by John Marsden
‘What do you think it’ll be like?’
‘I don’t know. It’s scary, isn’t it, to think how much things might have changed. They’re talking about Wirrawee like it’s a major city. New York, Tokyo, London and Wirrawee.’
‘It won’t be that big. It’s just the airfield really.’
Several newspapers had run stories on the development of a big new military airfield at Wirrawee.
‘That’s all we know. There could be heaps more happening. The whole countryside’ll probably be crawling with soldiers.’
‘You’re just trying to scare yourself.’
‘Mmm, and it’s not too difficult.’
‘Ellie, have you really changed a lot, or is this just a stage you’re going through?’ But she laughed as she said it.
‘Of course I’ve changed. What do you think?’ But I didn’t laugh.
‘You’ve always had the guts to do things. You’re not allowed to stop. We’d all give up then.’
‘I never had guts, Fi. I just did things because there was no choice. Like what you said about going back. Exactly the same.’
Iain Pearce, Captain Iain Pearce, strode over to where we were talking. He marched all the time. I bet he marched to the shower in the morning.
‘There’s been another delay, folks. Sorry about this. It’s what happens when you trust the Air Force. If you want a coffee there’s a canteen at the end of the fibrolite building. But be back in forty-five, OK?’
We all went over there except Homer. And we didn’t march, we slouched. Fi and I picked up our conversation as we sat clutching coffee mugs, using them to warm our hands.
‘I’m more scared than I used to be,’ I confessed. ‘I’m scared of dying now. I mean I always was, but now that I’ve seen so much of it, I’m bloody terrified. Aren’t you?’
‘Yes, of course. But it’s funny, I feel quite calm right at this moment. I don’t understand why. I should be in a straitjacket.’ She peered into her coffee as if she expected to find an answer there. ‘I think it’s partly because of the soldiers,’ she said at last. ‘They’re so professional about everything. I just feel we’ll be like spectators this time. We can leave all the important stuff to them.’
‘I suppose. But so much can go wrong.’
‘Nothing new about that.’
‘Do you think we might be able to see our parents?’
‘Well, Colonel Finley said he’d talk to Iain about it. He thought we’d have a good chance.’
‘Oh, come on, Fi! You believed that? He’d say anything to get us to go.’
Fi looked so sad that I felt guilty. ‘Oh, do you think so? But I want to see them so badly.’
‘You think I don’t? It’s all I care about. It’s all I want. If I thought I could get them out, I’d swim across the Tasman. Sharks and all.’
‘Then why are you being so strange about going back there now?’
‘How the hell should I know? Look, I don’t want to get into some big mystical scene, but I just don’t feel good about it, OK? Maybe it’s something to do with Robyn. That’s what Andrea thinks, anyway. All I know is, I feel angry. Everything makes me angry at the moment.’
Completely unexpectedly Fi said: ‘What did happen the night of the party with that creep Adam?’
‘How did you know he was a creep?’
‘Oh, Ellie! What happened to your good taste and judgement?’
That was the moment Lee and Kevin chose to come over.
‘Time to go, kiddies,’ Kevin said.
‘I’ll tell you later,’ I said to Fi.
We walked back across the tarmac, the cold wind tugging at us, twisting my jacket around me.
‘Last good cup of coffee we’ll get for quite a time,’ Lee said.
‘I know. It’s awful. No TV, no nice bed, no hot baths. I can’t believe we signed up for this.’
‘I didn’t think you were going to sign up for it at one stage.’
I sighed. ‘Oh, don’t bring that up again. Fi and I have been talking about it for the last hour.’
A minute earlier Fi had surprised me by her comment about Adam. Now it was Lee’s turn to surprise me. He put his arm around me as we walked along. I was shocked. We hadn’t touched each other in so long. We’d been as close as humans can get, but when that ended we didn’t dare touch each other in case it was taken the wrong way. At least, I can only speak for myself: that’s why I didn’t touch Lee. I don’t know for sure why he didn’t touch me.
‘We’re going to be OK, you know, Ellie,’ he said. ‘As long as we stick together, we’ll be OK.’
The wind was getting colder and fiercer and I honestly don’t know if it was stinging my eyes and making them water or if the tears were being pushed out by something else. But whichever it was I kept blinking till they were gone. No professional soldier was going to see me crying. Not to mention Homer.
We stood around on the tarmac for another two and a half hours. It was cold and boring and somehow, even with all the people, it was terribly lonely. Planes came and went but ours didn’t go anywhere. We could see it parked near the control tower with three or four mechanics working on the engine. It was a bit unnerving, knowing it needed all this work just to get into the air. Secretly I hoped they’d put the whole trip off. We could go back to our quarters with honour intact: the failure wouldn’t be our fault.
Ten o’clock New Zealand time – sorry, 2200 hours – was what Iain had calculated as our deadline: that was eight in the evening in Australia. We needed that big a margin. And sure enough, typical of our luck, it was 9.55 pm, 2155, when a mechanic came up on a little electric motor scooter and told us the plane was ready.
I should have known not to get my hopes up.
The pressure on aircraft had been terrible, of course, with so many shot down, or grounded with missile damage. If we’d needed proof of the importance of our assignment, the fact that they’d provided a plane was enough. But it wasn’t much of a plane: a little Saab jet, so old that the fabric on the seats was worn away in a lot of places. Before the war it had been used in civilian work, but now the Air Force had borrowed it. The roof was so low that some of the soldiers spent the trip with their heads bent forward.
Just as we were about to board, Colonel Finley arrived. There wasn’t time for big speeches, but he shook our hands and wished us luck. It was nice of him to turn up. He’d always been pretty good to us. I mean his main interest was the war, of course, and he was only interested in us as long as we could help with the military stuff, but he’d got us good accommodation and made sure we were looked after, and he’d arranged the counselling and everything, so you couldn’t have asked for more. He never seemed very warm, but there wasn’t much you could do about that.
I’d been hoping till the last second that Andrea would come to see us off, even though she’d explained she had a group of patients every Friday evening at the hospital, but I still hoped a miracle would occur and she’d get there. Instead we had to settle for Colonel Finley.
Anyway, there was no time after that for much of anything. Sixty seconds later Colonel Finley had gone, they’d shut the door, and we were in the air. No stewards or hostesses on this flight: it was just sit down, get your belts on and we’re out of here.
We seemed to whoosh across the Tasman so fast. The plane kept very low to stay under the radar level, but it was so dark we couldn’t tell where we were. According to Iain, our being so low would slow us down because there was more air resistance, but I wouldn’t have known that if he hadn’t told us. It felt fast to me. We never saw the pilots, even after we landed, because they kept the door shut the whole time, but I didn’t mind that. I was happy to know that they were concentrating on flying the plane.
We landed at a base in the free territory but we weren’t allowed to know anything about it. Certainly not where it was. It was all maximum security. And then everything happened very fast. There was no time to get sentimental about the fact that we were back on ou
r own soil. We had to get our packs out of the luggage compartment and race to a helicopter that was already warmed up and waiting to take off. Matter of fact it was straining to take off. It seemed to be almost off the ground when we were still a hundred metres away from it.
It was a huge helicopter, with two rotors, and, unlike the Saab, very new. It was a donation from the Americans, the pilot explained. It was only my second helicopter ride ever. The first time I’d been so sick at heart I hadn’t noticed a thing, and this time I was so scared that I didn’t notice much either, but one thing that did strike me right away was how much quieter this ride was than the first helicopter. We could talk quite easily.
The chopper pilot, Sam, was so different to the invisible pilots of the Saab. This guy was such a dag. He wouldn’t shut up. But I liked him. He got us all to relax a bit with his stupid jokes. And, for the first time since I’d known I had to go back, he made me feel a bit like a hero again. Like I was doing something brave, something worthwhile, something special. He was a bit of a hero himself because every day he was flying into war zones and occupied territory but the way he carried on you’d think he was doing a tourist run around a tropical resort. As soon as the plane landed the lights on the airfield went off again and they didn’t turn them on for the chopper. ‘Anyone got a torch?’ Sam asked. ‘If these jokers paid their electricity bills we might get some lights here.’ He looked at me and winked. ‘These choppers used to be powered by electricity you know, till it got too expensive.’
‘Powered by electricity?’ I repeated stupidly. I’m not at my best in the middle of the night.
‘Yeah, it was good too, but they needed long extension cords. Mate of mine flew an inch too far, the plug came out, and down he went.’
At least we went up, not down, then we wheeled away to the north. We were on the last stage of our trip. I was still nervous, of course, but it was a different type of nervousness: instead of feeling sick and depressed I felt keyed up and was even starting to feel excited. ‘I’ll lower the TV screens in a minute,’ Sam said. ‘Don’t bump your head as you move around the cabin. Our in-flight movie tonight is The Boy Who Could Fly. It stars Xavier here.’ He nodded at the co-pilot, who just grinned. I guess he was used to Sam’s chatter.
If the Saab pilots didn’t talk to us because they were busy flying the plane, I don’t know how the helicopter flew at all. Must have been Xavier’s doing.
It was a moonless night, so I couldn’t see anything. It was eerie flying like that, rushing through blackness, trusting entirely the little glowing lights on the instrument panel. Now I think it was Fi’s turn to feel nervous, more nervous than me even, because she grabbed my hand after we took off, and held it all the way there. I don’t know, maybe she was just excited about coming home.
I was, quite a bit.
It crept up on me gradually, this feeling that I was in the right place again, and doing the right thing. I’m an action person, no doubt about that. I’m not good at sitting around, and for a long time, apart from our tourist travels around New Zealand, I’d been sitting around.
I’d watched a lot of TV, even though most of it was, like, the fourteenth re-run of ‘Shortland Street’. Since New Zealand got involved in the war they’d cut out every non-military import, because their balance of trade was wrecked by the military stuff they had to buy. So overseas TV shows were suddenly off the air. There were no new foreign movies at the cinemas either. Some New Zealanders thought that was too high a price to pay for helping Australia. They would have chucked us away for a new series of ‘The Simpsons’. I must admit, I could see their point of view.
Sam was giving a fake commentary as we tore along through the night. We’d told him we didn’t believe we were as low as he said, so he was out to convince us we were wrong.
‘On our right we see a beautiful gum tree. Just look at those pretty little leaves. And if you look closely you’ll notice the ladybird on the third twig on the fourth branch on the left-hand side.’
But in between times he got serious, especially with me, because I was sitting nearest to him.
‘This is your place we’re landing on, is it?’
‘I think so. They don’t tell us much.’
‘It’ll be nice for you to see it again.’
He asked me how old I was and when I told him he shook his head.
‘Are you all the same age?’
‘Kevin’s a bit older ... like, six months.’
‘My God, you’re young to be doing this kind of stuff.’
‘We didn’t ask for it. We just fell into it. Anyway, in a lot of countries kids are in the army at twelve or fourteen. Or so everyone keeps telling me.’
‘I guess so. As far as I’m concerned you’re the gutsiest bunch of people I’ve had in this thing. Aren’t you nervous?’
‘Nervous? If you had a dunny in this helicopter I’d be living in it.’
That got Sam going again. ‘Haven’t you seen our dunny? Go down the back there and lift up the hatch. You’ll find a nice hole underneath it. You know how they used to call dunnies the “long drop”? Well, our dunny sets a record for long drops.’
It was a few minutes after three in the morning and suddenly Sam was silent, peering down into the darkness. ‘We should be in the drop zone,’ he said to Iain. ‘On the map this all shows up as clear. I’m going to come down very carefully and hope we’ve got a good spot. And hope no one’s underneath us with a mortar.
‘Get ready,’ he said to the rest of us. ‘If we have to go up we’ll go bloody fast and we’ll go sideways. Keep your belts on and keep your mouths shut, and stick your head between your knees if we look like hitting anything we shouldn’t. Like the ground for instance.’
I realised, watching Sam then, what an excellent pilot he was. He concentrated like a violinist at a concert, sensitive to every note, every subtle change in volume, every tiny variation. If a leaf from a tree had touched the helicopter I honestly think he’d have noticed it. And the co-pilot, Xavier, he had his hands on his controls too, watching Sam’s slightest move. I realised when I thought about it later that he probably was doing it in case something happened to Sam – like a bullet – so he had to be ready to take over in a split second.
Terrible thought.
No one else in the helicopter moved. We all felt the tension. I don’t know about the others but suddenly I wasn’t thinking about what I had to do after we landed; I was concentrating every fibre on just getting this great roaring thing down on the ground. If we could have spent an hour or two putting it down it would have been cool: Sam could have lowered it at an inch a minute. But there was the constant fear of bullets. He had to balance the fear of hitting a tree or a power line with the fear of getting shot at. If we were landing in the remotest part of our property, we should be pretty safe from bullets and power lines, but no one knew for sure. All our knowledge, and Colonel Finley’s, came from way back. There could have been a brand-new military camp below us. We could be setting down in the middle of the parade ground.
Then there was a heavy bump from the right-hand side. I yelped, Fi squealed, and we weren’t the only ones. But the instant he’d felt the bump Sam had the left-hand side down as well. He held the chopper there, rocking slightly from side to side. Quite calmly he said over his shoulder: ‘We’re down, but we’re on a slope. Take care getting out.’
There was no panic. Iain went first, followed by half the soldiers, then us five, then the rest. Sam winked at me again as I went past: ‘Good luck,’ he said. I tried to find a grin to give him but couldn’t: now it wasn’t so much that I was scared, there was just too much to think about. I was suddenly aware of how much responsibility would be mine once I got out of the aircraft.
I dropped out of the hatch. Arms caught me and helped me down into the darkness. Someone turned me around so I was facing to the left. A voice yelled in my ear, ‘Walk fifty metres; watch the rough ground.’ I stumbled away into the noisy night. The fumes o
f aviation fuel had blown away all other smells. I kept going, arms outstretched, until someone else grabbed me and I stopped and waited, letting my eyes get used to the darkness. Gradually I became aware of a lot of movement right beside me and I realised it was the packs being passed along from the helicopter. I cursed, annoyed that I’d forgotten to help with them. Already, back on my own soil, my sense of independence was returning. The last thing I wanted was to be treated like a helpless child. But when I tried to join the line of people passing packs I think I just got in the way and muddled things up. A sudden blare of engine noise from the helicopter and a rush of wind told me Sam was leaving. I felt scared and lonely again, but everything was happening too fast to allow time for luxuries like feelings.
A hand tapped me hard on the shoulder and at the same time another hand guided my arm to a pack. I was getting really annoyed at being so helpless but tantrums were a luxury too, so I lifted the pack onto my back. ‘This way,’ someone whispered. Already the sound of the helicopter had faded away and the night was returning to its normal sweet quiet self. It was a relief to be able to whisper again. I was getting my night sight too, so it was easy to fall into line behind a big broad back and follow it. I knew why we were doing this: Iain explained when we were in the Saab that our first move must be away from the drop site, in case of soldiers converging on us. Once we were well away we would worry about where we were.
We walked fast for fifteen minutes. The sudden exercise, coming after so much sitting around, was a shock to my system. I was soon panting and blowing. My nose started running too, which was a nuisance as I couldn’t reach my handkerchief. I had no idea who was behind me or who was in front, except that I knew it was a woman in front. It took ages for me to get my second wind – in fact I’ve never been sure that there’s such a thing as second wind – but after a while I got in a bit of a routine and started to travel more easily.