3am approaching the Sydney Harbour Naval Precinct, Garden Island, Sunday 27 January 1985
The massive black slab loomed out of the choppy waters like Moby Dick’s dark twin. A cross-wave slapped his eyes, causing another involuntary tilt of the surfboard made slippery by the black tape Alice wound comprehensively round it as camouflage. He corrected with his outstretched arms and trailed a leg behind him to check for the umpteenth time the limpet mine was still securely strapped between the fins. His toe jabbed the metal canister, hastily drawing back as if it might trigger its deadly contents.
He wanted to finger scoop the stinging salt water out of his eyes and snort the stench of sewage, shipyard oil and spilled fuel and God knows what else. He spat and continued his careful paddling.
He was still getting used to this large longboard he liberated from behind the Bondi surf lifesavers’ shed. It would have been quicker on his own sleek foam snapper and without the drag of the oversized wetsuit and its built-in headpiece. It would be totally quicker kneeling and getting some real thrust into his paddling, but that risked a silhouette that could be spotted by the sentries, and then the searchlights pinning him like a rabbit in a hunter’s roof-mounted power light. He knew there would be sentries.
It didn’t matter that Australia was a friend, the US Navy stayed on high alert 24/7. There was more reason for vigilance with these peacenik Greenpeace protesters milling about Sydney harbour getting in the way of the ANZUS naval exercises. He should know, he was one of the protesters -- but now he was staging a night-time lone protest. It was going to be way more effective than waving banners on the wharf and from yachts circling the battleships, about as menacing as white butterflies fluttering around an elephant. What the American Navy didn’t know was that right at this moment they were under attack from one of their own, a former US Navy midshipman was homing in on one of their nuke ships, and he was stealthier than a torpedo, there was no wake to reveal his presence.
He was bumped. He gasped, cringing, waiting for the impact. Nothing. It could only be a piece of driftwood, harbour flotsam or, more likely, jetsam dumped off a boat. He strained to see. Was that a dorsal fin? Nah. No way, José. If you saw it, you were too late. Relax. Take it easy. That bloody movie Jaws had a lot to answer for, even a decade on. Sharks had to be as uncertain about him as he was about them. Relax, deep breath, sharks are not interested in chowing down on rubber. Besides, Alice insisted on the appalling shark repellent, claiming there were thousands of sharks in the harbour cruising about at any given time. He wasn’t worried. Not much. He toe-checked the strap holding the mine to the board.
Come on. He was being a worry wort like Alice. Must be catching. Memo to himself: Remember to tell Alice about Moby Dick’s dark twin. She’d like that. Alice liked imagery. They first got talking in a tutorial about Melville and his big white whale. He’d told the class you could believe anything when you were surfing the Nantucket Sleighride. When questioned he said it was just a saying among surfers.
She ambushed him after class and wanted to know what it was really all about. Clever girl. He failed to talk his way out of that little bullshit lapse, but they got to talking long into the night. Here they were many nights later and he’d better stop mind-wandering if he wanted to survive the dark whale. Aldus must have fed him one fat spliff.
Now he was inside the 50-metre zone he further suppressed his presence by spading his hands ever so slowly, one dig at a time. He knew the score. Like every other recruit he had the induction briefings on the sonar capabilities for detecting incoming incursions. He was ideally suited to attacking his former employer. That’s why Aldus asked him. Let’s face it, Aldus didn’t have a lot of choice among the beardie and weirdie protesters. Who else had his skills? Nada, zip, zero, zilch. It was him or retool, try something else.
He blinked, seeing blurrily through salt-red eyes the brutal warship curving high over him like Darth Vader’s Death Ship poised to squash this feeble little intruder bug. He shook his head to clear the crap comic-book capitalist debris of Hollywood’s notion of our Hollywood President’s Star Wars and the English Literature class on Melville and his malignant whale. This was for real. He was going to strike a mighty blow against the Imperialist American war machine he once served.
It wasn’t Pearl Harbour, but it would be a shock to post-war American naval supremacy, comfortable for decades now shelling targets but not taking fire itself. This would show those amateur protest sailors what would really hurt the self-appointed US global police force, crippling a nuclear warship in the supposedly safe harbour of a client state. All he had to do was attach to the hull between the propellers this limpet mine Aldus told him he acquired through bribery from their own armoury. Aldus was blithe about the whole shemozzle, just twist the timer a half-turn and paddle the hell out of there before it blew the warship’s mobility to a twisted standstill. That was the plan, and now it was time to execute. Piss, or get off the pot.
He stopped paddling as he heard what sounded like muffled clanging. He tilted his head but could hear no voices. It was a frisky sort of night, dark clouds racing overhead, subdued safety lights on the warship and the few craft on the water, the distant tinkling of halyards from moored yachts, but all otherwise quiet, no sound of freight movements from the Royal Australian Navy shipyards. This was exactly as he needed it to be. What he heard if he counted correctly were the six bells for three am. The witching hour.
The stink was getting worse. The stifling heat was if anything intensifying. It was raising the ante. It was like every one of the 200 ratings had done a synchronised emptying of bowels overboard before heading for shore leave, leaving him trapped underneath this massive floating shit-can. He couldn’t put up with much more of this. But he had to. He had a job to do, a job he volunteered for.
Aldus assured him it was foolproof, and that he was the perfect man for the job. Nice of Aldus to say so, and he knew he had to take some of the blame for that. He had overegged his qualifications. Aldus was a Southern man, went on about the great life in the Big Easy, the sea food and the Cajun music, like a dash of mongrel French and native culture was superior to the New York melting pot. It brought out the boasting side of him. He told Aldus he could swim like a fish, surf like a dolphin, dive deeper than a sperm whale, and it wasn’t all long, tall Texan bullshit. He had done the US Combat Diving Course, could hold his breath under water for six minutes. None of the bronzed Bondi beach boys came within what they would call a bull’s roar of that.
No more than an hour ago, it seemed longer, Aldus farewelled him on his mission with one of his crushing Zorba the Greek embraces, rough black beard, strong body odour. For a moment there it made him wonder if this overweight and gargoyle-ugly marine engineer and fellow deserter was maybe a dick-diddler.
None of it mattered now, the power of Aldus Bruce’s aromatic assurances fading as he faced up to attacking a nuclear warship. Edging through the dark waters towards this potential Hiroshima, he flashed on scenes from the nuclear holocaust movie On the Beach, set in Australia. Could his mine trigger the nuclear bombs aboard, light up Sydney and him along with it, his last sight the mushroom cloud rising into the murky sky?
His imagination was running away with him. Get a grip. He could hear his mother sigh, looking away, dissatisfied he was not resolute like his father, a brooder, she called him. Their only child was a disappointment to them. He was never going to work his way up from lowly midshipman like his father did, become an officer and a gentleman, like that corny movie a year or so ago with Richard Gere posing in his pristine white naval uniform.
Come on, concentrate. Aldus insisted the mine could not under any circumstances set off a nuclear reaction. He was just reassuring him. He knew himself you could not trigger a nuclear device with a conventional bomb. It would be nothing more than a conventional explosion, Aldus said, but it would blow apart the propellers and probably a hole in the stern, and that would surely shake up the American Navy, you could bet your bottom dollar. He liked the sound of that. He said he would do it.
Aldus would be waiting, watching. He’d peel off this hot, itchy rubber wetsuit Aldus had supplied, they would climb into the outboard dinghy and zoom off into the sunrise, away from every other able-bodied sailor and shore crew racing to check out the underwater explosion and the listing ship. Like their Vietnam vet instructor said at Annapolis, hit the enemy with maximum shock. They would soon be running around like headless chickens.
Mustn’t count his chickens just yet. He eased the board against the rough steel of the hull, using one leg braced against its side to steady the board as he flipped it over and peeled at an obliging fragment of loose tape. He had to pass the unravelling tape around the girth of the surfboard, at the extent of his reach. In doing so he tipped the board and in correcting it he went under, taking in a disgusting mouthful. He pulled at the tape, somersaulting the board, but releasing a good length. He wound undone the cross-strapping and could feel the canister move. It was no bigger than the colander Alice drained peas in, and had the same conical shape, while its deadly contents hardly weighed as much as two bricks.
He paused, considered unzipping his headpiece, but decided against it. Concentrate on releasing the mine with one hand, holding it with the other.
It was free, resting on the board. He felt the magnetic pads. Now he traced the outline of the switch. According to Aldus it was a time fuse activated like setting an egg-timer, but not the four minutes for an egg, this gave him 30 minutes to get away.
He took a breath to steady himself, and it had the opposite effect. He began coughing and the tickle got worse, the coughing intensified. In the process he lost his grip on the canister and it slid overboard. Christopher friggin Columbus! He let go and dived, remarkably catching the canister.
He flashed on the movie of those Italian frogmen riding their torpedo-mines silently through the harbour waters to their targets. The difference was they and the audience could see what was going on. He was in pitch darkness as he paddled, and he banged hard against the hull. The clang reverberated through his skull, making him wince.
There was no way he could pause. He used his starboard hand mostly for motion and prodded the hull with his port hand, proceeding in awkward bumps towards the stern. He hoped and prayed that nobody had heard.
Direction no longer mattered when lights began dancing on the surface a matter of a few metres or so above him. He had to attach the mine. He cranked the switch and jammed the mine against the hull, no time to worry about the propellers. Aldus said it was foolproof.
The mine decided to part company. He must have placed the wrong end against the hull. Everything was cockeyed in the stinking wet dark brutal underbelly of the ship. Boy, would Aldus be pissed.
He upended himself and kicked as far as he could downward, his hands waving about like strands of kelp. He had not expanded his chest and stored air. Too late now. His thinking was slowmo. Smoking that joint with Aldus beforehand was a mistake. Concentrate.
He extended his hands into a wedge shape out in front, scissoring his legs to propel himself down. He could feel his chest tightening, but he had to recover the mine, he was not sure how long before it blew, it might have been the allotted half-hour, but the way things were going it could be half that, or a half-minute. For all he knew Aldus was new at the priming game. Aldus had explained about the ratchet breaking the seal and starting the chemical reaction which would initiate the ignition of the fuse, but he couldn’t pretend he understood. Science was not his thing. He was sure he had cranked it to the engagement point. He would continue to try and get to it, slap it against the hull, then get the hell away.
For one hopeful second he thought he had made contact with the bomb, but then realised that the rasping was much rougher and it continued, and it was shredding his rubber suit. Too late to recover the mine. He used the thick ridge to swing himself up the other side, and just in time as the water on the side he had abandoned shook violently and the side of the hull pulsed like J Arthur Rank’s cinema gong introducing those dreary Brit movies Alice dragged him along to at the varsity movie club.
It wasn’t much of a mine explosion, he had heard nothing, though that was probably because his ears were roaring with distressed blood. He had an insane urge to laugh. Not a good idea.
He could not think straight, but he retained enough sense not to open his mouth. Which direction? He was totally confused. He seemed unable to use his legs to kick, or his arms to breaststroke. He had to surface. Stop fighting it, go with the flow, let gravity assert itself. He stopped struggling and let himself drift.
His heart was going like the clappers and his chest was bursting. An inner voice was advising him to open his mouth and take a decent drink. What little reason remained, probably primitive brain stem instinct, cautioned him to keep his mouth shut. He tried a weak flailing of his arms, a few stirrings of his legs, but it was futile. It did nothing to quell the massed choir in his skull, the din of a cataract of water pounding on his head, pounding inside his head. He could not endure this. Time to take a drink.
As water entered his mouth he came out into blessed air, coughing, spluttering, spitting water. He was between the ship and its wharf berth, the other side from where he approached and blew it up. Didn’t he? The ship seemed to be upright. He could hear a high decibel drone like a wasp nest disturbed, harsh light probing down the side of the ship. He didn’t move, mainly because he lacked the strength. Patrol boat. He was literally in shit creek without a paddle. All they need do was chug the length of the ship, 50 metres if he remembered correctly. Yes, the zone. He thought he remembered entering the 50-metre zone, but then what happened?
There was a washing machine swirling of water and the light disappeared. They would probably just wait for him to turn himself in and ask for a packet of codeine and a double brandy. No, it was rum in the Navy. If they felt so inclined. They wouldn’t. The US ran dry ships. They would throw him in the brig. He giggled, hiccupped, blinked, shook his head, trying to get his befuddled brain on an even keel, so to speak.
The dime dropped. The bomb was a fizzer, thanks a bundle, Aldus. What he experienced was the impact of concussion grenades. Bastards. Underwater there would be no big explosion to attract local attention, but the grenades would have blown out his eardrums and probably his mind, if the ship itself had not taken the blows. He should have known they would be ready and waiting for an incursion, given all the hoo-ha in the media about anarchist eco-terrorists and the like. He had to face it, that he was a failed eco-terrorist. He preferred the Aldus version, eco-warrior, but either way it was a fail.
He dogpaddled under the wharf and rested against a crossbeam between piles. Any shark prepared to endure the human waste and chemical cocktail lapping around him would get an unexpected snack, if rubber was also to its taste. He was fatalistic. Too tired to do anything.
He lay back against the rough wood, stunned, like a landed fish struggling to take a few last, pathetic gasps. His brain seemed to be revolving. He pictured the bug-eyed denizens of those underground Rob Cobb cartoons. He knew he had to get into the park beyond the naval yards, go to the far top side. Aldus and Alice had a rubber ducky at the ready. They could paddle until they were around the headland and safe from the patrol, then activate the outboard and be away laughing. Instead, he was slumped laughing, the combo of adrenaline and marijuana a potent mix.
The USS Buchanan was no laughing matter, arcing over him like a sinister metal wave, like something out of that amazing rock version of War of the Worlds a few years ago. He shuddered at the memory of the clanging and hissing of the attack ship from Mars landing on the Common. Alice liked the gooey song by Justin Hayward, she was always leaving it on the turntable on repeat. He would bump the LP back to Richard Burton intoning that no one would have believed that creatures from outer space were plotting against us. For his money it was mad American generals and specifically admirals like his hawkish father who were plotting the destruction of mankind.
In the days when he still talked to his father, his position – the position of the US Navy – drove him insane with rage. They would neither confirm nor deny whether their nuclear-powered warships carried nuclear weapons. They took us all for compliant fools, as they wasted astonishing amounts of money on building ever more powerful weapons of mass destruction in their ridiculous juvenile claim to bragging rights over the Soviets. Reagan called Russia the Evil Empire, the focus of evil in the modern world. A few dozen socialist regimes in South America and South-East Asia might characterise America as the Evil Empire, and not recognise it was the self-proclaimed Saviour and Champion of the Free World. The Bible-banging Establishment believed might was right, saw nothing wrong with having enough weapons to wipe out humanity 100 times over. They called it MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction. His father was so proud that America was top dog. The Doomsday Clock was a few minutes to midnight. They had to be stopped, the nuclear stockpiles had to be dismantled.
Yet here was Ali’s dorky doofus protest group at Sydney Uni debating whether the ship presently in harbour was carrying nukes. Was the Pope a Catholic! He had to be careful to maintain his persona and not reveal too much detail of what he knew about the US Navy. He settled for scorn, telling them the Americans were not cruising nuclear subs and warships around the world with messages of peace and reconciliation. Eventually most of the group saw reason. The consensus was the USS Buchanan carried at least several Hiroshimas. All it needed was a malfunction in the twin nuke engines and it would light up Sydney and blow it back to the Stone Age.
Their dinky little conventional bomb, Aldus assured him, would simply disable the propellers and remind America that it didn’t take much to threaten its self-appointed global policeman role. The bigger they are the harder they fall. He glanced up at this resting monster. He could -- if his father had his way – have been just another of the 200 or so pressganged serf ratings on this very obscenity. After the diving incident and his hospitalisation, he ditched his white clown Gene Kelly marching uniform and lit out of Annapolis on his version of the Nantucket Sleighride into the Pacific. He figured he was just ahead of the Navy enforcers.
The wetsuit was increasingly a hot suit, especially the pesky hood he wasn’t used to. It trapped his brain, which was beating like a tom-tom drum. Perhaps the grenades had concussed him? He wanted to rip off the suit right down to the swim briefs the vulgar Bondi surfers called bearded clam poachers and sink into the cooling water. He wouldn’t, not when those Navy hoodlums were out there looking for him. The suit proved effective camouflage. The patrol boat searchlight had passed right over him. But now it was time to vamoose, to get out of here pronto.
He slipped into the water and began breasting along the side of the wharf when he heard a voice from the hard above hissing his name, asking if he was there, was he hurt?
How come? Was he just guessing? What the hell was Aldus up to? Why didn’t he get out of here? Didn’t he notice there was a patrol boat on the prowl?
The wharf overhead was lit up by the returning searchlight. This time the beam was staying in one place. ‘Ahoy there!’ a loudspeaker crackled. ‘You there! Stand right where you are, buddy. Do not move. Put your hands above your head.’
He felt the vibrating of the approaching patrol boat, the bump as it made contact with the wharf. There was a rapid popping of a pistol, the extinction of the light, cursing from the loudspeaker and a withering burst of bullets cutting across the wharf deck. A body crashed into the water metres away.
There was a flailing of the water and Aldus gasped his name. He slipped into the water and eased himself towards his threshing comrade. Aldus lunged at him and grabbed his suit and pulled him so close he was flooded in his stinking garlic breath. He tried to push him away. Aldus held him in a vice-like grip.
‘Listen up,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I’m hit real bad. Get away, man. Or you never will.’
He started to say he couldn’t leave him. ‘Cochon! Go! Somebody’ll be in touch. Get away. I’ll tell them it was only me. Save yourself and Alice. Go! Go!’
He repeated he would not leave him. He could not say anymore as a hard metal object rammed into his throat.
‘Go -- or I shoot.’
The gun poked into his neck. ‘I mean it. We can’t leave any evidence.’
There were boots on the deck above, approaching but then pausing. A torch beam was flicking along the narrow corridor of berth water between them and the ship.
‘Last chance, fella.’
There was enough light to identify Aldus raising the gun. Then there was nothing but the crazy light flashes and vicious crack of automatic rifle fire. He instinctively ducked as salvos of bullets peppered the bobbing, listing body of Aldus. The probing torchlight briefly lit the bloodied ragdoll shape that had been Aldus. Bastards gave him no chance. A pop gun against the Pig, maybe against the devastating SAW, if there were two marines operating it. He had only used these weapons against vaguely Asian cut-out targets on the rifle range. He had never fired in anger, but if he had a weapon, he would be returning fire.
Instead, he took a deep breath and dropped down into the stinking waters. There was no time for questions about why Aldus effectively committed suicide by waving his useless and probably emptied pistol at his vastly advantaged attackers. All he could do was sink to the bottom of the deepest natural harbour in the world, carefully surface and swim back around the warship and try to evade the patrols, get into and across the park and pray Alice was still there with the inflatable. Not much to ask, was it?