Dreaming the Enemy

by David Metzenthen

  ‘What do think you’ll do now, John?’ Above Malcolm’s head, the tangled vines reminded Johnny of a map of the Red River Delta, where he figured that bastard Khan lived. ‘Do you have an idea?’

  ‘Say goodbye to Carly.’ Shoey pictured her face, some of the loveliness lost but enough left to last a lifetime, if she was lucky. ‘Then head south. That’s about it.’ He had no intention of outlining his plan to a stranger. It was one highly classified operation.

  ‘Best of luck.’ Malcolm put out a wide, warped hand. ‘Look after yourself.’

  ‘Thanks. You, too.’ Johnny meant it. The man might be well-off but he was fair and reasonable. There was a lot to be said for that. Shoey turned and walked away.

  Twenty-eight

  Shoey’s Delta Company made their way through the wire into Fire Support Base Leslie. The smell of turned earth, diesel fuel, and sawn trees swirled as choppers touched down, disgorging men and equipment. Here the boys were met by a small, lightly built major with sleeves perfectly folded and new combat boots. The bloke’s face was pink and his grey sideburns were as neat as two five-cent stamps.

  ‘Welcome to the wild frontier, men.’ The major stood close to the front rank of soldiers. ‘FSB Leslie is now operational. A place of tall tales and true.’

  ‘That’s a line from Disneyland,’ Lex whispered to Johnny. ‘Sunday nights, six-thirty on Seven. I suggest you catch it. The last one I saw was about a giant beaver called Steven. It’s unbelievable what those critters get up to when no one’s watching.’

  ‘Donald Duck.’ Barry shook his head. ‘I hate the prick.’

  Lex laughed and Shoey shuffled subtly away from potential trouble. Glancing around he saw groups of men digging in, sandbagging, stringing wire, and preparing mortar sites and artillery batteries – but FSB Leslie, Shoey reckoned, wouldn’t exactly terrify Charlie back into the Long Hais. It was no Fort Steel where the Yanks had two thousand Marines on deck and every bit of hardware that flew, fired, bombed, shot, or burnt the hell out of the living and the dead.

  ‘Ever asked yourself, Johnny-boy,’ Lex muttered, ‘why we don’t get helmets or flak jackets? Is that a fashion thing or what?’

  Johnny studied the scrub beyond the Australian perimeter. Trees ringed the expanse of open ground like runners about to race, giving him the impression that as soon as he looked away they shuffled forward. Crouching among them, stretching for a thousand kilometres, were as many shadows as the gathering VC battalions would ever need.

  What Shoey saw only reinforced his feeling that Charlie was out there, because too many frightened informants had spilled their guts to all be wrong. A wave was building, and it was the enemy who would decide how big it would be, and when it would break. But Shoey knew it would be firepower, guts, and numbers that would decide the outcome – and fear, because he knew fear would question everyone constantly and relentlessly.

  It was easy to see how the wrong people got shot. Or why a rifleman snapped or an entire patrol might go mental. He had been one second away from chopping up two kids chasing a chook down a jungle track. The actions triggered by fear could not be calculated or predicted. He simply hoped that when the time came to fight with or through fear, he would do so – because failing to fight was the worst thing he could imagine. And that included dying.

  Anyway, orders had been given, and would be obeyed. He and the boys were to dig fighting pits to support an artillery battery. So this is what Shoey went and did, thinking that two years ago he’d been at Taralia High, kicking the footy at lunchtime then walking home with Jilly, holding hands.

  Now this.

  A model of the new fire support base had been set up in a small clearing. Or this is what Johnny pictured, as that was what the enemy always did. Each section of Khan’s battalion encircled it in turn until every fighter had memorised the layout, and their part in the impending attack. The briefing was exact, although Khan knew that in the fury of battle, strategies could collapse in seconds. He walked away, not convinced that they had the numbers or armaments to destroy the place.

  ‘It will be brutal.’ Thang spoke quietly as the boys ate a meal of cold rice and fish sauce. ‘Yet, with new comrades arriving, we might be able to do it.’

  Khan wondered if his face was as drawn as Thang’s. Only Trung had the slightest sign of youth blooming in his cheeks. Even in these most deadly of months the boy kept smiling. Maybe he was an angel?

  ‘Smoke, Khan?’ Trung held out a crumpled packet. ‘One each.’

  Khan grinned, took a smoke while shaking his head ruefully at the wonderful little idiot.

  ‘You’re a great man, Trung.’ He held up the hand-rolled smoke. ‘Perhaps we will share this one and you can keep two for tomorrow. Thank you.’

  ‘Oh, light up.’ Thang tapped his top pocket. ‘I’ve got a few. Chopped-up cow shit but better than nothing. We’ll get some good cigarettes after the battle. Those Australians smoke like chimneys.’

  ‘The bastards are going to go up in flames.’ Trung grinned. ‘I heard there will be five battalions of us. Maybe seven. We’ll massacre them.’

  The boys lit up, Khan hiding a sense of terror. The Australians would have planned their response to any attack. Their back-up would be immense. He also knew there would not be seven northern battalions. Or five. There might be three all-up, if they were lucky. And if things went well, three might be enough. After all, Khan knew the commanders’ sole aim was to leave the support base as nothing but a bloody smoking hole full of splintered bones.

  ‘I have to go over in the first wave of sappers,’ Trung blurted. ‘I’m going to die, aren’t I?’ He lapsed into silence, looking at the two older men.

  Thang put a hand on his shoulder. ‘The brave are especially selected and protected. You will do well. And you will make it. I feel that very strongly.’

  ‘We will follow you over.’ Khan saw that Trung was crying, tears rolling straight down his round cheeks. ‘We will be fighting like crazy. I will come looking for you.’ If I can, he thought; if I’m not hit by then.

  Trung shook his head, a tear springing away. ‘I want to go with you two. I can’t go first. It will be awful. Nguyen said there will be a hundred M60s. I’m going to die, aren’t I?’

  Thang gently moved Trung’s shoulder back and forth.

  ‘We will be right behind you. This is our land, little brother. We cannot let those bastards steal it. They’re going to die tomorrow. And we will help you, I promise on my mother’s grave.’

  Khan felt himself floating through this conversation, as did Johnny. Time passed unnoticed as he thought of Phuong. Gently he was lifted with a love that spread to Thang and Trung, and widened to include every man of the battalion, even those he knew as pigs and braggers.

  ‘All we have to do is be brave, Trung,’ Khan said. ‘And attack. The rest is out of our hands.’

  Khan could feel the boys had settled into another place. We have already accepted our fate, he thought. All that remains to be seen is if we – if I – am brave enough to go and meet it.

  ‘There can’t be a hundred M60s.’ Thang smiled his strongman smile. ‘Those cheap bastard Australians’ll be lucky to have two. And they’ll be gone in the first five seconds.’

  Khan knew if he swapped a single look with Thang, Trung might see what they all knew; that M60s might turn into waves of screaming Phantoms and thundering Cobras – because the Americans seized any opportunity to unleash their air cavalry, a unit whose motto was ‘death from above’.

  But we, the people, Khan thought, have never been defeated. This was the truth. And we will win; if not tomorrow, on a day that is coming, no matter how high the price.

  ‘When it is our turn to go—’ he spoke for his own sake as much as anybody else’s, ‘we go. That is how it is.’

  Into the firestorm.

  That’s right, buddy-boy, Johnny agreed. You on one side and me on the other – and just maybe this is where we get to meet right in the bloody middle.

 
Twenty-nine

  Carly’s house was visible between the straight trunks of gumtrees. A big yellow dog chained near the back door rose up to bark, and blue smoke drifted from a thin chimney. Taking a deep breath, Johnny continued down the driveway. A Marlboro for you after this, matey, he promised, his unease mounting as he walked out in the open. Was he watched? It felt like it; he wouldn’t have been surprised if the barking of the dog brought someone out of the house, or from the bush, with a rifle. The place, he felt, had potential for sudden violence.

  ‘Hey, Buster.’ He called softly to the dog that watched him with golden, calculating eyes. ‘Good boy.’ He figured it’d go him if he got too close. It was that type of dog and that type of house. ‘Settle, mate. You’re right. Take it easy, cobber.’

  Johnny knocked on a torn screen door. Tall gums, some burnt, encircled the couple of hectares. A crippled barbed wire fence had given up keeping anything or anyone out years ago, but it was not fences, Johnny thought, that would stop strangers from entering this place. He knew he could not live here; there were too many themes from too many days and nights gone by. Something was off-centre, secretive, and lawless. Here, he reckoned when the sun went down, he’d start looking around and he wouldn’t stop until he left the joint running.

  Johnny heard footsteps, light and steady. A key ground in a lock. Carly opened the door, barefoot, in jeans and a white polo shirt. She didn’t smile but he didn’t expect her to. Behind her a pump-action shotgun rested in a wooden rack. He’d bet it was loaded and that she’d know how to use it.

  ‘Johnny.’ She pushed open the screen door. ‘Come in.’

  He saw her face clearly. It told a story of a hard life that she did not see getting easier. And he saw he was not helping. She had a history that was not for sharing and he knew too much of it already. It was time to cut and run, perhaps to save them both.

  ‘Nah, I won’t.’ Shoey managed a smile. ‘I just came to say, well, see ya, Carly. And thanks. For everything.’

  He understood she’d taken a risk even talking to him. In this place, strangers, especially those whose motives were unclear, were not welcome. And his motives were not just unclear, they were unknown, especially to him.

  ‘Thanks.’ He felt like a swimmer struggling. ‘And thank Curtis. And your dad. They’re good people.’ He could see her courage. She had let the locals know he was to be left alone. She blamed no one for her past, present, or future. She was, he thought, tough and heroic. ‘See yer.’ He knew he wouldn’t because he would never be back this way again, and he doubted she’d ever leave.

  ‘You’re welcome.’ Her choice of words surprised him. ‘Don’t get stuck, Johnny.’ For a moment her face was open and unguarded, golden almost, because he was about to simplify everything by walking out of her life. ‘It’s no good for anyone.’

  He knew he loved her in some way. The trouble was he just couldn’t feel it, find it, explain it, or tell her.

  ‘Take care, eh?’ He looked straight at her. ‘Bye, Carly. See ya.’ Now that it was clear he was moving away from the house, the dog showed no great interest.

  Carly nodded, her hair glowing in a panel of pale sunlight that filtered through the distant trees. ‘Yeah. See ya, Johnny. You take care, too.’

  He nodded in return and left.

  Johnny imagined the bastard Khan in the rowboat, moving downstream, with Son. The muddy banks of the river were like striped walls of green and yellow. There were palms like fountains, their fronds brushing the hot blue sky. Shoey figured he knew something of what Khan might be thinking, because they had been soldiers, and had done what they had done.

  The war has gone, Khan thought, like an earthquake. But the fractures ran through the country from end to end and would do so for a hundred years. Surviving it was like riding a flooding river. It was up to each person to work out how to stay afloat, as no flood ever cared if a swimmer drowned or not. Well, he was going forward on the river with madman Son. The beauty of their adventure stirred his heart.

  ‘What do you deal in most, Son?’ Khan asked. ‘Cigarettes? Whiskey? American dollars? Girls’ underwear? AKs? What are you after?’

  Son rested the oars, his face shaded by an old cowboy hat that worried Khan. Surely he should not be wearing it? That would be a serious offence to the party.

  ‘My share of freedom.’ Son tipped the brim of his hat. ‘But you will be granted that before I am. Because you fought in the war and I dodged it. And I will have to spend the rest of my life dodging it.’

  ‘You seem pretty free to me.’ Khan pointed at nothing in particular, smiled, felt lightened. ‘This is about as free as you can get, I think.’

  ‘In a way.’ Son dipped the oars, water dripping off the blades in fine silver streams. ‘I am an unworthy dog, but a dog who has selected his own somewhat dangerous way of life.’ He grinned, looked upstream over Khan’s shoulder. ‘Perhaps that just makes me try harder, Khan, being as I am, outside the, ah, system. Anyway, I am at your service. Everything I have is yours. So, you see, maybe I am not the worst communist in the world.’

  Maybe you’re not, Johnny thought. And you are, at least, aware of the big issues.

  ‘I don’t want things, Son,’ Khan said. ‘To be in this boat is enough. It is a gift.’

  Son shook his head, pretending sadness when in fact Khan and Johnny thought he seemed highly amused.

  ‘Spoken like dear old Uncle Ho himself, comrade.’ Son, holding the oars aloft, flexed his muscles, and grinned cheerfully. ‘But on the subject of our wonderful communist system and honoured leader, we might have to be a little flexible in our dealings with our brothers and sisters downstream. Not all these people have embraced the entire Marxist-Leninist philosophy.’ He laughed, shipped the oars, and reached for his cigarettes. ‘Yet. Probably never.’

  ‘The Americans thought they did,’ Khan said. ‘They had a bomb and a bullet for everyone.’ He took a cigarette. ‘I owe you.’ He held up the smoke. ‘You can have a fish when we get home. A little one. So this woman Phuong you’ve heard of, Son. She could be anyone, of course.’

  Son shrugged and resumed rowing slowly for a few moments, cigarette in the white trap of his teeth.

  ‘Well, there are thousands of war survivors wandering around, as you know,’ he said. ‘But the river people say she’d served in a northern battalion and was extremely brave. So I put two and two together and ended up with Son and Khan in a boat.’

  Khan accepted Son’s explanation. As the brown river twisted and turned, and clouds rolled to the horizon like tanks, he thought of Trung and Thang. The boys would’ve loved this trip. They would have considered it heroic and right to try to find Phuong and return her home. They also would have simply liked being in the boat, the three of them together, as they had been. Khan knew he must not let them down by giving up or doubting the goodness of the expedition.

  ‘We’ll stop in a river village I know,’ Son added. ‘I have an arrangement with them.’

  Lightning sizzled and a mauve streak forked three ways through the clouds. One second later thunder boomed and Khan fell to his knees, his head pulled tight into his shoulders as if expecting a punch. The first strike of a storm always shocked his system. Son looked at him solemnly.

  ‘Khan,’ he said, holding out a helping hand, ‘I can see you have suffered for bastards like me. I apologise.’

  It was Khan’s turn to laugh. This was not the easiest thing to do when his heart was galloping like a horse and he was down on extremely wet knees.

  ‘It’s not to be worried about.’ Seizing Son’s hand Khan got up, brushing off flakes of paint, feeling like a crumpled coat being put on a shelf as he sat. ‘I’m fine. And despite what you think, you didn’t start the war.’

  ‘No,’ Son said. ‘But you ended it. You saw it through.’

  He has a point, Johnny agreed, that cannot be overlooked.

  Thirty

  Fire Support Base Leslie had an unfinished feel that reminded Shoey of a working bee
at a bush footy ground; no job quite completed at the end of the day. Groups of soldiers laboured at strengthening mortar and rifle positions and wiring parties toiled shirtless at the perimeter. Yet the place seemed open to attack from every angle.

  The sun, Johnny saw, was slinking slowly into the trees like a deserter as the Vietnamese night circled, waiting to lay down its thick black blanket. Fear spiked. The bush around the base seemed closer than when he’d last looked. All chopper flights in and out had stopped. What was here was what they had. Shoey wasn’t persuaded the place was as secure as Fort Knox.

  ‘Does the term sitting duck ring any bells for you, Shoebitch?’ Lex asked as they pounded their short-handled shovels into the dense earth. A couple of metres away their rifles leant against one of the mortars they were to defend. ‘How about Peking Duck? Or Duck l’Agent Orange?’

  ‘Sitting bloody duck.’ Shoey straightened, dog tags bouncing across his sweating chest. ‘Decoys. That’s what we are.’

  ‘Fuck ducks.’ Barry kept digging.

  The boys worked on. Shoey saw bent bare backs, white, brown, and freckled, wherever he looked. Weapons – SLRs and M16s – stood close to every hand. Sandbagged artillery batteries gave him some sense of security, but not a lot. Thirty metres away he saw an M60 sited in not the best-protected position. Silently he wished the crew good luck.

  Johnny took a moment to sip water, savouring it like wine as he thought of Taralia. To the east of town the low hills were bathed in the last coppery rays of the day. The sound of an Adelaide-bound passenger train was like a missed invitation. Cockatoos flew, a flickering white flock, and an eighteen-wheeler truck shifted determinedly through the gears on Staley’s Cutting. Then Johnny looked across the fire base, through the wire, to the bulldozed killing ground. In his veins he could feel his life flowing thick and sweet, like honey.