by Anita Bell
He peeled off his militia shirt and stepped over Shorty’s peppered corpse to inspect his friends. Behind him, the sky thumped with the rotors of four Blackhawks.
Harvey was unconscious and Mulhany wasn’t far behind them, nodding in and out of consciousness with a half-eaten banana in his hand. Rogers was the unit’s first aid man, sitting in a pool of blood, his leg tourniqued with his own underwear and grinning. ‘About bloody time you got here, bludger,’ he said, struggling over the pain. ‘Didn’t have to get yourself all shot up.’
Locklin smiled weakly, reaching down to inspect his own wounds and feeling pain burn across his shoulders.
‘Ow, what’s this?’ he said, reaching inside his shirt and finding pulped flesh. Blood spread a wet warmth over his fingers and touching his shoulder electrified agony across his chest. The pain opened up a pit in his belly that tried to swallow him.
‘Nice shade of white, mate,’ Rogers said, listening to Locklin swear. ‘You’re in shock. You should sit down.’
But he couldn’t, not yet. A Blackhawk whipped the puddles outside to froth as it hovered close to the ground and he could hear nine men jumping out to secure the landing zone. One, maybe two medic flights shouldn’t be far behind them, but he needed them now.
‘Listen!’ he told Rogers and explained about their orders quickly. ‘Westy has to get the credit for neutralising this place, okay? If the UN want to get stupid about it, they’ll have a harder time pushing us out of here if they’ve only got a dead man for a scapegoat.’
Rogers started to shake his head and then stopped. ‘Westy was good to me,’ he said. ‘I don’t like hanging him out as a scapegoat, but I don’t like him dying for nothing either. I guess he would’a suggested the same thing.’
Locklin nodded. ‘I’ll make sure his family knows the truth.’
‘You bet,’ Rogers said, forcing his agonised grimace into a grin. ‘Now get me a gallon of morphine, will ya? I’ve had about enough of today as I can take.’
Locklin clapped the private on the shoulder. He’d had enough too and he stumbled over Shorty’s body to get outside with his hands on his head to put an end to it.
‘Here!’ he shouted, as shock drained the last of the strength from his legs. ‘Over here!’ He waved and stumbled again, falling as he caught the attention of a sergeant who ran to assist him. His cheek hit the mud and someone rolled him over.
Through the east gate, he heard the shouts of women as the village filled with survivors and a yellow dog ran to lick his face.
‘Hey, Sarge!’ A corporal shouted. ‘We can’t fly this one.’ He was talking about the pregnant woman. ‘She’s ready to blow.’
‘Sure you can, Setchy,’ the sergeant shouted over the rotors. ‘Just keep your catcher’s mitt handy. Get her loaded.’
A hand touched Locklin’s shoulder and he swore.
‘Not in front of the children, soldier,’ the sergeant told him, poking at his collarbone. ‘Just tell me if this hurts …’
‘Isn’t this where you’re supposed to preach me the sixth commandment?’ Locklin asked.
Connolly paced in a circle, stopping next to him. ‘Every flock needs a shepherd,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘and occasionally each shepherd must use force against the wolves.’
Locklin clenched his fists in frustration. ‘You don’t understand. I killed eleven men! Eleven! How could I do that?’ He stared at Connolly, wondering if the older man could see what he’d become. ‘Did the army put this monster inside me?’ he pleaded. ‘Or was it always there? I need to know!’
‘You’re not a monster, lad,’ Connolly said. ‘You only did what you had to do.’
Locklin raked his fingers through his hair and swore, then apologised for it in front of the priest. He got to his feet and paced to his horse. ‘If you’d come through that boathouse door earlier,’ he said, ‘and struggled before I recognised you, you could be dead now. Do you realise that?’ He shaped his hands, as if breaking a chicken’s neck. ‘Reflex — snap — just like that.’
‘I don’t think so, Jayson. You’re not a killer, you might think you are now. I can understand that. It was one man against twelve. But you must remember that one of those twelve is still alive. He’s alive because you made a conscious decision to keep him that way, even though it nearly cost you your own life. That’s what makes you a good person, son. That’s what makes you different from them.’
Locklin slid up onto Jack’s back and nodded. ‘If you say so,’ he said, hoping that was true. He knew as well as any surgeon how to snap a spine to terminate life — and that scared the hell out of him.
As he cantered out into the lake to swim around the end of the cattle fence, Connolly could see that he was still worried about it.
The older man waited until the horse and rider had dissolved into the scrub on the other side of the boundary and then climbed behind the wheel of his Kingswood, wondering what else he could do to support Jayson Locklin. There were more just like him in East Timor, he realised, but he couldn’t help any of them until he was back in the army. He tapped the envelope in his pocket, determined to keep posting away his applications until the recruitment board accepted him.
He slipped the old car into fourth gear and pulled out onto the main road headed back to Lowood, still thinking about it. He indicated to turn right out of habit, even though nothing was coming to give way to, but the indicator didn’t cancel until the wheel had straightened up — and by then it was too late.
The Landcruiser that sped around the corner behind him had already seen him.
Eric Maitland stamped his foot on the brake and squinted into the sun. Ahead of him, a Holden Kingswood pulled out of his private track to the boathouse. He recognised it and scratched his wiry goatee with a skinny finger, wondering what the priest was doing out this way before nine o’clock in the morning. The only things to minister to in that scrubby paddock were the snakes, the wallabies and a few fat pelicans along the shore.
Maitland dropped the four-wheel drive into third gear, and was thankful now that his stomach had demanded breakfast in town before getting back to work. He drove slowly until the Kingswood was out of sight, but he wasn’t too worried about being recognised if the driver looked behind him. His older stepbrother would take care of everything.
‘What do you mean, me?’ Maitland snapped into his cell phone a few minutes later. ‘I can’t take care of a priest, man. It’s bad luck!’
‘You didn’t have any trouble helping with the last two,’ Fletcher said. ‘Take his collar off if it helps.’
‘I can’t kill a priest,’ Maitland repeated. ‘You’ll have to send someone else.’
Fletcher growled into the phone, wishing he could rid himself of his stepbrother at the same time. But he needed him. Maitland was good at what he did and Fletcher knew that finding a replacement in time to cope with the next delivery would be next to impossible.
‘Even if I did put someone on the next flight,’ Fletcher growled, ‘getting organised and getting out there puts a three-hour delay into the scenario. I don’t like the fact he was there at all, even if he didn’t see anything. You have to handle it now, before he does anything else.’
‘All right, all right,’ Maitland said, as he pulled up at the boat-house. ‘Let me think.’ The priest couldn’t have seen much. Cobwebs laced the curtains to the windows and the boathouse door was still locked, making it even less penetrable for a wayward priest, who — rumour had it — was keen to get back into the army anyway.
‘No wait,’ Maitland said, inspired. ‘Let’s not overreact. You remember the portrait you had me do for that special job last May?’
‘Yes,’ Fletcher said. The Minister for Defence had wanted a copy of Picasso’s ‘Harlequin’ for his wife for Mother’s Day. It was the only time that Fletcher had made money legitimately out of one of his wife’s parliamentary associates. The rest of the time he spent organising brown-paper-bag deals to exploit her business connections behind her back.
/>
‘He owes you a favour?’ Maitland asked, and Fletcher said yes again.
‘Perfect,’ Maitland said. ‘The priest can’t poke around if he’s not here. He’s an ex-army padre. Word has it he wants back in, so I say we help him.’
‘What?’ Fletcher snapped. ‘I’m not the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Kill him.’
‘My way gets us what we want with no mess and less risk of anyone asking you any questions. It’s radical,’ he added, ‘but …’
‘Worth trying, you think under the circumstances,’ Fletcher cut in, angry that his stepbrother could be right. ‘How far is it from Lowood to the air force base?’
‘Amberley?’ Maitland said, working it out. ‘About twenty minutes.’
‘Then that’s the fastest this can work. Get yourself into town. I want you to follow the priest and stay with him until things happen. I’ll make the call now, but I want to know if he speaks to anyone in the meantime.’
‘All right,’ Maitland huffed. ‘If I must.’
‘One more thing,’ Fletcher said, catching him before the line went dead. ‘It’s about the next shipment. The buyers contacted me after you left and told me they want the next delivery brought forward.’
‘How soon?’ Maitland asked.
‘Tonight.’
‘Tonight! Have you gone completely insane?’ Maitland whinged, still hoping to have a month. ‘Nothing’s ready!’
‘Before you complain,’ Fletcher said, controlling his rage at having his sanity questioned, ‘it’s only for two items. The most valuable ones.’ Then he told him what they were and there was a long silence, which told Fletcher that Maitland still didn’t like the news.
But that didn’t matter. Maitland had all day to get the shipment ready, when he only needed ten minutes. The time-consuming forgeries could be done later.
Lieutenant Colonel Chang jumped from the Blackhawk with two aides and jogged to the limit of the rotors before waving off the pilot. He’d been set down in the landing zone just beyond the officers’ mess at Maliana Headquarters which meant he didn’t need a jeep to get to the command hut. He could walk.
Major Maxwell, the second in charge to the camp commander, met him halfway and assigned people to take care of his gear.
‘I sent an armoured troop carrier out at dawn to get them,’ Maxwell said after the pleasantries. ‘They were due to rendezvous north of Lolo Toi this afternoon anyway, so I just recalled the unit early.’
‘Very good,’ Chang nodded. ‘I gather Corporal Locklin is with them?’
Maxwell shook his head, ‘That’s the bad news. He was bunked down with these guys after we got him back from hospital, but the last anyone remembers seeing him was about four days ago. One of the privates said he saw him going into the supply hut. I checked that, and I can verify that he signed out three packs of day rations, two M26 fragmentation grenades, two magazine clips and a smoke grenade. That’s the last written evidence we-have that he was in camp.’
‘The patrol commander reported him missing?’
‘Again, no. He hasn’t been here to notice. Corporal Locklin was assigned to light duties around camp until he got a full medical clearance and we’ve had to keep the recon units out on three-day patrols almost constantly now that we’ve got the raiders on the run. We’ve had rollcalls but only for those who are supposed to be here, and as it turns out, there was some confusion over whether he was in Dili getting his medical clearance or back here and gone out on patrol. Like I said, the patrols have been kept so busy they haven’t had a chance to compare notes.’
Chang nodded. The administrative nightmare of stabilising the region promptly was something that all camp commanders were trying to address.
‘Things, have been kind of hectic here,’ Maxwell added needlessly.
He pointed to a passing group of women as an example. A small boy tossed a stick into their path and the major stopped the procession, waiting until a yellow dog had retrieved it before proceeding.
‘As you can see, some of the outlying villagers are so worried, they’re sending their families in to pitch tents in our backyard. Problem is, they didn’t bring any tents. I’ve got our people doubled up so we could get them into shelter until we can scratch up better lodgings, and I believe Corporal Locklin had been helping with that before he disappeared.’
‘You’re not treating him as AWOL?’ Chang asked. He clicked his fingers and one of his aides passed him a leave application with Locklin’s signature on the bottom and a red line marked across it with ‘denied’ scrawled in large letters. Chang handed it to Maxwell. ‘This looks like a pretty strong reason to want to get out of here.’
‘We couldn’t approve that application,’ Maxwell said. ‘There was no duplicate death certificate provided with the original application and by the time we got verification faxed through from the local priest, it was too late to get him home. He’d have missed the whole thing.’
‘You didn’t grant him leave anyway? That says he was the sole surviving son.’
‘Beg pardon, sir,’ Maxwell said. ‘These aren’t the Dark Ages. Our records also indicate that he’s got an older sister, which means he wasn’t required at home to sign the death certificate or finalise the estate. We do try to be considerate of each man’s needs sir, but like I said, things are hectic. He’s one of the best we have and we needed him here.’
‘All right then, if he’s not AWOL, where is he?’
Maxwell nodded to the women again, who seemed to be attracting a small crowd of mostly female privates.
‘We’re walking a tightrope here, Colonel, as you can see,’ Maxwell said, as they neared the excited huddle. ‘We have to work closely with the local community, but as the rebels go to ground, it’s getting harder to tell the friendlies from the foes. These people are all smiles now, but turn your back on the wrong crowd and you could end up with a knife in it.’
Chang walked with his eyes on the East Timorese, not liking where the conversation was headed.
‘Considering Corporal Locklin’s exemplary record,’ Maxwell continued, ‘and the fact that he took the disapproval of his leave application with good grace, I find it difficult to believe that he’s jumped ship. His unit was involved in the downfall of one of the most ruthless rebel leaders this country has ever seen. It’s my feeling that he may have been singled out for a revenge attack by rebels.’
‘You think we’re looking for a dead man?’ one of the aides asked.
‘That’s the worst case scenario obviously.’ Maxwell didn’t have to mention the alternatives. If a soldier had been taken prisoner without militia announcing it promptly, it meant they’d taken him across the border and had no short-term plans for releasing him.
‘I’ve taken immediate steps to investigate this, of course. We’ve got informants asking questions from Dili to Djakarta. If they’ve got him, we should have it confirmed in a few days.’
‘You’re stepping up security here too I trust?’
Maxwell nodded. ‘As we speak. Clear that crowd,’ he ordered the nearby gathering of privates. ‘Help these people back to their assigned lodgings arid secure the perimeter. Work in pairs,’ he added, which automatically told them not to let anyone wander off alone.
A female corporal approached with a worksheet and Maxwell stepped aside to answer her questions while Colonel Chang watched the nearby huddle disband. He nodded, proud of the care the younger soldiers seemed to take in helping the women and children to move on. They didn’t herd them like cattle, but he still frowned, seeing that the centre of attention had been a young baby.
As a father, it always affected him to see children displaced by military or political upheavals and as three young privates filled their arms with bundles of belongings, leaving the mother attempting to carry two in addition to her child, he hurried over to lighten her load. His aides followed, taking up the remaining bundles.
‘A lovely child,’ he said kindly in Tetum. ‘A boy?’
The mother nodded, and see
ing the crown and one pip on Chang’s shoulder, she cuddled the child closer and hurried away. A string of colourful beads fell from the baby’s bundle and a small boy bounced ahead of his dog to pick them up.
‘Lok Lin,’ the boy cried, chasing after his mother. ‘Lok Lin, Lok Lin, Lok Lin,’ he sang, dancing in front of her until she returned the toy to her baby. She chastised her son and taking him by the ear, looked over her shoulder at Chang as if embarrassed. She cuddled the baby even closer and hurried away.
One of Chang’s aides tapped him on the elbow, but he didn’t have to say that he recognised the woman. Chang had already figured out who she was.
‘I thought the villagers denied having any contact with our soldiers during their ordeal?’ Chang asked, as more privates ran to relieve the colonel and his aides of their bundles and hurry after the mother.
‘They did, sir. According to reports, they were kept in separate huts and had no direct contact with any of them. The pregnant woman said she retrieved the radio during a moment of confusion and figured out how to use it without instruction.’
The second aide laughed. ‘And she guessed the codenames for both Charlie Six and Sunray. I should have her pick my wife’s Lotto numbers.’
‘What’s the chances, sir,’ asked the first aide rhetorically, ‘of a rescued villager co-incidentally naming her newborn baby after one of the soldiers who was involved in her ordeal, at the same time as we’ve been trying to figure out who was really responsible for getting them out alive?’
Chang smiled. ‘I don’t think we need to worry about that question anymore, gentlemen. What we have here,’ he added as Major Maxwell rejoined the group, ‘is just one more reason to find our missing soldier. Have you checked his barracks, Major?’
‘I have. All his belongings seem to be in order, another reason why I think we can scratch him going AWOL.’
‘Stores have an open-door policy here at the moment, sir,’ Chang’s first aide suggested. ‘There’s no actual requirement to sign out rations. It is possible that he could have taken things with him and still left enough behind to give the illusion of still being here.’
