Operation Viper

A Story of Historical Horror Fiction

Part 1

The small squad of the Australian special forces, part of the infamous M Unit, had been in the Borneo bush for four days and so far had managed to avoid contact. They had initially landed at night, using small folboats on a small, deserted beachhead. Waiting for them were two Dayak scouts that had been recruited by Aussie shore watchers. Working their way swiftly inland under the cover of darkness, they had made steady progress.

Their mission was a runup to the looming Operation Oboe. A major, full scale attack being planned to liberate Borneo from Japanese rule. Their target, a remote Japanese river supply and oil depot, lay ahead to the north, near the village of Tangulu. They would reach a point of being very close, definitely in striking distance, by tomorrow with any luck.

“Leftenant King…Sir?” Staff Sergeant Jack Thompson’s whisper was so low, it was not enough to stir Leslie King.

What Thompson had just heard, among the many other night noises of the Bornean rainforest was different, somewhere off to their left flank in the darkness. There were patches of dappled and filtered light from a full moon fighting its way through the canopy above, but for the most part it was pitch back all around them.

In a slow deliberate motion, he took his wet ‘slouch’ hat off and set it down beside him. A drip of sweat hung on the end of his nose stubbornly, then dropped.

And there it was again. This time it was to his right. His head turned slowly that way, also in the direction of the slow-moving Barito River they’d crossed earlier, just after dusk. Privates Kensington and Harris were dug in over there. The sounds seemed awkward and heavy but somehow cunning, stealthy at the same time.

His eyes and ears strained into the night and he took a silent but long deep inhale through his nose. In this oven of the Borneo rainforest, the smell of rot was constantly present, everything and everybody stank. This was different though.

This smell was something entirely new and he could not describe it. Sulfur came to mind but even that didn’t really do it justice in defining it. It had a wild, feral and completely alien stench to it. There was no human smell to this, or animal that he was familiar with, for that matter. The pungency got stronger and increased. The hair on his arms and his crew cut scalp sprang to attention and stood straight up.

He put down his Owen gun. Guns of any kind were a last resort until they made their final assault on the target, or they were in fact discovered early by the enemy. They were still approaching their target in stealth and would be for one more day and night. To be detected now would be a disaster and mean failure of their main mission. His left hand reached down to his belt and pulled his Marsden knife out of its sheath.

Then as if a switch had been flipped all the normal jungle sounds simply stopped. Everything at once, as if every living thing, large or small sensed the danger and turned itself off. Only the swarms of mosquitoes remained active.

Thompson’s ears rang with the eerie stillness. He tensed, gripped the knife harder and readied himself. After almost two years of dangerous and covert, behind the lines operations, he’d never felt this kind of fear.

The silence was so glaring now, that Lieutenant King did rouse, and his head came slowly up beside Thompson’s. “What do we have then, Jack?” King whispered.

“Sir, I…I’m not at all sure”, Thompson answered. “I feared the Japs found us with a nighttime patrol but it's somethin’ else. Take a whiff of that sm—”

The deep bellow was so sudden that both men jumped, and it rolled on for more seconds than possible, with no pause. It was a sound not of this world, cutting through the still night with a guttural rage. It ended abruptly.

Neither man had ever heard anything like it before and they were both veteran jungle fighters. “Bloody…hell”, was all Leftenant King could manage.

An approaching sound of something crashing through the wild jungle bush reached them. Maybe thirty or forty meters north of them. Tree limbs could be heard snapping and cracking. They both had their knives at the ready.

Then nothing. No sound at all again. Tense seconds ticked by.

The silence was finally broken by an angry snort, closer now and sounding like a huge, enraged bull. Again came the same bellow, even louder and longer than the first. Full of the same mix of brute loathing and pure blood rage. It cut off again, as sharply as it had begun.

The still night air was then filled with a loud, hissing sound but it was moving away from them. Gradually it faded until no sound reached them. The dead quiet that followed was almost as bad because they were expecting more, but the silence stretched on this time, without interruption. The familiar background noise of a rainforest jungle at night, slowly returned.

The others were in pairs, dug in, facing outward and formed in a loose perimeter circle, with about fifteen or twenty meters between each group. The commando squad consisted of King, Thompson and six other Aussies as well as the two Dayak scouts. As a testament to their training, there had been complete silence and no movement from any of them during the incident.

“Jackthompson.” It was the quiet and solemn voice of Kanang, the lead Dayak scout. He crouched down next to the two squad leaders. As was his habit, he had materialized silently out of nowhere from the bush just to the left of Thompson’s and King’s position. Kanang had memorized all the squad’s last names but preferred using Thompson’s full name and all run together in one word.

“Yes, Kanang.”

“Jackthompson.” The scout was clearly spooked and he was animated, pointing back into the dense and dark rainforest. “Naga…Naga.”

At first, Thompson could only see the whites of Kanang’s eyes in the near pitch black of the jungle. When the scout crept even closer to him, he could see how wide and wild those eyes were. The Dayak scouts were true warriors, from a warrior culture, especially Kanang. They were absolutely fearless in battle and they had no fear of the Japanese but this was clearly different.

“Naga.” Kanang’s voice was quiet and had a certain nervous quiver to it. In the dappled moonlight, he stuck his chest out, made a fierce expression and opened his mouth wide. Then he held up both hands as wide apart as possible. “Naaagaaa”, he deliberately drug out the word for Thompson this time.

He nodded at Thompson with a serious look, then thumbed his bare chest, adjusted the Enfield rifle slung on his shoulder. He held his sharp bladed Parang in front of him and shook it aggressively, then smiled at the Australian. As he moved out of the clearing, there was only a soft whisper of sound as he melted into the deep foliage.

The staff sergeant watched him go. He had high respect for the Dayaks. With their primitive ways, jet black bowl cut haircuts, heavy adornment of ceremonial animal bone bracelets and teeth necklaces, they were easy to underestimate. The Japanese had done themselves no favors in treating the Dayaks brutally since occupying Borneo.

“Jack, what’s that word? What was Kanang saying?” King’s hushed voice was steady but it also had a sense of urgency and tightness to it.

“Naga sir. Means dragon.” Thompson said it matter of factly and without pause. He could speak Bekati’ fairly well. It was one of several Dayak dialects he knew. He stared into the inky darkness, in the direction of whatever the hell it was they had heard.

King leaned in close. “What the bloody hell? You mean like a giant lizard or iguana?”

“Not exactly sir. It’s the Dayak word for a mythical, legendary serpent here on Borneo…a Deity, said to have a Dragon’s head. Huge in size. I’ve heard them talk amongst themselves, a snippet or two about it.”

“Didn’t sound like a myth, did it?...As if the Japanese weren’t enough to battle.”

***

At the first weak morning light in the east that could barely be seen with the thick canopy above and the deep jungle around them. The sun was rising but their position was still very dark. The squad was preparing to move out. No one was talking.

The two scouts, Kanang and Balik, waited patiently. They were always at the ready, at a moment's notice. Their Enfield rifles were slung over their shoulders, Parangs in hand and they carried squad supplies in backpacks as well.

King and Sergeant Thompson walked among their men, watching as they adjusted their packs and checked their guns. Thompson double checked the radio transceiver on Corporal Kelly’s back. When they appeared ready, King put his hands behind his back. “Right then, men. Gather round for a moment, before we take our leave.” He glanced at his Staff Sergeant and gave him a quick nod.

Thompson took a casual step forward. In a firm, but ever quiet jungle voice he said, “Yes, very well, form up then as your Leftenant said. Just a few quick things, then we shove off.”

The squad formed a rough circle around the two men leading the clandestine guerilla operation. Thompson scanned their faces. They were all young men, some like privates Coop Willabee and Owen Jones were just boys, not even twenty yet. Jake Kensington and Declan Harris, not much older than them. Corporals Archie Kelly and Lachlan Cooper who rounded out the six were considered old salts by the young ones and even they were both under 25 years old.

The Staff Sergeant cleared his throat. “First on the list and probably top of mind for all of you blokes is what was all that hubbub about last night…Well, fair dinkum? I’ve no earthly idea what the bloody hell that was last night…some sort of big cat possibly or lizard maybe…but that’s not our concern. We will not be gob smacked or distracted from carrying out our operation.”

Thompson looked at his men one by one, then continued. “Right then, so we’ll near our target by late arvo, coordinate our plans once more and then attack very late tonight. Kill all the Japanese we can, destroy the river supply boats but the one we’ll escape on and burn the depot and supplies to the ground. Mr. King, anything to add, sir?” He paused and looked over at his Leftenant.

“Nothing to add except we’re close mates, quiet and careful now…Off we go then.”

“Sir?” It was private Declan Harris from New South Wales. He saluted and stepped forward but before he could say anything a shot rang out in the stillness. The left side of his head disappeared in an explosion of red gore. There was a frozen split second of nothing except the squad watching the lifeless body of Harris flopping to the jungle floor.

Then gunfire, single scattered shots. No automatics. Coming from their left flank. Then everyone was shouting and scrambling. Kanang’s angry yell nearby, a deep thump from a Japanese knee mortar. A ferocious scream from the other scout, Balik came from farther away.

Thompson grabbed King, who had been hit as well and drug him to the protection of the same shallow hole they’d shared last night. He fell in next to his commanding officer and checked the positions of the other men.

He saw Coop Willabee running low to find cover behind a fallen mangrove. Just as he neared it his body hunched, faltered, then spun in a half circle as he was hit again before he fell.

A mortar round hit near Archie Kelly but he continued to return fire, as did Kensington off to the left. He saw just a quick flash and glimpse of Kanang flanking the Japanese before he disappeared into the foliage. He would do his damage.

The guns, maybe only two or three, were standard Japanese Arisaka rifles. They had a distinctive sound and were very familiar to Thompson. Still only bolt-action with short clips, no semi-automatic fire. With any luck, they might be limited on mortar rounds too.

“Conserve your shots, men!” Thompson yelled out over the gunfire, then glanced down at King. Vacant and half closed fading eyes were looking back at him. Leslie King, his longtime friend from Cairns and his military mentor, had been shot in the lower back and the bullet had blown out a chunk of his belly as it exited. Blood was everywhere.

Part of his lower intestines were trying to bubble out and the Lieutenant was trying the best he could to stop them with his right hand and forearm. King reached out to Thompson with his other hand, but it dropped right away. His eyes flickered to life one more time and he nodded, “Do your best Jackie boy.” Then he was gone.

Thompson racked his Owen and peaked over the edge of the hole. He saw a flash come out of the jungle at about one o’clock. He let off a short burst towards it, ducked and raised again.

He heard Japanese voices and then a loud bark of an order was given. Two more thumps came in quick succession from the knee mortar, one round landing far off behind them, the other exploded near Kensington’s position.

He turned and raised up to look again. What he saw was four charging Japanese not more than forty feet away. They were screaming and coming hard through the brush with their rifles fixed with bayonets. No officers, no swords.

Two were cut down almost immediately but one headed towards where Kensington was hunkered down, the other charged directly at Thompson. An easy target except his normally reliable Owen gun jammed on him. He had no time to try and reload the clip so he pulled his Webley revolver.

The charging Japanese soldier fired one round from the hip which went high over Thompson’s soldier. He fired his Webley and was sure he hit his target but the charging Japanese soldier just kept coming, fumbling with the bolt action and barreling towards him.

For accuracy's sake, Thompson waited until the man was about ten feet away and then fired, followed instantly by another hip shot from the charging enemy.

The man fell forward hard, hit square in the chest by the staff sergeants shot. Thompson swayed and stumbled backward. His upper right arm felt like it was on fire and he tried to steady himself by dropping to a knee.

He looked to Kensington’s position and saw him standing at least, while aiming down with his Owen at a motionless Japanese soldier. Thompson caught movement out of the corner of his eye and it was directly in front of him. A leg from the man he’d just dropped shifted and he fired two more shots from his Webley to make sure.

So much for going undetected and using the element of surprise.

He felt someone catch him as he fell backwards.

***