‘How was that, Barry?’ said the journalist to the producer after a few seconds’ pause to let the tape run.
‘Looked good to me,’ said the cameraman.
Barry gave the thumbs up.
‘Look,’ said Wilkes, walking up to the crew as the man called Barry checked the sound equipment, ‘I appreciate that you blokes have a job to do, but I asked you to keep us out of your reporting.’
‘I know. Don’t worry, Sergeant,’ said Barry. ‘The background is way out of focus – just a bit of colour and movement, that’s all. I can assure you that you and your men won’t be recognisable.’
‘Okay,’ said Wilkes. Anonymity was important to the SAS. If they could be identified by any bad guys, there was always the chance that revenge might be exacted on them through a hit on their friends and family in the future.
‘Hey, now I know where I’ve met you before,’ said Barry. ‘It’s just dawned on me.’
Wilkes cocked his head to one side. The guy did look familiar.
‘Well, we’ve never actually met, but aren’t you with Annabelle Gilbert?’
Wilkes didn’t answer. He was uncomfortable about having his professional and private lives mixed.
‘Yeah, I’ve seen you around the station a couple of times. Barry Weaver, producer,’ he said, holding out his hand.
Wilkes reluctantly shook it. ‘Tom Wilkes.’ He remembered that Annabelle had mentioned Weaver in the same sentence as ‘sleazebag’.
‘Look, Wilko, don’t worry about us,’ said the producer, putting his arm around Wilkes’s shoulders as if he’d become his new best friend. ‘We’ll do the right thing by you. And, by the way, I reckon you’d have to be the luckiest man on this planet.’ Weaver jiggled his eyebrows up and down repeatedly – suggestively – so that there was no mistaking why he thought Wilkes was so lucky.
The helo arrived with the familiar thump-thump, distracting Wilkes. Ellis came over.
‘That was quick,’ said Wilkes.
‘It was already airborne and close by, boss. Mt Hagen thought it better to pick the wounded up now and ferry them in, rather than turn the bird around and collect a medical crew.’
Wilkes looked at Beck.
‘That’s okay with me, boss,’ said Beck with a shrug. ‘The patients are as stable as I can make them, anyway.’
Wilkes nodded. Fair enough. He walked Ellis out of earshot of the producer. ‘Listen, when the help leaves, find some excuse to get that news crew on it will you?’ Fuck ’em. They had their story, didn’t they?
Twenty minutes later, the Blackhawk lifted off, carrying away the wounded and the news crew. Barry waved goodbye from the helo’s open door. From a distance, Wilkes and Ellis watched. Ellis yelled over the noise of the helo’s departure, ‘Told the producer guy the trucks had broken down and that we were going to have to walk out through this,’ he said, indicating the impenetrable wall of jungle nearby.
‘Yep, that’ll do it,’ said Wilkes, feeling relieved enough to return the friendly wave.
The tribespeople had gathered to watch the wounded men being loaded into the Blackhawk. They were all familiar with helos. The villagers about to get a ride in it were considered lucky, for this was seen as a real adventure. As the Blackhawk rose from the grass clearing, a small boy started spinning with his arms out, imitating the aircraft, and soon every child was doing it – spinning until they fell over, dizzy and laughing.
The smoke of several fires hung in the village at about waist height. Night fell quickly at this high altitude, and so did the temperature. The soldiers came prepared for it with khaki flight jackets, the same type used by military pilots. Timbu and the politicians threw on jumpers. Most of the locals ignored the cold, going about their business near-naked. Some of the older folk and the youngsters had grey blankets wrapped loosely around their shoulders. The days were hot, but the nights cool.
‘Ples bilong yu?’ asked the chief as he took a seat beside Wilkes. Where are you from?
‘Mipela bilong Ostrelya,’ said Wilkes, a bit of pidgin coming back to him.
‘Yu marit o nogat?’ asked the chief, making small talk.
‘Mi no marit,’ said Wilkes, hoping the question was not a prelude to the chief offering him a daughter. ‘Mi gelpren,’ he said.
The fact that Wilkes had a girlfriend seemed to satisfy the chief, who then turned away to answer a question Pelagka put to him about the health of his people.
The PNG soldiers kept to themselves, friendly but uninvolved. Eventually, dinner came. Wilkes and his men weren’t keen on eating the local food and would have preferred to stick with their ratpacks – pre-packaged ration packs – but both the chief and the politicians had been insistent. The first course arrived on bark platters and consisted mainly of baked sweet potatoes, and various cooked taro roots and bananas. Then came the meat.
‘Mmm, delicious,’ said Ellis, tucking in before anyone else. ‘What is it?’
Timbu asked the chief.
‘Longpela pik,’ said the old man.
‘What’s that?’
‘Man,’ said the interpreter.
‘Oh,’ said Ellis with a full mouth. And then the penny dropped. ‘What?’ He spat the mouthful into the fire, and wiped his mouth and tongue on the front of his shirt.
The chief rocked with laughter then spoke animatedly.
‘He says his village has never practised cannibalism,’ Timbu translated, ‘but that plenty of villages in this area have, even up to fairly recently. He says there are rumours the village that attacked them today still practises it occasionally, but personally I doubt that.’ Timbu turned to the chief and said, ‘Mipela laikim tumas dispela kaikai na longpela pik.’ We enjoyed the meal, especially the long pig.
‘Can you ask the chief why they were attacked today?’ Wilkes asked.
‘Already have – payback. No one can remember how it all started. They’ve been fighting back and forth for years. Only now, one side has guns. Back when they used spears, there’d be a few injuries, the occasional death. Now it’s not unusual for ten or fifteen men to be killed and the same number wounded in a simple skirmish. And then there are all the accidents with firearms, like we saw today.’
‘Yeah,’ said Wilkes.
‘What happened when these men chased the others into the jungle?’ asked Beck.
Timbu spoke at length with some of the young men who had gone on the raid, the conversation becoming quite excited.
‘They didn’t get anywhere near the other village,’ he said. ‘It’s a good day and a half’s trek away, maybe more, through the jungle and over a high ridge to the north-west. There was a bit of a skirmish in the trees not far from here, which is where the man took a bullet in the foot. They broke off the chase because they came across a party of Asians they believed were heading to the enemy village. These people from over the border in West Papua have a bad reputation for being cruel and vicious, so the men came back.’
The Australians looked at the faces of the people around them. Most were smiling broadly, innocently. Wilkes knew he couldn’t do anything to help them. It’s not your fight, Tom. ‘Did you say a day and a half’s journey from here?’
‘Give or take.’
Wilkes was due to go back on leave after this job, along with the rest of his men. They’d bloody well deserved it. He’d had a few plans to go away with Annabelle, his ‘gelpren’. If he were a few days late, would that matter? He knew the answer to that – yes, it would. ‘Timbu, you say you know these hills. Do you know them well enough to get us to that village?’
Timbu looked at Wilkes and wondered what the soldier was thinking. ‘No, afraid I don’t. The jungle out there’s so thick you could walk three metres from the edge of a village of a thousand people and not know it’s there. One of these men could take you,’ he said, indicating the locals, ‘but I’d have to go with you as interpreter.’
‘How about it? Feel like a stroll?’
Timbu took a deep breath. ‘It’s tough out the
re, in the jungle, but I guess you know that,’ he said.
Wilkes nodded.
Laughter and squeals of delight interrupted them as the women of the village presented gifts to Loku, Pelagka and the soldiers: their very own kotekas. Sergeant Wilkes was given the largest of them all, and there was much backslapping and eye-rolling to go with it. When the food and presentations were over, the village men lit enormous marijuana cigars. Wilkes and his troop declined when offered but the smoke hung around the fires and the conversation soon became quite silly even between those not dragging directly on the enormous cigars.
Wilkes’s Wankers had accompanied Loku and his party back to Mt Hagen when the voting had concluded. But now they were heading back to the village, returning with the wounded highlanders, who’d had their injuries dressed.
The village looked small from above as the Blackhawk descended through a thousand feet towards it. Wilkes preferred the view from above rather than the blind approach on the track through the jungle. The village was cut out of the surrounding bush, the terminus for the road, the end of the line. If you wanted to go any further, it was machete time.
He checked the man on the stretcher beside him. The wounded foot was set in a fibreglass cast, a big ski boot. The man appeared anxious, eyes darting left and right. Sergeant Wilkes smiled at him, hoping to provide some reassurance that the popping between his ears was normal. The highlander had been reasonably calm once the helo was airborne and settled into its cruise, but he’d been unconscious during his first chopper ride, so the descent was a new experience. He heaved once and then vomited on himself before Littlemore could get a bag under his chin.
‘Poor bugger,’ Beck yelled through the din.
‘Why?’ said Sergeant Wilkes in Beck’s ear. ‘He looks pretty comfy to me.’ Wilkes envied the man his stretcher. Sitting on the bare floor of a Blackhawk was one of life’s lesser experiences as far as he was concerned. Squatting on your pack was the only alternative. Timbu chose the hard, unforgiving deck. Lance Corporal Ellis and Troopers Littlemore and Beck had decided to come along, giving up some leave to do so. They each had enough ratpacks to last five days in the jungle. With the exception of Timbu, who didn’t know one end of a pistol from the other, the men carried weapons – Minimis for Ellis and Littlemore, M4/203s for Wilkes and Beck. Technically speaking it was illegal for the Australians to be carrying firearms because they were not working in an official capacity but, in the unmapped reaches of one of the most unexplored mountain ranges on earth, it was unlikely they’d be pulled up and questioned about it. And it would have been plain dumb not to bring them. They’d be tracking people who were armed to the teeth, and not likely to be friendly. This time, Wilkes also brought along a few flash-bangs.
The Blackhawk flared twenty metres from the ground, and its downwash flattened one grass structure and blew away two more. The young boys and girls from the village gathered dangerously close to the helo and spun around, arms outstretched, until they fell over giddy. A large number of men and women also came to greet the helo, this time armed with smiles rather than spears, led by the chief. The men hopped out of the Blackhawk, then turned and hauled their packs out. The pilot and co-pilot checked that their rotors were clear, the pitch of the thump-thump changed and the large, heavy machine rose from the ground on a swirling cone of dust, leaves and grass. The chief walked towards them with both hands outstretched in welcome. ‘Gude,’ he said. Hello.
Wilkes returned the pleasantries. ‘Moning. Yu stap gut? Good morning. Are you well?
‘Mi stap gut,’ said the old chief, nodding and smiling. The men shook hands warmly as if the parting had been for months rather than a couple of days. When the chief could be heard more clearly against the noise of the departing helo, he patted Wilkes on the back and said, ‘Taim san i go daun i gat bigpela singsing.’
He wants us to stay tonight for another feast, Wilkes thought, taking a few seconds to translate what was little more than a mumble and formulate a reply: thanks, but we’ve got a long road ahead and we need to hurry. ‘Nogut, tenku. Rot i longpela. Mipela hariup.’
‘Hey, not bad,’ said Timbu.
‘Can you ask him about a guide? Got no idea how to say that,’ said Wilkes a little self-consciously.
The old man nodded occasionally as Timbu spoke. He then addressed the Australians and Timbu translated: ‘He understands that we’re keen to be on our way. And he’s lending us one of his sons to be our guide.’
The chief turned and said something quickly to his people, and a boy of around fourteen stepped forward. His black skin glistened with sweat in the morning heat. There was not an ounce of fat on him. His face was open and friendly beneath close-cropped hair bleached an ochre colour. Overly large teeth crowded into a mouth that stretched from ear to ear as he grinned. A small collection of ornaments hung from his neck and, around his waist, the penis gourd. ‘Nem bilong mi Muruk,’ he said.
‘Tom,’ said Wilkes, shaking the boy’s hand. ‘Mi amamas long mitim yu, Muruk,’ he added politely. Pleased to meet you.
‘Er…don’t know whether you’ve noticed, boss, but he’s a boy,’ said Ellis, knowing how arduous the next few days would be.
‘To them he’s a man,’ said Timbu. ‘And if you don’t accept, the chief will think you question his judgment, which would be considered rude. Besides, this is the boy’s home. The jungle’s the kid’s backyard. There’s no way the chief would put him forward if he didn’t think he was man enough for the job.’
‘Sounds reasonable,’ said Wilkes. ‘Tell the chief that we’re honoured his son will be our guide.’ He knew that sending his son wasn’t such a big deal, but it didn’t hurt to be polite. The people here were polygamists. The chief had maybe twenty wives and God knows how many offspring. Half the men in the tribe were probably his.
Timbu thanked the chief and the village men mingled with the soldiers, nodding and smiling.
‘We should get going, eh?’ said Sergeant Wilkes after a few minutes. It was already 0900 hours and he was impatient to get underway. Just because he and his men were now officially tourists in PNG rather than soldiers on duty for the Australian government, it didn’t mean they could relax. That they weren’t performing an official task meant this ‘mission’ would not have the benefit of any intelligence. Time was therefore of the essence. The last contact with the gunrunners was just a few days ago. After further questioning of the warriors from the village who’d seen these foreigners, there was no certainty about whether they were on their way to conduct business, or leaving after having concluded it. And if they were heading out, what was their destination? The more Wilkes considered it, the more he thought that perhaps he was on a fool’s errand, and should be sitting on a quiet beach somewhere with a cold beer on one side and Annabelle on the other. Indeed, once they’d left the highlands, Wilkes had had second and third thoughts about becoming further involved in this guns-for-drugs mess. They could conceivably land in a shitload of trouble with the authorities back home. But then Wilkes took another look at the innocent faces around him and knew he was doing the right thing. Okay, so there was no way he and his men could single-handedly stop the flood of modern weaponry into these hills, but maybe they could discover something that would make this exercise worthwhile, even if just for this one village.
Muruk approached the Australians and shook each man’s hand in turn, learning their names as he went. The boy’s grip was strong. He said something to Wilkes, who then looked helplessly at Timbu. ‘He said he’s packed and ready to go now,’ said the interpreter.
‘Good,’ Wilkes said.
‘Rockin’,’ said Muruk.
Wilkes and Timbu blinked wide-eyed at the young man.
‘Radio,’ said Muruk by way of explanation as he ran off to one side and picked up a bilum, a shoulder bag made from woven grasses.
‘Jesus,’ said Beck, who’d caught all this. ‘Bloody Elvis has a lot to bloody answer for, don’t he?’
Muruk returned and Timbu
said an official goodbye on behalf of them all. The chief and the rest of the village waved, and kept waving right up until they followed Muruk into the jungle. A dozen paces into the thick ground cover and Wilkes turned to look behind him. The village had gone, hidden utterly from view. Timbu had been right. Within a few short steps, the jungle had swallowed them so completely it was if they’d journeyed into it for days.
Sounds filled Sergeant Wilkes’s ears – a chorus of birds, crickets, geckoes, the swish of lizards and snakes slithering through grass. He breathed deeply, taking in the wet heat he knew so well. The combination of jungle smells and sounds combined to send an unexpected shiver up his spine. Wilkes was suddenly reminded of his troop’s most recent mission into the centre of Sulawesi, where they’d rescued the survivors of a downed Qantas plane. There, they’d come up against the Kopassus, Indonesia’s infamous special forces troops. The mission had been successful, but it had also been murderous and two of his men had been killed. Until then, Wilkes had embraced the jungle completely, welcoming it as a second home. But now the press of wet leaves, the razor grass and the three levels of canopy overhead also held brutal memories that forced their way into his dreams and made him wake to the sound of his own screams. Virgin jungle was a place of death, of destruction, revealing its secrets only when it had worn down the mind and left it vulnerable. Sergeant Wilkes took a deep breath and shook his head: get a grip on yourself, pal – come unglued afterwards, when you’re sitting on that beach with Belle.
An hour later, Tom Wilkes was feeling more like his old self. The notion that the jungle had some kind of malevolent consciousness had receded and he was starting to enjoy the walk. The deep bush of the New Guinea highlands was a botanist’s delight, with orchids everywhere, and of every colour: purple, yellow, white and red. They flowered on the ground and in the trees. Some were large and some small. Some were openly parasitic, their delicate white tendrils tapped into the life force of host trees and shrubs; some apparently taking nutrients from the air itself. And all the while, the infinite diversity of song rang out from a spectacular range of birds of paradise, their intensely coloured plumage visible from a considerable distance. It had been too long since Tom had been in the jungle just for the pure joy of it. Okay, the environment held its dangers, but at least this time one of them wasn’t camouflaged enemy special forces. And that was a pleasant change.
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