Shakespeare on the Roof Read online

  ***

  Two: Ready for Action

  We dragged our kit into a pine forest that was growing near the beach, there were waterproof bags of food, guns, ammunition, binoculars, maps, spare socks, underwear, condoms, all the usual sort of thing. When we had finished I sat down on my bundles and collapsed, bloody exhausted, my mate stood in the prone position watching, waiting, ready for action.

  'You're ready for anything,' I said after five minutes of half dazed wakeful sleep.

  'Got to be,' he said in his strange high pitched American whine, I examined him more closely and I couldn't believe my eyes.

  'You've got tits!' I said.

  'So what if I have?'

  'You're a girl!'

  'So! I'm as good as any man, especially a man who can't even handle a cruise in a submarine.'

  'A bloody woman,' I said. I'm not sexist but sometimes it just seems to come naturally, we all have our bad hair days.

  She was tall, only just short of me and I'm over six feet, she took her cap off and beautiful long, dark hair fell down around her shoulders. She had blue eyes, lovely sunny day sea blue eyes. She had a pointy nose and rich creamy pink lips and her skin was a soft tan.

  'I can shoot as straight as you,' she said.

  'But this is dangerous work, this is obviously a dangerous mission.'

  'I'll do what has to be done.'

  'I reckon we are both dead, twice dead times two.'

  'We will accomplish our mission, that's all that counts.'

  'I don't think so, I'm fond of my skin, too fond you might think, but for the moment me and my skin want to stick together.'

  'Are you about to rescind on your duty?'

  'God don't give me that duty stuff, I've had it up to here,' I said lifting my hand to the level of my throat and then going higher.

  'You are required to carry out your instructions,' she said.

  'We will have to abort the mission,' I said. 'By the way what is the mission?'

  'We are going to achieve a successful outcome.'

  'Look they know we're here, the element of surprise has gone, they were waiting for us, there's been a leak, if they don't kill or capture us I'll be a monkey's uncle. Actually, I probably am a monkey's uncle, my sister has some pretty interesting looking offspring.'

  'You don't have the courage, is that what you are saying?'

  'I'm saying that we are dead meat, still, having a woman aboard could make my last hours more comfortable,' I said half as a joke and I brushed my hand by her face. She caught my arm, twisted it up behind my back and then kicked my legs out from under me, I hit the ground hard.

  'We have to stop meeting like this,' I said.

  'Don't ever touch me again or...'

  '…or what, you'll kill me?'

  'I will take you out!'

  'I believe you would,' I said. I stood up and brushed myself off. 'Doesn't matter anyway they will be here soon, there's no escape from this island.'

  'We'll pull back, we'll go up to the cliffs.'

  'And make our last stand,' I said and bent down to pick up the AK47 I had liberated from the Black Shirt. 'So let's have a conference, we can brainstorm some ideas, make a chart of possible scenarios and do a bit of outcome modelling.'

  'Just follow me,' she said.

  'And another thing, you're a bloody Yank.'

  'I'm Australian inside an American voice, my father worked in Los Angeles in California, I spent a fair bit of time there when I was young.'

  'I suppose Americans aren't so bad, give me five, my man.'

  'Come on let's go,' she said.

  'No I'm staying put, I kind of like the pine trees, they are soothing to the intellect.'

  'We came here to do a job, I got saddled with you, no sooner are we on the island than you start making sexist jokes and you're useless anyway, look at your performance on the submarine and you don't know a thing about the mission, I have grave suspicions.'

  'What do you mean?' I said flicking bits of a pine cone at her.

  'Stop that!'

  'What do you mean, grave suspicions?'

  'There's a mole.'

  'And you think it's me, that's a good one, I warn the Black Shirts that I'm coming so they can kill me.'

  'We arrive by submarine, no one knows that we are coming, it's a top secret mission and the Black Shirts are waiting for us, you must have let something slip before we boarded the submarine.'

  'It's not me who's the mole, I don't even know where we are, I don't even know what the mission is, I don't even know if I am here or if I am in a bad dream, wake up, wake up Jack,' I said and hit myself in the face. 'No I'm awake, this isn't a bad dream, I'm real and I'm going to die. If I am a mole then moles are bloody stupid.'

  'As we paddled in they were firing at us but they missed you.'

  'You seem to have come through pretty well yourself.'

  'Not quite,' she said and pointed to her right ear, there was a bullet hole through the lobe.'

  'Shit, we've got a first aid kit, where is it?' I said and I hunted around for bandages and pain killers.

  'It doesn't matter, only the mission matters.'

  I found the first aid kit, disinfected the wound, applied a sterile bandage and offered her some chocolate flavoured laxatives, she refused the latter. I dug deeper and found some food and water and gave her a drink and a power bar.

  'As good as new,' I said.

  'I still have only contempt for you, I still think I'd be better off without you, I still think you're a bad joke but thank you.'

  'You're welcome and I am a bad joke, life is a bad joke.'

  'Okay let's move,' she said. 'I vote for the cliffs, I think there are caves up there, we can hide out.'

  'So instead of getting shot to death we'll just starve to death.'

  'You're not taking this seriously.'

  'Yes I know, Black Shirts will come with guns and shoot and then its bye bye for me and bye bye for you.'

  'So what do you vote we do?' she said.

  'They'll track us down, this is only a very small island, it's just a matter of time, if I could see a map.'

  She pulled a map from her left hand breast pocket and gave it to me along with a small torch, there wasn't much light, the sun was only just thinking about waking up. I studied the map, the island looked like something the cat had dragged in, it was a jagged rhomboid mass of little inlets and beaches with some higher ground and cliffs to the south. To the north there was lower swampy land at sea level. The cliffs, the high ground, were covered with pines and the lowland to the north was heath with a small abandoned settlement.

  'It was originally a whaler's settlement,' she said.

  'Ah ha.'

  'The French claimed it.'

  'No place to hide as far as I can see.'

  'British marines stormed the island and claimed it for England, this is in the eighteenth century.'

  'While ago now.'

  'The English abandoned it, the Germans claimed it in the early nineteenth century, the Australians captured it in World War One and then on independence India claimed it.'

  'So we are in the far south of the Indian bloody Ocean miles from anywhere, what the hell are we doing here?'

  'Terrorists!'

  'Terrorists here?'

  'It's the international headquarters and communication centre for a right wing terrorist group, the Americans want it terminated.'

  'So get the Americans to send in the bloody marines.'

  'It's actually part of India, a sovereign state.'

  'Hm,' I said and scratched the back of my head, 'they want to avoid an international incident.'

  'Exactly.'

  'But why us, why Australia? Don't tell me, the Prime Minister, he loves America, he offered to send in our boys, well one boy and one girl, to do the job, fine but why me. I like Americans, I love Americans, well I loved an American once, having said that I don't like their foreign policy much.'

  'It's not for us to make policy d
ecisions, we just carry them out.'

  'Little Miss Marine aren't you?'

  'I do my duty.'

  'So what do we have to do? Put this place out of action and snatch the local big Kahuna?'

  'No it's easier than that.'

  'Tell me.'

  'We just have to shoot him dead.'

  'Ha brilliant, join the Secret Service, travel the world, meet interesting people and shoot them dead.'

  'Those are our orders.'

  'I don't give a fuck about our orders, let them court martial me. When I was on that submarine for days on end I suddenly asked myself what am I doing here, why am I going off to strange and exotic places just to kill people.'

  'Self questioning can be fatal.'

  'I know, if you stop to think you can't be a Special Forces Commando and I stopped to think, I stopped to have a look around and I didn't like what I saw. It's not you I don't like, it's me, I stopped and examined who I am and I don't like me.'

  'The mission is imperative.'

  'I don't care about the mission, call it a personality crisis, call it a midlife crisis, call it battle fatigue but I've lost the will to kill.'

  'I out rank you and I'm ordering you to carry out our orders.'

  'You don't outrank me.'

  'I do, I have more pips than you.'

  'Oh wow, I'm impressed, you have more pips than me, that's awesome, that's mega, oh I wish I had as many pips as you.'

  'You're a joker but I tell you here and now, don't mess with me fella.'

  'God almighty, here I am in the middle of the Indian Ocean, the only way off this damn hole is in a submarine, I absolutely detest submarines, our canoe's full of holes anyway and I've got a woman telling me what to do. I've got, on a rough estimate, at least twenty heavily armed terrorist wanting to kill me…'

  'Thirty.'

  'Thirty heavily armed terrorists wanting to kill me.'

  'Twenty five actually, we accounted for five on the beach.'

  'Oh that makes me feel much better. Here I am armed with a single shot sniper rifle and an AK47 designed just after World War Two, more than fifty years ago, and I have only twenty five heavily armed and angry terrorists coming after my blood, I am so happy, let's crack open a bottle of champagne and have a cheers, let's have a party, invite a few people, order some finger food, a few drinks, play some dance music, life here on this island is one great big bundle of fun.'

  'I was told you could be difficult.'

  'Then why am I here?'

  'Apparently you think on your feet, in spite of everything, you are a good man in a difficult situation.'

  'Listen.'

  'What?'

  'Voices.'

  'Where?'

  'Quiet, we'll have to postpone this little tête à tête but before we go we haven't actually been introduced. My name's William Shakespeare,' I said and pushed out a hand to be shaken.

  'Jane Austen,' she said in reply but she failed to shake my hand.

  'Your name's not Jane Austen!'

  'Well yours obviously isn't William Shakespeare.'

  'Alright, Jack's my name, Jack Hamma.'

  'I'm Kashmere, Lieutenant Kashmere Fellini.'

  'That's nice.'

  'Colleagues call me Annie Oakley.'

  'Let me guess, you're a crack shot?'

  'I am a crack shot.'

  'I'll call you Kashmere.'

  'You can call me Sir.'

  'Yes Sir,' I sang out saluting and coming to attention.

  'That's enough of your lip.'

  'Yes sir,' I sang out saluting and coming to attention.

  'You are trouble.'

  'The voices are getting louder.'

  'We'll have to abandon everything and make a run for it,' she said, pointing her gun towards the place where the voices could be heard.

  'Don't shoot, just take it easy, they are a long way away yet, let's organise what we want out of this mass of kit, repack it and then we can make a tactical withdrawal with the equipment we need.'

  'The voices are getting louder,' she said.

  'No worries, just do as I say and everything will be cool.'

  We repacked the kit, mostly the food and the ammunition and moved off.