Dreaming the Enemy

by David Metzenthen

  There was nothing.

  At a hand signal, the boys rose, separating from the trees and shadows. Within five metres they were absorbed by other trees and other shadows.

  ‘How come,’ Lex whispered, jabbing a finger at the bush ahead, ‘it’s always their turn to hide?’

  Johnny grinned. He couldn’t help it. Suddenly he was smacked in the head by a sound so loud and close it knocked him over.

  A mine.

  For a moment he stayed down, pinned by the weight of his gear. Smoke rose, a misty blue mushroom. He wondered if he’d been hit, decided he hadn’t and knelt, weapon up. Someone shouted.

  ‘Medic!’

  Someone screamed. The sound climbed into the trees. Men moved incrementally. The black aerial of the radio waggled above a bush. Someone was calling for a dust-off. The screaming went on.

  ‘Be fucking careful, Shoe.’ Barry pointed. ‘We’ll go there.’

  Johnny nodded. They moved two metres, setting the M60 to cover a trail and a small clearing. Something flickered. Johnny thought of a rabbit. Barry reacted. Vegetation burst into mist. The pounding of the automatic weapon drowned all other noise. No screaming now.

  Or if there was, Johnny couldn’t hear it.

  Khan, Trung, and Thang climbed out of the trench and ran. Fighters fled like wasps. The sky was distant, as if glimpsed through broken glass, patterns changing as the boys twisted and turned along trails they knew were not mined or booby-trapped. A fire team of five had been left to cover their retreat, commanded by a veteran with bullet scars in both legs. Khan was thankful he had not been selected to join them.

  He was also thankful for the jungle boots he wore. They were the best footwear he’d ever had, allowing him to run without looking at the ground. His pack, slapping lightly, seemed to have been inflated with guilt. The loss of rice was a serious blow but that was how the gods had seen fit for those bullets to fly, he decided. And that was that.

  Behind them he heard explosions. Grenades. The tall bastards were blowing the tunnels. Well, hopefully that would hold them up for a while – that, and the comrades who would fire from the earth then melt away. Now a mine went up. The weight of the explosion was like thunder in a cave. Someone’s just got the call from up above, Khan thought, as a thin screaming came through the scrub.

  He ran on, leaves tearing at his face as a machinegun added sledgehammer blows. He imagined a fleet of bullets pursuing him.

  ‘Shooting at shadows,’ he called to Trung. ‘No chance!’

  ‘Yes,’ Thang called back. ‘But we’re the shadows!’

  It did not feel good to run. Khan wondered if they shouldn’t just turn and blast it out with the Australians. But they were under-manned and under-prepared and now he could hear helicopters. Dust-offs or gunships, he wasn’t sure, but the fighters weren’t about to hang around to find out. To stop was to die and to die at this point was to lose twice.

  He ran on, holding hate for the enemy in one hand, and love of his comrades in the other. These were the weapons, love and hate, not B52s or Cobra gunships, that would win this war. He knew it, his comrades knew it, and the whole country knew it. And because Johnny was capable of imagining Khan and his life, and he had fought the North Vietnamese, he knew it, too.

  Shoey’s patrol set up a perimeter the size of a public swimming pool. Green men in green grass bent over the three casualties, one a Charlie fighter with a missing kneecap and a bad head wound. Two Aussies had been caught by the mine. Tommy Dean was dead and Patto looked bloody awful.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Johnny muttered, for no good reason other than he simply had to say something. ‘Get that chopper down here.’

  He steadied his rifle against a tree. From the corner of his eye he watched purple smoke leak as if from a small volcano. In his chest there was a deepening emptiness as he scanned a chequerboard pattern of green on green with straight shafts of bamboo climbing through it. Snakes and Ladders, Vietnamese-style, he thought. No winners here, only losers.

  Behind him, Tommy Dean had been carefully wrapped in plastic, and put to one side. TD, as he was called, from some tough outer suburb of Melbourne, was so permanently gone it was beyond any words that Shoey had. All Johnny could do now was his job: to search the jungle over open sights, and shoot anything that moved. Patto had been hit in the legs and was quietly swearing and crying. The sound of it ground in Johnny’s head and stomach.

  ‘Holy shit,’ he murmured. ‘Madness.’

  Thankfully he could hear the dust-off, the blurred whacking getting louder and louder. Fast and low the chopper came in, bubble-headed, iron-coloured, open-sided, slender skids rocking as it hovered over the thrashing grass. A team of blokes converged.

  Sleeves rolled, backs bent then up went a small forest of arms, five camouflaged faces turned to the sky. Patto was lifted into the open door, a translucent drip handed over like his passport out. Next the wounded Viet Cong was put aboard and then a long, heavy parcel was taken from the grass, and held carefully aloft. Hands released, hands received, and the Huey rose above the chaos – the feeling of the coffin leaving the church, and the church leaving the clearing.

  See yer, Tommy-boy, Shoey thought, some long day down the road.

  Johnny could picture the white egg-shaped boulders of the Long Hai Hills as clearly as the tiring Main Force fighters could see them. The North Vietnamese force was now well into the final stage of their mission, Khan looking back at where they had come. The tops of trees and scrub formed a knobbly wedge that spread out into farmland. There were villages to the left and right and the shaggy heads of palm trees drooped as if heat-exhausted.

  ‘Notice something, Khan?’ Captain Van pointed generally with his AK. ‘No smoke.’ He smiled wearily. ‘When the Americans are involved, they torch everything. It makes them feel that they’re achieving.’ He turned back to the trail, the boulders ahead like stacked skulls. ‘Thankfully, rocks don’t burn. Or they’d have cooked us like chickens years ago.’

  Khan walked into the welcome shade of the hot granite slabs. The narrow path, ages old, wended its way, so it looked, into ancient eye sockets. The Long Hais would swallow the soldiers. The rock pile would hold them safe in its heart and belly, and regurgitate them to fight battles with better odds.

  ‘Not a great success, men.’ Captain Van stood to one side, watching his fighters file past, ragged, muddy, and loaded like beasts. ‘But without rice, we are nothing.’ He patted Trung on the shoulder. ‘And that, comrade, is the truth.’

  Khan thought of Noc, twelve hours dead, and the injured Kien. Thoughts like these only added a steely edge to the hate he’d accumulated in the last year. One day he prayed he would stand in front of the Australians, or Americans, and fire a full magazine into their chests. The idea of them moving through this country whenever and wherever they chose, sleeping under its stars and drinking its water, seemed to squeeze the life out of him. They had to be driven away or killed. He would gladly do it.

  ‘Noc.’ Thang said the dead soldier’s name as he let Khan pass. ‘We will talk about him later. Properly.’

  Khan nodded, following the foot-worn trail, trying to remember what it had been like when he was a farmer. He thought of a water buffalo called Big Grandpa, could see him ploughing, could hear his hooves pulling out of the grey sucking mud. But when he tried to picture himself working the plough, the motion of it like a small boat in a choppy sea, he was not there.

  I guess, Johnny thought, once you’ve fought in a war, your other self will pretty much just drift away. And it will be up to you to recreate your new self from the wreckage. Take what is left and panel-beat a new personality. Or call it a day and write yourself off.

  As the rain drummed on Shoey’s carefully rigged hoochie, a different strain of fear entered his consciousness. It was a gnawing, crawling fear that invaded his sleep. It was a fear populated with small brown men, oily-slick, armed to the teeth, gliding through the forest. Unerringly they moved along trails towards him and the bedded
-down patrol, with long knives and automatic rifles.

  When he opened his eyes, about every third minute, he could see nothing. All he could hear was falling water. The blackness was complete, centuries old, as complex and other-worldly as the inside of a beehive. Yet Johnny knew, out in the liquid darkness, the North Vietnamese were always positioning to strike.

  For a moment he imagined himself home, walking along a dusty road, the sky studded with stars. He would be completely without fear. He would be in the place he was born to be. He would be with Jilly, he would be with Jack, his Blue Heeler, he might be on his way to fish in Ted Collins’ new dam, or he might be thinking about taking up Bill Grey’s offer to teach him how to shear and make some real money. The feeling of that road and those paddocks, and being with those people – his people – was in his bones. It was a feeling equalled by the knowledge that here he was the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time. The only thing right about it was his intention to protect the boys with every last measure of guts and skill he had.

  He moved his hand three inches and touched his rifle. And wondered for the thousandth time, how, from a far-flung town in sheep country, he got here. Then he gave up wondering and slept, knowing Barry was on sentry, the one person he trusted absolutely to inhabit the darkness as the enemy did.

  Barry Neville Grainger was incapable of letting his mates down. Barry Neville Grainger was capable of limitless killing. Barry Grainger was the perfect soldier; Johnny knew it, just like he knew had never met anyone like Baz before and never would again. The bloke was unmatched.

  Khan, Trung, and Thang sat in a dim corner of the cave Johnny had dreamed up, a cave that penetrated deep into the Long Hais. The boys shared a cigarette, oil lamps throwing a soft light over clusters of soldiers as they recovered from the day. The low murmur and muted movements reminded Khan of the noise of a peaceful barn.

  He looked around, seeing weapons, the warmth of wooden stocks married to the deadly efficiency of black gunmetal. And he looked at the men, drawn from the fishing and farming villages of the north, parts of the south, and everywhere in between. This was definitely a peasants’ war, he thought. It was the poor fighting the rich for the good of the people, and the party. So be it. Uncle Ho had spoken.

  Khan imagined the American bases. He pictured jets, attack helicopters, tanks, artillery, the thousands of big men, the millions of tonnes of equipment weighing down the ground. Even that flag of theirs looked rich. It was not like silk but velvet in bold red, striking white, and deep blue, as if everything in their country was clean, beautiful, and without guilt. The Australian flag, well, it was just some dull old blue thing with some stars and something square stuck in a corner. He couldn’t imagine that country or those odd people at all.

  ‘What do you think will happen to Loc?’ Trung asked pensively. ‘If he is not buried? Will his spirit remain unhappy?’

  ‘The Australians will bury him,’ Khan said. ‘Not properly. But they will bury him. It’s something they do.’ It was true. At least the tall bastards did that.

  We did, Johnny agreed. Yes, we always did that.

  The three North Vietnamese soldiers sat in silence, thinking of Loc while Johnny thought, in general, of the enemy.

  ‘I guess when you die,’ Khan spoke quietly to Trung, ‘your soul rests, and you exist in the thoughts of your family and friends. As we are doing now. Thinking of him.’

  ‘We’ll have our chance to pay them back.’ Thang nodded slowly. ‘This is where they operate. And this is where we fight.’

  ‘What about Kien?’ Trung glanced at the older men. ‘Will the Australians execute him? I hear they throw prisoners out of the helicopters.’

  Thang shook his head. ‘I doubt it. But you can bet you’ll never see him again. One way or another, he’s for the chop.’

  You’re right about that, Johnny agreed; but not at our hands. His countrymen from the south might decide he has to go and that’ll be that. And with a bit of luck, you fellers might be next.

  The Australian patrol moved out, snaking its way into the bush. Shoey had the sense of leaving yesterday in the awful drowned darkness of last night, leaving it in the clearing where Tommy Dean began his long trip home. Looking behind, he hoped never to come back this way but guessed he was heading to places that would be a whole lot worse.

  ‘I just remembered,’ Lex whispered, stopping in the steadily rising heat. ‘I have a shitload of library books overdue. Those fines mount up, Johnny. Five cents per book per day. Non-fiction may be even more. I could be up for millions.’ He lifted a thumb, presumably in the direction of the Black Rock public library, Johnny guessed. ‘I should go back now, John, shouldn’t I?’

  ‘Yeah, you should,’ Johnny said. ‘And don’t forget to lock your bike up outside.’ For a moment he pictured Lex, the mock-serious idiot on some wide sunlit beach, board loosely pinned under an arm as he checked out the waves, knobbly knees below flowery boardshorts, smiling just for the hell of it. Instead, here he was holding an M16, being paid to kill Viet Cong or be killed by them. ‘Or you could simply go throw ’em at the bastards in Canberra.’

  With every metre covered, the patrol penetrated further into the Minh Dam Secret Zone. This place, where the Australians ruled by day and D555 by night, was where the two forces would meet head-on. It was inevitable, because that was the plan, and everybody knew it.

  Khan and Thang, armed, squatted in the cover of boulders deep in the night-time recesses of Johnny’s mind. Around them the dark shoulders of the Long Hai Hills swelled and rose. Thirty metres in front, bare rock met straggly bush. It was a logical assault point for the enemy, although Khan was sure the Australians would not strike.

  He knew the tall bastards preferred to fight in daylight, apart from setting night ambushes. Generally they harboured in the dark. Or retreated to their base where there was electric light, strong protection, and beer in blue and green cans. They even watched movies. It seemed a ridiculous way to fight a war. They did not value time as the people did. They were not tireless like the people were. They were mercenaries flown in to fight, with no idea of whom, where, or why they were fighting.

  Not quite true, buddy-boy, Johnny thought. We did know something about you, your ideas, and your country. And to prove this, he allowed Khan to take flight in his imagination, to float away from the Long Hais and over the paddy fields, villages, mountains, jungles, and rivers. Johnny allowed Khan to feel the earth pressing the last of its rising warmth into his bare chest like love, to show his Vietnamese enemy that the Australians were not ignorant dogs but accomplished jungle fighters who had some understanding of their enemy. To underestimate the diggers would be a serious mistake.

  ‘I’d kill for a smoke.’ Thang rested his wide forehead against the cold barrel of his AK.

  Khan chuckled, Johnny seeing that the rice farmer-turned-soldier did at least have a sense of humour.

  ‘You mean we’d be killed for smoking.’ Khan waved a finger. ‘By either side.’

  ‘Yes, it would not be smart.’ Thang stretched his stocky legs. ‘It would be better to be in bed with a girl somewhere.’

  ‘It would be.’ Khan thought of Phuong, who had hold of his heart, and although he didn’t know where she was or what she was doing, he did know that she was caught up in the war as surely as him. ‘That is the truth.’ One day he hoped to see her, and tell her that she was beautiful, intelligent, and brave, his favourite woman in the entire world.

  Well, that’s a turn-up for the books, Johnny thought. You don’t seem such a bad bastard. Not that it would’ve stopped us killing each other back then. And now? Johnny looked at the inlet that was a couple of miles east of the Pacific Highway in southern New South Wales. Of course not. People had sat around a table and signed a piece of paper. What did the President of the US say? An agreement to end the war and bring peace with honour? Johnny shook his head. Still waiting, sport, he thought, still waiting.

  Sixteen

  Johnny parked in
the main street, the old shops crowding respectfully around a two-storey pub with a fancy veranda. He could see the red Commonwealth Employment Service sign. This is a first for the Shoebridges, he thought, walking. Perhaps a change not for the better, but that couldn’t be helped.

  He went into the small office. A few palm-sized cards were pinned to green boards. A young red-headed man in a shirt and tie sat behind a desk. He was kept company by a pot plant, a photocopier, a rack of pamphlets, and six empty chairs. Shoey could smell dust, tea, and paper.

  ‘Good morning.’ The bloke looked at Shoey with a watery blue-eyed intensity. ‘What’s on your mind, sir?’

  A laugh branched across Shoey’s chest, more like hysteria than good humour.

  ‘Jesus Christ—’ He saw the guy’s name, Curtis Stringer, printed on a tag. ‘Curtis. You don’t wanna know. Unless you really want your day ruined. And don’t call me sir. Call me Johnny.’

  ‘Well, Johnny, I’m here to help.’ Curtis stood. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ He pointed to a small alcove partially hidden by a curtain. ‘The Burko’s just boiled. Then we can talk employment.’

  ‘Or unemployment.’ Johnny shook the pale freckled hand that was offered. ‘As the case may be.’

  Curtis nodded sagely. ‘I’m familiar with both. Now, tea?’

  Johnny felt as if he’d walked into a web. The bloke was a character, obviously. It was also easiest, he decided, to simply go with the flow. Plus, he did appreciate being treated politely.

  ‘Sure. Thanks.’ Shoey sat in the chair that he figured was his for the taking. ‘Why not? Ta.’

  ‘Why not, indeed?’ Curtis’s eyes lit up. ‘You see? Already we’re making progress!’

  Johnny sat while Curtis disappeared behind the curtain, the musical tinkling of a teaspoon the only noise in town. The employment officer reappeared, carrying thick gold mugs, mugs that Johnny reckoned were owned by every household in Australia. One was handed across.