Peter Corris - The Big Score

St James approached me. ‘Should have asked permission, Hardy,’ he said.

He was annoyed enough to drop the Mister. ‘Sorry, Leader,’ I said. ‘I meant no harm.’

‘Hope not. Ask next time. You’ll be quartered in the house. Take your gear in and one of my chaps’ll show you to your room.’

Suited me. I almost saluted. I gathered together the stuff Clay had provided and my own equipment and organised it into a portable load. I spent longer at the task than needed, and used the time to inspect the NCOs and trainees as they got organised. I was more than fifty metres away and couldn’t be quite sure I’d spotted Gary Pearson. The code names were simply colours with a numeral, red 1, blue 2, yellow, etc. Pearson could’ve been one of three big blokes with a similar build.

As expected, the trainees looked young-early twenties or younger-and the NCOs were older. To my surprise, two of them had dark faces. Three or four of the trainees didn’t look like Anglo-Celts either, but they all seemed dead keen. They fell in smartly and were marched off towards the Nissan huts with duffel bags on their square shoulders.

I took my stuff to the house-laptop slung from one shoulder, overnight bag from the other, carrying other items. Just before I mounted the steps to the verandah, I looked around and experienced an odd sensation that stayed with me, although it meant nothing at all-I was the only man in sight not wearing headgear. Seriously undressed in military terms.

The big man who met me on the verandah wore a beret and a buttoned-up white Nehru-type jacket, with black trousers tucked into combat boots. Not quite a steward, not quite a soldier, but not far off either.

Over the next three days I spent some time participating in the trainees’ activities. I had a comfortable bed in a warm room while they slept in bunks in the huts with kerosene heaters that didn’t do much against the cold. I ate the same nutritious food as them but served motel-style in my room. I attended without encouragement one of St James’s lectures on courage and character, and that was enough.

I went on a couple of the route marches and didn’t fall behind, although I was carrying only a light backpack while they were heavily laden. A couple of trainees who finished well behind were given mild kitchen punishment duties. I passed on fording the waist-deep stream with equipment held up high above my head. Two trainees who fell into the water were roundly abused by the NCOs.

On the fourth day the trainees were mustered for shooting practice and I went along. I’d been permitted to take photographs up to then, but St James banned the camera for this exercise.

‘Might give your readers the wrong idea,’ he said. ‘You can write whatever you like, but pictures speak louder and sometimes more ambiguously than words.’

Nicely put. They marched, I walked, to a shooting site that had been constructed by bulldozers. A chute with sides about six metres high had been built with a solid earth wall at least twice that height fifty or sixty metres distant. Targets were arranged on the wall that sloped back slightly so that ricochets and deflections would be directed away from the shooters. There were six shooting stalls, all equipped with benches holding earmuffs, ammunition and semiautomatic rifles.

It had taken a while to identify Gary Pearson. The trainees wore their hats pulled down and seemed to delight in keeping their combat camouflage paint on, but I had him now and watched him closely. He appeared to be one of the keenest and most accomplished of the trainees- smartly turned out at all times, an early finisher in the marches, first or second man across the stream, beating a couple of the NCOs who’d had a head start. Now he was selected as one of the first batch of shooters.

St James took me aside. ‘In case you’re wondering, Hardy, DTS is registered as a gun club. In any case, this is private property.’

‘Really? I meant to ask. How many acres?’

‘About a hundred and fifty hectares.’

One for him.

A volley of shots sounded.

‘I hope you’re not a pacifist.’

‘Not me,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t have the courage.’

One for me, maybe.

The shooting continued and there are few more boring things to watch and listen to-motor racing, perhaps. The targets were human silhouettes of various shapes, sizes and colours. After a while the bullets had shredded them into unrecognisable tatters. One of the dark NCOs, still known to me only as number three, announced that Pearson had scored more direct and well-placed hits than any of the others. He clapped the young man on the back and had to reach up to do it, being ten centimetres shorter.

‘Who’s that NCO?’ I asked St James, who’d watched the shooting with his head tilted back in his Viking pose.

‘Why?’

‘He stands out-one of your best.’

‘True. Sirdar Assad. He should be. He fought in places you’ve heard of and places you haven’t heard of

‘He’s a mercenary?’

St James ignored the question. ‘Promising lad, that Pearson,’ he said.

‘What do you imagine all this fits them for especially?’

‘The future.’

I took an appraising look at the trainees being instructed in the maintenance of their weapons. ‘Kids look like suburban types to me-office workers, keyboard jockeys. How will this kind of training help?’

St James appeared to be pleased to get the question. He adjusted his beret. ‘Do you think this country’s safe, Hardy?’

‘Safe enough.’

‘Why d’you say that?’

‘I reckon it’s safe from all but a handful of religious maniacs who’ll go out of fashion as soon as the US elects an intelligent president and the media stops beating the terrorism drum.’

He spun on his heel. ‘There are none so blind that cannot see.’

I thought, but didn’t say, a misquote, and cliche is the last resort of the obsessive. It wasn’t much but I was beginning to get a closer focus on what St James and DTS were all about, beyond what was in the literature.

To my surprise, St James invited me to give a talk to the trainees that night on the subject of journalism as a profession. ‘You seemed to have some definite views on the matter and its relation to the present crisis when we talked earlier,’ he said. ‘We want these lads to have active minds as well as bodies, so I’d be glad if you’d give them the benefit of your experience and be willing to field whatever questions they might throw at you.’

I couldn’t refuse and I muddled through it on the basis of whatever I’d picked up from the few journalist friends I had. Two adjoining rooms in the house with the connecting doors drawn apart served as the lecture theatre. Fires were burning in both rooms and the trainees seemed happy to be there, whatever the subject, instead of in their huts. In years past I’d given talks on the private enquiry business to TAPE students doing the PEA qualifying course, and this wasn’t so different, until Gary Pearson got to his feet in question time.

‘What would you say, Mr Hardy, to the idea that journalists are liars who write whatever their bosses tell them to write no matter what the facts are?’

‘I’d say that’s bullshit.’

‘We don’t permit bad language here, Hardy,’ St James said.

‘That’s bullshit, too.’

Two of the NCOs, Assad and another, moved in efficiently. Assad blocked me off from the audience while the other one pinioned my arms and eased me out through a side door. I heard St James raise his voice slightly above the murmuring as he brought the trainees to order.

Standing in the corridor, we were joined by the man who’d met me on the verandah on day one-same beret, same jacket, same pants and boots but a different mood. ‘Go through to your room,’ he said. ‘Leader will speak to you when he’s ready.’