Sword of Allah (7 page)

Sergeant Tom Wilkes rolled out of his hammock two hours before dawn. No one needed waking. Within moments, the men were all quietly repacking their gear. Muruk led the way back to the enemy village, the NVGs looking totally out of place on a young man wearing a penis gourd.

The soldiers knew things would be different as they approached the village this time. The two men they knocked on the head would have sounded the alarm and guards would undoubtedly be posted. Muruk kept them away from the trails, which made the going more difficult.

They arrived within twenty minutes of the village just as the sky in the east lightened to purple. The bush crawled with highlanders stalking soundlessly through it with AK-47s, and some with pistols. The advancing dawn eliminated the advantage of the NVGs. Muruk brought the party in a wide arc around the village, but they couldn’t get any closer. Wilkes wanted to get on the trail of the gun traders, or at least see in which direction they were headed.

‘Timbu, ask Muruk if there’s any higher ground around here that’ll give us a view of the village.’

The interpreter put it to Muruk, who gave Sergeant
Wilkes a nod. Half an hour later the men climbed a volcanic outcrop with the jungle spread out below. The soldiers pulled out their binoculars. Wilkes could clearly see the traders, maybe a dozen men, leaving the village. Behind them snaked a trail of natives toting the sacks of marijuana slung between poles. The scene reminded Wilkes of old Tarzan movies. The party was departing to the north, on the opposite side of the village to their observation post. Wilkes and his men kept watching until the column disappeared from view, in case the initial direction taken was a ruse and they doubled back.

By midday, they had picked up the trail. It wasn’t difficult. The traders were lazy bushmen, and perhaps confident that whatever they met in the jungle they had more than enough firepower to contend with. Wilkes had Muruk take them on a parallel course – close enough not to lose contact but far enough apart so that the two groups wouldn’t stumble on each other. That made their passage through the bush difficult. It was dense, and becoming more so. The traders had it relatively easy, taking the paths maintained by the tribesmen that moved between neighbouring settlements for trading and warring. At the end of the first day’s trek, Wilkes and his men were exhausted keeping up with the gunrunners. By the end of the second, they had begun to fall behind. The drop in altitude brought a marked increase in the thickness of the jungle. And the heat. There was no way to move without the help of a machete. They only managed to stay in touch with the traders by carefully probing forward after dark with the NVGs and establishing the whereabouts of the camp.

An hour into the third day, hacking their way through vines and scrubby bush that, at times, presented an impenetrable barrier, they found something interesting.

‘What is it?’ Timbu asked, sawing though a branch that had grown against a hatch, pinning it shut.

‘It’s a plane, obviously, but what type?’ said Wilkes, shrugging, staring at the museum piece in amazement.

‘It’s a US Army Air Force B-17. Heavy bomber workhorse for the Allies in World War II,’ said Littlemore. ‘My grandad was a Yank, flew one of these babies. Have we got time to check it out, boss?’ He took in the wreck wide-eyed.

‘Didn’t know that,’ said Wilkes. ‘About you being a Yankee-dog.’

‘Yeah, well, Pop was stationed in Townsville for a while – met an Aussie. They shagged. Nine months later, my dad poked his head out.’

‘Go for it,’ said Wilkes, his camouflaged face cracking a grin. ‘You got ten.’

‘Thanks, boss.’ Littlemore ducked inside the hatch. Beck followed.

The people they’d been tailing for over two days were heading north, probably trying to link up with a river that would take them to the sea, no other way out that Wilkes could see. He shrugged, and followed Timbu and Muruk inside the wreck. There was time.

Even though it was well over fifty years old, the aircraft was in remarkably good condition. The waist machine guns still contained ammunition and many of the plane’s surfaces held their paint. The men quickly realised that they were inside a gravesite – there were several piles of bleached bones and rotten fabric.

‘Doesn’t look like this baby’s last moments were too pleasant,’ Littlemore whispered to Wilkes. He pointed to large sections of the fuselage blackened with soot. ‘Been a fire. Check this out.’ He toed a large pile of brass shell casings on the floor. They were several centimetres deep in places.

Aside from the fire damage, the fuselage was riddled with holes from cannon shell and shrapnel, punctured jagged alloy indicating the force of the incoming enemy fire. None of the men spoke inside the plane out of respect for its long-dead occupants. The jungles of PNG held many such downed aircraft, thought Wilkes, remembering the altimeter face jangling from the chief’s neck. He whispered to Beck to recover any dog tags he could find, and left the aircraft to get his camera. There were probably friends and relatives back home in the US who were still hoping that, one day, the fate of their loved ones missing in action would be known.

Sergeant Wilkes circled the plane, taking photos, especially of its identification markings. The plane still had all its engines, although the wing outboard of the starboard engine was missing. He considered marking the B-17’s position on his GPS but decided against it. Best to let the old girl remain hidden. Once wreck hunters knew of its whereabouts, it would be stripped for souvenirs.

A short while later, they were back on the trail. Beck had found four dog tags, which Sergeant Wilkes had placed in his pack. Littlemore told him the B-17 had a crew of nine. Perhaps the other five men had parachuted out of the plane before it crashed. It was a mystery Wilkes knew they’d never solve. If nothing else came of this little detour,
he told himself, bringing these men home had made the trip worthwhile.

Muruk suggested that they climb again to get their bearings. They’d just passed another volcanic outcrop, so they backtracked. The view from its summit was panoramic and their hunch had proved right. The gunrunners had made for a river and a large, sprawling village, no doubt a trading hub for local commerce, that was hacked out of the jungle. Canoes of varying sizes plied the slow-moving black waters. The bad guys were making for the sea.

‘We’ll let them keep their head start,’ said Wilkes, peering through his binoculars. ‘We’ll bivouac here the night and keep watch. Two-hour shifts.’

‘Roger that, boss,’ said Ellis, observing the comings and goings along the river through his own pair of glasses. The gun traders would buy boats, if they didn’t have them set aside already, and float their cargo downriver. The village itself was still a primitive one. No electricity that he could make out, so no communications and no law enforcement. The Wild West. Still, it was unlikely that the gunrunners would just waltz into town toting a couple of dozen sacks bursting with ganja. That meant they also had to be camped somewhere in the bush, and close by. It would be a tense night.

But the night passed uneventfully. Sure enough, at dawn six long dugouts slipped from the river bank and slid down the inky waters, heading for the coast. The dope was piled up in the centre of the canoes, a man paddling fore and aft. Sergeant Wilkes didn’t say anything, didn’t need to. He and his men were packed and ready to move,
and this time it was down the main trail, so at least the going was easier. They hadn’t gone far before they passed the warriors that the smugglers had used as porters, on their way back home. There was plenty of eye contact, but no recognition from the warriors. Wilkes noted the change in Muruk’s easy gate, his muscles flexed and ready to fight. These were the enemies of his people, men who had killed his brothers and sisters and cousins. It was all the lad could do to hold himself in check.

Muruk and Timbu bargained with traders in the village for craft to take them downriver. The price was remarkably good, something Timbu attributed to the fact that he was accompanied by men bristling with weapons they obviously knew how to use. ‘I should take you guys shopping more often,’ he said to Wilkes as they pushed the primitive boats off the mud and into the slow-moving water. Wilkes, Timbu and Muruk took one boat, Ellis, Littlemore and Beck the other.

According to conversations Timbu had had with locals, the coast was half a day’s paddle away through increasingly steep volcanic gorges and, sure enough, the low-lying jungle soon gave way to the rugged, towering cliffs they’d been told about.

‘Jesus,’ said Littlemore as they paddled through them, jagged black volcanic walls rising out of the river like enormous steak knives.

They weren’t alone on the river. Tributaries joined the main flow, bringing other natives paddling downstream. Sergeant Wilkes didn’t have a plan, and that was making him uncomfortable.

‘What are you thinking, boss?’ said Littlemore, his dirty
red hair burning like copper in the tropical sun. He sensed Wilkes’s disquiet.

‘Not sure, to be honest,’ said Wilkes. ‘Our friends are heading somewhere. When we get there too, what do we do? Just paddle up and ask what they’re up to?’

‘Yeah, see what you mean,’ said Ellis, the canoes side by side.

‘We know we’ve got a half-day’s paddle ahead of us,’ Littlemore said. ‘Before we reach the sea, maybe we should ditch the boats and hoof it.’

‘That’s what I’m thinking,’ Wilkes said, looking up at those basalt steak knives. The thought of climbing them didn’t appeal at all. The river was far easier but potentially far more dangerous. He didn’t see that they had any alternative.

‘We should also hug those cliffs, I reckon,’ said Beck. ‘If we come round a bend and see something no one wants us to, we don’t want to be stuck in the middle, out here in the open.’

‘Yep,’ said Wilkes. He looked at his watch. ‘Okay, we’ll stay on the river a while longer, then go overland.’ The men nodded agreement. Wilkes dug the blade of his paddle deep in the oily water and made for the base of the cliffs.

The sun was directly overhead, beating down fiercely, when they beached their craft on a bank of silt. They were getting close to the sea – the waters had become tidal. They pulled the boats high into the mangroves, above the high-tide line. The men knew they’d had it easy till now
and things were going to get tougher. The volcanic cliffs would be difficult and dangerous to climb without ropes. They also had to climb with full packs. Sergeant Wilkes felt sorry for Timbu and Muruk. They were not SAS and he was asking a lot of them.

An hour of hard climbing later, they reached the top of the cliff face. There were enough handholds and footholds to reduce the danger of the climb, but the volcanic rock was sharp and unforgiving. It was also bakingly hot. Wilkes and his men had shooter’s gloves to protect their hands. Timbu and Muruk had to wrap cloth around theirs, but only after their palms and fingertips had lacerated and blistered, especially Timbu’s, his hands gone soft from city living. At the cliff’s summit, they could see that there was too much traffic on the river, and on the tributaries flowing into it, to be an everyday occurrence. And all of it was heading in the one direction. Another hour’s climb and they knew exactly what was going on.

‘Shit,’ said Beck, ‘look at that.’

A deep green bay ringed by the volcanic cliffs spread out below them. And in the centre of the bay, an old white cargo ship with a hull bleeding rust swung slowly at anchor, rising and falling on a lubricious swell. A steady stream of native craft plied to and from the vessel.

‘Jesus, all that’s missing here is Greensleeves,’ said Ellis. ‘Mr Whippy’s in da house.’

‘You had a strange childhood, mate,’ said Beck, nose wrinkled under the binoculars as he squinted into them.

‘No, seriously. The Mr Whippy guy in my neighbourhood got busted for dealing pot. The parents became suspicious when the fifteen year olds got more excited
than the six year olds every time he drove down the street.’

‘You’re full of crap sometimes, Gary,’ said Beck, snorting.

It was a truly astonishing sight. About thirty dugouts were clustered around the ship and bales of marijuana were being passed up into the hands of waiting crew, in return for which a rifle was handed down. The gunrunning/drug-smuggling operation going on here was far bigger than Wilkes had suspected. Papua New Guinea was a primitive land on the verge of anarchy with many parts of its society breaking down. What effect would a few thousand guns dumped in the place have? Wilkes had witnessed enough of the effects on Muruk’s people to have a point of view on that.

‘Can I look?’ Timbu asked.

Wilkes handed him the binoculars and took out his camera. More tourist photos for the people back home.

Timbu took a deep breath and exhaled. ‘This is very bad,’ he said.

Wilkes nodded. ‘Yes, it is.’

Muruk picked up the sound first and shook Wilkes. The sergeant stopped taking snaps and looked up. ‘Wasmara?’ he said.
What’s the matter?

‘Balus,’ said Muruk.
Aeroplane.

Wilkes couldn’t hear anything at first, and then he caught it – a distant buzzing. It got louder quickly. Whatever it was, it was approaching fast.

‘Is that a helo?’ asked Beck.

And then the chopper burst through the sea opening between the cliffs and banked hard to stay within them, scribing a tight circle around the ship: a BK-117 Eurocopter.
Wilkes snatched his binoculars from Timbu, who was staring at the helo open-mouthed.

‘Now, that’s flying,’ said Littlemore.

Tape covered over the helo’s registration markings. Whoever it was didn’t want to be identified. A man hung in the open doorway facing the ship. ‘What the hell is that guy doing?’ Wilkes asked no one in particular. The helicopter swept around the bay, its jet turbines roaring, blades beating the air with a deafening clatter.

The helo’s sudden arrival had an immediate effect on the ship’s company. They started firing up at it with hand guns, rifles – whatever was available and loaded. Wilkes watched as a man sprinted to the forward deck and threw back a tarpaulin. A large calibre machine gun mounted on a pillar lay beneath it. It looked to Wilkes a lot like the US .50 calibre M2 heavy machine gun. If so, the chopper was in a lot of trouble, especially if the gun was loaded with SLAP rounds. Saboted light armour piercing ammo would turn a civilian chopper with no armour plating into confetti. The man cocked it, aimed and fired, and a new sound filled the bay. High velocity slugs spewed from the weapon peppered with red tracer rounds that reached up for the helo. The machine gun followed the chopper as it circled, a spray of bullets pulverising the rock barely metres below Wilkes and his men.