by Anita Bell
‘That only one person was responsible for the extraction,’ Allen guessed correctly.
‘One of our boys,’ Chang agreed.
‘You’re positive he’s a he?’
‘Unconfirmed, but probable,’ Chang said. ‘One of the kids said that someone carried both him and his pregnant mother across a creek with the kid on one arm and his mother on the other. And one of the dead militia had boot tracks in his face the size of a men’s eleven shoe, while another one had his neck snapped by hand, the old-fashioned way. If he’s a she,’ Chang said, ‘then I sure wouldn’t want to stiff her with the bill on any date.’
‘An SF boy, run amok?’ Allen asked.
Chang shook his head. ‘Special Forces boys are all accounted for that night,’ he said.
‘So we’ve got a mixed bag of witnesses,’ Allen said, consciously including himself in the team for the first time. ‘If the reconnaissance unit and the Blackhawk flight crew say they didn’t see who it was, surely one of the older civilians can point him out? The pregnant woman, for instance. She got pretty close to him.’
‘You’d think so,’ Chang said, trying not to grin.
‘They say,’ he said, ‘through interpreters of course, that our soldiers all look alike to them.’
Two small knocks heralded the arrival of the nurse ushering in General Broxton. She relieved him of his borrowed white coat and returned to her station.
‘Any news?’ Chang asked.
Broxton sat on the bed and shook his head, waving his hand to let them know he wanted to hear the end of their conversation first.
‘So did we do a head count on the other units in the battalion?’ Allen asked. ‘Is there any way of knowing if anyone was missing during the event?’
‘We’re not eagles or bears,’ Chang said, referring to the Americans and Russians who ran their armies by different rules. ‘We’re diggers, so rollcall isn’t necessarily an everyday event anymore unless we’re at war.’
‘Unnecessary paperwork,’ said Colonel Pike.
Allen leaned on a bedside table, thinking about that. ‘How can you be sure you haven’t lost anyone?’ he asked.
‘Each soldier operates within a small independent team with a unit commander,’ Chang said. ‘The unit commander reports to the next up the line, and so on. If someone goes missing it doesn’t take long for someone to notice and report it.’
‘Unless they think they have a reason not to,’ Broxton said, chipping in and staring directly at Allen. ‘In which case, we have a serious command and discipline problem.’
Allen stiffened and stood up. As Senior Medical Officer he may have made it to the rank of lieutenant colonel, but he was a doctor before he was an officer and the doctor in him didn’t like the sound of the word ‘discipline’ mentioned anywhere near the discussion of who could have saved the lives of his latest patients, not to mention a dozen or more civilians.
Broxton read the doctor’s thoughts through his body language and bombed a rubbish bin beside the bed with his newspaper. ‘No more guessing, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘We have a name.’ He summarised his theory, and then described Private Harvey’s reaction to hearing Lance Corporal Locklin’s name suggested hypothetically, instead of a mysterious saviour from another unit.
‘The boy went whiter than his bed sheet,’ Broxton added with a satisfied grin.
‘Lance Corporal Locklin had concussion and bullet wounds to his shoulder and leg,’ Allen reminded him. ‘Escaping by himself, let alone with everyone else intact, would have been next to impossible, given what we already know of the circumstances.’
‘True,’ Chang said, rubbing his chin. ‘Unless he was wounded as they were leaving.’
The group fell silent, each considering the implications of that one simple idea.
‘The UN aren’t going to like this,’ Pike said.
‘The UN don’t like this anyway,’ Chang added.
‘Okay,’ Allen said, deciding to get the corporal’s name onto commendation papers before anyone else could issue orders for a court martial. ‘So even if we suspect who got them out, we’re talking about a single-handed assault on an armed hostile encampment.’
‘Yes,’ Chang said. ‘We need to know exactly how the extraction was achieved and what weaknesses, if any, there were so we can exploit them again. If there’s a chance we can liberate more civilians from other militia camps, then we should be looking at ways to repeat the raid before they have a chance to change their strategies.’
The three lieutenant colonels nodded in unison like one head on many shoulders.
‘You’re getting ahead of yourselves,’ Broxton added quietly. ‘I have to bow out from the investigation from here on, so your actions are seen to be impartial. First, you have to prove that Lance Corporal Locklin is the one you’re looking for. Then we can decide where to go with any information that flows from that.’
‘Actually, there is one other problem,’ Allen said, not sure how Broxton was going to take it. ‘We have to find him first.’
‘How’s that a problem?’ Broxton asked.
‘The boy’s wounded, isn’t he?’ Chang said. ‘How far could hego?’
‘He’s been released, Pete. Two weeks ago. He’s supposed to be back on patrol by now.’
‘What do you mean “he’s supposed to be”?’ Broxton asked, not needing to shout to intimidate. His eyes shifted targets, to the colonel from Personnel. ‘Where is he?’
Colonel Pike shifted his weight back a step and crossed his arms. ‘He’s been stationed temporarily with another recon unit with 2Cavalry out of Maliana. After the handover to the United Nations Transitional Administration is complete, he’ll be reassigned again, since the rest of his unit is being discharged for their injuries. I’ve left orders for him to report to me when he returns from patrol, but so far he hasn’t checked in.’
‘Boarder patrols are only away two or three days, Colonel. How long ago did you notify 2Cavalry?’
Pike looked briefly at the floor, realising only now how many days had slipped by while he’d been caught up supervising interviews with the other witnesses. ‘Eight days, sir. But the unit he was with left three days before that.’
Broxton’s face set like a grenade timer.
‘Actually, General,’ Allen interrupted to disarm him, ‘I sent a message to 6Battalion this afternoon to request Lance Corporal Locklin be transferred back here as a medical emergency.’
‘Medical emergency? Why, if he’d been fit enough to return to duties?’
Allen shook his head. ‘You know me, Pete, overcautious. It looks like he hasn’t had his stitches removed yet. Apparently, he hasn’t reported to the field medics for so much as a paracetamol, let alone a follow-up antibiotic. If he’s picked up an infection out there in the fields, he could be a very sick boy by now …’
‘You had your own suspicions about him,’ Broxton added, reading his friend’s face. ‘Admit it.’
‘Yes, Pete,’ Allen said without apology. ‘I suppose I did.’
‘Very well. Have they sent notification that he’s on the way?’
‘Not yet, no. They’ve confirmed they’ll take care of it, but so far there’s been no verification.’
‘I don’t like the sound of this,’ Chang said. ‘We interviewed Locklin the day after he was patched up. That must have been just prior to his release, as it turns out.’
Allen nodded. ‘The leg wound wasn’t too bad. We kept him here overnight for observation for his concussion, any sign of delayed shock, that sort of thing, but he was fine aside from the fact that he was still groggy on a few things about the extraction. He seemed keen enough to help out if he remembered though, and he was itching to get back to active duty, so we just put him on the next flight headed west to Maliana.’
‘No sign of the shakes, psychological trauma or shock?’
‘Sure, but just the usual. He was a bit queezy, staggering off the chopper when he first got here,’ Allen said. ‘But I wouldn’t hold that
against him. I’ve seen marine vets lose their stomachs completely after a wet mission. It’s a fairly standard response to being released suddenly from stress.’
‘That’s exactly my point,’ Chang said, knowing that a wet mission was one in which blood was spilled, and if you were lucky, it wasn’t your blood. ‘To survive, your body draws on every reserve it has to keep you alert and alive. It’s not until you know for certain that you’re safe that you let go. But Corporal Locklin felt the need to let go like that, even though he was the least wounded in his unit. I’m thinking he went through a bit more stress under fire than the others maybe?’
‘You could be right,’ Pike said.
‘Then you know why I’m worried,’ Chang answered. ‘The boy could be a walking time bomb. If he’s disappeared there’s no telling when, or how, he could go off.’
‘That’s taking it a bit far, isn’t it?’ asked Allen. ‘They were all in shock to varying degrees. Why single him out on that?’
Pike scratched his cheek. ‘He seemed cool enough when we interviewed him, but if I remember right, this was his first close encounter with hostiles. He should have been anything but cool.’
‘Right,’ Chang said. ‘We should expect some delayed reaction from all of them. But the problem could go deeper for our mystery man. You’ve read the reports on the village clean-up. If Corporal Locklin’s our boy, he’s been baptised by blood as well as fire. Eleven kills. At least one of them the hard way.’
By hand, Broxton realised. That’s all he needed. A psychologically unstable soldier on the loose, who could jeopardise the political stability of the entire region, not to mention his country’s continued presence in East Timor.
‘Look I’m not saying this boy is the next Jack the Ripper,’ Chang said, reading the general’s expression. ‘I’ll admit it looks like the others could be keeping quiet out of fear of him. But his record is clean. He works well in a team and he’s shown enough leadership potential to make it a long way up the ladder in future, but he’s still basically the same loner who enlisted with us nearly two years ago.’
‘There’s no way an experience like that wouldn’t affect anyone to some degree,’ Allen agreed. ‘Without counselling, he could be carrying their coffins around in his head for some time.’
Broxton’s jaw tightened to the point of twitching.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said gravely. ‘We need to find this boy. Do whatever it takes, but do it quietly.’
Locklin handed the bottom of the rope ladder to his cousin.
‘After you, Sport,’ he said, shining the light up towards the others.
Helen leaned out further over the pit, her face illuminated in the beam. ‘You mean it was full last time you were down there?’ she called. ‘What with?’
Locklin licked his finger and wiped a wet line up Scotty’s leg as he climbed the ladder. ‘Snakes,’ he hissed, making his cousin jump.
‘Get out!’ Scott yelped. ‘I nearly fell on you!’
‘As if I’d feel it, paperweight. Tell Gran you need more red meat in your diet.’
‘Yes, Mummy,’ Scott whinged and Helen clicked her fingers beside his ears as he came up.
‘Manners, dumpling,’ she said. ‘It’s after your bedtime.’
Scott rolled his eyes. ‘I’m fifteen years old! Do I look like a dumpling?’
‘Crates,’ Locklin said, ignoring Scott as he followed him out. ‘But not full. There was only one left by the time I got down here. That’s where I got the little crystal coffin from. The other crates were bigger and had already been loaded.’
‘On what?’ Scott said.
‘A plane. They had a Cessna sea-plane out there on the water.’
‘A sea-plane? Wow!’ Scott said.
‘How’d they get crates down that rope ladder in the first place?’ Helen asked. ‘I’ll bet that was a good trick.’
Locklin looked up at the central ceiling beam and their eyes followed his to the rope pulley, which hung directly over the trapdoor.
‘So what was in the other crates?’ asked Connolly. ‘More coffins?’
‘Maybe,’ Locklin said. ‘But they were different sizes, some of them so big it would have been a tight squeeze getting them down there, even with the pulley. Tell me what you think of this, Helen,’ he said, unrolling the velvet pouch from his empty cigarette packet and revealing the lone earring of the angel with its Bible.
‘Now give me that one again,’ he said, pointing to his sister’s ear.
She sighed. She’d been hoping to keep it. ‘Isn’t it cute?’ she said, handing the earring to her brother. ‘It’s sucking on its little cross.’
Locklin held them both up for the group to compare and then laid them gently on the satin bedding inside the coffin.
‘Like putting little children to sleep,’ Helen said with one hand on her belly. ‘Hang on. I’ve got my digital camera in the car. I’ll take a few snaps and see if I can find out who makes this kind of stuff.’
‘A set,’ said Connolly as Helen disappeared.
‘A set with something missing,’ said Locklin.
‘Yeah of course!’
‘Test time then, Sport. What’s missing?’
‘I don’t know. A necklace?’
‘Ten points. You win a cookie. Someone got to this box before me and removed the necklace. What’s got me really stumped is how they managed to do it from Sydney.’
‘Sydney?’ Helen asked returning. ‘Now you’ve stumped me.’
‘Sorry, sis,’ Locklin said, rolling both earrings back into their velvet pouch. ‘I meant to ask you before. Can you do an internet search for me on the keywords Fletcher Corporation and Eric Maitland?’ He pushed the velvet pouch back inside the cigarette packet, and slipped the pack into his chest pocket, where it almost felt like it belonged now.
‘Yes okay,’ Helen said. ‘Any other specifiers?’
‘Try Nick, Nick Fletcher, Nikki, Nikki Fletcher and Sydney, that’s the place name not a person’s name.’
‘Nick and Nikki are only nicknames,’ Father Connolly pointed out. ‘You might have better luck, if you search the proper Christian names as well. Try Nicholas and Nicole,’ he suggested.
‘Yeah, I’ll try Nicola too,’ she said. ‘Are you going to hand that over to the police?’ she added, pointing to the coffin.
‘Not yet,’ Locklin said. ‘I don’t trust police. It might fall into the wrong hands.’
Scott laughed. ‘If you’ve already stolen it,’ he said, ‘then yours are the wrong hands!’
‘Don’t you have school tomorrow?’ Helen said. ‘It must be past your bedtime.’ She ushered him out while Locklin returned the lantern and table to their original position, and adjusted the padlock on the outer door so it appeared as if it had never been opened.
‘You’ve had your fun now,’ Locklin warned Scott a few minutes later.
‘Oh no!’ he cried, hearing the finality in Locklin’s voice. ‘I want to keep helping!’
‘You will in a way,’ Locklin said, seriously. ‘You can be my eyes and ears in Lowood.’
‘But I hardly talk to anyone!’
‘True, but you work with Janet Slaney,’ he said. ‘And she does.’
Locklin opened the front passenger door of his sister’s station wagon and helped her in while Connolly slid behind the steering wheel on the other side.
Scotty wasn’t sure if he should smile or not as he fastened his seatbelt in the back seat. He’d finally discovered a use for Janet Slaney, but it was going to cost him — probably his sanity.
Helen blew a kiss to Locklin, reciting the new keywords he wanted her to research as soon as possible.
‘Thanks, Hel,’ he said. ‘Anything to help me figure out how the necklace was swiped from the crate before it got here, would be great.’
‘You know, Jays,’ she said, ‘if there really was a necklace, I thought you’d be more worried about who swiped it rather than how they managed it.’
Locklin shook his head, swin
ging up onto Jack’s back for the lonely gallop home. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I already know who.’
‘Oh, go to sleep,’ Meggie Slaney begged her sister, rolling over. ‘It’s like, after midnight, babe.’
‘What are you, solar powered?’ Janet said. ‘Aren’t you the least bit excited? Am I the only one who’s looking out for you? Helloooo.’ Janet clapped her hands towards the sensor light on the chest of drawers between their beds and the lamp kissed aside the darkness, filling the converted verandah bedroom with a warm purple glow. ‘This is exactly what happened last time,’ she said. ‘Forget those magazines you read, Meggie. Trying to manipulate him didn’t work. You gotta get out there, girl. Get in his face or he’ll think you really did want to dump him. And you didn’t. I know you didn’t. You can’t hide that from your baby sister. You can’t. Uh-uh.’
Meggie pulled her purple bed sheet over her head, not wanting to be reminded of the biggest mistake of her life. ‘Oh like, I’ve got a chance of getting him back now,’ she said tiredly. ‘A plain Jane like me.’
‘Hey, if you don’t have a chance, what hope have I got? Besides, look at Sarah Ferguson. Everyone called her a plane Jane but she got to be a duchess. And Bette Midler, everyone says she’s divine! Mind you, Fergie got divorced. But that wasn’t her fault. It was the Queen’s, wasn’t it? I mean, the royal family never really wanted her. And you don’t have a Queen to worry about. Nobody’s going to stand up and say, you can’t be Mrs Jayson MacLeod, now are they? Well? Are they?’
‘Stuart MacLeod did.’
‘What do you mean? Oh, the thing about Jayson having to use his mum’s maiden name,’ she said, answering her own question. ‘Well, Stuart MacLeod is dead now. Jayson Locklin can be Jayson MacLeod again if he wants to.’ Her lips puckered and then frowned. ‘I reckon his dad had a hide signing him up in the army like that anyway, practically calling him a girl and all. Oh yeah, like Jayson is pumped on oestrogen — not. Like as if “Locklin” is an Aboriginally significant name or something. It’s German, isn’t it? Or Welsh? I mean, his mum wasn’t even a quarter Aboriginal. I heard she didn’t even like witchetty grubs. So how is this hoo-ha over what name he goes by significant? Would someone please explain this to me?’
