Tomorrow 7 - The Other Side Of Dawn (15 page)

Finally the moment came. ‘Let’s do it,’ said Homer, picking up his daypack. Like kids on a school excursion we grabbed our stuff and followed him down the hill. I was suddenly too tired to resent the fact that Homer was telling us what to do yet again.

At least we didn’t have heavy loads; we’d hidden our main packs, to collect after the attack.

I found myself side by side with Lee and suddenly felt an urgent desire to connect with him, to weld myself to him. It was the complete opposite of the way I’d been a couple of hours before. I grabbed his hand and squeezed it tight. And when I say tight, I mean I drew blood. Well, nearly.

I was surprised at my feelings but I don’t think Lee was. He just made a face at me. He didn’t actually say, ‘Are you in a state of total terror?’ but he knew what was going on. My insides were liquid from the neck down. I could almost hear them sloshing around.

I kept my grip on Lee’s hand until we were fifty metres from the road. Then I let go, wondering when I would get to hold it again. And if I ever did, would it be warm and comforting, like now? Or would it be cold and clammy, lying lifeless in mine?

We said goodbye to Kevin. This was one part of our plan that made me incredibly nervous. The others seemed too willing to forgive and forget. I was happy to forgive. But forgetting
,
that was the hard part. As long as our plans involved Kevin I was going to keep seeing in my mind’s eye the blubbering wreck at the airfield. When we needed five people that day, we only had four. No, worse, we only had three, or two, because Kevin wasn’t just a zero back then, he was a minus number.

Maybe that’s too harsh, but that’s the way I felt, and to me Kevin had to prove himself again. Just being more involved and friendly wasn’t any kind of proof that in an emergency he’d stand tall and straight and strong. I thought we were a bit mad to put our trust in him.

Anyway, it was too late to say or do anything. I kissed him, same as
Fi
, but feeling like a hypocrite, giving a Judas kiss. And I waved as he hurried away. At least he looked focused. I had to hope that was enough.

We paralleled the road for a bit, till we could cross at a point we’d chosen earlier, between a bend to the right and a bend to the left. One by one we scuttled over the bitumen. I felt very exposed. We should be safe: we should hear any convoy or patrol as it approached, but I still three-quarters expected a bullet between my shoulder blades.

There was no bullet, for me or anyone else. When we were safely in the bush again we set off in single file, keeping a good distance apart. We were now only a k at the most from the servo. My nerves were screwed up, like a Sumo wrestler had taken a wrench and put all his strength into tightening them. The trees got thinner as we approached the outbuildings. We spread out to find cover. It was safer that way.
Made it harder for a soldier with an automatic weapon to kill all of us at once.

Carefully we picked our way through the ghost gums. They were well named. There was something eerie about the way their white trunks shone at
nighttime
.
Never more than this night.
My heart throbbed painfully as I saw the dark outlines of the main buildings. They had lights on inside, but like most places they had heavy curtains to stop those pesky New Zealand Air Force bombers seeing the lights and dropping little Valentines down their chimneys.

Well, heavy curtains weren’t going to stop us.

We were coming in towards the back corner of the service station. I saw and smelt a
Dumpmaster
. There was the usual collection of litter you find round the back of those places.
A couple of 44s, a derelict car, a few rusting engines, and an overhead tank that had been abandoned a long time ago.

Unfortunately the toilets were there too. I could see a shabby fibro building with a battered white door. Someone had left the door slightly open, and the light on inside. It wasn’t much light, probably only forty watts, but enough to see the little black man on the door with his top hat and walking stick.

Kind of weird when you think about it: a guy looking so elegant and dressed up, on the door of such a cruddy building.

We got a couple of steps closer, then stopped and crouched low as a bloke came round the corner and disappeared into the dunny.

I knew there was no danger from him so I huddled down and hugged myself while we waited. ‘No-one else is going to hug me,’ I thought, being a bit pathetic, but remembering again
Fi
and Homer passionately kissing each other. To stop myself getting too gloomy I went over the plans again. It seemed neat enough, the way we’d worked it out. Trouble was, it didn’t allow for things like soldiers acting unpredictably: doing their jobs extra well for example, or going for a bushwalk. It certainly didn’t allow for one of us failing.

The bloke finished in the toilet and went back to the main building. Without needing a signal we started moving again.

We were closer to the servo than I would have liked, but there was no choice. The bush behind the place was too thick and the hill too steep. It would have taken ages to get up there and down again.

Just after ten o’clock we arrived, at the other back corner.

Stretching away beyond us was the
carpark
, which looked like it had been extended since the start of the war. Guess these convoys were keeping them busy. They might have been a regular event. We should have paid this place a visit a long time ago. To my right was a billboard advertising KFC, but it looked tattered and
weatherbeaten
now. The bowsers were around the corner, out of my sight.

After the tension I’d been through to reach this point, it would have been a relief to go straight into action. No such luck. If it took all night we had to wait for a convoy. There wasn’t much value attacking an empty truck stop.

Homer and
Fi
and Gavin said goodbye. Somehow here, so close to the danger, it didn’t seem appropriate to embrace or kiss or whisper nice comments to each other. I patted Gavin on the head and mouthed at him: ‘Be careful. Take care.’ He just shrugged and made a face. I don’t know if he even understood what I’d said. They moved away so quickly that I got a shock at how fast they disappeared. They went into darkness, like it was a kind of death. They were swallowed up.

I looked at Lee. He seemed affected too. Maybe we were both wondering if we’d see them again in this life. He touched my elbow and we moved further down the slope. We found a hollow where we could see the bowsers. I crouched behind a bottlebrush, shoved my hands into my armpits and waited. My rifle was on the ground beside me and my daypack of explosives on the other side. For this little effort I was useless without these weapons. In fact I was only needed here as the means to activate them. Tonight I had no real value as a human being.

I amused myself by trying to remember the
Pimlott
Principles that Ryan had raved on about. We were certainly using surprise. And if we could go on and get the railway
line, that
would be momentum: keeping the enemy off-balance. And both were centres of gravity.

I couldn’t remember the other
Pimlott
Principle, but trying to remember it gave me something to think about, until nearly 10.45. Then a low hum in the distance told me that a convoy was approaching.

Our time had come.

At the same time I finally remembered the other
Pimlott
Principle. Go for targets that are achievable. I gulped, with a dry mouth. I could only hope we’d got that one right.

When I tried to stand I was alarmed to realise how much I’d stiffened up. I could hardly move. This wasn’t a good start. I desperately stretched my arms and legs, as much as I could without doing a full range of aerobic exercises behind the bottlebrush.

I soon realised though that we were way too early. We had to wait for most of the trucks to refuel before we could do anything. So in spite of my cramped muscles I crouched again, and tried to keep my limbs in working order.

I didn’t need to look to tell what was happening. The sounds were enough. Tough on Gavin, who was with Homer and
Fi
, and who relied on his eyes quite a lot.

The trucks came pouring in. It got noisy. Engines revving, people shouting orders or instructions or abuse, horns blaring. There was no sign of tanks, but there were quite a few cars.

Our first problem was unexpected though. First one man, then another, then another, then another, came past, all with the same idea: to get a bit of relief after being jolted around in their trucks for hours. The constant hissing and splashing, and the bitter smell, got unpleasant after a while. Worse, it made me want to do the same thing, and I found myself squirming, wishing I could duck into the bushes.

Lee whispered: ‘Maybe we should get a couple of them’, meaning the men using the lavatory.

‘But what would we do with them then?’ I whispered back. Funny, after all this time, I still hated to think of killing anyone in cold blood.

Lee didn’t answer.

The action around the bowsers continued without a break. I counted fifteen trucks rolling towards their parking area one by one, after they filled their tanks. I hoped they would meet Homer and Gavin and
Fi
there. Then at last there was a break in the toilet action. Without needing to tell each other we both got up at the same time and darted through the shadows, in and out of
Dumpmasters
and piles of drums and stacks of old tyres, towards the parking area.

There was no sign that Kevin was doing his job. I knew it was tricky for him, because we had no accurate way of working out the timing, but even so, by now he should have struck. I wished, not for the first time in this war, that I had followed my gut instinct and told Homer we shouldn’t use him. But as much as anything, I hoped for Kevin’s sake that nothing had gone seriously wrong. It would have been bad enough if the charge hadn’t gone off, or hadn’t been strong enough, but what would that matter compared to him being hurt or captured or killed?

Or – and this was the real issue for me – compared to him losing his nerve. What if he was now curled up in a ditch sobbing and shaking and wetting
himself
with fear?

I wriggled again. At least this way I was getting some exercise.

Then the lights went out.

Even with the curtains covering the windows it was instantly noticeable. I hadn’t realised how much light there had been over the whole place until suddenly there was none. And I heard the bowsers die. With a kind of ‘
Urrrrr
’ noise they stopped pumping. Kevin had come
good
after all.

I struggled to my feet and took a step out from behind my bottlebrush. Lee did the same, but on the other side. God it was dark. There’d been just a few calls and cries when the power first went but now it was getting noisy. I heard one voice start to emerge above the others, a guy who sounded like he was in charge. The way he talked, I think he was quite efficient, which was bad news for us. But we had to ignore him and get to work. Getting a good grip on the pack of explosive charges and the rifle, I crept along the side of the building. I saw a couple of dark shapes go past, heading in the other direction. It made me realise how visible I must be. I glanced across at Lee. He was further towards the shadows and a bit harder to see.

Already we were closing in on our target. I was startled to see how near we were. We were heading for the little parking area for cars, at the other end of the servo to the truck section. I strained my eyes, trying to see how many cars were in there. I could see some dull reflections, off metal and glass, and thought there were maybe three or four.

Lee loomed up beside me. He used his shoulder to push me towards the left, and I let him do it, knowing he must have a reason.

He did. Somehow he’d seen one car a little away from the others. That’s what we needed.
A bit of privacy.

We circled around behind it, moving as fast as we dared. I felt the fear rise inside me, so much of it that I put my spare hand on my stomach to try to keep it down. We came up behind the car, Lee on the right and me on the left. Through the back windscreen it looked like no-one was inside. I confirmed it by checking through the side windows. Same result. It didn’t surprise me. Anyone in his right mind wouldn’t sit inside a car during a blackout in the middle of a war zone.

We kept moving forward. At last I saw Lee’s target. A soldier was right ahead, his hand cupped over his eyes: that familiar gesture of someone searching darkness, trying to see
better
. We’d agreed before that we’d go for a pair of soldiers, that we needed two. That’s what we’d said in the easy peace of the bush, up on the hill, when we’d been working this out. Now it felt a bit different. We’d settle for one, no worries, and sort out our next move afterwards. I glanced across, caught Lee’s eye, pointed to myself, made a series of big beating gestures with my fist, pointed to Lee and made little tiptoeing motions. He nodded and I had to hope he’d got the message.

I dropped my pack and rifle, and we both sneaked up on the man, me still on the left, not sure when to start making some noise, when to act as the decoy. The timing was kind of crucial. My life depended on it.

I was maybe a dozen steps from him when it was decided for me, because I made a noise without meaning it. The side of my boot scraped on a split in the bitumen. The man turned around quite slowly, as if he was curious but not yet suspicious. I started moving faster, hoping Lee would move faster still. The man reacted then. With a 360-degree leap he jumped and spun onto the bonnet of the car. I had no problem seeing his next move.
A flying leap straight at me.
Already his legs were tensing, about to drive off the metal and into my guts.

I was completely out of my depth. I wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to do that Jackie Chan stuff.
Might as well ask me to do open heart surgery on a bandicoot.
I had my rifle, but I didn’t dare fire. I was relying on Lee. Maybe that was lucky, because I glanced across, beyond the man on the bonnet, to see if Lee was going to do anything in the near future. I guess it was like those old movies where
the goodie
pretends to see cops coming up behind the baddie, to trick the baddie into turning around. Only this was no trick. And I think the soldier realised it. Maybe it was because I did it so unconsciously, kind of naturally, like I wasn’t even thinking of how it would look to him.