Could they have doubled back and made for the escarpment instead? Even climbed it? He cursed their lack of personal radio comms. If he’d had them, this job would’ve been over. He’d have sent a few men forward to track the man and woman and then easily coordinated an ambush. Instead, he’d had to keep his force together and virtually within line of sight of each other. And the camp had had to be effectively dismantled — they couldn’t have left it intact behind them. That had given the people he was tracking a head start. And they didn’t seem to be playing by the rules, stumbling and bumbling along the established trails, leaving signposts of their passage. This whole business was getting frustrating. He swore and spat on the ground. His men tried to ignore his anger. But they too were getting edgy, feeling the tension.

The sergeant took a deep breath to steady his temper and surveyed the map again, attempting to see it with fresh eyes. The stream wasn’t indicated on the map but that didn’t mean anything. There were hundreds of millions of litres of water still draining off the mountains and hills after the monsoon. Water was everywhere.

He took out his GPS and marked their position on the map. A fresh plan was forming in his head. He interrogated it and decided it was sound. They would set up an ambush… here.

At their backs was the plane wreck. Away in front and to the left was the high, rugged country. It was an obstacle that only well-equipped, experienced climbers could tackle. Desperation and determination could overcome many equipment deficiencies, but he seriously doubted that his two adversaries, wounded from the crash or their exertions in the jungle, would attempt sheer volcanic faces. There was an extremely good chance that they would stroll into his trap if he set it right.

Then, once contact was made, his men could pull back and converge to form a funnel that would catch his quarry in a killing zone. Marturak deployed lookouts, ordered his men to have their rations and take several hours rest. It would be a long day and an even longer night.

He checked the time. Allah! He was due to make a situation report. It was not something he could avoid any longer. His superiors back in Jakarta needed to know what was going on. The message he would send was in his head. Marturak knew it wouldn’t be welcomed: site unsecured, two survivors, in pursuit. No, the general would not be pleased.

East Timor, 0155 Zulu, Friday, 1 May

Sergeant Tom Wilkes’s section was patrolling the West Timor border when the call came over the VHF. They immediately broke off the patrol, found a spot under a tree and made a brew. It was time for smoko anyway. The light was grey and cool in the hill shadow.

Long after its independence from Indonesia, East Timor was still quietly hosting soldiers from Australia’s Special Air Services Regiment, men like Wilkes and his section. Neither East Timor nor Australia entirely trusted the Indonesian military to live up to its government’s word of nonintervention in the new nation.

‘In country’ was the ideal advanced training facility, great for the sharpening of battle senses. The bullets were real and border tensions regularly ebbed and flowed. Those tensions had lately increased somewhat since the proclamation of independence. The East Timor militia, now no longer supported by the TNI, had splintered into bandit groups that conducted vicious raids across the border from the old refugee camps in Indonesian West Timor. They had lost their war but continued the battle, a spiteful murderous rabble.

The United Nations soldiers of ETFOR on the ground knew what needed to be done to end the menace once and for all, but didn’t have the mandate. Where the UN soldiers had rules of engagement under which they could fire only when fired upon, the local fighters had a Swiss cheese of opportunity. That was how the United Nations men and women saw it anyway — Swiss cheese because it was full of holes and it stank. Still, Wilkes’s Warriors were having fun. This was what you joined up for. Exercising with the Yanks or one of ‘our Asian neighbours’ or the Kiwis in the north of Australia was clean and tidy compared to some of the things that had to be done when there was ordnance pointing in your direction that could put holes in you. Wilkes’s Warriors had learned plenty up in these hills.