Singapore Sling Shot - Andrew Grant [40]
I made it across the road and had just stepped into the aquarium grounds when the first police car came howling around the corner beyond the bus shelter with its full sound and light show going. I threw myself flat behind some shrubs as the car swept on towards the vehicle barrier at the fort gate. Doubtless the driver hadn’t expected the barrier to be down because there was a screech of brakes. The car came to a tyre-smoking halt.
As the three or four police in the vehicle got out of the car and descended on the barrier, I crawled on hands and knees towards the cover of the aquarium buildings. A second police cruiser arrived in equally dramatic fashion. This one had a spotlight in operation and its powerful beam started sweeping the aquarium grounds. The white scythe came towards me and I was caught with no cover.
No cover, that is, unless you count a pool filled with bloody great turtles. There was no alternative, so I vaulted into the water as the white beam from the spotlight swept by above me. The sound of my clumsy entrance into the pool hopefully was drowned out by the sound of cars and sirens.
Now, I don’t know a hell of a lot about turtles, but from what I’d seen of these huge guys on my reconnaissance run, they had beak-like mouths. I was in water that was almost chest high. I felt a boulder move under my feet and something slammed into my hip. I needed to tuck myself away in cover with all my bits hugged in tight and hope that these big guys didn’t get hungry for human flesh or that the guy with the spotlight didn’t get creative.
At one end of the pool was a pedestrian bridge. I half-swam and half-waded to it and ducked under. The bridge was quite wide and that gave me the room to get well under and out of sight. Turtles were nudging me. One came right up to me and surfaced. We looked at each other eyeball to eyeball in the half-light before he turned and swam away. I’m not sure if these guys are nocturnal or not, or if my sudden entry into their world just woke them up. Whatever, they were agitated. So far, although I had been pushed and nudged, I hadn’t been bitten. Long may the status quo remain, I thought.
There was a mesh under the bridge that cut the turtle pool off from the neighbouring pool or, I guessed, the other half of the same pool. If I could make it into the second pool, I could maybe get beyond the aquarium complex and into the cover of the trees.
I tried the mesh but it was heavy gauge and I didn’t have the tools necessary to cut it, so option number one was not available. I decided that I just had to tough it out where I was for the moment and pray the police didn’t get interested in the turtle pool.
There were more police vehicles arriving and, suddenly, one, and then two flashlights were playing on the water of the pool. Another joined it. I hunched low and turn my head away from the lights. Because I was deep under the bridge, I hoped that the light would bounce off the water surface and be reflected away and not penetrate the water. I could hear the cops talking. One suggested that no one in their right mind would be in the water with the turtles. Maybe he was right!
The cops’ discussion was suddenly interrupted by the sound of gunfire. Several weapons were in action back at the fort. There were shouts from the direction of the fort gate. The trio with the flashlights ran off. The turtle pool hopefully was now forgotten. This surely was my chance to get out of there.
I slipped out from under the bridge and gingerly levered myself out of the water. There were at least eight or nine police vehicles clustered on the roadway leading up to the fort. A senior officer was addressing a heavily armed squad. Other officers were under cover behind vehicles and stoneworks, pointing a variety of weapons up the fort driveway. Shots were still sounding from up above. A police helicopter was working a big light above the fort itself. Attention, it seemed,