‘I know!’ yelled Crumbs aka Clarry. ‘I fucking know! The thing we have on our side is no one knows he’s here. We can get rid of him and take off. What you blokes don’t understand is that even if we don’t do anything to him and they find us, we’ll be done for abducting a copper. Sentences for either of those crimes aren’t going to be real nice.’

‘Why can’t we leave him here alive and shoot through?’ Paul wanted to know.

Jack heard a fist connect with bone and the heavy thud of a body hitting the ground.

‘Hey, hey, hey,’ Clarry’s voice turned panicky. ‘We can’t go turning on each other now, John.’

‘If it means you and I can get out of here and he stays to take the fall, then we can,’ John answered.

‘No, no, no, mate. We’ve done that once before. When Gerard Hooper went to jail. He took the fall for me then. Let’s remember what our focus is here.’

‘It’s too murky now. Too many people have died. I think we walk away now.’

‘Well, we have a difference of opinion then.’

The STAR team deployed into the bush and surrounded the humpy. Dressed in camouflage gear, they moved like ripples through the land.

Dave was looking at the pictures the drone was streaming back to the computer and issuing instructions. ‘Opening on the southern side. Two windows to the north,’ he told them. ‘Where’s the infra-red camera view?’ he snapped to the officer beside him.

‘Here, sir.’ The officer tapped at the keys and changed view.

‘Okay, okay …’ Dave peered at the screen and saw four images. Two bodies were moving and two bodies were still. He held his breath, hoping they would both move.

‘We’ve got three inside, one out,’ he said through the mike attached to his headset. ‘Two moving, two not. One not moving is on the outside, the other is inside. Hold your positions.’

He waited a bit longer, but nothing changed. There were still two clearly moving, and two not. Dave didn’t dare take the drone any closer in case it became audible.

As he watched he saw one person moving start to drag one who wasn’t and knew it was time. It was beyond time; all he could do was hope that they weren’t too late.

‘All in position?’

‘Affirmative.’

‘Light them up.’ Dave watched as red beams from their guns hit the moving targets.

‘Righto, be on standby to go on my count. Three, two, one, go! Go! Go!’

From out of the bush streamed ten men with blackened faces, their guns trained on the shack.

‘Get on the ground!’

‘Police!’

‘Stay where you are!’

‘Get on the ground, get on the ground! Don’t fucking move.’