I pull out the GPS at breakfast and am pleased to see the remaining three dingo dots are very close together. This can either be good or bad. If they are all together, it might be a very dangerous situation. I check the GPS again, and it shows three dots within a kilometer of each other.
“Let’s go get them!” Dane says. And just like that, we are out the door.
The dingoes are located south of here near Hayes Creek. It is probably going to take us about an hour and a half to get there. So Dane suggests that I drive for a while so he can teach Derrick how to operate the tranquilizer gun. It’s pretty simple, but he wants to make sure Derrick knows how to load and shoot.
No problem for Derrick. Sometimes, at the zoo, they need to use a tranquilizer gun, especially if an animal becomes aggressive. But, just to be safe, Derrick watches and learns. Dane wants to have a third man on the tranquilizer gun in case the three dingoes are together.
I glance at the GPS sitting on the console between the two front seats and notice that our turn-off is coming up pretty soon, so I ask Derrick to grab the GPS and keep me posted.
“Turn right at the next intersection, Kobi.”
“Okay, turning right.”
We are driving on a dirt road now and come to a small clearing where we see a large tent set up. The dingoes are together and within 100 meters, according to the GPS, which puts them really close to the tent. We stop and start looking.
“I don’t see them,” Monti says.
“Neither do I,” Dane says. We wait for a few minutes and see a man walk out of the tent. Our first reaction is to yell at him and tell him to go back inside, but then we see three dingoes following him outside. Could those be the three dingoes we are looking for? Who is that man? Derrick takes a picture of him and sends it to Geoff. Within a few seconds, Geoff calls Derrick and informs him that the man in the photo is Stolz Johannsen, one of the doctors from the facility. Derrick tells him what is going on.
“What do you want us to do Geoff,” Derrick asks. There is a long pause
and Derrick says, “Okay, I’ll call you when it’s done.”
We need some time to formulate a plan. Geoff wants us to tranquilize Stoltz and keep him tied up until he and Marcus arrive. It will be later on this evening before they can get here. Dane asks me to back up the car and go park away from Stolz so we can discuss strategy without being seen. We are a little confused because it appears as though the dingoes and Stolz are together, which doesn’t make sense. Maybe the dingoes sense the connection and that’s why they haven’t attacked Stolz. That’s our best guess, but who knows.
Dane starts thinking out loud, “We will need to put more than one dart in Stolz because the darts I have are for something the size of a dingo, 20 kg or so. Stolz is probably around 110-120 kilograms (250 pounds). It will take four to five darts to bring down a man his size. We have four guns. Kobi, all you have to do is aim using the scope and pull this trigger.”
“I know. Remember, I shot the dingo.”
“Oh, sorry” Dane says and continues. “If we all shoot at the same time, he will fall, but what about the dingoes? If we shoot the dingoes first, he may have a gun and start shooting at us. So we have a problem.”
We were so preoccupied with our discussion that we didn’t realize there was a woman standing in front of our car with a gun pointed at us.
“Put your hands up and get out of the car,” she screams.
Stolz is there as well and is pointing a gun right at Derrick, so I open the door, put my hands up and get out of the car. Derrick, Dane, and Monti do the same. They tell us to get down on the ground and put our hands behind our back. Then everything goes black.