‘You okay, mate?’ said Wilkes, trotting over to Beck. ‘You’re one lucky bastard. Did the bugger hypnotise you or something?’
‘Dunno, boss. Maybe,’ said Beck.
Beck leaned down and picked up the dropped AK-47. He expelled the magazine and checked it. Just as he’d thought: empty. The selector was on automatic fire.
‘If it’d been set to single shot, there might have been something left in the till with your name on it,’ Wilkes said. He held out his hand and Beck passed him the weapon. He turned the carbine over and the two men gave it a cursory examination. It was old and filthy with a stock deeply scarred from years of abuse. The blueing on the barrel was also removed in places and rust eggs spotted the metal here and there.
‘The bloke on the other end was lucky this didn’t blow up in his face,’ said Ferris, looking over Wilkes’s shoulder. ‘What the hell are these bastards doing with Kalashnikovs anyway?’
‘Is there an echo around here?’ said Wilkes.
‘What?’ Ferris asked.
‘Never mind,’ said Wilkes, passing him the weapon. ‘I’d like to know where this came from, and how it got here.’
‘Yeah, well, knowing the important questions is why you’re the leader of our merry band of wankers, Sarge.’ Ferris handed the carbine back. Originally called Wilkes’s Warriors, the sergeant’s troop had been renamed Wilkes’s Wankers when they were in East Timor, and the epithet had stuck.
‘Come on,’ said Wilkes, ‘we’d better see how the rest of our party is enjoying themselves.’
‘What are we going to do about the locals?’ Robson said, nodding in the direction of the popping gunfire.
‘Not much we can do. We’re not here to sort that one out. We’re on protection duty, remember? So we’d best go and protect.’
‘All our guys are accounted for,’ said Lance Corporal Ellis jogging over. ‘A couple of the PNG boys are wounded, though. Stray shots. Nothing serious. Nurse Beck, you might like to see to ’em.’
‘Yep,’ said Beck. He turned and ran back to the Land Rover to get his first aid kit.
‘There’re ten dead – four defenders, six attackers,’ said Ellis, continuing his debrief. ‘Loku, the other pollie and the interpreter are okay, but shaken up.’
‘Could be worse,’ said Wilkes.
‘Sorry about shooting that bugger, Sarge,’ said Littlemore, disappointed with himself.
‘It was you or him, wasn’t it?’
‘Yeah, I know, but…’
‘Let it go, Jimbo. Did your best.’
The SAS were the elite of the Australian Army, trained to kill but not killers. There was a big difference and Wilkes’s men were proud of their level of professionalism. Littlemore had just ended the life of a man wielding a stone-age club. If nothing else it was a terribly uneven contest and he didn’t feel good about it. Five more warriors lay dead in the village centre, shot by the PNG troops who were a little less concerned about sparing their countrymen’s lives.
Wilkes’s men stood in a loose group, heads swivelling about, prepared for trouble. ‘How’s everyone for ammo?’ asked Wilkes.
The men checked their webbing and most shook their heads. They’d expended much of their personal stores. Frightening people away took more bullets than killing them. Wilkes didn’t like to be low on ammunition, especially when the jungle around them appeared to be full of people with twitchy fingers. He had half a magazine left – fifteen rounds. He could still call on his trusty pump action Remington, and he had plenty of heavy #4 buckshot to go with it. He also had five HE grenades left for the M203. Wilkes admonished himself for not having a few flash-bangs in his kit. As their name suggested, flash-bangs made a hell of a noise when they went off, as well as making a blinding flash. They were designed primarily for anti-terror work, for disorienting terrorists without killing innocent civilians. A few of them would have come in handy during a skirmish like the one they’d just experienced, stopping the invaders cold, and maybe saving lives on both sides.
Bill Loku, Andrew Pelagka and Timbu walked over, dusting themselves down.
Wilkes gave the civilians a quick once-over. They were dishevelled and muddy, but otherwise unharmed. He asked anyway, directing the question first to Loku: ‘Yu oraet, sir?’
The politician nodded, sweat beads glistening on his black skin.
‘Mr Pelagka?’
‘Yes, mi okei tenkyu.’
‘Timbu?’
The translator nodded.
Wilkes next turned his attention to his men. ‘How about you blokes? All OK?’
‘Fabulous, boss,’ said Beck.
‘Same,’ said Littlemore.
Ellis nodded agreement.
The headman of the village walked towards the group, taking broad steps, his composure not in the least affected, as though the events of the past half an hour were nothing too extraordinary. Indeed, he seemed more interested in Wilkes’s M4. He pointed at it and spoke in a language that was utterly foreign, barely moving his ancient lips. Timbu spoke to him, and they conversed back and forth. Finally, in unaccented English that continually surprised Wilkes, Timbu said, ‘The chief wants many guns like yours, Sergeant, so that he can bury his enemies. Can you show him a grenade? He saw you fire one and wants a closer look.’
Wilkes prised one from his chest webbing and handed it to the chief. It was perfectly safe. The device had to spin clockwise at quite high rotations to arm itself. The chief felt its weight in the palm of his hand, then threw it up and down carelessly a couple of times. He spat a crimson quid of betel nut and saliva on the ground at his feet before speaking again.
‘The chief is amazed that something so small can lift several men off the ground and throw them around like sticks. He says it’s truly magic of the gods, but can’t decide whether those gods are good or evil.’
They might be primitive people, but that didn’t dull their perception any. Wilkes said, ‘Tell the chief I admire his wisdom, Timbu.’
Timbu translated and the chief nodded, handing the grenade back. Next he beckoned for Wilkes’s weapon. The sergeant first checked that the chamber was empty and the safety on before he handed it over. Again, the chief felt its weight then brought it up, pulling the stock back into his shoulder and lining up his eye behind the sight. He muttered something.
‘He doesn’t like it. Says it feels light – not very strong,’ said Timbu.
The old man handed back the carbine. ‘Can you ask the chief where the jungle people get their guns from?’ Wilkes asked.
Timbu nodded and spoke in the strange, mumbling tongue and the chief replied. ‘Men from Papua – Indonesians,’ he said, nodding towards the west. ‘They come with guns and barter for the marijuana that grows wild here. It’s very powerful.’
‘It’s called New Guinea Gold. It’ll blow the top of your head off,’ said Ellis, chipping in.
‘I suppose you’re going to tell me next that you’ve never inhaled,’ said Wilkes with a smile.
‘Actually, I knew a bloke who knew a bloke whose sister’s boyfriend had the stuff once,’ said Ellis. ‘And he didn’t do the drawback.’
‘Yeah, right.’ Stale marijuana smoke. That was the smell Wilkes had recognised earlier but couldn’t quite place.
Timbu talked some more with the chief, nodding occasionally and asking questions. The chief became quite
animated.
‘What is it?’ Wilkes asked.
‘The Indonesians first came about a year ago with just a few weapons and gave them to a small village over the ridge,’ said the translator, pointing north. ‘In return, the people gave them food and herbs, which probably included marijuana. Six months later, the Indonesians returned, this time with several crates of weapons and boxes of ammunition, and bartered the lot for bales of pot. The guns proved a big success with the locals. They could kill at great distances – much better than spears, but there were a couple of accidents. The chief says he heard one man blew his hand off accidentally, and two boys
shot each other dead playing with them, but the weapons had allowed the small village to finally exercise payback on a much larger neighbouring village they’d been warring with for some time.
‘The Indonesians came back again a couple of months later with still more guns, wanting more drugs. This time they struck a deal with the larger village. The following day, a raiding party wiped out the smaller village – everyone – men, women and children. Fewer warriors use the traditional weapons around here anymore. They all want carbines. A lot of people are dying– it’s very sad.’
Wilkes nodded. Sad was an understatement. ‘Ask the chief why his village doesn’t have rifles yet,’ he said.
Timbu put it to the chief, who hawked loudly onto the ground before answering.
‘The chief says it’s the road. It scares off the traders. That’s why this village is one of the last in these hills to get them. But the chief thinks his village will get rifles soon. They must have them to deter attacks.’
The chief began to talk again, smiling, patting Morgan and Littlemore on the back. Timbu said, ‘The chief wants us all to be his guests tonight, and he is sorry that he didn’t make us feel welcome when we first arrived. He didn’t know we were such good fighters.’
Wilkes scratched his forehead. He wasn’t keen. This wasn’t supposed to be the SAS show. He looked at Loku and Pelagka. Bill Loku took over, speaking up in pidgin, smiling, using plenty of friendly gestures and back-patting of his own to get his point across. Striking up a rapport with these people was his reason for being here. Politicians – the same everywhere, thought Wilkes.
Timbu translated for the politicians and the chief smiled broadly, showing a mouth full of red and black teeth, the legacy of a lifetime of chewing betel nut.
But it wasn’t all happiness. The wives, mothers and sisters of the two villagers felled at the treeline by friendly fire began to mourn their dead. They howled over the men. Timbu said, ‘Aside from the emotional loss, losing their men is going to cause those women real hardship. They’ll have to rely on the generosity of the village to survive.’
Wilkes nodded. ‘If it’s not a rude question, Timbu, I’ve been meaning to ask – where’d you learn to speak English like that?’
‘My parents came from this area. Our village got torched when I was a baby. A payback raid over a pig. My parents were killed. An Australian patrol officer found me and adopted me. Went to a private school in Sydney. Political science at Sydney University, then back to Port Moresby, and here I am.’ He said it as if there was something about his life’s journey that was inevitable.
‘Is “payback” what it sounds like?’ asked Littlemore, who’d never been to PNG before and didn’t know much about the place.
‘Yeah, it’s exactly what you’d think it means. You do something to me, and I pay you back. Unfortunately, the way they practise it here, you pay me back and then I pay you back and on it goes, round and round. Used to be pretty bad before the Lutheran missionaries began converting the area and settled things down. But looks like it’s gonna get bad again with all these guns about.’
‘Yep,’ said Wilkes, looking at the dead highlander twenty metres away curled on the ground in the foetal position, his warpaint running with his own blood. PNG troops laid three other dead warriors beside him. ‘So what are you doing up here, Timbu?’
‘This was my home,’ said Timbu. ‘Not this village, but these hills. Come back every chance I get.’ He looked around, taking in the surrounds, and Wilkes could sense the man’s loss. ‘Now I work for the government as a translator. When I heard Bill was heading up here to kiss babies, I put my hand up to come along. I speak English, Indonesian, pidgin, a couple of these highland dialects and a smattering of menu French to impress the chicks.’
‘Don’t think you’ll find much foie gras round here,’ said Wilkes. He sized Timbu up professionally and decided it would be much healthier to be his friend than his enemy, for Timbu was a big man, five or six centimetres taller than Wilkes, and just as stocky – around a hundred and ten kilos in weight. He guessed Timbu was around thirty to thirty-two years old, a few years older than himself, and built like a rugby player – maybe a second rower, Wilkes thought – with a good strong face, a broad nose and teeth so white they appeared to be lit from the inside.
‘Boss,’ said Beck, interrupting.
‘Stu?’
‘Got three wounded PNG men. Not seriously. Two flesh wounds – both thigh shots – and a fractured tibia and fibula. The bullet’s still lodged in the bone. Should medivac ’em out.’
Wilkes nodded.
‘We’ve got no morphine, just a basic first aid kit – a few dressings and that’s it.’
Wilkes heard the men crying out when their pain became too much for them to bear. ‘Gary?’
‘Yo.’
‘See if you can get that Blackhawk up here pronto. Tell ’em we need medivac.’
‘On it,’ Ellis said.
‘And while you’re there, see if you can get a patch through to regiment. Give ’em the serial number on this rifle and see what they can do with it,’Wilkes said, tossing Ellis the carbine.
‘Sure, boss,’ said Ellis, who then turned and jogged off to the truck to get on the satellite videophone – the vone – and make the call.
Gunfire cracked from the treeline. Wilkes turned to face the source. It was the men who’d chased the marauders off into the jungle, returning. They seemed pretty happy with themselves, laughing and shooting the weapons they’d won skywards as they strolled back into the village centre. One man was being carried between two others, his foot a bloody red mass. Beck walked over to meet the approaching war party, Timbu following. ‘Put him down here,’ Beck said. The wounded man was laid on the damp earth and Beck rummaged in his satchel for swabs to wipe away the clotted blood. The warrior stared straight at the sky, eyes fixed and wide. He breathed short, quick breaths through his teeth, flecks of white spittle blowing from his lips. Yet, he made not a sound. ‘Sorry, mate,’ said Beck. ‘I can’t give you too much help, I’m afraid.’ Beck admired the man’s courage and cursed the fact that he had no morphine to end yet another unnecessary battle with pain.
An old woman, naked but for thin baggy cotton shorts, with hair the colour and texture of steel wool, pushed through the tribesmen, muttering. She carried a banana leaf on which were collected small piles of berries, leaves and beetles. She knelt beside the wounded man, placing the banana leaf on his rigid stomach. She gathered the nuts and leaves, put them in her mouth and began to chew. After a minute, she knelt over the man’s face and let a gob of purple spit fall from her lips onto his clenched teeth. He swallowed and, within a handful of seconds, relaxed into a deep sleep. Beck watched on, open-mouthed. The old woman spat the masticated quid on the ground, took one of the insects, a large orange beetle, bit off its head and chewed. She screwed up her face – Beck could only imagine the taste – and spat on the ground again.
‘The beetle’s head contains an antidote to the sleeping,’ said Timbu. ‘But its body is pure poison – a nerve toxin. They mash a few of ’em up and dip their arrows in it. Handy when your dinner’s up a tree. One scratch with that stuff and it’ll fall onto your plate.’
Beck was intrigued. He knew there were many species of plants and animals that had medicinal qualities undiscovered by western medicine. And he’d seen that beetle many times before throughout the Asia–Pacific region, yet he’d never heard of it having the properties it apparently possessed.
Timbu spoke to the old woman, who replied tersely before pointing at the shattered foot. ‘Apparently you’ve got around twenty minutes before the pain finds its way through the medicine. She says you should remove the bullet before he wakes, because she says she’s not doing this again,’ he said, screwing up his face, mimicking her.
Beck didn’t say anything, silently agreeing that eating live beetles was not something he’d want to make a habit of. He wondered what on earth was in the collection of nuts and leaves that, co
mbined, had acted so fast and so completely to knock the patient out.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said Timbu, ‘but you’ll never find out. It’s considered magic and they guard it jealously.’
Beck shrugged and got to work. He poured antiseptic on his hands, and then felt around in the flesh and bone of the man’s foot with his index finger until he found the slug. It was difficult to reach. He cut the skin further with a scalpel, working quickly, and then dug out the bullet, again using his index finger. He could feel that many of the delicate bones were broken. It must have been a ricochet, tumbling elliptically as it penetrated the skin, smashing its way in. The warrior would also have to make the trip in the chopper to the hospital at Mt Hagen. Beck did the best he could, dousing the wound with antiseptic and applying a pressure bandage to help stop the bleeding and keep the flies off. When the patient woke, the pain would be excruciating. ‘You know, it’ll be touch and go whether you keep this foot, sunshine,’ Beck said to his unconscious patient. Infection would be the major concern, ironically possibly introduced by his probing finger, but there was not much else he could do. When Beck was finished, he sat back on his haunches. ‘Okay, next,’ he said. Timbu told the villagers that Beck was done. The men picked up their wounded comrade and began to carry him off.
‘Better explain he has to go to hospital, Timbu. On the helo. They should carry him over there. Put him with those two blokes,’ said Beck, pointing at the sedated PNG soldiers who were also now miraculously sleeping like babies after having been visited by the beetle woman.
‘Boss, the helo will be here in twenty,’ said Ellis, panting from his run to and from the vehicles.
‘Good,’ said Wilkes, distracted. He’d noticed the TV news crew filming, using the activity of the SAS as background and that was a concern. It annoyed him. He walked over, careful not to be within the camera’s frame.
‘…violence continues to be a feature of these elections, but now there’s something new. The primitive highland warriors, people happily living a simple hunter–gatherer existence for thousands of years, are armed with modern military rifles. And they’re using them…on each other. This is Jim Fredrickson in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, for NQTV News…’
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