by Shaun Clarke
‘They’ve seen what those mines did to their friends,’ Bulldogsaid, ‘and now they’re not going to stop until they have their revenge. We better move out of here fast and get across that border.’
They started running, weaving between the trees, but within minutes an Indo helicopter was rising out of the jungle nearby. Heading straight for the SAS men, it was soon roaring overhead. Descending vertically, it created a storm and then hovered directly above them, dangerously close to the trees. A gunner was kneeling at the side door, taking aim with his machine gun, and when it roared into action it tore the clearing all to hell, with lumps of bark and leaves flying off in all directions, the ground convulsing and spitting soil
Marty was still running, weaving frantically around the trees, when he saw Pat O’Connor, obviously outraged, raking the Indo helicopter with his SLR. Whether the hail of bullets actually damaged the chopper or merely panicked the pilot, it tilted to the side and its rotors struck the treetops, slicing off branches, before buckling with a harsh metallic screeching. Crippled, the chopper shuddered, leaned farther to the side, then plunged to earth, smashing through the branches, bringing whole trees down with it and exploding into a fierce ball of yellow-and-blue fire that engulfed the surrounding trees and foliage, creating an even bigger blaze.
‘Keep running!’ Bulldog bawled.
Yet even as they did so, leaving the smoking ulu behind them, the distant crump-crump of firing Indo mortars was followed by a series of violent explosions that tore up the ground around them. Sucked up in a roaring vacuum and hurled back to earth, Marty rolled through boiling smoke and swirling soil, then clambered back to his feet. Shaking his head, trying to clear it, he glanced back through the trees and saw a great number of Indo troops advancing. Grabbing his SLR from where it was lying on the scorched grass, he followed his comrades into the protective shadows of the forest, lost them temporarily, then emerged into light again and saw Tommy Taylor standing nervously at an aerial walkway that spanned a deep gorge.
Looking down, rendered momentarily dizzy, Marty saw a river squeezing through a bottleneck of large boulders and emerging at the other side, directly below the aerial walkway, as a raging torrent.
‘Oh, shit!’ he whispered.
Hearing a noise to his right, he glanced up and saw Bulldog emerging from the forest and also stopping at the edge of the deep gorge, which he studied with undisguised dismay. Within seconds, Taff and Pat O’Connor had also appeared, the latter emerging backwards from the trees, firing on the move at the advancing Indos.
‘They’re coming close!’ O’Connor bawled.
‘We have to cross and then blow the other side of this walkway to hell,’ Bulldog said, ‘to ensure that the Indos can’t follow us. Taff, you go first. You go next, Marty. When you get to the far side, give us covering fire. Trooper Taylor goes third and I’ll come up behind him to ensure that he makes it across. O’Connor covers us all and then comes across when we can all cover him. Get going, Taff.’
Cool as a cucumber, Taff stepped onto the aerial walkway, took hold of the bamboo handrail, and then started carefully across the three parallel lengths of thick bamboo that formed the walkway’s floor. As soon as he started across, the whole walkway shook and Tommy Taylor visibly winced. As Taff continued across, seeming almost to be walking on thin air, a good thirty metres above the roaring rapids, Bulldog ordered Marty and Tommy to join Pat O’Connor in keeping the advancing Indos pinned down. This wasn’t easy. The Indos were advancing by darting from tree to tree, two or three at a time, while the others poured a fusillade of gunfire at the SAS troopers, causing branches and leaves to fly wildly about them.
‘Next man!’ Taff bawled from the far side of the gorge, having made it safely across.
Turning away from the advancing Indos and taking a deep breath, Marty stepped carefully onto the narrow walkway. Though trying not to look down, he found it impossible to uprights, the bamboo walkway, and the raging torrent that boiled between the rocky walls of the gorge over thirty metres below him. As soon as he had both feet on the walkway and had started across, it moved perceptibly, swaying from side to side. It was also being shaken constantly by the wind howling along the gorge, but it moved even more with each step that Marty took, almost making his heart stop.
To steady himself, he grabbed the bamboo support on his right. Looking down, he felt dizzy again. The actual floor of the walkway was only the width of its three lengths of thick bamboo, laid down side by side and strapped together with rattan that did not look too strong. In fact, it was hardly much wider than Marty’s two booted feet placed close together.
The uprights angled out and in again overhead, bending where they were strapped with rattan to the horizontal holds. Because of this, Marty could slide his avoid the wide spaces between the bits-and-pieces nature of the fragile hand along the holds only as far as the next upright. Once there, he had to removed his hand for a moment and lift it over the upright before grabbing the horizontal hold again. This meant that every few steps there came a moment when he couldn’t hold on to anything and had to use only his body to keep his balance.
He judged the walkway to be about fifty metres long, though it was so narrow it looked a lot longer. Its swaying was visible, its creaking constant, and the wind blowing along the gorge had the force of a hammer blow. Given the wide spaces between the uprights, he realized that he could be blown off with nothing to prevent him from falling through those wide spaces to his doom. His stomach churned at the thought of it.
He inched forward, a step at a time, balancing precariously each time he had to release his grip on the horizontal hold and lift it over an upright to grab the next hold. As he did so, his stomach churning, his heart beating too fast, he saw the foliage exploding around the kneeling Taff, where the Indo bullets were spraying the forest about him as he gave covering fire. Realizing that the Indos were rapidly coming closer, Marty forced himself to move more quickly and finally, reaching the far end of the walkway, virtually threw himself off, landing on hands and knees, then rolling over and clambering to his knees beside Taff. Even as he opened fire on the forest at the other side, he saw Tommy Taylor nervously crossing the walkway, followed closely by Bulldog.
By now the forest around Pat O’Connor was being torn to shreds by a hail of bullets from the advancing Indo troops. Mortar shells were also exploding around him as, still giving covering fire, he inched ever closer to the aerial walkway. Just as Tommy and Bulldog reached the middle of the walkway, a mortar explosion tore up the earth dangerously close to the supports on the far side. When the whole walkway shook more violently, hammered by the blast, Tommy hurried across and was soon jumping off. Instantly, with an excited gleam in his brown eyes, he joined Marty and Taff on the edge of the gorge, giving covering fire to Bulldog and O’Connor.
O’Connor was backing towards the walkway, firing while on the move, as Bulldog jumped off the walkway. He turned around beside Marty and dropped to one knee to give covering fire also, as O’Connor backed right up to the walkway, still firing his SLR from the hip, this time at the first of the Indo troops to charge out from the shelter of the trees. Some of the Indos went down, but others were still advancing when O’Connor jumped onto the walkway and started across.
Hedidn’t get very far. Just as he was beginning the fifty-metre walk, an Indo machine gun roared from inside the cover of the trees, raking the aerial walkway, sending lumps of bamboo and pieces of rattan flying off in all directions, then finally finding him. Convulsing in a noisy explosion of bullet-torn bamboo and rattan, he dropped his SLR, which went spinning down into the rapids. He screamed in agony, his body shuddering, doubling up, pieces of clothing flying off him as more bullets stitched him and blood began soaking his shredded OGs. Gripping the side of the walkway, he tried to haul himself forward, but then fell to his knees, nearly slipped off the edge, but managed to straighten himself up, no longer screaming but still shuddering as if having a fit.
Suddenly, even
as more Indo troops burst out from the trees, firing at O’Connor as well as across the gorge, Bulldog jumped back onto the walkway and started towards him, determined to rescue him.
‘No, Bulldog!’ Marty bawled without thinking. ‘It’s too late! Come back!’
But Bulldog didn’t come back. He was hurrying across the walkway, holding on with one hand while firing his Armalite with the other, the stock tucked into his waist, when more bullets stitched O’Connor and he was punched violently forward, hitting the narrow floor of the walkway, then rolling off the side and plunging to his doom in the rapids far below.
Bulldog stopped advancing then. Trapped on the walkway, unable to turn around, he attempted to inch backwards while still firing his Armalite with one hand. As he was doing so, the Indo soldiers poured a fusillade of gunfire at him, tearing the walkway immediately around him to shreds and eventually tearing him to shreds as well. Slammed backwards by the bullets, he dropped his Armalite, which fell to the roaring rapids far below, but he managed to keep his grip on the horizontal hold and attempted to pull himself backwards, Somehow, even while still being peppered by Indo bullets, he managed to twist himself around until he could grab the hold with both hands, holding on for dear life.
At that very moment, a final Indo mortar shell exploded on the edge of the gorge, where the end of the walkway was attached to it, tearing the supports out of the earth and making the walkway buckle and then collapse. As Marty and the others looked on in horror, even while still firing their weapons, the far end of the aerial walkway dropped towards the rapids, with Bulldog still clinging to it. Amazingly, Bulldog managed to hang on as the remains of the walkway, the narrow floor, fell and swung in towards the wall of the gorge, right beneath the shocked SAS men. Bulldog was smashed against the hard-mud wall, hammered to hell just like the walkway, and plunged in a shower of splintered bamboo and torn rattan into the boiling rapids far below. Marty saw his broken body splashing into the rushing water, smashing into sharp rocks, then bouncing off and being swept away until he was out of sight.
‘Shake out!’ Marty bawled, then he and the others raced away into the trees, into safety, leaving the Indos to fire furiously, frustratedly, without further effect, from the other side of the gorge. As the aerial walkway was no longer there, they could not get across.
The SAS survivors were safe, though they were all devastated by what had happened – Marty most of all.
He never really recovered.
Chapter Seven
‘You’re past forty,’ Ann Lim told Marty as she dressed young Ian, preparing to take him to the nursery school in Hereford. Dark and handsome at five years old, Ian was wriggling and giggling where he sat on the cluttered kitchen table, framed by the window that overlooked the rear garden and the softly rolling green fields of Herefordshire. ‘You’re going to be forty-four this year – a bad time for a man.’
Marty had just confessed that he had lost something in Borneo and, whatever it was, it hadn’t come back. The bloody death of Bulldog had cut as deeply as the loss of Tone Williams years before in Malaya; the equally horrible death of Pat O’Connor, though not as seriously wounding, was also hard to take. With the departure of those good friends, Marty felt that a hole had been cut deep inside him and that nothing could fill it.
‘Don’t mention my age,’ he said. ‘You’ll just give me more sleepless nights.’
‘That’s childish.’
‘That’s me.’
‘I married a man and you’re still that.’
‘Well, thank God for that, at least.’
His feelings of loss were only compounded by the fact that the man he admired most of all, Paddy Kearney, was no longer with the SAS, having been RTU’d to a desk job in Number 8 Commando, and was soon to retire from the army altogether and return to Civvy Street. This loss, to Marty, was like a death in itself, making him feel that his best days were behind him and could never be replaced.
‘Come on, Marty, let’s be honest,’ Ann Lim persisted. ‘The problem’s your age. You’re really trying to face the fact that you’re not a young man anymore and that there’s no turning back of the clock. Sooner or later, all men have to deal with that dilemma and now it’s your turn.’
There was a certain amount of truth in that, Marty knew, but it wasn’t the whole of it. While he could not deny that turning forty had been troublesome, filling him with fears that he despised in himself, his ageing could not completely explain the deeper changes within him. The brutal deaths of his closest friends had given him many nightmares and caused him to build a wall around himself, not encouraging close friendships within the regiment in case those friends, too, came to a bloody end. He wanted to be detached, objective, prepared for any possible future loss, treating even the deaths of comrades as the natural outcome of his dangerous profession. Yes, he thought of it as a profession and wished to be the ultimate professional. He could take his pride from that.
‘You’re restless,’ Ann Lim suggested, still trying to dress the wriggling, giggling Ian who was, Marty noted, beginning to look more Chinese every day. ‘You want to be back in Borneo. You’re always restless when your squadron’s returned to base and you’ve nothing to do. You hate being back here.’
‘I don’t hate being at home,’ he told her, anxious to avoid a repetition of Lesley’s resentment at his many absences when on overseas tours of duty. Ann Lim had not shown a similar resentment so far and he didn’t want her to start.
‘Good.’ She brushed the black hair from her brown eyes. ‘You can love your work when you’re doing it, so long as you still like coming home. I still expect your attention.’
‘You always get it.’
‘I spoil you in order to be spoilt. I’m a clever woman that way.’
‘No argument. I’m yours until Doomsday.’
‘That’s my man,’ she said.
Now thirty-three years old, she had cut her long hair to shoulder length which, she insisted, suited her more at that age. Marty still missed the long hair, which he had felt looked very sensual, but he’d had the sense not to complain. Nothing lasts forever, he thought, studying her new hairstyle with undeniable regret. He was grateful, however, for the fact that she had kept her figure and now, in a tight, black dress and white jumper, belted at the waist, emphasizing her full breasts and slim waist, she was looking more attractive than any of his friends’ wives could manage.
‘Do you really believe I’m having a male menopausal problem?’ he asked her.
She nodded, smiling, still trying to dress young Ian as he tickled her and playfully kicked his legs. ‘I believe you haven’t been the same since you first came back from Borneo. We both know why. Probably what happened there also made you start thinking about mortality in general and your age in particular.’
‘True enough,’ he agreed.
‘On top of that, you’ve had these problems with your mother, which must have been draining for you and probably still is.’
‘That, too, is true, darlin’.’
‘It’s not been a good time for you, Marty, but unfortunately that’s also part of being over forty. You’re at the age where things start going wrong with a lot of people you love. That makes you feel that things are going wrong with you as well– but, in fact, they’re not. You’re still okay. We’re okay. We have our lives to get on with.’
What she was saying was true enough. During the past couple of years, as he had alternated between tours of duty in Borneo and acting as an instructor in the training wing at Hereford, his life had seemed to be falling to pieces all around him. This had really started with the death of his father, which had happened shortly before the first Borneo tour. But his feelings had certainly not been helped by the violent deaths of Bulldog and Pat O’Connor. That aerial walkway, he knew, would haunt him for the rest of his days.
‘You’re right,’ he confessed. ‘I haven’t been the same since I returned from that first bloody tour of Borneo. I’m also depressed at the realization th
at the only old friend I have left in the regiment is Taff Hughes.’
‘The one you call the mild-mannered, cold-blooded killer.’
‘Right. That’s him. The only friend left – and he doesn’t even go back as far as the Originals, the old gang from North Africa. On top of that, he’s absolutely unknowable.’
‘A friend who can never be a real friend.’
‘Well, not quite. I mean, he still goes a long way with me, so even though there’s no way of really knowing him, I feel warm towards him. I wouldn’t like to see anything happen to him; that would hurt me as well.’
‘But he’s still unknowable, Marty. Finally, he’s out of reach. That’s why you’ve taken young Tommy Taylor under your wing. You need someone more human.’
‘Yes, I think so.’ He’d taken Tommy under his wing after that first tour of duty in Borneo and treated him as a protégé ever since. Tommy was now an experienced corporal with extensive experience gained in Borneo. Marty was proud of him. ‘I have to admit, though, that every time I return to England I’m faced with the undeniable fact that my world’s changing rapidly and will never be the same again.’
The death of my dad, he thought. The deaths of friends. The death of John F. Kennedy. The death of Sir Winston Churchill. Now astronauts are walking in space and a New Age is dawning. My past’s growing longer every day and my future’s shrinking.
‘Not helped by your mother,’ Ann Lim said, breaking his reverie as she lifted Ian off the table and planted him on the floor. She sipped at her coffee while the boy put on his jacket. ‘That’s been hard to take, too.’
Marty sighed. ‘I suppose so.’
Even while trying bravely to cope with the death of her husband, Marty’s mother had been broken up inside and was visibly ageing, with increasing lapses of memory and a general loss of interest in most things. Though once houseproud, she rarely cleaned up any more and Marty, when he managed to visit her in London, was usually shocked by the neglected state of his former home. Also, as he was gradually finding out, she rarely saw her old friends anymore, drank a lot in private, and was receiving a wide variety of sedatives from her doctor. She often rang Marty here at Redhill, usually in the early hours of the morning, sobbing drunkenly and saying she was frightened for her future. Though Ann Lim had invited her to come and live here, she had always refused. The desperate phone calls still came, though.