‘I didn’t say,’ said Khan. ‘You tell me.’
The boy looked at Khan triumphantly. ‘We think her name is perhaps Phuong. But no one knows for sure. You will see why when you visit her.’
‘Interesting,’ said Son. ‘So it is possible for us to meet with this person?’
The boy nodded vigorously. ‘It would be my pleasure to take you. She looks after the chickens and pigs and fetches water. Please follow me.’ He pointed downstream. ‘There’s a jetty you would be most welcome to use.’
Khan saw that Son was enjoying the show.
‘All right, friend.’ Son inclined his head politely. ‘If you could guide us that would be good. From the bank. I don’t think your mother would like you to jump in a boat with two old river rats like us.’
‘Of course I can guide you, sir!’ The boy headed for the high ground. ‘Follow me. It is only a short way. And if you could remember, misters, that it was me who told you about this gentle lady soldier.’
Khan and Son swapped looks. The heat of the day was mounting. The blue sky was like a weight poised to drop.
‘I would never forget an important fact like that,’ Son said. ‘But this person might not be the one we’re looking for.’
The boy stopped at the top of the bank. ‘Yes, that’s true, mister.’ The kid beamed with startlingly white teeth. ‘But she might just be!’
He’s got you there, Johnny thought. You’d better go check out this woman to prove to yourself that you have not lost hope, because to lose hope is to lose everything.
Forty
Another battalion had been airlifted in to FSB Leslie. Shoey was acutely aware of the extra men, energy, and weapons. The freshly turned ground bristled with dug-in pits with logs for head cover and sandbagged positions spiked with nests of M60s. Two Centurion tanks, like a sullen tag team of heavyweight wrestlers, sat camouflaged in their respective corners. Their massive steel barrels, as thick as logs, were aimed directly across the killing grounds that lay open but unseen in the dark.
Barely able to speak, Johnny kept working, and when he looked to the wire he felt a savage determination that muscled in beside his fear. He wanted to kill the people out there. As many as possible.
Since midnight, lights had flickered in the burnt bush and bugles had sounded like crazed birds. The night vibrated as if myriad snakes and ants moved forward, laying up whenever he was looking, advancing when he wasn’t.
‘Splintex,’ a dark-headed rifleman called Noel murmured from his hole. ‘We have shitloads of beautiful Splintex.’
‘And tanks,’ another rifleman added, a sunburned giant from Longreach who Shoey had had a few beers with in Vung Tau. ‘Fifty tons each. You bloody beaut.’
‘White phosphorous,’ someone else added, as if quoting from a shopping list. ‘That shit burns underwater.’
Johnny treasured the words that talked up firepower and mass destruction. He prayed they had the weapons to keep the VC on their side of the wire; that when Charlie rose up, the Centurions and the artillery batteries would simply knock them down with waves of Splintex that would shred anything, trees included, in their path.
Other fire bases would add long-range artillery support, and on distant airstrips helicopter gunships sat like giant hawks. Then there were the Phantoms, ready to unleash what the enemy did not have. And he and the boys would be here to do whatever killing they could.
Shoey settled into his pit, a bleak-eyed rifleman staring at the blackness, cigarette butts scattered around his boots.
‘Come on, you dirty bastards,’ he whispered. ‘Let’s get this over and done with.’
The Main Force battalions, reinforced by fresh troops, began their advance through the landscape of Johnny’s head. To Khan it appeared the ground was rippling towards the fire base. Hundreds of fighters slowly began the surge that would accelerate into a headlong charge at the Australians, dug in like a plague of beetles.
Khan ordered himself forward. It was the hardest thing he had ever done, moving within the strike force through a fog of fear. Four nights ago, the Australians had been under-prepared. Tonight he knew they were poised to bring hell down from the sky and the hills.
Somehow he put his fear aside. It was the only way he could hit the wire; to accept he was a feather on the winds of war. If he was to die then he would do so knowing he had done his duty. Yet he felt a deep anguish like lost love. He loved his life and the people in it. He also knew he was being manipulated by others, but his minor role was of prime importance. When the rockets, machineguns, and mortars opened up, his courage to attack would prove to the land, the gods, his ancestors, and the enemy, he was here to kill.
It started, Shoey felt, like a mass exhalation of breath. Swiftly it lifted into a storm that rose into a hurricane, the sheer force of the attack pressing like thumbs into his eyes. Then the camouflaged Centurions, a pair of monster cheats, lit up the night with five-metre flashes of fire as they sent shell after shell of Splintex over the wire.
The killing grounds and bush beyond were swept with a hundred thousand flying scalpels. Now the M60s waded in, supporting artillery from distant fire bases began to pound the attackers, and over it all parachute flares floated and star shells drifted as Johnny fired at the ghostly green running figures, every shot piercing his old self until that boy from the bush was gone for good.
And when shrapnel slashed his arms Johnny kept on firing, felling one fighter, dropping another to his knees, shooting him again before finding other targets, stopping only to slam home fresh magazines, praying that whoever he was aiming at he was killing. Whatever wounds he had, physical or mental, he figured he would deal with later. If he survived.
Khan left the trees and was through the wire, almost at a mortar position when he was grabbed by the right arm by a lion, punched in the side by a heavyweight boxer, and flung backwards. This was something that Johnny had not predicted, the Vietnamese fighter on his knees, the earth sliding as the magnesium-white sky pressed. A seismic panic shook the injured Khan. What had happened to him? Where was his AK?
With his left hand he felt downwards from his right shoulder, fingers encountering a mass of splintery pulp and stringy tendons. Somehow his elbow was gone, the arm hanging like the torn sleeve of a wet shirt. Pain flared like a petrol fire. Then he was hit again in the side, a single smashing blow that threw him over onto his face.
‘Oh, mother,’ he moaned into the dirt. ‘Help me.’
A comrade appeared so suddenly it was if he had swooped from the sky. Khan did not recognise him but, looking into his face, felt he had known him all his life.
‘Oh, brother,’ Khan said. ‘My arm. My side.’
The man examined Khan’s wounds. His hands moved like that of a musician. His eyes held a deep glow.
‘Lie still, friend. Hold your arm like you are.’ Taking a tattered field dressing from a plastic bag, he tied and taped it in place. Then he strapped something to Khan’s side and secured it tightly. ‘You will have to go back, if you can,’ he said. ‘There’ll be people waiting.’ He handed Khan his rifle. ‘Don’t lose this. Make tracks, comrade. You have done your duty. Your battle is over.’
Khan gripped his weapon and stood, swaying, remaining upright with help. Beneath his boots the ground see-sawed as bullets whispered past his head. The unknown fighter turned him around, and pushed him lightly.
‘That way, friend. See you soon.’
Khan stumbled away, pain riding on his back with the weight of a bear – a bear that had sunk its teeth into the shattered bones of his right arm and torn holes in his side that he could put his hand in.
‘I need help,’ he murmured then fell, to lie on the ground like a grain of wheat, his rifle under his hip, the point of the bayonet piercing his good arm.
Maybe I’ll die now, he thought. It feels like it.
Unfortunately it’s not your time yet, Johnny decided. Someone had to survive that battle, that night, that war, and carry away those memories. You cou
ldn’t just leave it all up to me. So keep breathing, sport, although I’m not sure this is a development that will help me a hell of a lot in the long run.
Forty-one
Johnny left the motel, giving it one backward glance as he turned out onto the Hume Highway. Already he was missing the security of the small pine-panelled room, the potholed bed, and the midget fridge that had muttered to him all night. He was also missing the woman in the office who’d called him love, the bloke who’d called him John-Boy, and told him to drive safe.
It was like this country couple thought he was normal. They couldn’t see his madly running mind, his lost friends, and the enemy Khan who stalked him day and night. If they had, they would have attempted to understand because they were parents, everyday people – but too late. Johnny Shoebridge was on his way to meet Lex’s family, find Jill, then . . .
Slow drive or fast drive?
Johnny put his foot down, although he figured he might simply be accelerating towards a very sudden and serious dead-end. This, he guessed, he had known for months.
‘Ah, do yer worst,’ he muttered, trees falling behind as if dropped by a hurricane. ‘See if I fuckin’ care.’
It was a rather strange village, Khan decided, as he and Son introduced themselves to the head man. They were given food and tea by women who seemed sunny but vague. Many of the residents appeared to use a kind of sign language, the place held still by a pervasive silence. Khan shared a look with Son as they followed the chief out behind the houses.
‘You need to see this, friends,’ the man said. ‘To understand us a little more.’
Through a tangle of bush, bamboo, and rank grass was the biggest bomb crater Khan, or Johnny, had ever seen.
‘It removed the graveyard and temple,’ the head man said, whose knobbly knee joints seemed to have been inherited by the kid on the river. ‘A thousand years of ancestry gone in one second flat. The sound deafened three-quarters of the village. It killed thousands of fish. Maybe it was two bombs together, who knows? I was five hundred metres upstream, but the concussion knocked me backwards.’
For a while the men looked into the crater, where creepers meekly attempted to hide the damage. I can believe this did happen, Johnny thought – to a thousand villages, because the bombing went on day and night for years.
‘When we had recovered somewhat,’ the chief appeared entranced by the hole, ‘we found a woman wandering. She was a fighter but had no weapon or papers. And since she cannot hear or talk, we don’t know who she is. Only that she is a simple lost soul.’
‘The boy said her name was Phuong.’ Khan spoke slowly.
The head man nodded, his face hidden in the shadow afforded by his wide hat.
‘That was probably a name young Ng heard from people chattering on the river. In truth, no one knows what her name is. We call her Li. But Ng put two and two together.’ The old man gave Khan and Son a gummy pink smile. ‘He is a smart little fellow. He will be chief one day. And get this crater filled in.’
‘May we meet with this Li? Or Phuong?’ Son produced a packet of Marlboros and offered them. ‘She might be the woman from our village Khan seeks.’ He snapped his lighter into action. ‘We have travelled a long way, as you can appreciate.’
The village chief drew in smoke. ‘Of course. It would be my pleasure. She is happy here. Like a good child. You will see. Follow me. Then we shall have a drink.’
Khan and Son followed the chief back into the village. The crater, although out of sight, existed as a malign and forceful presence.
‘You first, Khan.’ Son indicated that Khan should step forward.
The head man stopped outside a well-built hut. Khan could hear the sifting or shifting of rice from within the dim interior. Inside, he could see two women kneeling, working, and one who sat cross-legged, smiling.
‘After you, uncle,’ Son said cheerfully to the chief. ‘We would not like to alarm the ladies with our outstanding handsomeness without warning.’
The chief cackled and limped through the narrow doorway. Khan followed and saw immediately that Phuong was not there. For a moment his gaze rested on a young woman who was undoubtedly beautiful, Johnny feeling, against his will almost, a certain empathy with his enemy.
Khan, he thought, this beautiful one, like beautiful ones everywhere, ain’t written into your stars. Your past and present self requires another type of woman; a special woman, a wise woman who might well be one in a million, and is more than just a looker. Otherwise it is not going to work for you, for us, either in the real world or the imagined world, and believe me, sport, those two places are not that far apart at all.
Forty-two
Shoey sat slumped in his bunker, rifle across his knees. Its muzzle, still warm, was pointed at the gun slit that now showed a horizontal metre of fragile dove-grey light. Thirsty and half-deafened, he was surrounded by hundreds of empty brass cartridges, unable to register anything except that the battle was over, and he and the boys were alive. His shirt felt like cardboard, stiffened with dried blood back and front.
In the distance there was some sporadic small arms fire but it hardly registered. Perhaps it was each side farewelling the other. Or making a half-hearted promise to return. As Johnny moved his cuts broke open but the desire to sleep overrode everything. He needed to immerse himself, for many reasons, in blankness very soon.
‘The rabbits win,’ someone said.
Shoey heard the metallic click-click of an empty magazine being ejected, and a fresh one inserted.
‘Thank Christ for a well-dug hole and a well-made tank,’ someone added.
Johnny lit up then tossed smokes to whoever wanted one. A few were taken, lighters ground into action.
‘You blokes are all right.’ He didn’t know if he’d spoken out loud and didn’t care. He had come to the end of something, although he knew he was not safe, or due to go home or take leave. ‘I could go a long chopper ride,’ he added. ‘To anywhere a long way away from here.’
There was a general stirring in the gun pits but no one showed any great inclination to leave their temporary protection. It was like the final morning of a camping trip, Shoey thought. Plenty to do but no one was rushing to get up and do it. Especially when a stray Charlie might be out there, keen to add a final point to a losing scorecard.
So the boys sat, talked, and threw a bit of rubbish out of the holes and when eventually the all-clear was sounded they emerged into the early morning to walk around the silent, smoking mess. The battle was over and they had won it; secured their futures at least for the next ten minutes, although Johnny knew he was stuck in the past with Lex and Barry, without a clue as to how he might escape.
What had he done that made the bullets bend around him? Or render him invisible to Charlie firing point-blank? It was a question he knew he would spend the rest of his life considering and always coming up short.
‘Holy shit.’ He looked across the base. ‘What a mess.’ It was nothing like a fort but merely a piece of flat, bombed-out, scrubby ground reinforced with men and weapons stuck in the middle of a foreign country. Bodies, dressed in black and green, lay around like drunken sleepers needing to be woken. ‘We’re gunna be busy.’
Johnny knew the Aussies were nothing but a bunch of blow-ins. And when they left, the locals, whichever side they were on, would simply move back in. Or they wouldn’t, because they never wanted this bit of trash scrub in the first place. He also knew the boys had fought fantastically. That’s what he would take away, the greatness of the men – even if it might not be known to anyone who wasn’t present, because already the reality of the place was changing. The sky, now a shining early-morning blue, was being bullied by choppers dropping in and lifting off, the ground alive with new troops with clean shirts and shaved faces. Johnny reckoned it was like watching an army of willing slaves getting down to work.
Men moved out, alive, wounded, and dead. Fresh troops took their places, tasked with securing the base for as long as it was consi
dered useful. Quietly they settled into positions and went to work on strengthening them. And the owners of the raw, terrible memories of the last four nights were already locking them down into a place that they prayed not to revisit.
Johnny tossed empty ammo boxes into a heap, knowing sleep was not yet a possibility. He also knew that the type of sleep he needed was never going to arrive. For a moment he looked to the wire, and wondered about the men he’d just fought. Like wounded dogs, he thought, they would’ve crawled off into the bush to heal or die. Suffer, he thought. Suffer. You knew what we had and still you tried it.
‘Determined little bastards,’ said a private called Roughy, looking where Johnny was looking. ‘Never seen anything like it, really.’ He blew dirt out of the back sight of his M16. ‘Never want to again, either. Just quietly.’
The Main Force battalions dragged themselves away through the scarred country of Johnny’s mindscape. As they travelled the dead were buried and the wounded were carried, walked, or were dispatched to village clinics or underground hospitals. At various junctions the forces split, to complete their dangerous journeys to distant bases, every fighter knowing they could be attacked from the air, or savaged by ground patrols tracking them like wolves.
Khan could walk only slowly, his smashed arm in a clean sling, his side taped with boiled bandages already showing blood. A small, head-injured fighter carried his AK for him. Overhead, branches imprinted shapes and textures on a sky that was changing from grey to blue, and warming up fast.
‘Soon we will be safe,’ the small man said to Khan. ‘Keep walking, comrade. You are doing well. Not far now.’
Even with morphine, Khan felt as if he was wading deeper into a lake of pain and fever. But it was not possible to stop.
‘Thank you, brother. I hope I can keep going.’
Khan knew there would be no rest until he reached a field hospital or the Long Hais. It would be unforgivable if his comrades suffered another blow on his behalf. The only reason for stopping would be to fight, pass out, or die. He trudged on, his mind jellied with pain but stalled around the truth that life could be worse than he thought possible, and people more ruthless.
Dreaming the Enemy Page 18