Not too long ago my mate Bullitt, whom some Bikernet readers know as the V-max riding professional soldier, came back home from some undisclosed overseas country where he’d accomplished some undisclosed military things.
Having been on active duty for almost a full year, he was looking forward to a month off. Relaxing on the Barbary Coast beaches, riding around with his mates to country pubs, you know, the usual stuff.
So me and Troy are barreling down the highway next to the Royal National Park (Southern Sydney outskirts). I’m on me Max and Troy is on his new Kawa sports bike.
We’re in a 90 kilometer zone, doing about a hundred of course, when I see a highway patrol come roaring up behind us. We’re in the inside lane, overtaking cars on our right.(Note to readers: In Oz we drive on the opposite side of the road to the USA.)
The cop puts his blues and twos on. I assume he wants us to pull over.Fuck knows why, we’re only doing ten over the limit. Cars in front of us going much faster than that.
I’m in the outside of the left lane; Troy is behind me on the inside.There’s a red car next to me in the right hand lane.Before I can even think of pulling over the red car changes lanes, no indicators, no head turning, no brake lights, nothing.
It slams right into the side of me bike!Sends me veering offline, over into the emergency pullover lane, aiming straight at the bloody rock face of the cliff.
I wrestle the bars to the right, stick a foot down and do a complete sideways drift, trying to keep the Max upright and the bike away from the rock face.Somehow I manage to keep the bike upright and stop it. My right leg hurts like fuck, after all, a car doing 90 k an hour just slammed into it!
Troy pulls to a stop beside me. The cop car pulls up behind the pair of us.Troy is off his bike in a second, runs around and grabs hold of me.
”Fuck are you ok mate,” he yells?
I just look at him, dazed.I kick the sidestand down and start to slide off the Max with his support.
All of a sudden he looks in front of us and shouts, “Look out!”
The red car that has run me off the road has apparently pulled up some distance in front of us. Now it’s reversing back towards us at high speed.Troy grabs me and pulls us both to one side as the bloody car crashes into our bikes!
Unbeknownst to us, the cop had undone his seat belt, opened his door and put one foot outside his car. The red car impacts with our parked bikes and smashes them back into the front of the cop car!
The driver’s door slams into the cop’s lower leg (we later discover it broke it just below the knee). His body is jerked forwards and his head crashes into the inner corner of the open door, slicing his forehead open to the bone. He falls down onto the roadway.
By now cars going past are screeching to a stop all over the place, two of them rear end each other, further back down the road, more do the same.
(Jaq: Bullitt said later it started to look like the opening scene in a Monty Python movie!)
Our bikes are crushed against the front of the cop car.The driver of the red car then stamps on the accelerator and starts to burn rubber away from the accident scene. But doesn’t get far because another motorist (a fellow rider as it turns out) has pulled up in front to see if he could help us.
The red car now crashes straight into the back of this guy’s car!
This is too much for me.
Ignoring the pain running up and down my outer thigh I dash forward and use the back of the red car as a springboard to roll myself over the roof and down next to the drivers side door. Which is just opening.I reach in and grab a handful of throat. My other hand goes back to deliver what is surely going to be the most savage karate stroke I have ever thought about doing to a human beings face.
And then I stop!
My hand is wrapped around the throat of a young girl, very young, about 16 or so I would guess.I don‚t have to destroy her face; someone‚s already had a damn good try at it. Her nose is broken and streaming blood, she has a black eye.
Her blouse is ripped open and one breast is hanging out. She’s wearing a mini skirt, bunched up around her waist. She has no panties on and I can see scratches and bruises on the inside of her thighs.
I’ve done a lot of soldiering in Africa, seen this many times, this girls been raped, and not too long ago.
” Jesus,” I blurt out, “are you ok?”
Of course she’s not but it’s an instinctive comment faced with this situation.And she goes berserk, I mean like completely fucking mental!
She screams and claws my face, knees me in the groin, tries to bite my hands. She’s completely lost it.Have you ever tried to subdue someone in a state like this? I have before, and it’s almost impossible without doing them some damage.
She’s writhing and jerking and screaming and crying and clawing and kicking.Troy went to look at the cop, who is sitting on the ground clutching his broken leg and groaning.
I yell out to him. “Get his fucking handcuffs for fucks sake mate!”
The guy who stopped in front of the red car is standing around doing nothing frantically.Imagine what this scene must look like.Troy doesn’t ask the cop for the handcuffs. He just rips them off the bloke’s belt and shoves the cop aside as he protests.
He runs over to me and together we get the hysterical girl down onto the ground and pull her arms down and handcuff her.
Concerned motorists are all around us now, demanding to know what’s happening. What are we doing to this poor girl? Who are we? What are we? What happened to the police officer?
I leave Troy to hold the girl down on the ground and dig my wallet out of my back pocket. I have a feeling this could all get very nasty, very quickly, if someone doesn’t show some authority around here.I flash my military ID at them.
”Military Police officers. Everyone return to your vehicles and move off,” I stammer.
Everyone just stares blankly at me.
I raise my voice, a lot. “I said this is police and military police business, get back in your cars and drive on or we’ll arrest you for failing to obey a police directive!”I shove a couple back towards their car.
”Move out, now, now, let’s do it, get going,” I shout.I am not in actual fact a military copper, a Redcap. But how the fuck would any of these people know? One military ID probably looks just like another to them.Some minutes later and I’ve cleared the area of bystanders.
The girl has quieted down and is sobbing in Troy’s arms. The other guy from the car in front is helping the copper. The cop has called for backup, which arrives shortly thereafter with an ambulance.
To cut a long story short the girl’s step dad raped her about an hour before. She escaped and nicked his car.She thought the siren of the police car was meant for her, went to pull over, ran into me. Freaked out and stopped. Reversed the car to come back and make sure I was all right, in her desperate state she couldn’t remember brake from accelerator and drove straight back into our bikes. Then she freaked out even more and just wanted to get away. Then she drove forwards into the other blokes car!
She went to the hospital, where me and Troy later went to visit her.The cop went to the hospital as well.The bikes went home on the back of a mate’s Ute.The cop car, the other bloke’s car, and a few of those who crashed into each other on the road beside us all went home on the back of tow trucks.
I got a warning from our local police officers not to remove and use police handcuffs without the officers permission.To which I said fuck off and don’t annoy me you prick!
They saw I was a little stressed. I’d already refused a trip to hospital in an ambulance myself. My right leg was bruised like you wouldn’t believe. So they wandered off after a while.
The step father has been charged with assault, rape and unlawful imprisonment. Maybe he’ll even go to jail. If he doesn’t it’s ok, cause now me and the lads I work with know where he lives.
You really don’t want to have us visit you in the early AM. Trust me on this.
They charged the girl with nicking the blokes car can you believe?Luckily the stolen car was fully insured, so the bikes will get fixed ok.
What a fucking day!And this is me relaxing?I can’t wait to get my next assignment personally.
This story, pretty much word for word, from Bullitt to Jaqhama and re-written here. 30/11/05.