Cameron of the Seas

4: Four Days on the Road-2

RYAN, THE AMPHIBIOUS SPECIAL FORCES MAN, rubbed his tummy and smiled gratefully. Duck motioned with his head that it was time to go. Without much ado, they rose to their feet as one and headed for the check-out counter to pay for breakfast. Ryan patted his pocket. Alas, there was no wallet; he screwed up his ruggedly handsome face after realising he had driven without a license, never mind having no money for pay for his meal.

Duck pulled his wallet out, quipping as he fished out his credit card, ‘Remind me not to call you again for a lift.’

Ryan replied, ‘Sure, sure.’

From as far back as they could remember, it had always been this way between them. They had been in the same unit for much of fifteen years. Thrown into the deep end of training and in operations, they had grown close, as close as brothers.

Duck remembered the physical rigours of selection for becoming a clearance diver, his only preferred Special Forces role within the Royal Australian Navy. As a naïve seventeen-year-old recruit and a fleet boy on the HMAS Cerberus, he used to watch the men with wide-eyed envy, dreaming of one day joining their ranks.

His initial training had been at HMAS Penguin, a coastal establishment that was the home of the Royal Australian Navy Diving School at Balmoral in Sydney’s Middle Head, a beguiling leafy upper-class suburb.

During the physical and psychological ordeal of the Clearance Diver Acceptance Test, Duck had first lost his name and gained a number, being known henceforth as Number Seven, and joined the other nineteen cadets for their gruelling four-hour session that involved running along the way, sprinting up forty-five-degree inclines, sprinting hundreds of yards with numerous bodyweight exercises thrown in. When they finally reach the HMAS Penguin exhausted and in pain, they were told they had just completed the warm-up and were told to do it all again.

After just six days, only twelve shadowy faces remained, and they were moved to the dive school’s second home, the Pittwater annexe. The outstanding natural beauty of their habitat hid its ruthless regime. Yachts bobbed lazily at their moorings; day and night sails drifted in and out of its harbour. Seagulls flew overhead, dive-bombing the water for sustenance. Sexily clad women in bikinis paraded on its beaches like personal catwalks.

Those waters weren’t for relaxing as far as the training was concerned. The cadets finned for hours on end, followed by a gruelling two-hour gym circuit, followed by speed-dressing drills, followed by long-distance canoe paddle and portage, followed by six-mile pack marches up and down rugged hills, followed by rapid wetsuit-changing drills ... They were made to change into their wetsuit in only five minutes. The wetsuits were damp and sandy, used so often they never got the chance to dry. The cadets helped each other into them until they were standing at attention, their fins tucked under their left arm.

They repeated this exercise over and over until they could do it in one minute. Their skin was scraped off them by the end of it, and they bled from the subversive assault of sand and salt water.

It had been some of the most challenging training Duck had ever endured. One of the things that brought him and Ryan close was that shared experience, and how each knew that the other had come out the other side stronger, fitter, better.

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EVERYTHING DONE AND READY TO GO, Ryan walked ahead and casually pushed open the glass door, resisting the urge to check behind him and to hold the door for his mate. He had to remind himself that Duck was proud of his physical prowess and wouldn’t want to be molly-coddled. Being an amputee didn’t make him disabled. Knowing this didn’t stop Ryan surreptitiously glancing behind him. Sure enough, Duck was following closely. Aside from a slight limp, he didn’t show any signs of discomfort or pain, but Ryan had been around enough amputees in the past to know his mate was in a bad way.

They walked to Ryan’s Holden sedan for a quick drive to Pittwater Annexe. Duck tossed his backpack in the back seat before sliding into the passenger seat.

The northern suburbs were beginning, slowly, to come to life. It was forecast to be sixty-four degrees Fahrenheit, more spring than winter, even fooling some of the flowering plants to blossom early. But at six-thirty-a.m., it was still nippy, for most people a perfect excuse for a sleep-in snuggle under the doona.

Soft, middle of the road music played courtesy of 95.3 Smooth FM. Ryan focused on the driving and left his friend to his musings. Duck looked out the window, his left arm propped on the window sill, the cold wind blowing in his face.

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