Island in the Sky

by R. B. Shaw

  His aircraft formed a loose ‘V’ formation and climbed through a ragged gap in the tall mountains, just clearing the beech forest in the low saddle. Five minutes later, he climbed steeply to clear a large cloud mass drifting across their path from the east. A flash of light, high to the east, caught Yoshiro’s attention. Aircraft were vaguely visible heading south east, circling to gain height over the cloud. Yoshiro notified his group of his intention to investigate the distant aircraft, then ordered the two camera-equipped aircraft to continue on course at reduced speed, leaving one of the Zero Fighters as escort.

  Yoshiro and his wingman climbed steeply toward the now distinct forms of two aircraft. At this distance, they looked like American Catalina Flying Boats. As he armed his guns, Yoshiro saw the flash of machine gun fire from the tail turret and flicked the nimble fighter clear of the tracer fire. He noticed the twin fins and three engines on the flying boats and suddenly his attention was attracted by the distinctive Dutch markings. Dutch East Indies Dornier 24s! He levelled his Zero out at high speed, following the closest aircraft, but staying below the gun travel arc of the Dornier’s tail turret.

  A flash to the south proved to be Yoshiro’s wing man, pressing his attack on the second Dornier. Yoshiro advanced the throttle swiftly to overtake his target. He would rake the flying boat’s unprotected belly with one massive burst of machine gun and cannon fire from a rolling pass. He turned the Zero inside the Dornier’s bank, the distance rapidly diminishing.

  As he pressed the firing button, Yoshiro felt a savage jolt through the whole airframe and heard the deafening cacophony of sound. A full five-second burst of all his guns raked the Dornier from tail to wing, along the exposed hull of the fuselage. Pieces of the disintegrating aircraft sprayed back over the Zero, some clattering loudly through the propeller arc.

  The damaged Dornier fell astern as Yoshiro accelerated the Zero briskly ahead and pulled the nimble aircraft up into a steep climbing turn. The airspeed decayed rapidly as the Zero slipped out of the turn. Yoshiro thrust the throttle forward again, preparing for a frontal attack, making sure he positioned his Zero roughly between the approaching Dornier and the brilliant sunlight.

  To the south, the sparkle of flames caught Yoshiro’s eye. The other Dornier was blazing fiercely and gliding in a shallow descent toward the mountainous barrier above the clouds. He scanned the sky for his wingman, obviously the perpetrator of the damage, and was horrified to see his comrade’s Zero, minus a wing. It was spinning down to the cloud layer, like an exterminated and mutilated insect.

  Both remaining aircraft were charging at each other head on. Yoshiro began firing, exchanging shots with the Dornier’s nose gunner. The brave Dornier pilot held his course unflinchingly, knowing full well that, should he turn away, the Dornier’s unprotected flanks would be raked again by gun fire.

  Yoshiro’s bluff failed; the Dornier rushed onward on a collision course, deliberately presenting the smallest possible target area from head on. Yoshiro noticed he had scored some strikes on the port side of the Dornier, but could not turn away without exposing the Zero’s vulnerable under-belly to the deadly guns of the fiercely determined nose gunner.

  At the last second, Yoshiro yielded and lifted the Zero’s nose slightly to flash over the Dornier with only metres to spare. Momentarily as the aircraft passed, Yoshiro heard the heavy pounding percussion of the Dornier’s upper cannon. A split second later a deafening series of explosions shook the Zero. The sudden impact lifted the aircraft; it leapt uncontrollably as though kicked in the rear by some gargantuan foot.

  The stinging lash of glass peppered Yoshiro’s face as the cannon shell from the Dornier shredded his instrument panel. The engine of the Zero faltered momentarily, then resumed its former thunderous beat. Temporarily blinded, he kept the controls centred and opened his eyes to a crimson world. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand; blood stains smeared his skin. Gradually he stemmed the flow of blood from his forehead and cleared his vision.

  The windscreen was completely smeared with a moving layer of viscous black oil. It totally obscured everything outside the cockpit. The flight instruments had been pulped by the explosion, but he still had the airspeed indicator and engine instruments. Yoshiro pulled his goggles over his eyes and slid back the cockpit canopy. To his alarm, the aircraft was in a swift diving bank and he quickly corrected. While struggling to maintain control, he glimpsed a flashing explosion on one of the nearby peaks. Possibly an indication that the burning Dornier had been unable to overcome the damage inflicted by Yoshiro’s wingman.

  Reluctantly he turned toward the other three Zeros orbiting in the distance and permitted himself a last glance back at his former adversary. At last he saw the Dornier, a minute moving speck at the apex of a grey trail of smoke. It crept across the huge backdrop of a forbidding mountainous skyline, barely above the brilliant ocean of cloud. Was it all worth it? he thought. One definite kill and one probable. But Yoshiro had also witnessed the destruction of his wingman and aircraft by the guns of the tenacious Dornier.

  Yoshiro was about to join the other Zero’s when he saw the needle of his oil pressure gauge fluctuate and then slowly drop towards nil pressure. The oil leak had expended the life blood of the engine and he now had no choice but to reduce power before the engine overheated and burst into flame. He dived steeply west, away from the cloud layer, deliberately losing height as fast as he could to cool the hot engine.

  A quick scan below revealed a large mud stained river, its winding course rupturing the lush green pile of the jungle. A slight insidious vibration was building up, indicating the balance of the engine had been affected. An early landing was imperative, so Yoshiro quickly decided to ditch the Zero in the river rather than land among the trees.

  After his successful ditching, Yoshiro traded his flying goggles for a dugout canoe from a nearby group of friendly but astonished villagers. He proceeded downstream for three days, before being captured by Australian coastwatchers and subsequently interned in a POW camp for the remainder of the war.

  Responding to a question from Jan, Yoshiro also said he had no knowledge of air attacks on shipping in the Ramu region at that stage of the war. He hadn’t seen evidence of a shipwreck as he paddled along the length of the Ramu River.

  The fire died down to embers and I bedded down for an uncomfortable sleep. A starry section of sky was visible overhead, but it was difficult to settle. The recent rain had brought the jungle insects alive, the usual monotonous hum intensifying to a piercing crescendo. As I eyed the black wall about me, I slapped at myriads of irritating flying and crawling bugs till weariness overcame me.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The loud nauseous pulse of insect noises still assaulted our eardrums next morning. Lance and I prepared to trek onward, but first we searched for more water. We had little trouble refilling our containers; hundreds of large leaves and lily pads had collected the rain. The ground was spongier and we had difficulty moving through the quagmire, the mud sucking at our feet with every step. Leeches were everywhere and we were forced to make frequent stops. No sooner had we removed them when, incredibly, they squeezed their gruesome bodies through our shoelace eyelets for another bloody feast. It was difficult to pull their slippery bodies off using bare fingers, so we burned them off with a cigarette butt. Without prompt medical attention, our open wounds would soon fester and turn to septic tropical ulcers.

  Leeches were only one of many jungle horrors feeding on us; mosquitoes never let up their attacks, while fat blue bush ticks had to be removed regularly. We did have one thing in our favour—the rainforest was no longer a dense wall and it was now possible to move a few metres before chopping at vegetation. We were making better time today, unrestricted by undergrowth and able to see our way ahead. The small amount of sunlight, which penetrated the top cover, lit the jungle with a muted twilight glow.

  Ahead was a sunlit area like an oasis in the gloom and we made directly for it, cleared a space with the bush knif
e, rested and checked our boots and clothing for leeches and ticks. Our water supply was again low, but the first vine I cut only produced an unacceptable milky sap. I slashed a two-metre length from another typical jungle liana, gnarled and twisted like an elongated sinewy forearm, and was rewarded with a small quantity of pure water.

  After quenching our thirst on vines we sited our direction along a few trees and then blazed them as we passed, back-sighting our next plot. The groundsel had cleared a little and we could see the best foot-placings. Our feet disappeared shin-deep in mud and rotten vegetation, the surface definitely more liquid.

  It was late afternoon, so we were on the alert for a section of clear dry land for a camp-site. As the foliage thinned, it became evident we were moving into swamp country. We were knee-deep in stinking ooze, when we finally found an elevated section of ground around a large tree trunk. It was an eerie sight; long banners of fluffy green beard moss hung ten metres from the overhead branches and swung back and forth at the whim of a mild breeze.

  I began preparing a clear area and while it was still daylight, Lance read Jan’s letter regarding the Ramu air combat. He was spellbound by Yoshiro’s story and said nothing as he flicked excitedly through the pages.

  “If we could find one of the Dorniers, it might give us a clue to the mystery, Dave. I wonder where in the mountains the first Dornier crashed? The other may be in the same vicinity.”

  “Don’t know. The Jap saw the flash of an explosion out of the corner of his eye, so it must have been above the 11 000-feet cloud layer,” I offered. “Even if we do find one of them, it’s unlikely we’ll find any clues to the bullion ship.”

  “I still think it’s worth an aerial search at least. There’s a lot of ground above 11 000 feet, but fortunately most of it’s bare of vegetation.”

  Lance was right. After the Ramu River search, we should extend our search to the high terrain of the Bismarcks, first from the air and then, if necessary, by ground search—that’s if we ever managed to escape this sodden stinking hell alive.

  Toward nightfall, famished and frenzied swarms of mosquitoes seemed to materialise from nowhere. They formed dense clouds, like brown gas floating above the surface of the quagmire. Our situation soon became unbearable, as they repeatedly stung any exposed flesh. We scooped up the foul-smelling mud and smeared ourselves to prevent penetration.

  “Things are starting to look up,” I said.

  “Why’s that?” Lance queried.

  “The vegetation’s thinner and the wetter ground indicates we’re moving in the right direction, lower all the time. Eventually it all runs to the Ramu River.”

  We had a cold meal of raw scraps and then attempted to sleep. I would have given any amount of gold for a warm bed and oblivion. The swamp was a frightening place by night; the calls and noises seemed straight from hell. A luminous vapour of swamp gas swirled lazily above the putrid muck, forming hideous and monstrous shapes with the help of our over-wrought imaginations. The long agitated plumes of beard moss waving against the opaque backdrop looked like a sluggish tribe of zombies moving towards us.

  I opened my eyes after an uncomfortable night and surveyed the utter tranquillity of the swamp. Nothing stirred, until a single sudden movement caught my eye. I turned too late to see what it was, probably a bird or even a crocodile, as the area was typical of the reptile’s habitat. Nearby, a huge rhinoceros beetle was struggling toward the withered remains of a fallen palm. Aptly named, the shiny black beetle had a top pincer like a horn jutting out of the top of its head and as long as its body. A lower claw met the upper to form a gruesome set of vertical pincers. They were relatively harmless, but could strike and hang on with a vice-like grip.

  I stirred Lance so we could get moving and kicked the beetle out of reach. We said little as we packed our meagre possessions. Suddenly Lance began a frantic search.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “The bushknife is gone!”

  “Where did you leave it?”

  “I left the blade jammed in the tree up here. See the cut?”

  “Must have fallen out. Check on the ground.”

  “I have. Someone’s stolen it!”

  “There must be a village nearby and someone paid us a visit early this morning.” I thought for a moment. “I saw something move over near that tree earlier. Have a look around for footprints!” The ground in our immediate area was firm, but eventually we found footprints leading off in a southerly direction. “Let’s get going. If we can follow his trail we might be right tonight,” I said.

  We’d been too optimistic; within half an hour, we lost the tracks and were bogged down to the knees in putrid slime and black moss. We had to remove our tattered shoes, as with each laborious step we would lose them beneath the sucking heavy mud. Upon reaching firm ground, we were lucky enough to stumble upon footprints again. A blatant trail led on through freshly slashed vegetation in a south-west direction. Abruptly the trail ended at a dense bamboo thicket, but we soon found a newly cut trail veering off to the south and the occasional footprint amidst crushed foliage.

  I stopped in my tracks, catching Lance’s attention. “Can you smell anything?”

  Lance sniffed the air and gave me a surprised look. “Yeah, I can smell food cooking. Must be a village.” Without hesitation, we moved along the obvious track, but then I slowed down, aware that something was wrong.

  “What’s the matter? Let’s get some food,” said Lance excitedly.

  “Take it easy. There’s no village around here. Look around, no gardens, no well-worn trails, no noise or animal spoor. Just take my advice, be quiet and let’s have a look first.”

  Lance’s fiery temper exploded. “Don’t be so bloody stupid! I’m starving, for Christ’s sake!”

  After he calmed down, we moved on. Eventually the smell was stronger and smoke was visible ahead. We could distinctly hear a fire crackling; the normal thick top cover of matted vegetation had thinned noticeably ahead. As we ventured near and peered into the small area of crushed greenery, we were stunned by the sight before us.

  The mangled remains of the khaki helicopter were draped in vines and torn shrubbery. The massive impact with the ground had compacted its structure and shattered the perspex bubble and cockpit, spewing its contents out across the flattened foliage. Warily we stepped into the trampled clearing and disturbed a lone figure crouched by the fire. A near-naked warrior suddenly stood up, surprised we had managed to track him through this remote wilderness.

  The elderly leper was obviously a village outcast sentenced to a lonely existence in the endless Ramu swamps. His hideously deformed face was devoid of ears, nose and lips, exposing fang-like teeth, sharpened to tapered points by ancient tribal initiation. Sad but belligerent brown eyes stared at us balefully. On an impulse, he grabbed our bushknife off the ground and in a panic turned and ran to the sanctuary of the nearby jungle. We were shocked to see that the retreating figure had three arms, the third amputated limb stuffed roughly into a string bilum hanging on his back.

  Nervously we moved toward the fire and were revolted by the sight of a human leg among the smouldering timbers, the limb further dismembered to fit closely over the flames. The other leg had been partly devoured, judging by the repulsive litter of human flesh and bone surrounding the fire. I turned away in disgust toward the wrecked helicopter, evidently the same machine we had knocked out of the sky over a week earlier.

  To my horror, Lance was crouching over the fire and sifting through the still smouldering ashes.

  “You ghoulish bastard, haven’t you seen enough?”

  Lance seemed quite composed. “Shut up and have a look at this!”

  He flicked some charred scraps of paper from the fire and lifted up a half-burnt photo for me to see. I recognised the Dornier 24 instantly. Forgetting my earlier repugnance, I immediately began sifting through the photos and documents, anxious to find further clues to the gold. The native had used the paper as ready fuel while preparing a fi
re for his disgusting fare.

  All the documents were in Indonesian Bahasa, as were the notes in the open pilfered map case laying nearby. Lance and I scurried about retrieving the scattered sheets until we noticed the nauseating stench and suddenly stumbled into a bloodstained basin of carnage and bestiality. The butchered trunk of the helicopter occupant had been stripped of all belongings, exposing further mutilations incurred in the impact. The head and limbs had been roughly severed, making the corpse appear nightmarishly hideous. I turned away and gagged, my presence not even disturbing the evil masses of bush flies that were quarrelling over the rotting remains.

  Closer to the helicopter, we found that the other crew member had suffered a similar brutal fate. Lance stared at the corpses and laughed. I ignored his ill humour and perused the dozens of photos, but found nothing written in English.

  All of the photos were of Dutch Dornier flying boats. One particular photo, a close up of the nose area, showed a pilot in full uniform standing in the upper cockpit hatch. Large white letters ‘MLD’ appeared on the side of the nose.

  “Lance, look at this one.”

  “What’s wrong with it?” Lance enquired as he studied the aged black-and-white enlargements. I whipped out Jan’s letter and thumbed rapidly through the pages. “Here, look, MLD—Mariene Luchtvaart Dienst—Dutch for Naval Air Arm.”

  “So what?”

  “Look at the pilot’s shoulder patch and cap in the photo.”

  “An anchor … shit, Naval aircraft and Navy crews!”

  “Right on! That Naval officer that staggered into Tepsugl in ‘42 was off one of the Dorniers. There is no bloody ship—the Dorniers were carrying the gold!”

  “The Indonesian helicopter crews must have carried the documents and photos to identify the wrecks, not having seen one before.”

  “Let’s go through the rest of the photos and see what else we can find!”