“Belt up,” Brian said.
“That’s no argument.”
“It’s an answer, though. I might be a slave this minute but I’m going to stop being one soon.”
“Only because they’re letting you go.”
“That ain’t what I mean. I don’t care if it takes five years: I’m going to stop being a slave.”
“Close up,” Odgeson shouted back. “Here’s some more of the plane.”
“It’s like a jig-saw puzzle,” Cheshire said. “Three-and-six from Woolworth’s.”
“You’ll never stop being a slave to something,” Baker said.
A tail elevator of shining aluminium lay in their path like a gate barring their way to an abundant and well-cultivated small-holding. They stepped over it one by one, as if afraid to damage it and have to pay the farmer for its repair: Baker had the sense to kick it fiat. Brian took the radio from him: “I didn’t try and hit that bandit I saw back there. I fired plenty, but hoped I wouldn’t get him.”
“I wouldn’t be able to stop myself,” Baker replied, not believing. A clearing had been brewed out of the jungle by the main wreck of the plane: it had come to rest against the far end of a plateau, a cigar-shaped fuselage, a priceless accomplishment hanging dead and derelict halfway down between the trees, pieces of wing and wood and glittering fabric scattered all around. It was inaccessible without ropes, ten or fifteen feet up, looking like the victim of an unsuccessful attempt to decorate a Christmas tree. They stood fifty yards off, speechless after having searched for what seemed like weeks. The fuselage was scattered with rips along its frame where branches had impeded its clumsy uncalled-for descent, some foliage seeming to grow out of the plane itself as if it had been there far longer than forty hours. There was no movement, noise, or cries of life from it. On the underbelly by the pilot’s cabin, as though some great hand had given it a nosebleeder, was a broad crimson mark, dried and hardly noticeable in the first look. “O Christ,” Brian said, unloading the radio.
“What a way to die.” Baker slung down his pack.
“Poor bastards,” said Cheshire. My stomach’s hard, but my heart’s as sick as a dog’s, Brian felt, while Odgeson blew his guts out on the jungle-rescue whistle, hoping to reach Knotman and the army. Its dull throat-notes filled the air, low and warbling, the sort of alarm-noise that during the war sent Colin and Dave scurrying from their fireside cups of tea into the backyard and cold November streets to avoid the coppers they imagined after them. When Odgeson had no breath left, he asked Brian to have a go.
It was accepted, and he flexed his lungs so that both God and the Devil would hear, only to be startled by the solid lead-heavy crack of what seemed a tree bough, as though the plane had weighed sufficiently and long enough to snap one down. Baker ducked, as if, Brian thought, the whistle unblown between his lips, the bough was right above their heads and threatening to fall. Another sharp crack revealed this and the first as rifle shots — now they were all down, pressed into the undergrowth as, from the direction of the plane, in the thick bush under its stranded body, leapt a wide-toothed saw of bullets, flying close around, burning into tree bark or burying their noses into soft clammy soil. It wasn’t difficult to find cover: Brian moved back, dragging the wireless set, to shield his face, towards a length of tree trunk that kept his guts secure, though he felt his feet exposed at the mixture of twigs, leaves, and random bullets scattering about them like the butt-end of a typhoon thunderstorm. The incredible noise numbed him with a feeling of helplessness, as if the bullets came from such an army that it was no use fighting back, like an uneven rattling against the palings of hell that left only the impulse to press hands to each ear. “It’s the army,” Cheshire said. “The bastards think we’re bandits. Hey!” he shouted. “It’s us. Nark it, for Christ’s sake!”
Odgeson and Baker were sending bullets across the clearing in the general line of fire, though this was difficult to pin down, for after the first rush it seemed more scattered and spasmodic. “The army can’t be that far off,” Odgeson yelled. “They’re bound to hear this racket.”
Brian pressed a clip into his magazine, raised himself to line foresight and backsight through the undergrowth, settled for a hefty yard-wide monster of a tree and let fly — harmlessly. I’d better hold back, he thought. The others’ll have nowt left in a bit. Fear and sickness grew into him and he lowered his head, an image flashed from his first life of when he had been in gang-fights, each manoeuvring warrior-band hurling showers of stones and bottle-tops through the blue sky above tips or field. Though every missile was dangerous and shunned as if it carried death, he had stayed fixed on the ground to be held with the rest of them, whether or not he had been frightened of injury at that particular hour.
In such danger he lived on two levels, one of fear, and one of not taking the fear seriously so that the situation seemed a harmless though perhaps foolish kind of game. He looked up, lifted his rifle to fire but could see no one, peered a while at the thick enclosing foliage in the half-darkness of the jungle. There were neither faces nor movement around the wrecked plane, though bullets still came at an uneven rate from it. In a one-second reflection, Brian reasoned that maybe the bandits had difficulty in seeing them as well, though as if to call him liar and point out that this was no game, a bullet went too close to Odgeson’s elbow as he was lifting for a cool aim. He swore with shock and the rifle jumped from his hands as if a charge of electricity had gone through it, wounding him so that all he could do, and did, was get the whistle up to his mouth and use what extra strength had been given his lungs due to the incapacitated arm — blowing so that the noise rose even above a renewed burst of firing.
Brian did not want to lift his head and be killed, but when he forgot for a few seconds that to be killed was possible, he drew the butt into his shoulder and failed to see anything worth aiming at. Maybe the bastard that got away from me is busy letting us have it from over there: though when he did press out a trio on rapid fire, he had no desire to kill or wound because the sense that they were caught in some kind of game was still with him. They want to kill us, though, he thought with bitterness, firing into the bushes so that for once, at least, he had as much chance as Cheshire of stopping someone’s gallop for good. Bullets came back. They’re rich in ammunition, he surmised, as they smacked into iron trees or came fizzing so uncomfortably close that the dam of fear broke and pushed his face into the now sweet-smelling soil.
Baker had finished his ammo and was rifling Odgeson’s pack for more clips. The noise, according to each bullet’s often accidental trajectory, varied from the snap of giant dead branches to the hollow receding echo singing on a last journey down the mountainside, from the savage and vicious clout against a tree to the dull burial in a pillow of soil; and amid all this was the low moan of Odgeson’s whistle signalling for help. Brian filled in the gaps of their firing, making his own noise for survival, though he knew that his bullets were having no effect, and hoped that no one would notice that they weren’t.
He laughed, a shattering loud cry that the others were too busy to bother about: I’m making a present for Mimi, he thought. A goodbye gift in not shooting to kill maybe someone who, for all I know, is the old boy-friend she had at high school in Singapore. He lay on the damp earth of the forest, some yards from a rampart of covering tree trunk, reloading with fresh clips dragged out of his pack. His refusal to get caught up in trying to kill the Communists (who were clearly wanting to slaughter them for a rich haul in rifles and wireless gear) held him from the advantages of rage and excitement that might have given him the semblance of courage. As it was, the level of fear stayed with him, burning his face and eyes and causing his guts to creak like the timbers of an old battleship.