The sound from the engine-house was varying—‘hunting’ he called it—the note of the big diesel rising and falling on a cycle of about 20 seconds. A hundred metres from the engine-house and inside the well-insulated living quarters Dave was normally only subliminally aware of the faint throb. Until the note changed.
Damn, why does this happen only when Bruce is away? And always at night.
The first time it happened—months ago, with Bruce away on his fortnightly overnight provisioning run into Baghdad—he had reluctantly ventured out to investigate in the engine house. The harsh glare of the space communications facility security lighting flooding the compound always unnerved him, made him feel like he was visible to anyone lurking in the blackness beyond the fence. The engine house frequency meter confirmed the speed oscillations, but everything else was normal. Fuel flow, temperature, oil pressure… He’d thought about swapping in the standby diesel.
A two-man job, I reckon.
He’d shrugged, returned to his room and put on his hearing protection so he could sleep. By the morning the note was steady. The computer log told him the hunting had gone on from 8 pm to 2 am.
Dave and Bruce were contractors, engaged by the Australian Defence Force for maintaining and operating a remote communications facility in Iraq, its array of big dishes pointing skyward and smaller ones aimed back to an operational military base. Rarely was there anything to do beyond periodic fuelling and servicing of the diesel generators and ensuring that the all-knowing computer system logged and reported all instrument readings. Maybe someone somewhere took an interest in them. But now a new dynamic had entered.
Every second Wednesday, from 8 pm to 2 am, when Dave was alone on-site, the diesel driving the generator had taken to hunting. Puzzled, he and Bruce had later swapped the drive to the generator from the main to the standby diesel, without any effect—the hunting recurred. They swapped their Wednesday Baghdad provisioning runs. Amazingly, the hunting did not recur two weeks later when Bruce was in sole charge, only when Dave was there alone the following week. And here he was again, in sole charge of the facility, that varying note from the engine house penetrating his innermost being.
I’m being haunted. Why me?
He began to dread Bruce’s Wednesday absences, anticipating the change of note at 8 pm, unsure whether to be gratified by its predictability or spooked by its occurrence.
Six months of this was enough. Dave quit.
A week later, insurgents overran the facility. The bodies of Bruce and his new buddy were never recovered.
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