The Long Green Shore by John Hepworth Page B

there.’
    â€˜Wait a while—we might get mortar support.’
    â€˜If it doesn’t come in thirty seconds, it won’t come till we call,’ says Janos.
    He turns his wrist and glances briefly at the second hand of his watch. He keeps his wrist turned and his gaze goes back steadily to the jungle. Thirty seconds. The leaf drips fifteen grains of eternity.
    â€˜OK,’ he says. ‘Bring them forward, not too close. When I give the hand, get them down and let them keep down—less movement the better. They’ll probably have a cover man out—you watch him—I’ll try for the gun.’
    Janos glides away. Pez follows—his hand conjures the patrol from the earth—they materialise, drifting through the grey-green of the undergrowth. Harry Drew leads again, Regan is close behind him.
    Here is a ballet and a symphony—here is a dance whose name is Death—whose overture is silence—waiting on the cue for savage strings, the bowel-plucking whine of the bullets. All the earth and yesterday and tomorrow are blotted out in this fierce, relaxed concentration that narrows a burning spotlight on this rain-soaked stretch of mud and jungle. The earth is suspect, save where we stand—the trees are treacherous—the leaves slant like eyes.
    Janos drifts…the Owen in his hands loses the stock of metal and plastic and becomes an instinct of life, shifting and probing like mantis antennae…
    Pez’s hand beats imperatively towards the earth and the furtive life behind him returns to the earth.
    Janos drifts on. Pez follows—his dominant hand keeps the earth still and unbreathing behind him…
    Janos was right. They had a cover man out. Pez killed him as he fired at Janos, and Janos sprang towards the pit where the two Nips were trying to swing the gun around against him.
    He killed them both in the pit. One fell forward over the gun. The other—a big fellow with a square face—was trying to clamber out, trying to run. He fell against the edge of the pit, his crucified arms stretched up over the mounded earth, his fingers clawing, and he was biting in agony into the red clay of the edge of the pit when Janos fired again—and passed swiftly on, to drop, crouching, into the shelter of a further tree, his eyes swift and steady on the jungle as he snapped another clip into his Owen.
    In a few moments Pez joined him.
    â€˜I went through these two Nips in the hole,’ said Pez. ‘Nothing on mine at all. Three pens, a watch and a bundle of yen notes—take what you want.’
    â€˜Not for me,’ said Janos. ‘Thanks for getting that first one—he’d have got me.’
    â€˜I didn’t,’ said Pez. ‘I just nicked him. He tried again when I came up to him. I brained him with the butt.’
    The lobe of Janos’ right ear was a bloody smudge. Pez saw it as he rose. ‘I’ll fix that for you,’ he said.
    Janos rubbed a quick hand against it; stared for a moment at the smudge of blood on his palm; then rubbed it off on his trouser leg.
    â€˜She’ll do,’ he said. ‘Let’s wander on.’ He took two short steps, vomited briefly and spat with a wry mouth. He glided off into the trees.
    Pez looked for a moment at his loot from the bodies. He stuck the watch in his pocket, tossed the notes and fountain pens back into the pit and followed Janos.
    Behind him, the patrol materialised through the trees.
    The rest of that day we see nothing of the enemy—but that is no safety when with every step he may appear. We pass down the track. We reach a spot on the map, marked with a cross in red. We camp.
    We eat a mouthful of bully before dark. Our water bottles we have filled on the way. The rest of the Company is following behind us, spread in a thin line down the track back to the river. We dig ourselves in before dark and a quick patrol clears our front without finding anything. We make