The Easy Day Was Yesterday (22 page)

I was really getting bored, so decided to walk to the prison office where Manish worked. The Chief Clerk told me to sit and sent someone to buy Sprite. We had a glass each and it tasted so good and I could feel the sugar give my energy level a slight lift. While in the office I found two old newspapers with a Sudoku puzzle in each. Sudoku gave me something to do at night, so I asked if I could take the puzzles. The Chief Clerk happily agreed. I sat there for a while and watched the activity in this very small office happen around me. It soon became apparent that there just wasn’t room for me, the Chief Clerk, Manish and Gaz, so I told them I would return to the cage. But they wouldn’t hear of it and insisted that I sit.

The Chief Clerk and the Warden were the only prison employees working in the office, all the others were prisoners working for extra privileges. Gaz worked alongside Manish with the Chief Clerk. He and Manish were arrested together for the same offence, but both declared their innocence. Gaz had some long Indian name that I couldn’t pronounce, so I shortened it to ‘Gaz’. After a day the name stuck and I heard the Chief Clerk refer to him as ‘Gaz’.

So, on orders to stay, I watched as the prisoners who had been to court during the day were processed back into the prison. I also noticed the prison guards outside as they patrolled with their old, rusted weapons. It reminded me of the time I spent in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea (PNG) working at a gold mine. It was like another life …

I had been out of the army for six months and was working as a security supervisor at a gold mine in the Highlands of PNG. I hated the job and couldn’t relate to the people; I really missed the army. I was on night shift this night and doing security guard work at the sag mill. The sag mill is the place where they sent all the big rocks to be ground down to a thick paste. The thick paste was full of gold dust and the locals knew this. So there I was sitting on the awning that covered the massive generator, reading a book, with my Mossberg shotgun by my side. The awning gave me a good view over one side of the compound, but in reality it was a lazy option to sit somewhere out of the way. Next to the awning was a staircase that led to the first floor of the building. A mill worker was driving the bobcat around the yard moving dirt from one place to another and I was so bored that I was entertained by his skill on the machine. Suddenly a man ran from the doorway next to the awning. He was a PNG national and he ran down the stairs and across the yard. The mill worker stopped the bobcat and watched the man run in panic. I grabbed my Mossberg, jumped off the awning, ran down the stairs and chased the man across the yard thinking he’d stolen something.

The man stopped in the corner of the yard and pointed frantically back towards the staircase we’d both just run down. I turned around and saw two men appear in the doorway. The man in the rear had a pistol to the head of the man in front of him. I cocked my Mossberg and saw another man appear behind the two. He had a shotgun and appeared shocked that I wasn’t still on the roof of the awning. I reached for my hand-held radio and raised the alarm in the security control room where I knew I could find some reinforcements. My message was clear and understood and I had a sense of confidence that assistance was on the way. The bobcat driver was still sitting frozen in the bobcat, so I told him to get out, which he did and ran underneath the building.

Talking on the radio created some tension between the criminals and me. They were yelling at me to drop my gun. I aimed my weapon at the head of the man restraining the hostage, who I now identified as the security guard from the front gate, and knew I could hit him, but at this point in time a lot of ‘what ifs’ entered my mind. Like, what if the man pulls the trigger of his pistol as he falls and kills the hostage? What if I miss and hit the hostage? And let’s not forget that, at that point in time, I had a shotgun pointed at my head too. I decided to take cover behind a pile of rocks, but the two men and hostage kept walking towards me. Suddenly, the police were blurting out instructions on the radio which, at this time, was located in my pocket. I couldn’t grab it, to do so would mean letting go of my weapon.

The criminals became alarmed, realising that their plan had gone to shit, so they began to back up. Now it was my turn to follow. I decided the best thing to do was to contain the incident until help arrived, which would hopefully be soon.

Phil and Darren were having a break in the security control room when they heard my garbled call over the radio. Darren grabbed a Mossberg from the armoury, a 25-round belt of ammunition and ran for the vehicle. On his way to the incident, a faster vehicle passed him from the security office, which was also responding. As the response crews arrived, they were confronted by a locked gate. Meanwhile, the reserve police elements had arrived at the front gate and were directed by Darren to move down behind the fence line in an attempt to cut off the criminals’ escape route.

I followed the three towards the corner of the fence line. I knew they were trapped; there was no way out except over the fence which was covered in razor wire. As I backed them up, to my horror, I saw two more men jump the fence and another five or six running around on the other side of the fence, all with weapons. The men were climbing up onto the roof of the toilet block located along the fence line and were jumping off the roof into the compound. I decided to take some cover and see where that fucking support was.

The group of three continued pacing back and forth along the fence line looking for a way out. The other men behind the fence were trying unsuccessfully to cut into it with machetes. I decided to throw a gas grenade to break up this activity. Unfortunately, I’ve never had a good throwing arm and the grenade landed short and blew back into me, causing my eyes to water and to continue watering while I remained in this position. I started laughing at the stupidity of the situation. There were about 10 men with guns and a hostage only a short distance away and only me in their way and I had added to their arsenal by gassing myself — classic. I felt comfortable that no shots had been fired at this stage and I thought that the criminals just wanted out, so I decided to move across the yard to another covered position away from the gas. As I moved, I was pursued by a volley of shots; this changed everything. No longer was this a stand-off, it was now a gunfight. My new position was about 10 metres from the hostage and the criminal. The third man had joined two other men behind a pipe and continued to fire in my direction. They weren’t very good shots though, and their rounds were well off target.

The police were now down behind the criminal gang and were located on the other side of a creek. They were lying low in an attempt to ambush the criminals when they withdrew. I heard them tell Darren on the radio that they were in position. I wondered where the hell Darren was.

At the gate, Darren tried to squeeze through the two steel gates, but the gap wasn’t wide enough, so he directed a vehicle to nudge up against the fence and continue moving forward. Eventually the lock snapped open and the response force was in. When Darren entered the yard, he could see the hostage and criminal walking back and forth along the fence line, but couldn’t see me. At this stage the incident was contained, but we still had a jittery criminal holding a hostage with the odd round coming in. I could see a local security guard near some old drums, so I ran over to him and asked if he’d seen Darren.

‘Yes, he’s down between the drums.’

I moved to Darren and briefed him on what had happened and the situation at hand. We decided to call for the Sig Sauer 5.56 semi-automatic assault rifle to be brought up to us. If we had to take out the criminal, this weapon would be far more accurate than the Mossberg. I moved back to my position to give us a better coverage of the incident. I could see men crawling around on the other side of the fence trying to get a better shot at me, so I had to watch them as well as keep an eye on the hostage and the criminal. They were now near the toilet block and some men were jumping onto the toilet block and were escaping. They’d given up on their mate who was still caught inside with the hostage. I tried to warn the police that the group was on its way down towards them, but a group of locals had assembled on the other side of the creek on the high ground and was warning the criminals to go up the creek because a trap had been set. I then tried to tell the police to move up towards the toilet block, but the battery on my radio had gone flat — isn’t that always the way? So Darren passed the message.

The lone criminal was still located at the toilet. Every time he let go of the hostage to attempt to jump onto the toilet roof, I called out to him and he grabbed the hostage again. This happened four or five times until I decided to move closer to the two of them — I really wanted to arrest one of them. At this, the criminal decided to just go for it and off he went, leaving the hostage behind. Darren moved up to me and we both watched for any further movement, but saw nothing. Up until this time I hadn’t fired any rounds, but Darren had fired a few suppressive rounds. We had ample opportunity to fire and hit the criminals, but there was no justification. A number of times the criminals stood up behind the corrugated iron and fired at us, we could have fired a solid round (a solid is a single ball of lead fired from the shotgun) straight through the iron and into one of them, and believe me we were tempted, but there was no justification to do this, so we didn’t. We secured the hostage and told him to report to the front gate where a group of security guards was waiting to be deployed. The police were now at the fence line, but hadn’t made any arrests. The Mill Foreman contacted Darren and I and told us that one of his men was missing. Darren and I realised that we had no choice but to go and get him. We jumped the fence and, with the police and a dog and handler, we moved forward. We’d moved about five metres when Darren and I realised we were on our own. We tried to call the police forward into an extended line, but they were reluctant, so off we went, essentially on our own.

We climbed a small rise, one man moving at a time while the other covered. I moved with my weapon on fire, a solid in the chamber, the butt in my shoulder and my finger lightly on the trigger. We reached the top of the rise and moved down the other side trying to get out of the silhouette as quickly as possible. We found the bottom of the five-metre descent and began to climb again. To the front of us, about five metres away, was a patch of thick grass and weeds standing about a metre high. I was concerned about the covered area and strained my eyes to see into it, when I saw a flash erupt from the bush and then heard the crack. Darren yelled that he had been hit in the shoulder and I could see a lot of movement in the grass. A man stood up out of the grass and pointed his weapon directly at me. I raised my weapon and instinctively fired. The man fell and his limp body rolled back down the rise. I quickly moved to him and felt his carotid pulse for any sign of life — there was none. The man had died instantly. As Darren was hit, another man had appeared to the left, a bit further off. Darren fired the Sig and the figure jumped clear and ran away under cover of darkness. The years of training as an infantry soldier kept me from dwelling on the life I’d just taken and I continued forward to a covered position and asked if Darren was okay — he seemed to be coping. We continued to move forward in turn, clearing as we went. My pulse was racing now, let me tell you.

Behind us, the police were moving through the grass when the dog started to bark. A man was trying to crawl away from the scene, but had made enough noise for the dog to detect him. The police moved in and jumped on the man who happened to be the criminal who had held the hostage in the yard. They took the pistol from him and then dished out a little PNG justice, which included picking up rocks and driving them into his head. The man tried to cover himself by putting his hands over his face, but they just continued to smash rocks into his face, splitting his fingers open like squashed bananas in the process. By the time they were finished, the man was a bleeding mess. Darren and I saw this, but kept moving forward.

After moving about 15 metres beyond the grass area, we received word that the person who was missing had been located. Darren and I stopped and I told him that I’d killed one. He hadn’t realised and was surprised. We moved back to the compound and called in the civilian police who began an investigation.

The next few days proved eventful. Darren and I had to write statements and brief the rest of the security department on what had occurred at the mill. The man who was arrested and beaten by the police escaped from prison and is still on the run. Security was boosted with the expectation of a reprisal. The body went for a post-mortem that consisted of the doctor removing a solid slug from the chest of the deceased and nothing more. Death was said to have occurred because all of the major internal organs were destroyed; that’ll do it. No action was taken against me — the shot was deemed to be legal and justified.

But that was then and this is now and I was bored and wanted to stroll the yard with the politician before lock-down; I also knew that the old man would be pissed if I didn’t get back in time for my evening bath. So I got up and simply said I had to go, ignoring their pleas to stay. These three guys were good people and they broke up my very long days and stopped me thinking about my crap situation.

That night the Hari Krishnas let rip again, then the Warden came by for his usual evening chat. He was a very kind man and told me not despair, but to pray to God and everything would be okay. I wondered whether he would be so kind to me if the police Inspector hadn’t asked for special treatment, or the Nepali Police Superintendent hadn’t been supporting me or, importantly, the Mayor, Bala, hadn’t insisted he be called if I needed anything. Whatever, I was glad he seemed to be on my team. In fact, I was damned fortunate to have all that support.

Manish came by around 9.00 pm. Manish was allowed extra privileges because he worked in the prison. He wasn’t paid for this, but the extra privileges would certainly make his 20 years in gaol a little easier to bear. Manish kindly brought me four cold rotis and a cup of lukewarm vomit in which to dip my roti. I thanked him and discarded both once he had left. It was a quiet night of thinking, Sudoku and more thinking. I spent a lot of time thinking about the kids and our future. I was also worried about my dear old dad.