by Jake Avila
The Papuan was joined by an older bearded man in a Free Papua T-shirt, with an AK-47 slung over his shoulder. They conferred for a moment before the older man bellowed ‘Husat?’
‘Dokta Mia Carter, America.’ Mia put her hand on Nash’s shoulder. ‘Dispela hia Rob Nash, Aussie.’
‘Yu wok Ford Misin?’
‘Yes!’
Another giant log crashed against the submarine and rolled in the grinding chop. Mia pointed to the suspended cargo net on the other side of the sinkhole.
‘Plis move hia and pullim ap!’
As the men fanned out along the sinkhole edge, Nash counted at least ten of them, armed with a hotch-potch of rifles and shotguns.
‘They’re OPM,’ Mia confirmed.
‘By the time they set it up over here, we’ll be paste,’ he told her.
‘What are we going to do?’
‘Run!’
Taking Mia by the hand, Nash stepped onto a log facing that direction, a twenty-metre giant with a remnant canopy still locking it to the western edge of the pile. Although a good metre wide, it was slippery as hell and they ran in awkward baby steps to maintain balance.
‘Keep going!’ roared Nash as he saw the next route opening in the shifting pile.
Without hesitating, they leapt across a rapidly closing pocket of water to another log, a scant moment before the great lengths of timber came together with a jarring shudder, driving the first under and rolling theirs. Nash’s bare feet skidded, and for a heart-stopping moment it seemed as if they would fall into the giant mangle, until Mia’s counterweight brought them back from the brink.
The men above were rapidly lowering the cargo net, and it was almost down.
‘We’re out of options!’ Nash yelled as they approached the end of the log.
Before them lay an open patch of water, not much larger than a suburban swimming pool.
In one motion he used their momentum to propel Mia forwards, one hand in the small of her back, and then dived in after her.
By the time they’d swum half a dozen strokes, the net was down, and they swam inside.
‘Go, go, go!’ yelled Nash, as two great logs began swinging back like oversized clappers.
The net had just cleared the surface when the behemoths came together. Nash felt the enormous mass of the impact miss his dangling right foot by inches. Mia cried out and he thought the worst, but it was just the net pinching the flesh of her thighs.
They rose swiftly, swaying from side to side, and Nash prayed they wouldn’t drop back into the blender below. Then strong arms swung the net over the lip, and they were pulled to their feet and given hearty handshakes and back-slaps by the mob of excited men.
Their leader was the bearded man they had seen from below. With intense bulging eyes, and an impressive pink scar down the side of his face, he introduced himself as Donte Babo, an independent OPM commander operating in the areas around the mission. He explained that Indonesian air activity and the need for payback had drawn them up the Hoosenbeck Gorge, a place they usually avoided.
‘Why is that?’ Nash asked.
‘Nogut magik hia. Dewel bilong men I dai.’
Mia translated. ‘He’s says it’s bad magic, that the ghosts of dead men live here.’
And now Douglas had joined them. But there was no time to bury him, even if they were able to identify his corpse among the many.
‘Tell Babo we need to get out of here before more soldiers come,’ said Nash. ‘By now they will know something is wrong.’
Babo was distracted by an excited jabber of raised voices. It seemed the OPM men had just discovered the golden Hind. Nash and Mia stood by watching while they celebrated. About a third of the bullion had pooled in the fury of the immolation, but many bars were available to pick up, and the men were beside themselves. A delighted Babo explained that now they would be able to buy powerful weapons to fight the Indonesians.
Mia clasped her hands together. ‘Plis helpim sik tu. Ol needim.’
‘Of kos!’ Babo agreed. ‘Plis, yu bringim tu.’
Magnanimously, he offered them several bars with a wide gap-toothed grin.
But Nash’s sharp eyes were on two fast-moving dots coming up the gorge.
‘Helikoptas,’ he barked. ‘Hide!’
With the Hoosenbeck raging at their backs, the closest available cover was the belt of living trees in the lee of the southern wall of the gorge. A giant fig at the very base of the cliff seemed to offer the best protection and, along with most of the OPM men, Nash and Mia made a dash for it through a waist-high carpet of ferns. The fig’s huge and twisted trunk was like a four-storey building, supporting a scaffold of massive grey branches which spread the majestic green canopy above them. Throwing themselves down between thick buttress roots, they cautiously looked back.
The lead machine was a large olive-green Bell 412 transport, with a red and white insignia on its nose. As it banked in a tight curve over the sinkhole, Nash felt his skin crawl, for stencilled on its flank in prominent white letters was the name General W. Suyanto. The second helicopter was another Mil-24 Hind gunship, and it opened fire immediately.
The violence of its Gatling gun was tremendous. Several OPM men weighed down with too much booty were cut to pieces. From the other side of the fig tree, Babo bravely stood up and opened fire with his AK-47, but the Hind was indifferent to the rounds sparking off its flanks. Meanwhile, General Suyanto’s Bell hovered just above the old camp, apparently enjoying the show.
‘Evil bastard,’ growled Nash, wishing they had the weapons to fight back.
The Hind targeted a small group of OPM men crouched behind a sizeable tree further downslope. Unable to puncture the trunk, the pilot unleashed a salvo of hissing rockets, which brought the whole tree crashing down in an orange ball of flame.
As the shrill screams of the dying filled the air, Nash knew they would be next. And while the thick buttressed roots of the fig might offer some protection from bullets, it would not protect them from high explosive.
High explosive – but didn’t they have their own?
Crouched beside them was the teenager who had first spotted them, shivering in fear, his old Lee–Enfield forgotten. Nash snatched it up and worked the bolt.
‘Get down!’ he screamed at the top of his lungs. ‘Everybody, get down!’
Unceremoniously, he rested his knee in the small of Mia’s back to keep her there.
It was Uncle Frank who’d taught Nash how to shoot – out on the Douglas family’s station near Mukinbudin – with an old .303 Lee–Enfield that left his shoulder black and blue, knocking out bottles, cans and, once, a feral piglet, which he’d felt bad about.
Nash took a bead on the bright yellow roll of det cord. He knew pentaerythritol tetranitrate exploded, rather than burned, at unbelievable speeds of more than 6500 metres per second.
‘This one’s for you, Frank.’
As the Hind turned towards them, Nash squeezed the trigger.
The detonation was instantaneous – a ball of brilliant light, followed a millisecond later by an all-encompassing deep whump that sucked the air right out of his lungs. The ground seemed to contract, then expand. Above them, giant branches flexed like sap wood and snapped. Nash pulled Mia to him as the debris began to fall, a maelstrom of steel and rock, and half a million cubic metres of displaced water. Huge weights of ragged steel whizzed through the air like a meteor shower. Rocks the size of basketballs peppered the ground like hail. Bludgeoned and severed branches began to crash down on top of them. A half-tonne lump of stone shook the ground five metres away. A branch the size of a tree fell directly across them, but the mighty buttress roots took the impact.
When things finally stopped falling, a thin, high-pitched whine continued to drill inside Nash’s head. Mia clasped her hands around the side of his face and yelled ‘Are you all right?’
To his great relief, he could still hear her.
Crawling on hands and knees, they extricated themselves f
rom the shattered remains of the fig and emerged into an alien landscape. For half a kilometre, not a tree or shrub remained unscathed. It had been – in Boerman’s parlance – erased.
What was left of the I-403 now dotted the landscape for as far as the eye could see. Most were fragments, no bigger than a toaster, although embedded above their heads in the severed trunk of the mighty fig was the mangled remains of an anti-aircraft cannon.
Nash was stunned to see the force of the explosion had ejected three quarters of the water in the sinkhole, and enlarged it by a third as the sides caved in.
‘Do you see how fast it’s filling back up?’ Nash marvelled at the Hoosenbeck overflow pouring unabated into the expanded sinkhole. ‘The explosion must have sealed off the exit passage.’
One by one, the surviving OPM men appeared, looking shocked, stunned and relieved. Babo came over to Nash and embraced him.
‘Tenkyu,’ he said gravely. ‘Man bilong pait.’
‘He says you belong in a fight.’
‘Tenkyu.’ Nash smiled. ‘Please tell him I would like to try and find my friend.’
They searched for half an hour, and although they checked numerous body parts, there was no sign of Douglas. The only object relatively unscathed was the melted mass of gold bullion, flung several metres from its original position. Nash was about to give up, when he spotted something small and white, gleaming in the mud.
‘Don’t tell me that’s his teeth!’
Mia screwed up her face as Nash slid them into her top pocket.
‘They’re not going on the mantelpiece,’ he chided her. ‘There’s this place in North Queensland called Wonga Beach – white sand, fishing shacks and long lazy days. I think it’s just the place to buy Uncle Frank his last beer.’
Epilogue
Four Seasons Hotel, Singapore
Even though the night air was soft and sultry, Mia Carter still hadn’t quite thawed out. Safe and sound, feet up on the balcony rail of their suite, it was hard to believe that a week ago she’d been drowning in a steel tomb – that her life might have ended there, instead of beginning anew with this man, Rob Nash, whose strong hand rested intimately on her thigh.
Helped by OPM, they had walked for a week, evading Indonesian patrols and aircraft, before making it across the PNG border where, to their amazement, a party of Australian journalists had found them. It seemed Saworno had got out by boat and raised the alarm. This had expedited their immediate evacuation from PNG, with no backlash from Sir Julius Michaels, who was destined for Bomona jail. It also meant the 9.8-kilogram chunk of melted gold bullion, their farewell present from Donte Babo, was safely being accommodated in the hotel safe.
Of course, her joy at being alive was tempered by loss. So many good people had died, and although there were other hospital missions in Papua, the US ambassador was adamant that Mia should never set foot on Indonesian soil again.
At the thought of that lonely stone marker among the oak trees, she felt a lump in her throat. Rest in peace, Paul.
Whatever the truth really was, I will always remember the good you did and the kindness you showed me.
Sitting beside Mia, Nash sensed she was re-evaluating where she was in the world.
So was he.
Rob Nash was not a religious or superstitious man, but no one would ever persuade him that Natalie had not come and saved his life that day under the Hoosenbeck. She had forgiven him. Now he was going to write a true account of the accident and publish it in the national cave diving journal. He was going to ring Brendan and explain. And he was going to take Jacquie and his parents on a holiday to Wonga Beach, and properly bury what was left of old Frank Douglas.
And he was going to go cave diving again.
Staring out at the glittering skyscrapers, Nash felt a moment of regret. That vast hidden passage, blocked by countless tons of rock, was gone, and with it the mysteries of the Hoosenbeck system. But who was he to begrudge anything? In its stone innards, he had been made whole again. He had found himself, and he had found Mia.
Nash brought her hand to his lips and kissed it.
‘What now?’
Acknowledgements
I am indebted to John Vanderleest of the Australian Cave Diving Association for his invaluable technical advice and generous feedback. Any errors and omissions are mine. Thanks also to big wave surfer, Damon Eastaugh, for his insights on the Cow Bombie. I would also like to thank Simon Mann, Tor Larsen, Geoff Martin, Michael Potts and Tom Davies for their unstinting belief and support on the journey, and of course my family, in particular my wife, Cathy, my father, Ian, and my sister-in-law, Pip Austin.
I would also like to acknowledge and thank The Wilbur and Niso Smith Foundation for the opportunity it afforded me, David Llewellyn for his incisive manuscript development, my editor, Claire Johnson-Creek for her perceptive insights, my agent, Charlotte Colwill, for her care and guidance, and last but not least, the people of the island of New Guinea, who I hope will forgive any liberties taken in my imaginings.
About the Author
Jake Avila is a full-time writer with a BA in Writing and Information Technology. He has a background in freelance journalism writing on politics, culture, technology, and sport, and taught secondary English for ten years. In 2019, he won the Adventure Writer’s Competition Clive Cussler Grandmaster Award for Cave Diver and then went on to win the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize for the same book in 2020.
The Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize supports and celebrates the best aspiring and established adventure writers today. Writers are recognised in three distinct categories with awards for published, unpublished and young writers.
Cave Diver by Jake Avila won the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize, Best Unpublished Manuscript award in 2020.
Launched in 2016, the Prize is administered by The Wilbur & Niso Smith Foundation, a charitable organisation dedicated to empowering writers, promoting literacy and advancing adventure writing.
Find out more at www.wilbur-niso-smithfoundation.org.
First published in the UK in 2021 by Zaffre
This ebook edition published in 2021 by
ZAFFRE
An imprint of Bonnier Books UK
4th Floor, Victoria House
Bloomsbury Square, London
WC1B 4DA
Owned by Bonnier Books
Sveavägen 56, Stockholm, Sweden
Copyright © Jake Avila, 2021
Cover artwork © Steve Stone
Design by Nick Stearn
The moral right of Jake Avila to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1-83877-537-7
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-83877-536-0
This book was typeset by IDSUK (Data Connection) Ltd
This ebook was created by IDSUK (Data Connection) Ltd
Zaffre is an imprint of Bonnier Books UK
www.bonnierbooks.co.uk
00%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share