handgun in its webbing rig on his chest.
Sonny didn’t waste time. ‘Hey, Mosie – let ‘em out,’ he said, pulling up the chair behind the desk and sitting down. Moses opened the cell door and positioned himself in front of the confi scated weapons.
Sawtell stalked out of the cage, looking like he could kill someone with his bare hands. Sonny put his hands up, palms facing Sawtell.
‘Time to talk, eh boys?’ When Sonny said ‘boys’ it sounded like he was saying ‘boice’.
Sawtell and Sonny talked and talked. They talked about campaigns, about people they’d lost, bullets they’d taken, idiot superiors and the stresses of dealing with friendly fi re in a combat zone. They even realised they’d both been in Somalia at the same time.
When Limo’s death came up they talked about how much it hurt to tell a bloke’s mum that her boy had bought it, but how important it was to make that call yourself, not let the bureaucracy do it for you.
Sawtell welled up. Sonny didn’t blink. He said you knew you were in deep when your boys’ welfare meant more to you than your own.
‘That’s not weak, John – that’s being a professional. That’s the way it has to be.’
Sawtell sniffl ed. Wanted to say something but his lip quivered and he stared at the ground. Mac didn’t know where to look. He’d never been in the inner circle of the military when soldiers did this kind of debrief. He’d assumed they just got drunk.
‘Tell you something else, John – that boy, the big fella – he was the only one who clocked me,’ said Sonny, his voice respectful. ‘Got a shot off too. Good talent, good lad that one.’
‘His name was Alvarez, Christian Alvarez,’ said Hard-on, tears running down his cheeks. ‘We called him Limo ‘cos he was built for comfort not speed.’
‘Well he was the fastest of the lot in that clearing, eh boys?’ said Sonny. ‘Billy the fucking Kid. Scared the shit outta me – lost it so bad I almost took Chalkie’s head off!’
They all chuckled at that one.
‘And then what’d we do? One less intel fuckwit to get us in the shit.’ There were wry smiles as Sonny continued. ‘Us simple army boys wouldn’t know how to fuck it up without Chalks here to help us, eh?’
The soldiers laughed and Sonny ruffl ed Mac’s hair, pretended to try again when Mac leaned away.
Soldier psychiatry: make it all about the offi ce guy, get the team bonding.
Sawtell wiped his cheek with the back of his hand. Turned to his lads. Hard-on and Spikey looked like jocks ready to get back in the game. Something passed between the three of them.
Sawtell looked back to Sonny, said, ‘What’s up?’
The Green Berets were assigned rooms and had their showers, then ate with Sonny’s skeleton crew in the mess. They ate steaks, mashed spud and then Hemi brought over a plate of steaming corn cobs.
Sonny’s eyes went wide as hands reached from everywhere. Corn was a favoured military food if you could get it. It made you feel full and had a slow-burn energy effect.
‘Hey, McQueen. This reminds me of that time in the desert.
Remember?’ said Sonny. ‘In the Yanks’ mess? Tell ‘em the story.’
Mac had hoped Sonny wouldn’t want to relive that episode. He batted it away. ‘Some other time, eh Sonny? Let’s talk Garrison.’
‘Easy,’ said Sonny. ‘You get the girl, Hemi grabs Garrison, then we pick up Limo on the way back. Sounds like a plan.’ He pointed his cob at Mac. Sly smile. ‘Shit, Chalkie’s embarrassed. A blushing Australian.
Who would have thought.’
Mac put his cob down, leaned back, looked at the ceiling. Yes, he was embarrassed.
‘It was a long time ago, Sonny – I thought I was doing the right thing,’ he said. He could feel a constellation of dark eyes in brown faces staring at him. He felt like an iridescent son of Saxony. He looked back at Sonny.
‘I’m not a racist, okay?!’
There was a pause. Then they all laughed. Mac put his face in his hands, moaned slightly. He was still very tired, lump on his head the size of a lemon.
Hard-on grabbed Spikey by the arm, made a high-pitched nasal mimic. ‘ I’m not a racist, okay?’
The hard men of the military shrieked like a bunch of girls. Hemi had to hold on to the kitchen bench, like he was having a seizure.
Sonny cried with laughter. Moses, who was sitting beside Mac, patted him on the back. Smiled a very big Fijian smile.
Mac let them go. He watched a joke go down that he was excluded from. Forever.
He fi nally held up his hands. ‘Okay, Sonny, I’ll tell the fucking story.’
‘See this corn?’ He looked at Hard-on and then Sawtell as they caught their breath. ‘They don’t serve it like this in the ANZAC chow tents. If you’re Aussie and Kiwi, they pour loose frozen corn kernels out of white plastic bags, boil it till you can’t taste it and then expect people to eat it.’
‘Yuk,’ said Spikey. ‘Why don’t they just get the cobs in?’
‘That’s what Sonny here reckoned. It was the end of the fi rst Gulf War, there were two days till the airlift, and this madman here,’ Mac pointed at Sonny, ‘had heard that the Yanks served fresh corn cobs. So he invited himself to eat in the US Army NCOs’ mess.’
‘This in Basra?’ asked Sawtell.
‘Yep.’
Hard-on whistled low.
‘They put up with him for a few days – the Yanks were getting ready to pull out and they were feeding a lot of people. I think they were being polite.’
‘Sounds like us,’ said Sawtell.
‘I was seconded with Army MI for a few days and I was sitting in the NCO mess one afternoon. I had a pass.’
The lads ooo ed.
‘Anyway,’ said Mac, ‘in walks Sonny with a couple of his SAS lads.
And the bloke – what’s he called, the steward?’
‘Yeah, the mess steward,’ said Sawtell.
‘He intercepts Sonny and tries to tell him that lunch is off. Sorry, but that’s the rules.’
‘No dice?’ asked Sawtell. He laughed, shook his head like hard case!
‘But Sonny has already seen the corn, sitting there in the bain-marie,’ Mac continued. ‘And the cook seems okay to have it eaten, so the steward shrugs it off. But on the way to the bain-marie Sonny goes past this Army bloke.’
‘US Army?’ asked Sawtell.
Mac nodded. ‘They let you wear T-shirts in the American messes, and this bloke had a very short-sleeved T- shirt on, and he had these tattoos down his arms. He was a skinny, blond guy. You’d call him a peckerhead, or a, a pecker…’ Mac searched for the word.
‘Peckerwood,’ said Spikey.
‘That’s it,’ said Mac. ‘Peckerwood – Southern accent, and on one of his arms he had a Confederate fl ag.’
Hard-on whistled low again, turned to look at Sonny. So did Sawtell. Sonny shrugged.
‘So Sonny stops. But he doesn’t worry about the bloke’s fl ag, ‘cos on the other arm he’s got a Maori design.’
‘Moko, Chalks,’ said Sonny. ‘Fucking moko. Get it right.’
‘Sonny goes “Nice ink you got there, Chalkie – perhaps you’d like to fi ll me in on its history?” And the Peckerwood doesn’t have a fucking clue who this guy is or what he just said.’
The table laughed, egging Mac on.
‘So Sonny says, “The tat, Chalks. The fucking tat – that’s my family you’ve got on your fucking arm.” And this Peckerwood is getting frazzled. Tries to shoo Sonny away.’
Sawtell was loving this. ‘Bad idea, huh?’
‘Terrible fucking idea. Sonny does that Maori thing, looks him up and down like he can’t believe that such stupidity and ugliness exist in the same body – it just can’t be physically possible.’
Hard-on and Spikey high-fi ved.
