Chapter 2

Gazza White was perplexed, as he didn’t know where he was.

Gazza had been part of the UNMCTT (United Nations Mine Clearance Training Team) that had been stationed in Afghanistan since 1989. He was twenty-one years old and had been due to come back to Australia after serving a year overseas. Unfortunately, May of 1992 was not a happy month for the population of Kabul.

While he had the basic training in Landmine Clearance, that wasn’t his job. Gazza hailed from Ayr in Queensland and he had started his Army career in Townsville, as an eighteen-year-old recruit. He’d planned on being a Grunt since he was a fair shot but during one of his meetings to discuss placement at the end of the three-month recruit course, he happened to mention that he held a private helicopter licence.

He’d been licensed for two years when he joined and had over three thousand hours under his belt. He’d started flying at fourteen. After his mother had died, his father had to find a way to look after him, so he took him to work with him.

His dad ran a business where they flew helicopters to round up cattle on the larger cattle stations to the west of Ayr and Townsville. They also made weekly runs to pick-up and drop-off people and parcels. Once Gazza had finished high school, he worked for his father full time for nearly a year.

His father banked his wages and controlled his spending. He didn’t get a lot of free time either. The problem was that Gazza had a hankering to join the Army. They had argued about him joining up, so as soon as he hit eighteen, he took off. He took a job on Lindeman Island for a couple of months to earn the cash to get to Townsville since his father refused to release his money.

The officer wasn’t pleased when he learnt that Gazza hadn’t put his flying skills on his application to join the Army. Gazza explained that he didn’t think a private licence qualified him to be an Army Helicopter Pilot. He was soon disabused of that idea. He found himself on a plane to Canberra to attend Pilot Training School.

Swapping from the old Bell four-seater to a Black Hawk medium transport had been like upgrading from a Holden station-wagon to a Porsche. More bells and whistles and faster but the basic operation as far as he was concerned was the same. He still had to attend the nine months of training but as long as he was flying, it wasn’t so bad.

Gazza was one hundred and sixty-eight centimetres tall. He had buzz-cut brunette hair, blue eyes, a sharp wit and a winning smile that he used to his advantage on both sexes. He was slim of hips and modestly broad of shoulder and chest. He didn’t carry an ounce of fat after finishing his recruit course.

While he didn’t look effeminate, the facts that he was about sixty-five kilograms when ringing wet, short and pretty, did attract the bullies. When his hair was longer, it became a riot of curls that he hated. More than one fool had thought he was an easy mark for bullying.

Gazza couldn’t count the number of times the few simple moves that his friend Tristan Watson had taught him while he was working on Lindeman Island had gotten him out of trouble. Gazza had learnt how to defend himself as part of his training; however, it was Tristan’s moves that were never expected by the antagonist. He only resorted to using them when he couldn’t talk his way out of trouble.

One fact not many people knew about him was that he was bi-sexual. For many years, he had thought that he was gay. While he enjoyed female company as much as the next man, Tristan had taught him that he could pander to the other side of his nature, as long as he was careful.

One of the hardest things about going to Canberra for a year was leaving his boyfriend Mitch, back in Townsville. Mitch had been pissed. He wasn’t really surprised when he got the dear Gazza letter after three months of separation.

It didn’t bother him that much by then, as he’d found suitable company to take the edge off, while he was stationed in Canberra. He often wondered how many people knew that his Lieutenant and his wife were swingers. Gazza also realised he did seem to attract the officers. The good thing about them was that they didn’t blab.

After completing his training, he was based back in Townsville. Mitch had been transferred to a unit in Brisbane, so they didn’t cross paths again. When he was offered the chance to go to Afghanistan on the UNMCTT mission to fly the bomb-clearance training teams around, he was more than excited to get the opportunity.

He was amused when the townies bitched about the heat and dust. He told them they should try spending ten hours of their day in a helicopter rounding up cattle in Queensland when the stations were in drought and it was high summer. The dust got so bad that he had often had to resort to using goggles and a dust-mask just so he could breathe. The old Bell helicopter he flew was a sauna with the windows shut, and the red dust of the outback still got inside.

He did a six-month stint in Afghanistan, had a month back at home and then went back for a second tour. He was due to go back to Australia when he got special orders. He had to take an old Bell Helicopter that belonged to the locals to Kabul to drop it off and some artefacts that had been found at a remote dig site.

His orders were to hand the machine over to the Afghani maintenance team, deliver the package to the Australian Consultant and then he could fly out of Kabul a week later to go home. He’d not been impressed with the helicopter and it had handled like a bitch in heat for the entire flight.

Gazza had been told to take the northern route to fly to the Airport in Kabul and not the regular route. He guessed something hush-hush was going on by the speed they had him pack and on his way. He got the weirdest feeling when he handled the polystyrene box and made sure he strapped it in well on the co-pilots seat. He’d been told to not let it out of his sight.

Reports that things had settled down in Kabul since the new government had taken charge would prove to be false. On May the fifth, all hell broke loose, and Gazza was horrified to find on his approach to the airport that the locals were busy hurling missiles at each other.

He was still five klicks out from the airport and low over the mountain behind it when a stray missile hit the end of one of the landing struts. Subsequently, it blew up his underbelly. If he’d had passengers in the back, they would now be dead. The old Bell had bucked and shuddered from the explosion. The missile had damaged the wiring to his tail rotor and he was out of control.

He had dropped altitude in preparation for swinging around into the heliport landing area. His loss of control had him heading towards the mountains instead. Sweat poured down his face and body, and the veins in his arms popped as he tried man-handling the unwieldy, bucking beast that he was now riding.

He was going down fast and was sure he was going to meet his maker very soon. The rotor shuddered and the tail section was sheared off of the copter. The next blast under his copter blew what was left of the body of the machine into a ravine. “Oh shit!” he screamed, as the ‘copter spun out of control. All he could see was rocks and then the sky, then rocks and then more rocks, as his machine spun down into the ravine and hurled him to his doom. He felt the tough old Bell being ripped apart around him.

He heard the screeching of metal across rock when the ‘copter touched the side of the mountain and then he was falling at a new angle as his bird bounced off the wall. He hung onto the seatbelts as the machine spun around him. He wanted to puke but the pressures on his body had him succumbing to the darkness that enveloped him.

Mercifully, he never felt the ‘copter hit the deck.

When Gazza awoke, he was still strapped to his seat but he was lying on his side.

His body hurt just about everywhere. Slowly, he opened his eyes. As his eyes adjusted, he realised that it wasn’t as black where he was as he had first thought. Pin-pricks of light like stars twinkled over his head. Groaning, he hit the release on the seat belt and rolled over and off the seat onto a rocky floor.

He ripped off his helmet and then let the contents of his stomach loose, despite the pounding in his head. As much as he hated the taste and smell of puke, he did feel better after emptying his stomach. Sitting back on his calves, he looked around as he spat the last of the foulness from his mouth in several large globs.

As his eyes adjusted to the low light level, he discovered that he could see rather well. He surmised that the wreckage around him was mostly from the cockpit and the front half of his helicopter. How the fuck it and he had ended up inside a cavern had him flummoxed.

Gazza remembered falling, but looking up he knew the lights were not stars but some form of crystal that emitted light. There was no way he could have fallen into this immense cavern from above. Gingerly, he got to his feet and looked at the scatter pattern of the wreckage. It didn’t make sense either.

His brain was having a hard time with the facts. It looked as if the old Bell had hit the ground around him and bounced away in bits and pieces. His seat had been snapped loose and flung away before the rest hit the ground. He was several metres from the cockpit that was laying on the crumpled mess of what had once been the undercarriage before it had hit the deck.

Gazza saw that the door from his side was missing, as was most of the rear of the helicopter including the rear seats since the back of the machine was now just a gaping, ragged hole. Wincing as he stood, he then headed over to the mess. When he pulled on the hanging co-pilots door, it came away in his hands.

Gazza stumbled back but caught the door as it swung sideways. He placed it towards the front of the crumpled nose and then he peered into the cockpit. He was delighted when he spied that his two duffle bags were still strapped to the underside of the seat, even though it had come loose from the mountings and was sitting at an odd angle.

Since he didn’t have a co-pilot on this trip, he had chucked the bags into the front of the old Bell. They were supposed to be stored in the back but he had jammed them in the footwell and strapped them down, to make it easier for him to retrieve them when he got to the airport. The back of the ‘copter had been filthy and he’d not wanted to put anything of his on the floor.

Like any good soldier, he knew that one of his duffle bags had his regulation three Rat-packs and three litres of water between his two canteens. He could last a week, while he worked out where the fuck he was and how to get out of the cavern. The whole situation had him spooked and he was trying to stay calm and logical.

He chuckled when he realised that the crate of forty CR1Ms (Combination, one -man, one-day ration packs) was still strapped to the back of the mesh that divided the cockpit from the rear seating area. He always tied down everything in his bird.

Australian rat-packs were very popular amongst the Afghan locals. He had collected them from the teams he had been based with. He had planned to sell them for local currency to pay for his stay-over before he had been due to fly home in a week.

The rations were tossed out when close to the expiry date but everyone knew the bloody things lasted for years, as the food was tinned, dehydrated or in sealed packets. Gazza could last a month or more and only need to find water. He wasn’t a great lover of rat-pack food but he would survive for the foreseeable future. Having food at least settled his nerves some if not his pounding headache. He needed to see what else he had at his disposal and then get some rest for his batted body.

He was surprised to see the polystyrene box that he was to deliver to the Embassy was still in the co-pilots seat. He grinned and remembered strapping it into the seat since he had been told to guard it with his life. He released the harness and tried to turn the mangled box. It hadn’t travelled so well and crumbled in his hands.

Gazza frowned as he removed one of the two packages from the mess. He planned to put the boxes in one of his duffle bags but the packaging took up too much space. He carefully pulled the wrapping off of one of the boxes. It was covered in many layers of bubble -wrap and then to his astonishment, several layers of aluminium foil.

The box was about the size of a ladies shoebox. However, it was only about half as deep and it was made of a copper coloured metal with strange symbols etched into the lid. As his fingers came in contact with the metal box, he was surprised by how warm it felt. Gazza then got the weird feeling again that he was to open the box. To him, it felt like the box was pleading with him to open it.

He examined the box but to his annoyance, he could not identify the seam for the lid.

“How the hell do I open this damn box?” he grumbled loudly and in frustration. His next words were, “Oh crap!” as the contents clinked out of the box and on to the cave’s floor. It had opened while he held it upside down.

Gazza placed the box back on the seat before he squatted down onto the balls of his feet to look at the items. He picked up the oddly shaped ring. It had a wide platinum band and the strangest combination of five different gems that were mounted in an ‘X’ pattern. Without thinking, he slipped the ring over his left middle finger.

He gasped as he felt the oddest sensations and even felt himself become erect. In his squatting position, this was decidedly uncomfortable and distracted him. He dropped to his knees and had to rearrange his cock to relieve the very painful pressure.

Sighing with relief, he then noticed the necklace with the oddly shaped pendant also made of platinum. It had a large square crystal in its centre and four symbols etched on it around the gem. He picked it up to examine it. He turned it over and saw that the writing on the back was in the form of small hieroglyphics.

“I promise to serve the One People, to the best of my abilities,” Gazza said aloud and then wondered abstractly, why he knew what the writing said. He shrugged and placed the chain, which seemed to be made of several different types of precious metal links, over his head. He dropped the pendant down his camo shirt front. He felt a brief surge of heat radiate from the pendant and through his body before it settled down. “Man, this is some weird shit,” he mumbled as he picked up what he thought was a headband.

The thin and flat platinum band had the same strange crystal in the centre and the same four gems that matched the ones on his ring. Two of the gems were placed on either side of the central crystal. He noticed how it was shaped and felt it had to go across his forehead and not on the top of his head as he had first thought.