by Onbekend
Rossi laughed.
Zulkifli frowned. ‘I said something amusing?’
‘I… uh… ye mean ye really are a member here?’
‘Yes, tuan. There’s no colour bar at this golf course.’
‘That’s a bit prejudiced of you, innit?’ Torrance asked Rossi. ‘Assuming the only way Zulkifli here could know the layout of the golf course is if he used to be a groundsman here?’
‘Don’t ye start wi’ me!’ snarled Rossi. ‘Don’t ye dare! I wisnae making assumptions about Zulkifli, I was making assumptions about the club’s membership code, awreet?’
Torrance shrugged. ‘What handicap?’ he asked Zulkifli.
‘Three.’
‘Three! That’s pretty good, innit?’
The Malay made a ‘so-so’ gesture. ‘I need to work on my chipping.’
It was dark by the time Piggott re-emerged with a sergeant. The sergeant headed for a wooden gate set in a tall fence running by the side of the clubhouse.
‘Private Zulkifli reckons he knows the perfect spot to launch the boat, sir,’ Torrance told Piggott as the subaltern climbed back up to the cab. ‘He’s a member here.’
Piggott nodded. ‘Near the tee on the tenth fairway, about half a mile to the east. There’s a narrow arm of the reservoir, about seven hundred yards long, sheltered by trees on either side. I’m a member here too, Torrance. All right, chaps, back aboard the lorry.’
The sergeant opened the gate, and once everyone was back aboard the Bedford, White drove through, pulling up on a gravel track on the other side. The sergeant closed the gate behind them, then climbed up onto the running board beneath the cab door on the driver’s side to direct White. Leaving his headlights switched off, White drove the Bedford along the gravel track, then left it altogether, bumping away across the golf course. As they rounded one strand of trees, Torrance saw orange light in the sky to the north: the flames from the petrol tanks at Kranji and Woodlands, their light reflected off the underside of the pall of smoke, the silhouette of the trees on the intervening ridge mirrored in the waters of the reservoir.
As they drove, Torrance glimpsed an odd-looking bunker on one of the fairways. Seeing another one a few seconds later, he realised what it was: the course was dotted with bomb craters. Why the Japanese would waste bombs on a golf course was not immediately obvious, but then the reasoning behind many things the Japanese did was not always immediately obvious to him.
Finally White parked up in the shadow of a clump of palm trees near the end of the ninth fairway, and Cochrane ordered MacRae, Rossi, Quinn and Zulkifli to unload the boat from the back of the lorry. They placed it on the grass, and MacRae hauled up the gunwale on one side, stretching the canvas and revealing the pair of paddles stowed in its folds, while Rossi folded down the two struts to brace the gunwale in place. The two of them repeated the procedure on the other side, and then they had a boat about twelve feet long from its prow to its transom, just large enough to fit the nine of them.
‘You’d better get the lorry back to the barracks,’ Piggott told White.
‘Why aye, sir. Good luck to you.’ White put the lorry in gear and drove back the way he had come, the sergeant who had escorted them from the clubhouse now sitting in the passenger seat.
Carrying the boat on their shoulders like pallbearers bearing a coffin, MacRae, Rossi, Quinn and Zulkifli followed Piggott across the tenth fairway. Cochrane, Torrance, Gibson and Shapiro followed.
In the darkness, a crusty voice was berating some squaddies digging slit trenches on the putting green. ‘This is unconscionable! I’ll write to the club secretary about this!’
‘If you’re gonna write to anyone, try writing to General Yamashita,’ retorted an NCO, undaunted by the club member’s Sandhurst drawl. ‘His boys will be coming down the fairway any minute now. Don’t you know there’s a war on?’
They cut through a screen of palm trees to the tenth fairway, where three soldiers were setting up a Vickers machine gun in a sand trap. Torrance broke away from the others to look at the machine gun, then crouched behind it and squinted along the sights.
‘You sure you wouldn’t be better off using a nine iron for that shot?’ he asked them.
‘Hark at him, lads. It’s Tommy bloody Trinder,’ retorted one of the machine-gunners, unamused.
Torrance redoubled his pace to catch up with the others at the edge of a water trap. It was exactly as Piggott had described: an arm of water, faintly reflecting the orange glow in the sky, with trees on either side. MacRae, Rossi, Quinn and Zulkifli lowered the boat into the water and Rossi knelt behind it on the ground, holding it steady so the others could climb aboard.
‘MacRae in the bow with the Bren,’ ordered Piggott. ‘Then Cochrane and Torrance behind him with their tommy guns. Then Quinn and Shapiro with a paddle each, then Gibson and I, then Rossi and Zulkifli with the second pair of paddles, all right?’
As Torrance boarded after MacRae and Cochrane, he was struck by how much the boat sunk under his weight. He reminded himself of what he had seen with his own eyes at manoeuvres last year: that this type of boat could easily support nine men and all their kit without being swamped. On the other hand, none of those men had been as big as Shapiro.
Once they were all aboard, Rossi and Zulkifli took up their paddles, pushing the boat away from the grassy bank, thrusting it up the channel. With all nine of them in the boat, there was only a couple of inches of freeboard between the water and the gunwale. MacRae inserted a magazine in the Bren’s breach. Cochrane and Torrance pulled back the cocking handles of their Thompsons.
‘All right, let’s go,’ said Piggott.
A few seconds later the order was to cease paddling. ‘The object of the exercise is to propel the boat through the water, not beat the water into submission,’ explained the lieutenant. ‘Shapiro and Rossi, try to take your rhythm from Quinn, he seems to know what he’s doing. And all three of you, look how Zulkifli handles his paddle. Show them, Zulkifli.’
The Malay made a couple of strokes with his paddle.
‘See how he keeps the blade of his paddle in the water, even on the backstroke?’ said Piggott. ‘Instead of pulling it all the way out and digging it into the water again, he just turns the shaft of the paddle in his hands so it cuts through the water as he brings it back forward. It’s less tiring, and it splashes less, so it makes less noise. Rossi and Shapiro, now you try it.’
The two men dipped their paddles and made a couple of experimental strokes. ‘It disnae feel reet,’ protested Rossi.
‘Keep your top hand loose on the stroke, tuan,’ said Zulkifli. ‘Use the heel of your palm to push the pommel of the paddle, and turn it with your lower hand. When you bring it back, grip it firmly with the top hand and let it turn in the lower hand. Like this.’ He gave Rossi and Shapiro another demonstration.
‘Try it again,’ said Piggott.
After a few more strokes, Rossi and Shapiro were getting the hang of it. With all four of them paddling, taking the rhythm of their stroke from Quinn and paddling the way Zulkifli had demonstrated, the boat made better time and moved more quietly. In a couple of minutes, they had almost reached the mouth of the inlet. The far shore was a dark band a little over two hundred yards away. ‘Keep silence now,’ whispered Piggott. ‘Remember, sound travels a long way over water.’
They emerged from the inlet. The west end of the reservoir faded into darkness beyond a couple of hundred yards. Torrance could only hope that if there were Japanese troops stationed there, then the waters the boat was crossing would be just as dark.
‘There’s water in the boat!’ Cochrane hissed urgently.
‘It was probably left in the boat from the last time it was used,’ said Piggott.
‘No’ all of it!’ There was a hint of panic in Cochrane’s voice. ‘There’s a leak! We’re sinking!’
‘Keep calm, Sergeant. I don’t think we’re going to founder just yet. If it gets too bad, I’ll use Zulkifli’s helmet to bale out the wate
r.’
Torrance could make out an inlet on the north shore. The boat’s head started to come around. He glanced back to see who was steering, and saw Piggott’s hand on one of Shapiro’s arms, restraining him. When the boat’s prow was pointing towards the inlet, Piggott took his hand off the arm and gestured. Shapiro resumed paddling.
At the far end of the inlet they had to fight their way through a tangle of water weeds, but at last the prow bumped against the shore. MacRae leaped out, misjudged it and landed knee-deep in the water. He cursed under his breath, and held the boat steady so the others could get out. Torrance and Cochrane were the next ashore, dropping to their knees in the lalang grass to take up covering positions facing the trees fringing the clearing. All was quiet; Torrance did not let his guard drop, but he was fairly sure that if there were Japanese watching them from the darkness beneath the trees, they would have opened up on the nine men coming ashore by now. Gibson, Rossi, Quinn and Zulkifli collapsed the boat and hid it in the undergrowth beneath the trees with the paddles inside.
Piggott took a bearing with his compass. ‘Stick close. Everyone hold the webbing of the man in front of you with your left hand. Those of you carrying rifles, fix bayonets. If we run into a Japanese patrol, our best bet is to go in hard and heavy with the bayonet and the butt, got it? And keep silence: if we do run into any Japs, the sound of our voices will be the first thing to betray us, so no talking unless you absolutely have to, and then only speak in whispers. Torrance, you’re getaway man, okay?’
‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Getaway man’ was the role Torrance would have picked for himself: it meant he went at the back of the file, and if the squad ran into trouble, it would be his job to run away and report to Colonel Hamilton. He carried his Thompson in his right hand, first making sure the safety catch was on: he did not want to trip in the dark and accidentally wipe out the other eight.
With every man gripping the webbing of the man in front of him except for Piggott, who led the way, they advanced into the darkness beneath the trees.
It was pitch black: gripping MacRae’s webbing belt at the back, Torrance could not make out the Glaswegian immediately in front of him even as a vague outline. All he could do was shuffle along in everyone else’s wake. The jungle was alive with the croaking of thousands of frogs, which was just as well, because the noise must have muffled the scuffling, breathing and muttered curses of Pigforce’s advance. Occasionally, Torrance heard the swish of Piggott’s parang – the Malay equivalent of a machete – hacking through a liana lying across their trail. He had spent enough time in the jungle to have some idea of what they were passing through, even if he could not see it: soaring seraya trees, massive pillars supporting the jungle canopy more than a hundred feet above their heads, with wide buttress roots, and an understorey of sago bushes.
Occasionally the file would stop; it was too dark for hand signals, so the first thing Torrance knew about it was when he bumped into MacRae, who had presumably just bumped into Shapiro, and so on, all the way to the head of the file. Piggott would shush, and they stood in silence for the best part of a minute, listening anxiously to the darkness. Apart from the frogs, the only sound was the desultory rumble of artillery floating across the reservoir, sounding increasingly muffled the deeper into the jungle they penetrated. Having reassured themselves there were no Japanese nearby – or if there were, they were doing a good job of keeping quiet – Piggott would (presumably) check their bearing on the luminous dial of his compass, and they would set off again. And every hour or so they would stop and rest for ten minutes, though Piggott would not let them talk or smoke. The ground beneath their feet was either swampy or uneven – that was why it had not been converted into a plantation – and Torrance would have been astonished if they were marching at more than half a mile an hour.
It started raining, the fat drops drumming against the leaves of the canopy far above them making a loud, unending hiss. Probably the frogs were only trying to make themselves heard above the noise, but the rise in the volume of their croaking made it sound as though the increased damp excited them. Torrance likewise welcomed the rain: only the occasional raindrop fell from the canopy to splash on the men below, and the increased noise was additional cover.
It must have been closer to dawn than midnight when they finally saw some light up ahead, not much, barely sufficient to differentiate the black-looking tree trunks silhouetted against the orange-tinged darkness beyond them. There was a lane fifty yards across cut through the trees, which looked as though it should have been a road, except there was no tarmac, just grass. The pipeline was buried here, but not too deep below the surface, and the Public Works Department made sure it could be accessed without too much difficulty. Through the curtains of rain falling into the lane they could just make out the palm trees on the other side, all aligned in rigid rows: a rubber plantation.
‘We’ll cross in two squads,’ decided Piggott. ‘I’ll go first with Torrance, Zulkifli and the two Australians while Cochrane and the rest stand by to provide covering fire. When we get to the other side, I’ll signal with my torch – dot, dash-dash dot – if the coast is clear for the rest of you to follow. Ready, lads? On the count of three: one… two… three!’
Torrance was soaked to the skin before he had crossed halfway. No shots rang out: the rain was so heavy they might have passed within twenty feet of a Japanese patrol without being seen by it. The five of them splashed through the puddles amidst the grass before skidding to a halt in the shelter of the trees on the other side. Torrance unslung his Thompson and leaned against one of the rubber trees, ready to provide covering fire as Piggott pointed his torch to where Cochrane and the others waited, flicking the beam on and off in the arranged sequence. A few moments later Cochrane, Gibson, Rossi and MacRae had joined them.
There was enough light in the sky to have made following the pipeline north easy – too easy – and Piggott made them march through the rubber trees, parallel with the pipeline but fifty yards to the left of it. His caution soon proved to be well founded: before they had covered another half a mile, the whispered order was for everyone to get down. Torrance dropped to his knees behind the bole of a rubber tree, and soon saw what the danger was. By now the rain had eased off, and they could make out half a dozen indistinct figures moving along the pipeline. They moved in complete silence, but Torrance could tell from the silhouette of their heads they wore Japanese forage caps with havelocks hanging down behind. Piggott waited until they had disappeared from view, then waited another two minutes before giving the order for Pigforce to resume its advance.
Torrance felt cold and wet and miserable. He cursed the Japanese. A posting in the Far East should not have been like this. He should have been lying on a towel on a sandy beach somewhere, basking in the warmth of the sun with an ice-cold Tiger beer in his hand while native girls skimpily clad in grass skirts, bearing more than a passing resemblance to Dorothy Lamour, rubbed suntan lotion into his skin. And he cursed MacRae for stealing his tickets to Batavia, forcing him to volunteer for this suicide mission. Sitting in the NAAFI at Tyersall Park might not be as much fun as cavorting with native girls on tropical beaches, but it beat the hell out of blundering about in the rain and the darkness with Jap soldiers lurking in every bush.
Marching across a plantation in darkness was a good deal easier than marching through untamed jungle had been, especially with the faintest hint of light coming from the lane of the pipeline to their right. There was no need for them to cling to the webbing of the man in front of them any more, and in another hour they came to where the pipeline crossed the Mandai Road. Here they turned left, now heading west as they marched across the plantation, parallel to the road. In another half an hour they had reached Woodlands Road. There was more light now – Torrance was not sure if that was because they were closer to the fuel tanks burning at Kranji, or because dawn could not be far off – but there was no mistaking the Japanese tank parked under the trees where it could cover the Mandai Road ju
nction fifty yards to their right.
Marching the same distance in the opposite direction – through the trees, parallel to the Woodland Road – brought them to a point where there was no danger of being spotted by any of the infantrymen Torrance did not doubt were well concealed around the junction where they could cover it with their small arms. The problem was what lay on the other side of the road: a concrete-sided monsoon ditch, and beyond that the railway line from Woodlands to Keppel Street, and then an irregular dark band that might have been bushes. Between the railway line and the bushes was a couple of dozen yards of padang overgrown with lalang grass and weeds.
‘What do you think?’ Piggott asked Cochrane.
‘Same as we did crossing the pipeline,’ said the sergeant. ‘Two teams. First squad crosses to the monsoon ditch, then provides cover while the second team leapfrogs them as far as the bushes and provides cover in turn as the first squad crosses the padang.’
‘Except the squad in the monsoon ditch won’t be able to provide covering fire if anything goes wrong,’ said Torrance. ‘You know how deep those drains are.’
‘Have ye got a better suggestion?’ demanded Cochrane.
‘First squad will have to go all the way to the bushes and cover the second from there.’
‘If anything goes wrong, the first team will no’ be able to provide much covering fire frae all the way over there.’
‘Maybe not, but they’ll be able to provide a hell of a lot more than they could from the drain.’
‘He’s right,’ Piggott told Cochrane. ‘All right, we’ll do it Torrance’s way. Same two teams as before: me, Torrance, Zulkifli and the two Diggers, then Cochrane, Gibson, Rossi and MacRae. Let’s go.’
The first team dashed across the rain-slick tarmac and jumped down into the monsoon ditch. It was about six feet deep, with a runnel no more than two feet wide running down the middle of it and a concrete berm on either side. Even with all the rain that had fallen in the past few hours, the runnel was still scarcely overflowing, and easy enough to step over. Piggott stood with his back to the opposite wall and clasped his hands before him to give the others a leg-up. Quinn was about to climb up when Torrance put a hand on his shoulder. When Quinn looked at him, Torrance shook his head.