Cave Diver

by Jake Avila

  Singkepe spotted two men in traditional costume huddled by the water’s edge. As the raging fire scorched their flesh, they threw away their home-made guns and ran in opposite directions. Loping through the muddy slop, pain and terror lent them superhuman speed. Singkepe opened fire. These bastards had killed Moses. Other long-suffering soldiers opened up, too, in a furious and sustained volley. The noise was deafening, and they howled with glee as the running men were literally dismembered in a flurry of mud, blood, bone and flesh. Singkepe only realised he was screaming, too, when his clip ran out.

  The kunai grass was thinning, and Daniel’s heart swelled with hope. Suddenly a shadow roared overhead, and the grass flattened. The machine soared up against the edge of the tall trees and spun around to face them. Daniel saw the big white man standing on the skids with a long gun. He stopped running and crouched down, but almost immediately the heat of the flames was on him. There was nowhere else to go but straight ahead. Daniel put his head down and started running as fast as he could.

  Boerman smiled gleefully at the frantic men charging towards him. The racing fire devoured their trails as it nipped and singed their heels. They reminded him of a panicking herd of springbok, and he roared with laughter. There would be no escape for these vermin. Boerman opened up on the leading runner with short exploratory bursts, adjusting his aim with minimal expenditure of ammunition. The M60’s percussive boom was like coming home to moeder. Great chunks of dirt flew up around the sprinting man, and then his head exploded like a shattered coconut.

  Boerman shifted aim to the next man, and the next. The M60 bucked in his brawny arms, raining red-hot cartridges as it spat leaden death. Just as it had during his days with the Legion, it gave him a massive hard-on, and the slaughter became a private, sexual thing.

  Nash and Mia had not long got Douglas onto a mess table when the roar of the helicopter drew them to the porthole. The sleek gold Jet Ranger darting to and fro above the pall of smoke was like a rogue sheepdog herding its flock into a corner before tearing out their throats.

  ‘It’s Boerman!’ Nash exclaimed, as they caught sight of him on the skids.

  ‘Where did he get a machine gun from?’ Mia trembled.

  ‘From his bloody cabin, God damn it.’ Nash was furious with Kaboro, and himself, for not taking unilateral action.

  ‘Don’t let him land with that thing,’ Mia muttered. ‘Go tell Kaboro . . . I’ll see to Frank.’

  Up on deck, the soldiers, who were now drained of bloodlust, stood there passively watching a primitive enemy mown down by technology that they were helpless against. Kaboro was soaked in sweat; he seemed to be in a kind of dumbfounded trance as the acrid smoke billowed around him.

  ‘Kaboro? Kaboro!’ Nash had to seize him by the shoulder to make him turn around. ‘Did you order this?’

  ‘Good God . . . No, I did not!’

  ‘Then find Sura. Make her call them off!’

  They located Sura on the helicopter pad, casually watching the carnage like a spectator sport, with a walkie-talkie in her hand.

  ‘Get him to cease fire,’ Kaboro snarled, pointing the M16 at her face. ‘Do it, now!’

  Hiding behind the thick bole of an old casuarina, Daniel listened to the last of his wantoks being cut down. The fire had almost burned itself out. Through the dissipating clouds of smoke, he could see the top of the grey ship above the exposed, scorched riverbank.

  Daniel kept the bole between himself and the circling predator above. But eventually his shredded nerves betrayed him. Breaking cover, he sprinted across the charred ground towards the line of trees. The helicopter filled the sky behind him as it swooped.

  Stumbling on a rock, Daniel fell heavily and rolled over in a heap. Face down, he played dead and prayed for the spirits to protect him. For a moment it seemed to work. The furious wind of the machine’s blades beat steadily on his naked back, but there were no bullets; perhaps they could not see him? Then he realised they were playing with him, waiting for him to make a move.

  Eventually, he could take the shame no more. Slowly getting to his feet, Daniel found himself staring into the blue eyes of a white-haired devil. He was so close that Daniel could almost touch him. Spreading his arms wide, he waited to join his father and son.

  The devil smiled and pulled the trigger.

  The battered Jet Ranger settled awkwardly on the sloping pad. It was surrounded by the six remaining PNGDF personnel, who had their weapons trained on the cockpit, while Kaboro stood with Sura and Nash. The rotor came to a halt and a sweaty Boerman stepped from the cockpit, smeared with ash.

  ‘Don’t thank me all at once,’ he grinned happily, M60 dangling in one hand.

  ‘Put down your weapon,’ Kaboro ordered. ‘You are under arrest.’

  ‘Arrest?’ Boerman scoffed. ‘I just saved your life.’

  Sura looked up and flashed her best media anchor smile.

  ‘Lieutenant, why don’t we all calm down and discuss this amicably? After all, we’re on the same side.’

  ‘The same side?’ Nash said incredulously. ‘This is a massacre.’

  ‘Try and be reasonable. You can’t expect us to just sit around while armed terrorists try to kill us. This is legitimate self-defence.’

  Kaboro stared at her with the unblinking gaze of one long inured to the injustices of realpolitik.

  ‘We might seem like savages to you, Miss Suyanto, but we have laws in Papua New Guinea. Now, get Mr Boerman to put his weapon down, or I will order my men to open fire.’

  Chapter 22

  Mia’s expression was so full of apprehension that Nash felt a rush of protective concern.

  ‘Kaboro has disarmed and arrested them,’ he told her quickly. ‘Sura, too. They’re tied up and under guard on the quarterdeck.’

  ‘Oh, thank God.’ Mia’s shoulders slumped momentarily in relief before she straightened up. ‘Am I needed out there?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  Her eyes narrowed in concern. ‘Are you all right? You don’t look well.’

  With the immediate danger past, Nash was suddenly overwhelmed. Three young men had bled out on deck, and he had a feeling the blackened, twisted bodies scattered on the smoking riverbank would haunt him for the rest of his days.

  ‘Boerman wouldn’t stop,’ he murmured, gripping the doorway as a wave of nausea struck. ‘He just wouldn’t stop.’

  Mia stunned him by coming over and wrapping her arms around him. Despite the pain of his injuries, the slim perfection of her took his breath away.

  ‘Thank you,’ she whispered.

  ‘For what?’

  By way of answer she squeezed him tighter, and as they clung together, it struck Nash that this was no passing attraction. Something special was happening, something beyond his control, and it was only reluctantly that he released her when she pulled away to search his face.

  ‘What happens now?’

  Nash blinked, then felt like a fool when he realised Mia wasn’t talking about them.

  ‘Kaboro’s gone out in the tender, looking for a signal to contact headquarters. At least we can evac Frank – Singkepe says he’ll personally hold a gun to Hartono’s head.’ He stared for a moment at the unconscious Douglas. ‘How is he doing?’

  Mia’s face fell. ‘Rob, he’s tachycardic, in shock. I really don’t think he’d survive the flight, he’s just not strong enough.’ She put her hand on his arm. ‘I’m going to try and improve his vitals, but the medical kit is rudimentary at best. They don’t even have saline. I’m so sorry.’

  Nash’s face darkened as he remembered Shangri-La’s claim they would provide first-rate medical backup.

  ‘I’ve got a defibrillator in the hold,’ he offered.

  Mia’s expression suggested it would make no difference, and Douglas’s deathly pallor and ragged breathing told their own story. A cracked Formica table was a rotten place for a man’s life to end.

  Douglas’s yellowing eyes suddenly snapped open.

&nb
sp; ‘Get it out,’ he growled in a low and hardly recognisable voice. ‘Bastard hurts like hell.’

  Nash managed to stop him from grabbing hold of the taped-up arrow stump.

  ‘No, Frank, leave it!’

  Mia helped to pin his arms. ‘Listen to me, Frank. I haven’t got the equipment to perform an extraction and there’s no pain relief. Do you understand me?’

  Douglas hissed in frustration. ‘Jesus, what difference will it make now? Don’t let me die with this mongrel thing inside me. It feels like a fucking hot coal. Get it out, or I’ll do it by my-bloody-self.’

  ‘Kaboro, are you still there? Can you hear me?’ Sir Julius Michaels’ voice matched his personality – high-pitched and histrionic; his sentences came in rapid-fire bursts.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  In the wide shade of a mighty fig, the tender rocked gently on wavelets stirred up by the northerly wind. Clutching his phone, Kaboro smelled smoke and death in his clothes, and his mouth was stubbornly dry despite the canteen of water he had drunk.

  ‘You say three of our men are dead. Is Miss Suyanto all right?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Kaboro visualised the minister’s plush office in Moresby, the framed photographs of armaments his dysfunctional defence force did not possess.

  ‘Well, thank the dear Lord for that.’

  ‘Mr Douglas is seriously injured, sir. Also, Mr Goki was evacuated by Shangri-La’s helicopter yesterday, but I have grave concerns for his safety.’

  There was a small pause in which Kaboro thought the minister would enquire as to what these concerns were, but instead his voice became cold.

  ‘How could you have let this disaster happen, Lieutenant?’

  Again, Kaboro reported the facts of the collision and subsequent grounding.

  ‘Yes, yes, I know all that, but why weren’t you on the bridge?’

  ‘You relieved me, sir.’

  ‘Go on, go on.’

  ‘We were in the process of freeing the ship, when we were attacked by a large party of local men. It was a payback reprisal, sir.’

  ‘That’s illegal.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Mr Boerman then deployed a heavy machine gun which he had smuggled on board. He killed all of them, sir. A total of nineteen men and boys.’

  ‘But you were under fire at the time?’

  Kaboro fought to stay calm. ‘The villagers never had a chance to surrender. I have arrested Mr Boerman and the pilot, along with Miss Suyanto.’

  ‘Arrested Miss Suyanto?’ Michaels’ voice rose to a shriek. ‘Are you insane?’

  Hurriedly, Kaboro reported their findings in the hold.

  ‘Sir, I suspect this is a criminal group who have entered our country under false pretences. I have secured the crime scene and await further instructions.’

  ‘For God’s sake, man! Have you no shame? You should be thanking these men, not persecuting them for doing your job.’

  Kaboro squeezed the phone so hard he thought it might shatter.

  ‘Sir, with all due respect, I do not think the deaths of our citizens can be so easily dismissed.’

  There was an ominous silence on the phone before Michaels spoke again.

  ‘Now, listen to me very carefully. You will release our guests at once. Then you will apologise to Miss Suyanto for the inconvenience you have caused her.’

  ‘But, sir –’

  ‘You will then confine this stowaway, Doctor Carter, and the troublesome Mr Nash to quarters, while your men burn all the bodies. As soon as possible, you will refloat the ship and continue with the mission. Are we clear? The mission is paramount.’

  Years of ingrained cynicism could not have prepared Kaboro for such an outrage. He realised it was the end of his seventeen-year military career.

  ‘What you’re asking me to do, sir, is illegal. I won’t be party to it, and that is final. I will go on record and resign my commission.’

  There was a long pause. Michaels’ next words chilled him to the bone.

  ‘Your son Toby is currently serving time in Goroka jail for a drug-related offence, is he not?’

  Toby had run wild after his parents’ bitter divorce, and joined a raskol gang before being arrested with a carload of ganja. Kaboro had spent his life savings on bribes to cut his son a deal: fourteen months of a five-year sentence in minimum security. A condition of early release was that Toby would enlist in the PNGDF on a degree programme. Kaboro had been counting the months down to the day his boy walked free.

  Michaels’ high-pitched voice snapped him back into the present.

  ‘Lieutenant, if you refuse to obey my orders, I will contact the Attorney General and by this afternoon your son will be transferred to Bomana maximum security prison to serve out the rest of his sentence. Do I make myself clear?’

  The arrow had punctured through the pectoral muscle into the pectoralis minor beneath, and possibly a rib. Mia figured the point probably hadn’t penetrated or collapsed the lung, but it was impossible to be sure. What she really needed was an X-ray to determine the location of the arrowhead, its shape and composition, whether it had detached or fragmented – even better, an MRI to evaluate nerve damage.

  Oh, for Gods sake, she chastised herself, how about a fully equipped operating theatre, too?

  At least Douglas had passed out again. She could only hope he stayed that way, because there was no anaesthesia either.

  Tentatively, she pulled the arrow stump with the pliers to assess its grip. She knew these kinds of penetrations were much harder to treat than bullet wounds. Arrowheads were usually attached with dried tendons or naturally derived glues, which became sources of infection. In contrast to the smooth track left by a bullet, the jagged edges of an arrowhead created wounds the body found difficult to wall off. Again, lethal infection was almost guaranteed. Without antibiotics, this fate almost certainly awaited Douglas.

  Mia realised she was prevaricating. As a doctor, the dictum first, do no harm was weighing heavily on her mind, but without the possibility of getting Douglas to a hospital, was it any kinder doing nothing?

  ‘OK, Rob. Hold him firmly in case he wakes up again.’

  At the head of the table, Nash placed his hands on Douglas’s shoulders. After dousing the utility knife and the wound site with a bottle of Kaboro’s rum, Mia made two incisions above and below the shaft. As blood oozed out, she carefully pulled the incisions apart, the muscle fibres separating like strings of vermicelli. Just under the surface of the skin, she could see a thicker bulbous section which connected the shaft to the unseen arrowhead. Under her gloved finger, it had a scaly texture which felt like animal hide.

  With the tip of the blade, she nipped away more of the clinging muscle. Then, she used the pliers again to check resistance. The arrow was embedded in the bone. She was going to have to cut deeper. Pushing her finger into the incision, she felt her way along the junction and cut through the next layer of muscle until she encountered the arrowhead itself. It was smooth, a little over a centimetre in diameter, possibly some kind of bone, but black in colour. She grasped hold of it with the pliers and began twisting.

  Suddenly it came free, and Douglas came to with an ear-splitting scream.

  Nash bore down as instructed.

  ‘Hang in there, Frank,’ he grunted, struggling to keep him still.

  A hole was visible in the white of Douglas’s rib, and before the wound refilled with blood, Mia caught sight of bright red lung tissue beneath. With her free hand, she placed a pad in the wound and applied pressure.

  ‘Oh shit,’ groaned Douglas.

  ‘There is no frothing, Frank,’ she encouraged him loudly. ‘The lung is OK.’

  Douglas mercifully passed out again, and Mia was able to examine the peculiar black arrowhead in the jaws of the pliers. Projecting from a scaly ball, it was as long as a man’s finger, tapering to a sharp point with a distinct curve.

  ‘What is that?’ Rob was looking pale.

  ‘It’s a cassowary claw. The inner t
oe is used like a dagger for defence.’

  The very idea of it – not to mention the bacterial load – was revolting. Mia proceeded to thoroughly clean the wound of detritus and bone fragments. Then she doused everything with generous glugs of rum, and stitched the lower pectoralis muscle closed with the light monofilament fishing line Nash had found on the bridge. For a drain, she used a small length of plastic tubing from the water filter. Finally, she stitched up the upper layers of the pectoral muscle and the epidermis and dressed it. By the time this was done, she was drenched in sweat.

  ‘I’ve done what I can. What he urgently requires is antibiotics. I’ll go and have a word with Kaboro about sending the chopper for some. That was the tender we heard a while ago, wasn’t it?’

  Nash frowned. ‘Yeah, I thought he would have got down here by now.’

  Suddenly, the tools on the tray rattled and sprang into life. A glass smashed on the deck, and the whole cabin began to shudder as the Albany’s engines started up.

  ‘High tide?’ Mia stared at Nash.

  ‘Yes, but we were going to stay put to preserve the crime scene –’

  Nash broke off as an appalling smell filled their nostrils. Through the porthole, a huge column of oily black smoke could be seen climbing into the sky.

  The PNGDF men had dug the pit in the soft and charred ground behind the riverbank. There had been little conversation, and resentment filled the air almost as thickly as the stench of charred flesh. Singkepe had dug with a vengeance. The men had a right to be angry. Kept in the dark over the purpose of the expedition, they’d been treated like shit from the start, and now they’d lost three good friends whom they were disposing of like rubbish.

  Carefully, they’d placed the bodies of Faiwalati, Wirake and Moses in the bottom of the deep pit. Standing at attention, they’d sung the national anthem and wept tears of shame. Singkepe had led them in the Lord’s Prayer, and then they got on with the gruesome task of collecting the mangled bodies of the villagers.