Cave Diver

by Jake Avila

  ‘And very precious to me. So, when you dispose of Boerman, make sure she can’t do anything stupid. Understood? I want her brought back in one piece.’

  The commando fired off a smart salute, about-faced and departed.

  One by one, General Suyanto fed the photos into the paper shredder by his desk. For a time, celebrity had given his wayward daughter fulfilment in life; in fact, they had been getting on – so much so that he’d even believed her gift of the submarine was genuine, until her greedy outburst.

  Paris? Good God, Sura, what were you thinking? Those real estate brochures in her email cache were a reminder she wasn’t thinking straight. Clearly, the liberal views she’d picked up at that infuriating English university continued to contaminate her priorities.

  Suyanto consigned the last image to oblivion and sighed.

  ‘When this little adventure is over, my girl, you will knuckle down, or I’ll have you married to a man strong enough to handle you. Either that, or committed.’

  Chapter 8

  Port Moresby Cargo Terminal, Fairfax Harbour, Papua New Guinea

  Nash was taking refuge in the terminal’s air-conditioned office when the glass doors swung open and Frank Douglas strode in on a wave of hot air.

  ‘Robbie, lad, great to see you!’

  ‘Likewise.’

  They shook hands awkwardly, laughed, then gave each other a hug.

  Feeling how skinny the other man was, Nash stepped back and observed him critically. Douglas’s faded khaki dungarees, cinched up tight by an army belt, were comically baggy, and the disturbing yellow cast about his skin and eyes was much more pronounced than it had been three weeks ago in Margaret River.

  ‘Hey, are you feeling OK, Frank?’

  ‘Had a touch of malaria last week, but I’m good to go. How about you, kiddo? Ready to rock and roll?’

  Nash forced a grin he didn’t feel. ‘You bet.’

  He should have been jumping out of his skin with excitement, but the debacle in the Octopus was weighing on his mind. Had the panic attack been a one-off, or was it something more insidious? Added to the pressure was that, for the first time in his professional life, Nash was being paid for his services, as opposed to creating and selling a product, and with his doubts unresolved he felt uncomfortably like a fraud.

  Douglas jabbed a gnarled thumb at the exit. ‘Come on, then, we’d better fetch your container before it goes missing.’

  Outside, the midday heat struck like a moving wall. The concrete and steel of the long wharves were shimmering in a blinding glare, and Nash had to screw up his eyes despite the sunglasses he was wearing. A handful of docked freighters, mostly from Australia and New Zealand, were being relieved of their shipping containers. The sluggish harbour beneath their hulls was a milky coffee, awash with multicoloured plastic bags which billowed like jellyfish. A stink of anaerobic mud and fuel oil thickened the foetid atmosphere.

  A fluoro-jacketed port official in a dented hard hat ushered them into a white car whose interior was as cold as a fridge and drove them through rows of stacked containers. Nash was relieved to see his insulated white container in the shade of a huge canopy, as per instructions. A mobile crane was standing by.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Douglas, as the crane edged forwards. ‘Open it up.’

  The official stabbed his clipboard with a chubby finger. ‘Inspection was done a week ago. You please sign here.’

  Douglas shook his head. ‘We’re not signing anything until we look inside.’

  The official indicated the impressive fence on the perimeter. ‘You see that razor wire? It’s the tallest in PNG.’

  ‘It’s not out there I’m worried about,’ said Douglas flatly.

  Fortunately, everything was as Nash had left it in Perth: twelve steel scuba tanks stacked along the left-hand side and a compressor to fill them. He and the cameraman he was yet to meet would be using rebreathers. Packed in rubber-coated racks were colour-coded gas tanks of helium, nitrogen and oxygen. Two underwater scooters took up the rear wall, beside a great mound of plastic storage boxes containing everything from a defibrillator to writing slates. An emergency decompression chamber completed the inventory.

  Nash signed the chit. The container was then loaded onto a battered-looking truck, under the watchful eye of Douglas. In sweaty fatigues, he looked like a reproving drill instructor.

  Nash smiled. ‘Still winning friends, Frank?’

  ‘Mate, if it’s not bolted down, you’ll never see it again – it’s a bloody national disgrace.’

  At the main gate, they transferred to Douglas’s ancient red Land Rover, and followed the truck out of the cargo terminal into the city.

  Moresby hadn’t changed. The overwhelming impression was one of neglectful decay. Litter lay in drifts. Bus stop seats had all their planks removed. A modern children’s playground lay smashed in vandalised ruins. Men wearing shorts and singlets and carrying plastic bags seemed to wander aimlessly. There were few women about, and none were unattended. Shabby unarmed security guards in faded fluoro vests could be seen on every street corner, yet what they were guarding was unclear. Businesses and residences hid behind ubiquitous razor wire. After dark, Moresby got uglier. Endemic poverty, corruption and unemployment fed a culture of gangland – raskol – violence. Locals carried machetes for self-defence, while the homes of expats resembled maximum security prisons. Moresby was routinely ranked first on the list of the world’s worst cities. Little wonder that refugees dumped here by the Australian government had declined the invitation of citizenship.

  Nash had assumed they would embark from Jayapura, the capital of Indonesian Papua, for it was much closer to the mouth of the Sepik. But with seven eighths of the river in PNG, a dual-national approach had been organised with the Papua New Guinea Defence Force (PNGDF). How Shangri-La Productions had been able to organise this so quickly was another mystery.

  Douglas’s air conditioner was just moving hot air, so Nash wound down his window to let the breeze dry the sweat on his face. The container truck turned north on the Napa Napa road, and Douglas explained the ship was moored at the dockyards to keep a low profile.

  ‘Is this all really necessary, Frank?’

  ‘Oh, it’s necessary. You wouldn’t believe the bullshit around here, Robbie. I bought a load of bulk diesel, and when this officious prick saw an Indo address on the docket . . . Well, it was like I’d done a deal with the Devil. Ratbag even rang the ministry. I mean, sure, the Indos get a little heavy-handed at times, but they do a way better job of running things over there.’

  ‘Down the barrel of a gun?’ Nash laughed derisively. ‘Come off it, Frank.’

  Douglas swerved to avoid a massive pothole. ‘Don’t be so bloody politically correct. You know what it’s like here.’

  Nash knew all right. Papua was ethnically Melanesian and clearly distinct from Asia; quolls and tree kangaroos roamed its forests, not tigers and monkeys. Whatever the socio-economic problems plaguing PNG, he was sure heavy-handed colonialism in Papua was not the solution. The origins of the province were mired in controversy, too. After the Dutch vacated in 1969, the Indonesians had seized the western half of the island and rigged a referendum to shut up the UN and swindle more than ninety-nine per cent of the indigenous population out of a vote. Despised and persecuted, they were becoming a minority, dispossessed of territory for resources, with just minimal resistance from the Free Papua movement known as Organisasi Papua Merdeka (OPM). Of course, it was pointless arguing this with Frank Douglas, whose old-school politics were as unshakeable as his belief that Vietnam had been a just war.

  The dramatic sound of Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ abruptly filled the car and Douglas snatched up his mobile.

  ‘Hello? Yep. I’ve got him. And the gear. Yep, uh huh, uh huh . . . What?’ He braked violently and Nash held on to the handgrip as they slithered and swayed back down to walking pace. Taking his hand off the wheel, Douglas savagely changed gear, oblivious to the horn
s of the irate drivers behind. ‘So, what am I supposed to do now – peel potatoes? Yeah, well, how do you think I feel? Uh-huh. Well, I’d expect nothing less, Sura. Yep. Understood. See you in a week.’

  He slammed the phone back into the centre console and swore loudly.

  ‘Something wrong?’

  ‘Sura’s got herself another pilot, fuck you very much.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Apparently, the network has insisted on one of their own.’

  ‘Shit, can they do that?’ Nash was genuinely worried because flying out here demanded the best.

  ‘It’s in the contract.’ Douglas exhaled moodily. ‘And I’m now the highest paid gofer in television history.’

  Usually, it was Nash who was the mover and shaker, and he felt bad. ‘Sorry, Uncle Frank.’

  ‘Nah, I’ll live.’

  Nash glanced knowingly at the old pilot. ‘And how do you think you’ll go being Sura’s assistant?’

  ‘The woman’s a control freak!’ Douglas promptly took the bait. ‘I swear to God if I hear her say “do we understand each other?” one more time, I’m going to follow you into that cave myself.’

  Nash chuckled. ‘It’s the military pedigree. Leave nothing to chance and assume everyone is an idiot.’

  ‘Well, you know me and military discipline.’ Douglas grinned. ‘Maybe my expertise in that department will loosen the ramrod up her arse.’

  The general’s daughter was clearly used to getting her way. In recent emails, Sura had informed Nash that they would only begin detailed planning when her team joined the ship on the lower reaches of the Sepik. She had not addressed his request for the credentials of her dive crew, and Nash was consoling himself with the fact he could veto anything suboptimal, as per his contract.

  They cleared a security checkpoint and drove down a long, straight road flanked by scrubby coastal forest. The dockyard was located on a baking isthmus, expanded by several million tonnes of earth and rocks to stabilise it against the northern wash of Fairfax Harbour. Inexplicably, the smooth bitumen road turned to gravel with the gates in sight. Douglas dropped back, cursing, as the truck ahead kicked up clouds of dust and flying stones. They passed rows of dilapidated storage sheds, various tanks, and rust-streaked infrastructure, until at last they came to a large concrete dry dock – currently flooded – in which a long grey vessel was moored.

  ‘There she is,’ said Douglas. ‘Isn’t she a beauty? Ex-Aussie, cutting-edge, before we flogged her to the Indo navy.’

  It was an old patrol boat. But her sleek lines were compromised by a rough-looking helicopter pad welded onto the stern, and an incongruous-looking yellow crane in place of a deck gun. The ship looked deserted and run-down.

  ‘Was that back in the sixties, Frank? I thought you said the PNG navy were taking us upriver?’

  ‘Navy?’ Douglas guffawed. ‘Give me a break. The Papua New Guinea Defence Force has four shitty patrol boats, three of which don’t work on any given day because someone’s either spent the petrol money or stolen the spare parts.’

  Nash was speechless. The idea of venturing into the raskol-infested interior of PNG – not to mention crossing into the Papuan war zone without armed protection – was something he would never have agreed to.

  Douglas slapped him cheerfully on the knee. ‘Just messing with you, kid. A PNGDF crew is running the boat, and a squad of commandos will join us on the Sepik.’ His lopsided grin faded. ‘I’d rather do without the locals riding shotgun, but unfortunately their government wouldn’t agree to private contractors.’

  It sounded entirely reasonable to Nash. Ever since getting shafted by a bunch of South African mercenaries on an expedition to Lake Otjikoto in Namibia, he’d had an acute distrust of them. The bastards had left his team stranded without protection, while they drove the vehicles up to Angola to sell them.

  Douglas pulled up behind the truck. ‘You go meet Captain Ahab while I make sure this container doesn’t end up back in Moresby. Oh, and don’t mention the Hoosenbeck. All they know is we’re going up the Sepik to shoot a doco. OK? The Suyantos were insistent.’

  Nash stared at him.

  ‘Mate, it’s PNG.’ Douglas tapped his mutilated nose. ‘Can’t be too careful.’

  Nash got out, grumbling.

  It’s a cave, for Christs sake.

  Secrets were toxic on expeditions; add the pressure cooker environment of a boat, and things could become explosive very quickly.

  Standing on the dock, he ran a critical eye over the ship. The helicopter deck was a shambles of rusty steel joists and perforated steel plating, shoddily welded together and several degrees out of true. Nash wondered how it would affect her balance, for patrol boats tended to roll like a bathtub in the lightest of swells, and to reach the Sepik they had to negotiate the shallow Torres Strait, notorious for its big, wind-driven seas, then traverse the stormy northern coastline of PNG. The state of the superstructure was also appalling. Beneath hastily applied grey paintwork, patches of bubbling rust were erupting like pus from an infected cut. The ship looked ready for the scrapyard, which is where he figured Sura’s production company had found her.

  ‘You must be Mr Nash.’ A powerfully built man in khaki was standing at the head of the gangway. ‘Lieutenant Michael Kaboro, PNGDF. Please, come aboard.’

  Everything about Kaboro was smooth and polished. Nash thought him about forty-five, although with that bald head, it would not have surprised him if he were ten years out either way.

  ‘Has your ship got a name, Lieutenant?’ he asked as Kaboro’s huge hand swallowed his.

  ‘Her Indonesian designation is Nusa Kambangan.’ It seemed a bad omen, for the so-called ‘Execution Island’ had become infamous after some young Australian drug smugglers were stood before an Indonesian firing squad. Kaboro smiled to put him at ease. ‘Don’t worry, we’re using her original name of Albany. It’s less of a mouthful, too.’

  Once inside the ship, Nash was hit by a pervasive odour of diesel oil and fish sauce with a hint of septic. The Albany’s paintwork was scuffed to bare metal in high traffic zones, and the red linoleum floor was chipping off in large flakes. Screws were missing in door frames and exposed wiring was evident in light fittings. Kaboro, however, was upbeat.

  ‘She’s a first-class boat,’ he rumbled proudly, as they stood on the bridge. ‘Fremantle class, built 1981. Original displacement 220 tonnes, forty-one metres long, twin diesels making 3000 horsepower.’

  Nash ran a finger along the rusty frame of the windshield.

  ‘How will she stand shipping a swell?’

  ‘We brought her over from Java, no problem. Don’t worry, Mr Nash, we’ll take care of you.’

  He led Nash below to a junior officers’ cabin which contained a bunk bed, a battered aluminium wardrobe, and a small desk and chair – all bolted down. There was no air conditioning, not even a porthole. An old fan in a dangerously corroded cage tried to stir the hot air. The bottom bunk had already been claimed, with a grubby green kitbag spilling cartons of cigarettes. Three cases of beer were shoved underneath.

  Remembering Douglas’s sleep-murdering apnoea, Nash figured it was probably too late to amend the contract, and shoved his rucksack on the top bunk.

  ‘Excellent,’ said Kaboro. ‘Now to your equipment.’

  Down in the forward hold, Nash was relieved that the steel hull looked solid. Kaboro supervised the unloading of the dive gear. He seemed a capable leader, staying patient with the irascible Douglas, who insisted on manning the crane, and lowering material before they were ready, and ensuring that everything was securely stowed by three young servicemen who were exceedingly polite.

  When they were finished, Kaboro wiped his scalp with a handkerchief.

  ‘Come on, I’ll introduce you to Saworno.’

  The tiny Javanese ex-navy engineer was busy greasing a bearing on the starboard engine. Nash figured he was in his mid-sixties. Behind thick round glasses, his eyes were good-humoured.

  ‘
Saworno worked on this ship for years until they were both mothballed,’ explained Kaboro, with a straight face. ‘There’s no better spare part in the inventory.’

  Beaming at the joke, the engineer revealed snaggled yellow teeth.

  ‘These engines are like my wife.’ He patted one of the 16-cylinder behemoths. ‘They go like the crappers.’

  Later, as the sun sank quickly in the tropical sky, Nash shared a few ice-cold South Pacific lagers with Douglas and Kaboro, while Saworno stuck with iced tea. Dinner was a spicy Fairfax Harbour fish masala, whipped up by the ship’s cook, Ensign Faiwalati, during which Kaboro and Saworno exchanged sea stories and amusing anecdotes on the ineptitude of their respective armed forces.

  ‘Rest assured, Mr Nash,’ Kaboro added, ‘our Long-Range Reconnaissance group are solid men who train with your Aussie SAS. A squad will join us on the lower Sepik.’

  ‘Do you expect trouble?’

  ‘Not specifically, but the Sepik provinces are remote, and we need to be prepared, wouldn’t you agree, Mr Douglas?’

  ‘If you say so, sport.’

  Douglas did not bother looking up from his phone. He seemed withdrawn, probably still stung by the news of the other pilot. Nash had been enjoying himself too much to worry about it. For the first time since the accident, he felt anonymous. Free. With a guilty start, he realised he hadn’t thought about Natalie or Jacqueline all afternoon.

  ‘Well, here’s to the Hoosenbeck.’ Nash was fuzzily expansive after his fifth beer, and raised his bottle in a toast. ‘May she prove as exciting as we think she is.’

  He felt foolish when Douglas gave him a long stare. Kaboro diplomatically suggested they turn in for an early start on the ebb tide.

  Chapter 9

  Port Moresby Harbour, Papua New Guinea

  After rounding the depth marker on Natera Reef, Kaboro opened the throttles. Now the Albany revealed her pedigree. Sitting back on her haunches, she dug her twin screws into the blue tropical water and was soon planing at twenty-two knots, thudding across the small swells with ease.