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Wilkes looked around, trying to read the state of his men. Morgan had his head back, resting against the bulkhead. It moved slightly as the helo rode the air currents. He appeared relaxed. In the crook of his arm was the H&K MP5SD, a 9 mm sub-machine gun, silenced, of course; the expelling rounds made no more noise than a baby farting. On his chest webbing were four M26A1 defensive hand grenades and four M34 ‘Willie Pete’ incendiary/fragmentation hand grenades. The M26A1 had been in service with the US forces since the Korean War. The body was of thin sheet metal lined with a prefragmented spirally wound steel coil, and filled with 155 gm of composition B. On detonation, the M26A1 created a casualty zone with a radius of fifteen metres. A blunt instrument, but effective.

PTE Morgan could toss a grenade fifty metres and land it in a garbage can. He’d won lots of beers from dubious visitors on the firing range with that trick. The point was, he was damn accurate, and with a weapon like a Willie Pete grenade, you needed to be because it had been known to kill quite a few of the good guys. It was filled with white phosphorus that burned at 2700 degrees Celsius, on contact with air, for around sixty seconds. The phosphorus particles were scattered over an area of around thirty-five metres. Get that stuff on you and it burned clear through to China.

Between them, the group also packed a dozen claymore mines, very common, nasty and cheap-to-buy little devices that held ball bearings encased in PE. The claymore was designed to fire its load of ball bearings in a specific direction so that its killing zone could be tightly controlled. It was the ideal sentry to place in a narrow defile or track you knew the enemy would take. The mine could be triggered remotely or by trip wire. And it was easy to deploy. One face of the casing instructed matter-of-factly, ‘This side to enemy’.

For communications, the MAG was equipped with two Raven 11A HF sets, the extra one for backup. Ellis had one, Morgan the other. TACBEs, three carried for the sake of redundancy, had made the trip. More communications were always better than less. The Raven 11A, a development of the original and much-vaunted Raven, had a theoretical range of 200 nautical miles with 120 metres of aerial deployed, and was also capable of sending and receiving secure, scrambled short-burst transmissions. Two satellite phones were also carried, one as backup, with receiving equipment for image viewing. Two sets of backup batteries were carried for each.

The helo had quickly reached a cruising altitude of around 5000 feet. Wilkes peered out at the green water flecked with whitecaps below. A movement caught his eye. It was PTE Littlemore, fiddling with his patrol radio, the type that allowed each man to stay in contact with the rest of the section. He was slapping the receiver in the palm of one hand, then checking the connections. Whatever the problem, it seemed to have been fixed. The trooper repositioned the tiny boom mike in front of his mouth, adjusted the earpiece then, satisfied, moved on to his pack, checking the tightness of the straps. Littlemore was a fiddler. Always checking and rechecking. Like all the men, Littlemore wore thick camouflage paint on his face, which, in his case, only served to highlight the shock of carrotcoloured hair on his head. Red hair also sprouted profusely from the top of the t-shirt at his neck.

* * *

Water had been scarce and they were thirsty. Joe and Suryei made their way cautiously into a gully, listening for suspicious sounds. They scooped handfuls of the cold, clear water into their mouths and then Joe quietly filled the bottles. A small yellow frog drifted across the surface of the slow-moving pool, stroking for the far side. Just as it reached the bank, a slender, bright green viper darted from the grass and snatched it up. The frog’s legs quivered either side of the snake’s jaws briefly and then were still. The reptile briefly held its prize above the water, as if in triumph, then carried it into the tall grass where it quickly disappeared.

Another movement in the grass caught Joe’s eye — a large black scorpion stinging a beetle into submission with the wicked-looking barb on its tail. It occurred to Joe that he was witnessing metaphors for their own situation. Waiting somewhere were their killers — determined, ruthless and committed. That they’d managed to avoid their fate was nothing short of a miracle. He wondered whether he should share this pleasant thought with Suryei and instantly decided against it. Suryei’s determination, her will to survive, had been their defence against the soldiers. Best not to undermine it, he thought. Something large pushed aside the bush on the far bank. Whatever it was it was making its way to the creek. Suryei placed her hand on Joe’s shoulder and they slid back silently from the water’s edge on their bellies into the thick of the jungle.

* * *