The Cadet Under-Officer

by Christopher Cummings

  “I’ll put them in my pack, along with the briefcase, now tie your hair back,” Graham replied. He took the incriminating clothes and placed them in a dark green plastic garbage bag. The briefcase went into another. Elizabeth tied back her hair and had a long drink, then put on the floppy cloth hat. Graham placed the bags in his pack, then pulled down his shelter and placed it and his sleeping bag in on top of the briefcase.

  Elizabeth sat on the log and tried to pull the prickles and thorns out of her right foot. Graham looked down and sucked his breath in. He hadn’t realized how much she was hurt. She took off her left shoe and carefully pulled the sandshoes on. Graham wanted to help pull out the prickles but was afraid to touch her foot so he went instead to start picking up the small items and groundsheet.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “Yes.” Elizabeth stood up carefully and trembled with anxiety as she put her right foot down. With a sob of pain she began hobbling along. They went slowly up the creek bed. Graham picked up the items from the observation course as he went, at the same time keeping a careful eye out for NORMAC people. He was now starting to feel very excited at the adventure. There was also the romance. In his mind he was not just rescuing a damsel in distress but one he thought he was in love with!

  A hundred metres from the camp Graham spread out the groundsheet and sleeping bag in the shade of a tree. He put down the waterbottle, biscuits and chocolate. They were beside a bush which gave some cover from view.

  “Lie down here Liz. It’s lunch time and I’ve got to get things organized for the afternoon. I’ll be gone for at least an hour or so. If any cadets come along say you are from Two Platoon on a compass march and that your group have gone to get Lt Standish with a car to pick you up. If any of the security men come tell them you are from my platoon, Four Platoon, and that you are near the latrine – that’s the toilet - because you have an upset stomach.” He looked into her eyes and his heart skipped a beat.

  Elizabeth nodded. “Yes, alright. Thank you,” she replied. Actually she was terrified of being left alone but did as she was told.

  “Now don’t try to hide or act suspicious. Act like you are bored and fed up. Your name is Rachel Black. She belongs to the platoon but didn’t come to camp,” Graham explained. He looked at his watch and, after a reassuring farewell, walked quickly on up the gully picking up more small items.

  Back at the camp he saw Lieutenant McEwen and Roger sitting in the shade talking to the police sergeant. Graham slipped off his pack and pushed it into his shelter, then walked over to join them. Stopping next to Roger he undid his webbing and dropped it, then sat down.

  “Boy, am I hungry,” Graham said, pretending to be happy and relaxed. After a drink he set about preparing a quick meal of tinned meat and biscuits washed down by coffee boiled on a hexamine stove. As he ate they discussed the missing girl. It seemed the police sergeant wasn’t very interested and didn’t know much but said the police were co-operating with the mining company.

  It was quite hot by then with a clear, cloudless sky and no wind. Graham drank a lot and refilled his three waterbottles. He was so excited he was having trouble acting normally. He was also very pleased the policeman didn’t know Elizabeth’s name as she was in Miss McEwen’s class at school and she would be sure to say something. Graham had a shrewd idea that the searchers did not realize that the cadets came from Cairns. ‘They probably think we are locals, or come from Townsville,’ he thought.

  As soon as he finished lunch Graham packed up, then called in his three corporals and began giving his orders for the afternoon’s training. As he did so a very angry and sweaty Mr. Bargheese appeared out of the scrub to the north followed by a tired looking security man.

  The police sergeant called loudly, “Any luck?”

  “No sign of her!” snarled Bargheese in reply.

  “That’s bad. Well, let’s hope you find her this afternoon. I can’t keep all my people out here for much longer just to find a girl who’s stolen your briefcase,” said the sergeant.

  Bargheese looked quite unhappy at this comment. “Are your road blocks in position?” he asked testily.

  “Yes they are. In fact I was just about to head off and check them,” the sergeant replied. He got into the police car and drove off. As he did a small yellow helicopter came clattering overhead. Bargheese took a hand radio from the security man and began talking to it. The helicopter circled back, then came down to land half way along Sandy Ridge.

  “You remain here Martinez,” snapped Bargheese, giving the security man back his radio. Then he strode off and climbed into the ‘chopper’ which took off and flew away southwards, keeping low over the trees.

  Graham looked at his watch. “We must get on with training. We’ll be in these gullies,” he said, pointing north. The security man didn’t look happy and obviously wasn’t sure if he should stay where he was or go with the cadets.

  Lt McEwen stood up. “I’m going to drive back to the army camp to tell the OC what’s going on. I’ll be half an hour or so.”

  “Yes ma’am. Can you get another couple of jerry cans of water while you are at it?” Graham replied as he put on his webbing and pack. Then he collected Roger and Cpl Sheehan’s section. Lt McEwen climbed into the car and drove off. The security man sat down. Graham looked at him and tried to hide his anxiety. ‘I hope it isn’t too obvious that I am the only one wearing a pack,’ he thought.

  Leading the group he set off across the open ridge top. They walked a hundred metres to the top of a deep, v-shaped gully which wound its way out of sight through a fairly close stand of ironbarks. The cadets went down the gully in single file. The soil was almost bare, with hardly any grass and only a moderate amount of leaf litter.

  Graham began directing cadets to take up hidden positions and to put trip wires and dummy mines for an Individual Observation Course. In this activity the cadets would come along on their own and have to try to spot the hidden cadets or the traps. This was part of their training for scouting.

  It took twenty minutes to walk 500 metres down to a fence line and to position the six cadets along the way. Graham had done a reconnaissance the previous day and had made sure that each incident was not visible from the next because of the little spurs and bushes along the gully. Lower down this became a dry sandy creek bed about five paces wide, lined with scattered eucalypts.

  Graham then walked back up the gully checking that everything was ready. All the while he was in a fever of concern that Elizabeth would be found and that he would not be there to help her. About half way down was a natural dyke, a wall of rocks and gravel that ran at right angles across the gully. It was broken in the middle where the creek had breached it and to Graham it looked like an old railway embankment without a bridge. ‘This will be a good spot to watch in both directions along the creek,’ he decided so he scouted around and selected a spot to ‘hide’ Elizabeth.

  After dropping his pack with the precious briefcase among some rocks about fifty paces from the washed out section of rocks Graham walked quickly up to the head of the gully. All the while he was feeling fit and enjoying the physical exercise. The other two sections of the platoon were sitting in the shade at the bivouac waiting. Graham now put another part of his plan into action.

  “Corporal Kenny, you and your section come with me, Sergeant Dunning, start sending Corporal Lake’s section down the course at five minute intervals, Corporal Lake leading. She is to collect them at the fence line and when they are all there is to bring them back up here via the Canning Road and Sandy track. Corporal Kenny’s section is going to look for this missing girl.”

  The squad of six cadets got up and followed him over to where the security man sat on a log. Even to a youth like Graham it was clear the man was unsure, partly because his boss had not given him clear instructions and partly because he obviously knew very little about the army or cadets, except that it was definitely ‘government’ and ‘official’.

  Graham stood facing the man
and spoke, tyring to sound both confident and helpful. “Corporal Kenny here and his section are to help you search for this girl. He is to search from the road northwards between the South Gravel Scrape and Scrubby Creek for one hour. You’d better go with them in case they find her.”

  Graham showed them both on the map where to look.

  The security man stood and looked uncertain. “Mr Bargheese told me to wait here,” he said.

  “It’s alright. We will have a section here all the time and we can watch this whole ridgetop,” Graham said.

  The man reluctantly agreed. Then he looked towards where the buzzing of the helicopter could be heard somewhere along the Canning. For a moment he fingered the switch on his radio and Graham feared he would call to check but he put it back on its sling and began talking to Corporal Kenny. They then began walking east along the dirt vehicle track. Five minutes later they filed out of sight down past the gravel pit towards the highway. Graham walked slowly after them and waited till they were out of sight among the trees. Then he turned and walked quickly back through the camp and down into the gully Elizabeth was ‘hiding’ in.

  To Graham’s relief she was still there, stretched out asleep. He woke her up. She looked quite worn out. He pointed to the dried blood on her shoulder. “You’ve hurt your shoulder,” he said.

  “Yes, I got caught on a barbed wire fence,” Elizabeth replied. Then she took a long drink from his waterbottle.

  “You carry that,” he said. “We are going to walk across to the next gully and I’ll sit near you. You must pretend to be a sick cadet. Who are you supposed to be?”

  “Oh...ah...oh, I’m Cadet Rachel Black of Number Four Platoon.”

  “Good! Now, just walk normally and leave the talking to me. You carry the groundsheet and sleeping bag.”

  They set off up the gully until close to the bivouac, then circled to the right through the open bush towards the top of the gravel scrape. Graham kept looking in that direction. He knew the group with Sgt Dunning might see them but he wasn’t worried as he was sure they would assume Liz was one of Kenny’s section.

  A hundred metres past the bivouac he could see down over the disused gravel scrape with its small heaps of stones and scoured out patches of red-grey earth to where Cpl Kenny was lining his people up along the fence beside the highway. Satisfied he and Elizabeth weren’t seen Graham turned left and walked out onto the flat, open crest of the ridge. What helped him was his intimate knowledge of the ground from the previous camps.

  At the place he had chosen they were out of sight of the NORMAC vehicle on the Canning Road and too far from Sgt Dunning’s group to be easily identified. Roger’s group didn’t seem to be looking anyway. ‘Telling jokes most likely,’ Graham thought.

  It took a long couple of minute’s walking before they went into a belt of small trees. From there they circled to the left went down into the dip at the top of another gully. Graham realized he was sweating with excitement and wiped his hands. This gully was steep and rocky. It led down to the rocky dyke where he had left his pack. Liz had to take it slowly on her sore feet and she slipped several times on the loose sandy soil.

  As they got to the top of the dyke Graham saw one of the female cadets, Deborah Wallis, coming down the creek, eyes alert. Deborah, whose nickname was ‘Super Babble’, saw them and stopped but he waved her on.

  Graham showed Elizabeth where to spread the groundsheet in the shade. There was a bush obscuring the view from down the creek while the slope of the embankment covered upstream. She had another drink and lay down.

  Graham felt relieved. ‘So far so good,’ he thought. He had safely moved Liz into an area Bargheese wouldn’t suspect. “Wait here Liz while I see how the training is going,” he said. He saw by his watch that the move had taken nearly half an hour. He went and stood in the open beside the gully to watch the next cadet coming down. It was another girl, the pretty brunette, Sharon Morrow.

  “How many more to come?” Graham asked her.

  “I’m the last one from Eleven Section, sir,” Sharon replied.

  That answer made Graham worry that his timings were a bit out. He set off down the creek at a brisk walk, overtaking two cadets along the way. He found Cpl Margaret Lake and two others sitting in the shade at the fence.

  “Corporal Lake, as soon as your last cadet arrives you are to take your section around to the top and take over from Cpl Sheehan’s section. Go along the road,” he said.

  Margaret nodded, knowing what to do from having done the same sort of thing as a ‘First Year’ cadet the previous year. With adoring eyes she watched Graham walk off through the bush. She was his sister’s best friend and had been in love with him for years but to her regret he treated her more like a little sister. She sighed. ‘If only he would notice me!’ she thought wistfully.

  Unaware of Margaret’s thoughts Graham went back to where Elizabeth lay. After another drink, for it was hot and still, he pulled the briefcase out of his pack and sat down. Carefully he opened it and sorted out the contents, laying them out on the garbage bag in little heaps. He replaced the packets of computer discs in the case first. ‘Without a computer they can’t tell me anything and they need to be protected from the elements,’ he reasoned.

  Next he looked at the money. There was a lot of it - Australian dollars, US dollars, New Guinea Kina and Fiji dollars, with a few Singapore dollars and Yen. Graham didn’t count it but put it in the case as well. Then he looked at the passports. He could recognize what they were but knew little about them. As there were three sets - two of Australian passports and Fijian passports and one of Australian and Papua New Guinea with the same person’s name, photo and particulars he felt sure they were illegal documents. ‘Although some people can have dual citizenship,’ he thought. That uncertainty bothered him some more.

  In an attempt to work out the truth he studied them again. He noted that the photos were all of Indian looking people, and two with different names had a photo of Mr Bargheese! ‘That has got to be sus,’ he decided.

  Graham placed the passports back in the case and picked up the brown leather-bound notebook. It had dates and names and some words he couldn’t make out but which he presumed were codes of some sort. He flicked through the diary part of it and saw the pencil entry:

  12 Sep 8pm Brendan Creek

  Pilot - Desbriere, Aircraft No 3

  Passengers - 12 - from Lifula

  ‘That is two days from now!’ he thought.

  Hoping to find more clues Graham flicked on through the book. There were people’s names with nicknames in brackets, telephone numbers and bank account numbers and on one page the names of several International Banks, two in Switzerland and one in the Bahamas, with what could be account numbers.

  For a few minutes he sat and stared off into space. He decided that, even if the operation was not illegal, the information in the notebook would probably be worth a lot of money to rival business organizations. Bothered he looked down at Elizabeth who was again asleep. ‘Is she telling the truth? Or are she and her family involved in some sort of scam or robbery?’ he wondered. Thoughtfully he wrapped the notebook in a plastic bag and placed it in his left basic pouch. Then he took out the pistol. The weight and feel of it was real and menacing. More than anything that convinced him this was no dream and no game.

  The sight of Cadet Hodgins, his signaller, coming down the creek reminded Graham where he was. Quickly he slipped the gun back into his basic pouch. He put the briefcase into the garbage bag and back into his pack, then pushed the print-outs in as well and stood up.

  He watched Hodgins detect a trip wire and avoid it, then spring away on spotting Lance Cpl Halyday lying behind a bush. Hodgins turned and saw Graham standing on the bank and grinned, giving a thumbs-up. Then he pointed up the other re-entrant behind Graham. Graham turned and felt a cold shock.

  Two security men with shotguns were coming through the bush towards him! ‘If I hadn’t pushed the papers and briefcase into my pack they’
d have caught me sitting reading the stuff!’ he thought with dismay.

  He pushed the flap on his pack closed with his boot and spoke quietly. “Two security men coming Liz. Lie still.”

  Graham wasn’t sure if she was awake or if she heard him. He looked at the men, now only 25 metres away, and deliberately turned his back on them.

  “Go on Cadet Hodgins, keep going,” he said loudly.

  The two men walked along the top of the dyke towards them and stopped right beside Elizabeth. Graham turned back to face them, arms resting on his basic pouches and heart thumping wildly.

  CHAPTER 7

  LOYALTY

  Graham had never seen these two men before but they frightened him. They had NORMAC ‘Security’ badges on the sleeves of their blue shirts. One was a big, burly man with a hairy chest exposed through the front of his unbuttoned shirt. The man was sweating and in a bad temper. He stopped close to Graham and snapped, “Who are you?”

  To his own surprise Graham answered coolly: “I might ask you the same question.” The man’s aggressive manner shocked him.

  “Don’t be smart with me boy!”

  “I’m not a boy. I’m a Cadet Under-Officer and this is a military training area. If you want something you might at least be civil or I’ll have you removed.” It was a long shot and not strictly true as it was private property the cadets were using with the owner’s permission but the man was obviously unsure.

  “You and what army!” the man retorted, but less aggressively.

  “There are nearly thirty people within hearing distance of me and several are watching you right now,” Graham replied. Graham indicated LCpl Halyday watching from behind his bush. The men looked around and also saw Hodgins looking back at them.

  Surprise showed on the men’s faces and changed their men attitude. The other man pointed at Elizabeth, who lay apparently asleep, her face covered with a hat. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Her, she’s a girl.”