by John Marsden
Against Ryan’s reliable voice was the way he’d snapped at Lee and Homer. He was entitled to be angry at them, sure, but what worried me was that maybe he would be like that whenever there was pressure. Fiery and unfriendly.
I got tired and stopped listening again. They were talking about conditions back in New Zealand. Ryan didn’t want to say much about that either, but for a different reason. He just wasn’t sure it was safe using our voices out here in the bush.
I wasn’t sure either. We were well away from the drop zone, there was no sign of the enemy, and at this time of morning we should be the only people stupid enough to be out and about. And yet my tummy was rumbling like Rotorua and I was as nervous as I’d ever been.
So I listened to the music of the soft voices around me, but I didn’t listen to the words.
We set off again. The hike up to Tailor’s Stitch seemed endless. I couldn’t remember it ever taking so long, even in the worst circumstances. The trouble was I hadn’t had any real sleep since Colonel Finley told us we were getting a visitor. Not much more than twenty-four hours ago, but it felt like a fortnight. I knew every tree, every pothole, every bend of that track, but I could swear someone had taken the road and stretched it out like a piece of chewie, till it was a hundred per cent longer.
The light gradually got grey rather than black, then that sort of fuzzy grey before dawn. Shapes started to appear. Suddenly I could see trees a hundred metres up the track. We were nearly at the top, thank God. Everyone had stopped talking. I guess we were all tired, and a bit puffed by the last steep bit of the climb. I glanced at the crest that we were toiling towards. I felt like I was watching a black and white movie. And there were new actors in this movie. A line of them, three, then four, then five.
I was so tired that for a moment I didn’t believe what I was seeing. They were like a line of ghost soldiers. I stood still, in shock. My body tingled and burned. Ahead of me Kevin had seen them, and he stopped too. I guess that’s what convinced me they were real. Homer and Lee and Ryan plodded on with heads down. To my amazement, the soldiers on the ridge were still walking past in profile. Then Homer, now at the front of our group, suddenly saw them. He stopped like he’d been snap-frozen. That at last made the other two realise something was wrong, and they froze too.
The five of us were perfect targets. If the patrol went into attack mode we’d have to dive off into the bushes and hope we could find cover. But incredibly, the soldiers just kept walking. They looked pretty tired themselves. They were actually better targets than us, lined across the horizon like ducks in the shooting gallery at the Wirrawee Show. Maybe they’d been out all night too.
The last one moved across my line of vision and was gone. The bush was still and peaceful as though no humans had ever trodden through it.
We stared at each other in shock, then, without anyone needing to suggest it, we sidled like spirits into a patch of scrub on our left. We sneaked in about twenty metres, then gathered in a group. We were all trembling a bit I think. It had been so unexpected. There was just nowhere safe for us any more.
The first thing that was obvious was Ryan’s anger. I didn’t blame him. He’d put his life in our hands and almost lost it. I suppose we’d been too tired, not thinking things through enough. But in the middle of the night, so far from anywhere, with one patrol dead and buried just hours ago, and us certain no-one would come looking for them for days, we’d convinced ourselves that we’d be OK.
I always had the feeling that the New Zealanders weren’t sure that we really knew what we were doing. I just got the sense from talking to them that they thought we were a bunch of kids who’d done some crazy, wacky stuff and by a few lucky flukes got away with it. The first time I felt Colonel Finley finally, really, completely took us seriously was when we told him over the radio that we’d wiped out an entire patrol of enemy soldiers without getting a scratch. And now, such a short time later, it looked like we’d blown our reputation again. It was very aggravating.
Ryan said to all of us, ‘Well, that was a great effort’, then he said to me: ‘Good call, Ellie.’
Steam was coming out of every opening in his body – well, the visible ones anyway. He was flurried and flustered now. First he’d gone off at Homer and Lee for chucking mud, now his blood pressure was off the scale a second time. I was scared his moustache would catch fire.
It was funny having an argument in whispers, but we didn’t have much choice. And for once I didn’t buckle at this attack. I’d always struggled to cope with these army guys. Major Harvey and even Colonel Finley sometimes too. But now I looked Ryan straight in the eye and said: ‘We know these mountains backwards. In fourteen months they’re only the second group of soldiers who’ve been up here. It was totally unpredictable.’
All that was more or less true, although lately it seemed like the mountains had been swarming with as many enemy soldiers as a World War II movie.
OK maybe we had been careless. But they must have a lot more resources up here than we’d imagined. After all, not everything’s foreseeable. Not everything that goes wrong has to be someone’s fault. That’s why I stood up to Ryan, and that’s why I felt confident doing it.
He did gulp a bit. He literally swallowed his next words: I could see his Adam’s apple go up and down. After a pause he said: ‘Well, it’s no good having post-mortems. Let’s decide what we do from here.’
‘We have to go on into Hell,’ I said. ‘Fi and four kids are down there. Kids we’re looking after. I don’t want to leave them any longer, with enemy soldiers running around the mountains.’
Ryan didn’t look impressed by that either. ‘Four kids? How old are they? Mother of God, it’s a day-care centre. Where did they come from?’
He didn’t seem like he really wanted an answer, and this wasn’t the time or place anyway.
After another pause he said: ‘Do you all need to go on to – what do you call it? Hell? Maybe some of us could stay out here. I could go through what I need to and catch the midnight special out again.’
‘Is that the deal?’ Homer asked. ‘You’re only here for twenty-four hours?’
‘Absolutely. Provided it’s safe for the chopper to come in, I’m gone. I’ve got another hot appointment the next night, and I’m not missing that. If I judge it’s not safe here I’ll use the radio to arrange a new pickup point.’
There was a sigh around the group. This was getting complicated.
Homer said: ‘I think we should go on into Hell. Once we’re there we’re safe. That’s our base, it’s where everything is, it’s where we can organise ourselves for the job you want us to do. And it won’t be hard to get in safely.’
Ryan seemed about to disagree, but he looked around the group, at our faces, and whatever he saw seemed to persuade him. So in the end he just shrugged and said: ‘We’re going to have to be bloody careful.’
I thought that was one of the dumber comments of the whole war, but occasionally in my life I’ve been smart enough to hold my tongue, and this was one of those times.
As we set off again I was thinking of all the possible answers I could have given. ‘No, I’ve got a better idea: let’s form a conga line and dance our way to the top.’ ‘Hey, Ryan, have I told you about my diploma in yodelling?’ ‘By the way, guys, isn’t it time for our morning haka?’
We did a bush-bash to the crest, stopping fifty metres short and sending Homer and Kevin to check it out. We could hardly hold Kevin back. I wondered if Ryan’s presence made the difference. Maybe Kevin was so keen to make a good impression on a professional soldier that he didn’t mind sticking his neck out.
They were away half an hour. The first I saw of them coming back was a glimpse of Homer in among the rocks at the top of the track. Just a glimpse of his black hair, before he bobbed down again. My stomach did a slow roll, a full 360 degrees, then fell apart. I knew this was bad news. If he was staying in deep cover it must be for a reason. I glanced round at the others. At least they were awake
, and watching. I waved them down, like ‘Get out of sight’. A second later they’d all disappeared.
Ten minutes later I saw Homer much closer, then almost at the same time I saw Kevin coming down the hill on the other side. They were moving like daddy-long-legs, so delicately and carefully. I sneaked up the hill and met Homer behind a boulder. When I put my hand on his forearm I felt he had a thousand volts running through him. If we’d wired him up to the Wirrawee electricity grid they could have turned on the streetlights and still had enough left over to heat the pool.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘They’re spread out along Tailor’s Stitch,’ he said. ‘Just looking down into Hell. I don’t know what they’re doing. They’re bloody suspicious though.’
‘Maybe they’ve seen something from the air,’ I said.
‘Yeah, maybe.’ He was panting, then he added: ‘God, I can’t take much more of this.’
There was a rattle of stones behind me and I turned around. It was Ryan.
‘What’s happening?’ he asked.
Homer repeated his news. We both looked at Ryan, waiting for him to say something brilliant. Instead he seemed a bit embarrassed. He said, ‘I haven’t actually had a lot of experience in this kind of situation. What do you guys think?’
I felt my eyebrows go up, but got them under control again.
‘We can’t afford to let them start climbing down into Hell,’ I said. ‘Not with Fi and the ferals there.’
‘We’re light on for weapons,’ Homer said.
‘There’s plenty of firepower in those crates,’ Ryan said.
‘They’re too far away now,’ I said. ‘How much ammo have you got for that thing?’ I nodded at the rifle Ryan carried.
‘Eighty rounds.’
We all had automatic rifles, knocked off from the enemy, but with only thirty rounds between the four of us. It sounded a lot, but I knew the patrol up on Tailor’s Stitch would have a couple of thousand.
‘Are there only five of them?’ I asked Homer.
‘I think so.’
Kevin arrived, then Lee, from his position out on the flank. We told Lee the news.
‘Let’s get up closer and see what we can do,’ I said.
Ryan cleared his throat, nervously.
‘Er ... I don’t quite know how to tell you this,’ he said.
We waited. I had no idea what he was about to say, but it was obviously important.
‘I’m under strict orders,’ he said, getting redder with every word. ‘I’m not allowed to get involved in a combat situation. Not under any circumstances. Unless I’m being attacked, obviously.’
‘Oh,’ I said.
‘Well, OK,’ Homer said.
‘Unbelievable,’ Kevin said, which I thought was a bit rich, considering some of the performances he’d put on during this war.
Lee just gazed into the distance, up at the ridge, without saying anything.
‘Well,’ I said, echoing Homer. ‘OK. At least we know. Better to find out now I guess.’
With a big mental effort I made myself concentrate, not get distracted by negative feelings.
‘You wait here,’ I said to Ryan. ‘We’ll come and get you after we’ve checked things out. Can we have your ammo? If we leave you with, say, a dozen rounds?’
‘Sure,’ he said in his gruff voice. ‘Look, I’m really sorry about this, but they seem to think I’m needed for a few more jobs yet ...’
‘It’s fine,’ I said. I just wanted to get moving. I was very conscious of the patrol sniffing around at the edge of Hell, and in my overactive imagination I could see them already halfway down the sides of the crater, closing in on Fi and the kids.
We did the business with the rifles and started the long slow sneak up to the ridge. As I left Ryan he slammed his fist into a tree and muttered, ‘Mother of God, this is so unfair’.
I suppose he meant it; I wasn’t altogether sure.
The last thing I wanted was to go slowly but we simply had to be ultra careful. By the time we got to the top and set out for Wombegonoo the first heat of the day was starting to settle on us. The clear daylight scared me. We didn’t normally fight in these conditions. We were nocturnal killers.
Five against four weren’t good odds either.
We didn’t see the first soldier until we were halfway to Wombegonoo. Homer, beside me, was really fretting. Anything to do with Fi had him on edge. ‘They were much closer than this,’ he muttered to me, meaning that the soldiers had moved further along the ridge since he saw them. Either that or they’d already gone over the side and into Hell.
Then I saw one. He was standing on top of Satan’s Steps, looking down the cliffs. He was holding something, but I couldn’t work out what. Homer and I scanned the length of Tailor’s Stitch, looking for the others. I could see Lee and Kevin, to my right, doing the same. When I glanced back at Satan’s Steps, the guy had disappeared. For a moment I thought he must have fallen over. But Lee, who was working his way along the side of the ridge quite quickly, waved Homer and me forward, and as I ran, crouched, to the safety of a tree, I got a glimpse of a rope trailing from a large eucalypt.
I realised then what was happening. They were abseiling over the edge.
After that things happened at a speed that allowed for no thought, no feeling, just the mad adrenalin rush to make the correct decisions, call the right shots, and stay alive. There was a commotion to my right, not a noise, just a sense of the air being disturbed. I snapped around to see what was happening. Lee and Kevin were doing something, under another tree. They had a body between them. I left Homer and sprinted over, rifle at the ready. But they didn’t need me. They’d taken a prisoner. A young woman, in military uniform, was kneeling on the ground, her arms behind her head. Kevin had his rifle pointed at her face, from just three or four metres away. I was impressed, but then the problems hit me. Having a prisoner was a huge complication. But, like I said, no time for thought, we were in the middle of it now. Whatever happened in the next few minutes, we had to come out on top, we had to win. Second prizes in this war were handed out in the morgue.
The woman had been supervising the unwinding of the rope. She didn’t have to do much I’d say, just stand there and keep an eye on it. It ran around the trunk, with a leather strap to stop any fraying. Lee pulled out his knife, and looking at me, made a gesture of ‘I’ll cut it’.
I shook my head at him and tried to think. God it was hard. I was too tired, not just from the events of the last day and two nights, but from the whole long exhausting war. Homer arrived. I was so glad to see him. Somehow his just being there helped me to focus my mind, clarify my thinking. ‘Look,’ I said, keeping my voice low, ‘leave the rope for now.’ I couldn’t put it in words, but I knew in my mind I was right. If we cut the rope, anyone who wasn’t on it would know right away there was a problem. They would melt into the bush in Hell and we’d never find them.
‘Homer and I’ll go down the track,’ I added, ‘and try to surprise them at the bottom of the cliff.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ Lee said at once. ‘Kevin can look after her.’
I didn’t argue. I was too grateful for his company. I was wearing Lee’s watch, so I hit the start button and said to Kevin: ‘Cut the rope in eight minutes.’
I figured that if we moved fast enough we could get to the bottom of the cliffs in eight.
We went down that path like we had no fear. I guess the three of us were picturing Fi and the kids, those helpless kids who thought they were so tough. We ran silently, but we ran swiftly. Somehow I found myself in front. I hurdled logs, slipped on rocks, skidded round bends in the track, ducked under branches. I only looked behind me once. The boys were right there. That was all I needed to know.
Every time I hit another tree, or sharp edge of rock, I knew I’d collected another graze, or cut, or bruise. The sweat poured off me. It mingled with my blood. I ignored both the blood and the sweat, concentrating on the two important things, which were spe
ed and silence. Nothing mattered beside them.
When I wasn’t looking at the path, trying to dodge the ruts and bumps and huge mounds of wet leaves, I was checking the watch. In two minutes and forty-five seconds we reached the first bridge that the old Hermit had built. We made contact with Satan’s Steps for the first time at three minutes fifty, again at four minutes forty, and again at five minutes twenty. We were cutting it awfully fine. Through the gap between the cliffs exactly one minute later. I guessed we’d need another minute and a half, which was horribly close to the deadline of eight minutes. We couldn’t afford to be late. Surprise was worth lives in this race.
I heard Homer behind me cocking his rifle as he ran. I did the same. Kind of dangerous, running through bush at full speed with rifles cocked and loaded. I decided if I ever saw my dad again I wouldn’t tell him about this. But it was good Homer did it. It made me remember that this wasn’t just a race against the clock, a race against the bad guys, it was a battle, and I had to be in full combat mode, right now. No time for warm-ups or stretches or motivational speeches. I had to be ready to fire. To shoot. To kill.
The last glance at the watch showed seven and a half minutes gone. I reckon it probably was thirty seconds later that we reached the bottom of the cliffs, where I knew they’d be. It was only in the last twenty metres that we slowed down. Only for that little bit did I drop to a walk, then a fast creep forwards. I was so intent that I had no room to feel nervous. Talk about focused. All my energy, physical and mental and emotional, was on the job we had to do.
I saw them at the same time they saw me. The difference was that I was expecting to see them and they weren’t expecting to see me. That gave me a moment. But a moment wasn’t going to be enough, as I realised at once, with a kind of sick terror. There were six of them and three of us. Homer had been wrong about the numbers. Our little time advantage wasn’t worth much when it was six to three. No way could we wipe out six of them in a face-to-face battle.