The Cadet Under-Officer Read online

  THE CADET UNDER~OFFICER

  © Copyright C. R. Cummings 2000

  1st edition 2000

  (Seaview Press)

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

  Cummings, C. R.

  The Cadet Under-Officer: a novel about cadets in North Queensland.

  ISBN 1 74008 094 7.

  1. Title.

  A823.3

  This eBook 1st eEdition, 2012

  DoctorZed Publishing

  www.doctorzed.com

  eISBN 978-0-9871645-3-7

  This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealings for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission.

  C.R CUMMINGS

  THE CADET UNDER~OFFICER

  The Army Cadets

  DOCTORZED PUBLISHING

  www.doctorzed.com

  DEDICATION

  This book is dedicated to Captain Jack Careless, Lieutenant Dave ('Sylvester') Maclaren, and The Officers of Cadets of the Cairns State High School Cadet Unit (4 Cadet Battalion) 1964 for giving me the encouragement and opportunity, and to the Officers of Cadets and cadets of the Heatley State High School Cadet Unit (130 Army Cadet Unit) for providing me with inspiration and friendship over many years.

  ALSO BY

  C. R. CUMMINGS

  THE GREEN IDOL OF KANAKA CREEK

  ROSS RIVER FEVER

  TRAIN TO KURANDA

  THE MUDSKIPPER CUP

  DAVEY JONES’S LOCKER

  BELOW BARTLE FRERE

  AIRSHIP OVER ATHERTON

  THE CADET CORPORAL

  STANNARY HILLS

  COASTS OF CAPE YORK

  KYLIE AND THE KELLY GANG

  BEHIND MT BALDY

  THE CADET SERGEANT MAJOR

  COOKTOWN CHRISTMAS

  THE SECRET IN THE CLOUDS

  THE WORD OF GOD

  * THE CADET UNDER-OFFICER

  THE SMILEY PEOPLE

  Map 1: Bunyip River

  CHAPTER 1

  THE SECRET DISCOVERED

  Fifty year-old Mining Engineer Jack Schein pulled his car into the kerb beside the Charters Towers Post Office. He did not switch off the motor. Then he swore softly and bit his lip. He had just remembered his niece.

  Anxiously he glanced at his watch. 5 past 10. ‘If the bus from Townsville is on time she will be waiting for me at the bus stop,’ he thought. Jack wiped sweat from his face and looked nervously around. His fingers drummed on the steering wheel.

  ‘Should I just leave her and go on my own?’ he wondered.

  In the rear vision mirror he watched a vehicle turn into the almost deserted street behind him. He relaxed. ‘Not one of theirs,’ he noted. Then he returned to the problem of his niece.

  ‘What will Elizabeth do if I don’t pick her up? Will she just walk to our house when she got tired of waiting?’ Jack wasn’t sure. He shrugged and decided she would probably try the telephone first he thought - might even phone the mine to see if he was there.

  “Blast!” Jack smacked the wheel as he cried aloud in frustration. ‘What a day for her to arrive for the holidays!’ In his mind he saw her innocently walking into the trouble he had caused.

  ‘Am I providing Bargheese and his thugs with another hostage?’ he wondered. He couldn’t be sure the crooks would leave the women alone.

  Guilt at having left his wife to face whatever viciousness the gang might inflict helped him to decide. He glanced at the fuel gauge. Enough. Jack made his decision, looked, then pulled out and drove on.

  As he drove cautiously along the main street to where the bus stop was he saw a coach parked there. A handful of passengers stood on the footpath collecting their luggage. There was no sign of a NORMAC vehicle. Jack couldn’t remember whether he’d told any of the crooks at the mine that he was coming here or not.

  He saw Elizabeth waiting. She was a big girl for 15, tall and well built. She was wearing a white blouse, purple skirt and white shoes. The clothes made her look very attractive and older than she was.

  As the car stopped Elizabeth saw him and, after a quick wave, picked up her suitcase and walked over.

  Jack got out, looking hurriedly up and down the street as he did.

  Elizabeth smiled. “Hi Uncle Jack. How are you?”

  “Ok. Here, give us the case Liz,” Jack replied. He took the suitcase and placed it in the boot. Elizabeth went to get in the front passenger seat. There was a black leather briefcase there and she picked it up and placed it on the floor.

  “I’ve just put your briefcase on the floor Uncle Jack,” she said as he slipped into the driver’s seat.

  Jack shook his head. “Briefcase! It’s not mine. It’s.... Look Liz, you’ve come at a bad time,” he said as he restarted the car.

  “Why is that Uncle Jack? What’s wrong?” Elizabeth asked as she adjusted her seatbelt.

  Jack didn’t reply for a moment as he swung the car out into the traffic. Then he wiped his sweaty palms alternately on his trousers and muttered: “I’ve got a bit of a problem.”

  He looked nervously up and down Gill Street before turning left and accelerating along a side street.

  Elizabeth frowned. She really liked Uncle Jack and was worried. “What sort of a problem Uncle Jack? Can I help?”

  Jack shook his head. He drove on across several side streets without speaking. Elizabeth moved uneasily in her seat as she sensed his nervousness. She became even more puzzled, even slightly alarmed when Uncle Jack drove up another side street and turned right onto the Flinders Highway. They had reached the edge of town and drove on down the long slope past All Souls and St Gabriels School.

  Elizabeth knew they were on the road to Townsville. She glanced at the bush and racecourse on her right and then said, “Uncle Jack, where are we going? This isn’t the way to Aunty’s.” Her hazel eyes dilated in alarm.

  Uncle Jack nodded as he drove across Mosman Creek and up the slope beyond. “Sorry Liz. You’re not going to believe this but I ... we ... are being chased by a gang of crooks whom I believe are murderers,” he said. His worried eyes met hers. Then he tapped the small black briefcase now wedged beside Elizabeth’s knee. “The proof is in there.”

  “Who are they? What? Yes but...but why aren’t we going to Aunty’s?”

  “Because they know I’ve got this stuff and they were waiting for me there. Luckily I saw them before they saw me,” Jack replied.

  “But if they’re crooks shouldn’t we be going to the police?” she asked.

  Jack Schein didn’t reply for a moment as he concentrated on overtaking a semi-trailer.

  “I tried that first. They were already there at the Police Station. Again it was only luck I saw their vehicle. I don’t know... The mine security boss, Falls, was there and he’s good mates with the local Senior Sergeant. I just turned down a side street and now I don’t know who I can trust.”

  “Where are we going?” Elizabeth asked. They were out of town now, racing along at 120kph. The country was undulating and covered in dry savannah woodland - brown grass and stringy looking eucalypts. There was an occasional farm or dirt track leading off but it was a lonely highway.

  “Townsville,” Jack replied.

  “Townsville!” Elizabeth cried. She had just come from there in the bus and knew it was more than a hundred kilometres away, the intervening country mostly just empty bush. “But why?”

  Jack pointed to the briefcase. “To give that to the Federal Police.”

  “Federal Police!” Elizabeth was astonished. She had heard of them but had never met one or even seen one that she knew of. “Why?”

  “Becau
se I’ve uncovered a smuggling racket - illegal immigrants and drugs,” Jack replied. His face was set in a worried frown. He went on. “Look, I didn’t plan this. I just stumbled on it. I was doing some work on the computer in the office this morning and there was no-one else around. I looked into the Manager's Office and found the safe open.”

  Jack paused for a second to look anxiously in the rear vision mirror, then went on: “I wouldn’t have looked any further if I hadn’t already had a few suspicions and if I liked the people I work for. I mean NORMAC pays well and the conditions are good but there’s just something. I’ve felt it ever since I started work at the Brendan Creek Mine.”

  “What sort of things Uncle Jack? Could you slow down a bit,” Elizabeth said as the car nearly went out of control passing another truck.

  “Sorry. Look, it was like this, six months ago Jim Harding, he was Third Engineer and Shift Boss, said he thought there was something fishy about the set-up. In particular he wondered about the aircraft and vehicle movements at night. The company owns several aircraft and a helicopter for survey, prospecting and moving people about. They own several mines spread across North Australia,” he explained.

  Elizabeth nodded. She knew that but wasn’t really interested; or hadn’t been up till now.

  Jack went on, “Well, Jim started poking around and I found him dead at the end of the night shift. Accidental death. Killed by a rock fall in the open-cut. Yet he wasn’t wearing his hard-hat and it was lying nearby and not scratched. Jim was always very safety conscious and I’d never seen him on the job without his helmet on. It worried me.”

  Jack paused for a moment to concentrate on his driving. Then he went on, “It got me thinking too....shit!...Sorry Liz.” Just in time he swerved and braked to avoid hitting a kangaroo which suddenly bounded across the road.

  Elizabeth had never heard him swear and it helped her believe his story. ‘He isn’t making it up,’ she thought, a sick feeling forming in the pit of her stomach.

  Jack went on: “The Brendan Creek Mine employs a lot of people: a manager, four in the office, sixteen miners, a cook, an electrician, a storeman, a diesel fitter, an aircraft mechanic, two pilots and seven security men, seven! That’s a lot of people to employ on not much gold.”

  Elizabeth had no concept of the costs of paying all those people or of running a gold mine. Jack continued. “Now, I’m Second Engineer. I use the computers a lot and I kept coming up against blocks requiring a password. Do you follow?”

  Elizabeth nodded. “Yes. I do computing as part of my Maths Course at School,” she replied.

  “Well you’d expect that,” Jack said. “I mean, there are obviously confidential office files. You know, things like personal records of employees and so on. Well I hit the wrong key this morning and up came a query for a password I’d never seen before. That was when I looked in the Manager’s office. I didn’t mean to pry but boy, did I get a shock!”

  Elizabeth was curious now and had calmed down a bit. “What did you find Uncle Jack?”

  “There are two safes,” he explained. “The general office safe and the manager’s. I’d never seen it open. The first thing I picked up was a large envelope. It was open so I looked in. It contained two passports and a brown leather covered notebook - a diary type thing. They’re in there.” He pointed at the black briefcase again. “I suppose I shouldn’t have looked. I mean it was none of my business but I can’t stand that Watton, he’s the Manager. He’s a stuck-up snooty sort of bastard. Sorry Liz. Well, the passports weren’t his. They were for two different countries; Australia and the USA. They had different names inside but the photo of the same man. They were of a bloke named Bargheese who’s the Chief Secretary at the mine. But he’s from Fiji. A Fijian of Indian descent really. I know you can have dual citizenship but not in two names.”

  Again Jack paused to gather his thoughts. “So I opened a drawer and it was full of passports. They’re in the briefcase too. There were three types. There were Australian passports all with pictures of Indians inside and all the details filled in. There was a bundle of about twenty Australian passports which were blank - no photos, no names and so on. That’s got to be crooked. The third bundle were all foreign passports, some from Vanuatu, Sri Lanka or Singapore but mostly from Fiji, and all the photos were of Indians.”

  Jack wiped his sweating palms and again checked the rear-vision mirror. “I was scared by this. I knew I’d found a bundle of trouble. I opened another drawer and it was full of money; thousands of dollars in foreign currencies. I took samples but left most of it. Then I found a packet of computer discs. I couldn’t resist by then. I had a quick look around but there wasn’t a soul in sight still so I popped one in. The password still blocked me but I flicked through the brown notebook and on one page with a bookmark in were what looked like keywords. I typed one and there it was.”

  “What Uncle Jack?”

  Jack turned to look at Elizabeth with worried eyes. “Illegal Immigration. Indians mostly. I did a quick read, then tried another disc. It had details of gold output. I was right. They are doctoring the figures. A Stock Market swindle I suppose. The mine is only a ‘front’ for their real money earners. I tried another and got another shock. Drug smuggling. It was all there; dates of delivery, quantities, prices.”

  Jack wiped sweat from his face. “I knew then I was in trouble. I mean this is deadly and I know too much. I wondered what to do and decided I would never get another chance. I had another look outside and then put the two computer printers to work. The Manager’s got one in his office too. In ten minutes I had a heap of printed evidence. That’s in the briefcase too.”

  The car sped up a long grassy ridge. Jack again studied the view in the rear vision mirror. He frowned. “I don’t like the look of that white car behind us,” he muttered. Then he went on. “Well I got all nervous then. A bit flustered really. I took the briefcase and walked out to my car and drove to town. I had to come in to meet you anyway. First I tried to go to the police, as I said. But they were already there: Falls and Berzinski in a NORMAC Landcruiser, two of the mine security men.”

  Elizabeth puzzled over this. The Brendan Creek Mine was over 30km northeast of Charters Towers on a dirt road. “But how did they know Uncle Jack?”

  “My fault. I left the safe open. I realised on the way in I should have shut it and then it might have been hours before they discovered it. I suppose they radioed. All their vehicles have radios. Falls must have been in town already. Bad luck I guess.”

  Jack grimaced and gave her a sickly grin. “That’s when I went round to get your Aunty. I wanted to get her safe away from there. But there was a NORMAC vehicle there too, parked under the trees further down the street. I did a U-turn in the intersection so I don’t know if they saw me or not,” he explained. He cast another worried glance in the mirror.

  Shaking his head he went on. “I was in a hell of a quandary. I felt a real heel just running away and leaving Mavis. Then I thought of you getting off the bus at 10 O’clock and just walking into their hands. I...I imagined they would use you as a hostage or something. So I thought: ‘I can’t just run out again.’ That’s why I’ve picked you up.”

  Jack paused. His eyes flickered and his mouth set in grim lines. “But I’m not sure if I’ve done the right thing,” he said.

  “Why Uncle Jack?”

  “Because I’m now positive that white car behind is chasing us.”

  Elizabeth turned to look, brushing her long, brown hair out of her eyes. The white car was about half a kilometre back. It had a radio aerial and could have been a police car except it had no blue light.

  Jack swore. That reinforced the seriousness of the situation in Elizabeth’s mind.

  Jack bit his lip then said, “It’s them alright. That’s buggered it! How the hell did they know which way I’d gone? They must have seen me. Hang on Liz.”

  Jack began to drive as fast as he ever had in all his life, knowing in his heart he was no racing driver. He coul
d feel a mounting dread clutching at his stomach.

  They crossed a small bridge and went over a rise at 130kph, down a long dip, then up over another rise. There were hardly any other vehicles on the road. They passed a truck and a car going the other way and then overhauled and passed a car.

  Jack kept glancing behind and his hands were slippery on the wheel. He was having doubts about his ability to win this race as there was over a hundred kilometres to go. The policeman at Mingela might be their only hope but even that was twenty minutes drive through mostly empty bush. The way in which they were being pursued left him in no doubt of how serious things were.

  Another small bridge, another crest, more open bush. On they raced, the other car slowly drawing up behind them. Liz was frightened now, more from the speed than from any realisation that she might be in danger from the men in the car behind. She saw that it was only a hundred metres back.

  “There are two black men in the front of that car,” she said.

  “Not black. Fijian Indians. The driver is a clerk named Vyajana and the other one is Bargheese. Bargheese is the mine secretary. He is the dangerous one. The two in the back are security guards named Amos and Berzinski.”

  Something in Jack’s voice made Elizabeth glance at him and she was shocked by his appearance. His face was set in grim lines and there was a desperate look in his eyes. The effect was heightened by the beads of sweat on his brow and top lip. His skin had gone a pale, waxy colour. She began to experience real alarm.

  CHAPTER 2

  THE CHASE

  As the car roared over the crest a wheel went off the bitumen. Gravel flew and dust rose. Uncle Jack wrestled with the steering but waited till they reached an area where the bitumen had smooth edges before pulling the car back onto the road. The vehicle swayed alarmingly.