‘Well done, Cresswell! Reckon if there’d been someone shooting at you as well, that would have been worth a medal.’
Alan gave a humph of laughter as the comment relaxed the tension of the situation, and, as Dan promised to strip him when they got back to the others and ‘go over him for leeches’, he quipped, ‘What more could a man ask?’
Chapter Fifteen
If vigilance had been the order of the day before the airdrop, afterwards the tension of the exercise was screwed several notches tighter.
Before they moved off on the fifteenth day, the major beckoned them round for a briefing.
‘I worked this area for most of the war with the help of old Entap here, “the best pucking scout in Perak!”’ He paused after the imitation of the Dyak’s response to any remark made to him, and Entap self-consciously put his blowpipe to his mouth and made the spitting noise that preceded the expulsion of the poisoned darts.
‘And unless,’ the major went on, ‘our calculations are seriously out we’re within a day’s march of the camp we think the commies use as area headquarters. All kinds of activities point this way — a major link in their jungle postal system, raids to extort and terrorise, printing of leaflets, training, indoctrination, we believe it all goes on at this base.’
‘Anyway, Entap and I are the reason this unit’s come in from the longest cross-jungle route — not, Veasey, because I had a personal down on anyone. I thought we’d get that clear now.’
Alan glanced down at Dan, who shuffled a jungle boot in the undergrowth and scowled like a guilty schoolboy.
‘The other units on this op won’t have started so soon or have travelled so far, but we serve to complete the encirclement. If the CTs make for the deepest jungle we’ll probably be heavily involved in picking them off. I hope we will anyway, though we’re running a little behind time.
‘We had a decent result at the kampong; this next could be the best result of the whole campaign so far.’
They murmured their support and even Alan was impressed in spite of his alienation as Sturgess went on.
‘Entap has found elephant tracks just off to the left. I propose to use these provided they don’t veer off our course too much. It’ll give us the chance to move more quickly and to keep a better lookout for their tripwires.’
It was the practice of both sides to guard their positions with elaborate systems of alarms or booby traps — a tin set to rattle against a pole, a bundle of tins in a tree, a flare or an antipersonnel mine.
They moved cautiously though much quicker all that day, following the paths the elephants had trampled, marvelling at the branches torn from trees and saplings uprooted as the animals had grazed their way through the jungle.
Sturgess read his compass and consulted Entap at regular intervals, and early in the same afternoon the Dyak came back to the line of soldiers with the speed and silence that astonished Alan and gestured them all down.
He was pulling his tube of poison darts from his belt as he went forwards alone. They listened intently, rifles at the ready. Alan thought he heard a noise like a tree keeling over, as they often did on the soft jungle floor, except that the next moment Entap reappeared grinning, holding something down by his side.
Sturgess, who was nearest, swore softly.
‘Pucking guard,’ Entap reported, lifting his left hand to reveal he carried the guard’s head.
Behind him Alan heard Danny bring back his breakfast. Several men swore and blasphemed under their breath; Alan swallowed hard several times. He had heard that this was something these Dyaks did instead of carrying the whole man back for identification purposes. In camp he had seen them sitting around their tent, continually honing their parangs to razor-edged sharpness.
‘You know?’ Entap asked, holding his trophy higher for Sturgess to examine. ‘You take picture!’
‘Yes,’ the major said patiently, ‘then you can get rid of it. I said I would use my camera so you do not need to do this.’
A look of hurt and stubbornness came over the tribesman’s face and after the photograph had been taken Alan suspected he took the scalp before finally disposing of the head at the major’s insistence — at gunpoint.
‘We don’t want anything extra to carry,’ he told the tracker. ‘Now on we go. But good work, good work!’ He patted Entap on the back and his grin came back immediately.
About an hour after this Sturgess halted the line and called them in again. ‘We’ve made good time so we’ll bivouac early, keep a low profile in case they miss their man — we don’t want to trigger anything too soon.’
There was a heightening of morale, for now their officer was working as a fully committed soldier. Alan too admitted his superiority as an officer in action. Every soldier had heard of officers and sergeants who deliberately made their presence known in the jungle — to make sure they never did encounter any terrorists. He watched Sturgess as he went from man to man with a word for each one; in action he was of a different calibre.
‘Have a listen in,’ Sturgess asked as he reached Alan, ‘just make sure there’s nothing we should know about.’
The signaller had barely swung his radio and pack from his shoulder when from some distance came a single reverberating echo. It was hardly more than the sound of an eardrum popping as an aircraft climbed, but they all froze, listening intently. The single shot was followed by the unmistakeable stutter of an automatic weapon.
‘Christ! Someone’s blown it!’ Sturgess spat out the words.
‘Not all that walking for nothing!’ Dan stood and shook his head.
Alan dived for his radio, put on headphones and throat microphone, switched on and listened to the operation frequency. Silence. Then he switched to their headquarters at Ipoh. His hand was just reaching for the knob to retune back to the operation call station when the smooth, upper-class and unmistakeable voice of the commander in chief came on the air.
‘Sunray here! Attention! Sunray here! All units Operation Tight squeeze! Go in now! I repeat. Go in now! All units ... ’
Alan looked up at the major, slipped the headphones off and handed them to him. Sturgess listened, nodded, handed them back. ‘Acknowledge,’ he said turning back to the men. ‘We’re going in now!’ he told them. ‘I estimate we’re about a quarter of a mile from the camp — a bloody long way in jungle, but if these tracks go our way a bit farther and the CTs want a quick way out, we may pick some of ‘em up.’
He gestured to Alan to let him have the throat microphone as well and, pressing it to his larynx, reported in no more than a whisper.
‘Unit One to Sunray. We’re on a natural escape route so won’t go in hell for leather, we may pick up more if we let ‘em funnel in rather than scatter them around the jungle.’ He listened out, then passed the instruments back to Alan.
‘The other thing is it’ll be dark in about an hour,’ he told the group. ‘We’ll move off right way, then lie in ambush along these tracks for the night. Signaller, see what else you can pick up as we go.’
Alan reassembled his kit, loaded up, locked his radio on to the operation frequency and, wearing his headphones and throat microphone over from the set on his back, followed the major and the sergeant. They had barely gone two hundred yards when they were again given urgent signals from Entap to disperse.
Alan slid the headphones aside a little so he could hear what was happening around him. It was not difficult. Whoever was coming, he thought, was not Dyak or Iban and sounded in a blind panic. The jungle trapped the sounds, sending them rolling along the track like the echoes in a tunnel. Soon, he thought he could actually hear laboured breathing, the regular suck and pump of air, then he realised it was his own heart thumping.