Rogue Element (28 page)

Suryei ran her hand over Joe’s back. Blood seeped from the innumerable weeping sores left by an army of leeches. Her dirt-blackened thumb flicked the lighter’s small friction
wheel until the gas caught. It was now on the highest setting but the flame flickered low. She managed to sizzle one last grey-black tube the size of a small cucumber, sending it spinning to the ground before the Bic went out for good. She put it in her pocket. If she managed to escape from this with her life, she’d recycle the lighter into a good luck charm.

‘I’ll pick the rest off with my fingers.’

‘I can take it,’ said Joe, forcing a smile.

They had climbed a low ridge in an attempt to confirm their bearings but, again, it proved a useless exercise. Joe hoped they were going in the right direction but feared that they were just turning blind circles, going nowhere. They could wait an hour or so and see which way the sun dipped, but that was a luxury. Staying in the one place might come with a mortal head wound. Several times they had heard, or imagined they’d heard, footsteps behind or beside them in the dense bush. They had to keep moving in the direction they thought was the right one. Without proper bearings it was a flawed plan, but its simple purpose was giving them a goal to strive for, even if that was just to put one foot in front of the other.

Suryei was starting to doubt her ability to go on. The muscles in her legs ached so badly from the constant effort of walking that she dared not stop in case they cooled down and cramped solid. But they had to rest, even if only for a few minutes every now and then, to remove the swarming, crawling parasites that hitched a ride and feasted until they dropped off, bloated.

Joe found a large tick behind Suryei’s ear that hurt her like hell when he removed it. It was so drunk with her blood that the little bugger could hardly waggle its legs
when Joe held it upside down and examined it in the palm of his hand. Suryei hoped that there weren’t more of them hiding in her hair and armpits. They injected a nasty poison to keep the blood from clotting. It could bring on nauseous attacks, vomiting, and the sweats: all the good stuff.

She examined Joe’s scalp and found it clear. Leeches were Joe’s bane. They seemed to like his blood. He had two on his skin for every one found on hers. Following him along a trail, Suryei had even watched them standing up on the ground and turning their blood-sucking mouths in his direction as he passed.

And, of course, there were mozzies everywhere. One landed on Joe’s back and wasted no time burrowing its proboscis deep into his flesh. Malaria. There was plenty of it about in this part of the world. It started with symptoms that were a bit like flu, with fevers and chills. Things went downhill from there. They had warned her about it on East Timor.

She felt okay, all things considered, but it was impossible to know what was happening inside her body. People often came down with diseases weeks after they arrived home, which meant that both Joe and she could have something now and not know it: dengue fever, filariasis, viral encephalitis. She knew all the names. She shivered, wondering what the tick had left behind after having had its fill.

‘How’re you feeling, Joe?’

Given the situation, Joe thought it an odd question. ‘I could do with a holiday,’ he said.

‘No, I mean, do you feel sick at all?’

‘I’m alright,’ he said. ‘Why?’

‘If we don’t get out of here soon the wildlife will kill us even if the soldiers don’t.’

Joe swatted ineffectually at the miasma of insects around them. A couple of mozzies landed on his arm. He squashed them against his skin, leaving a smear of blood. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘know what you mean.’

Joe looked up at the violently swaying canopy. ‘Must be blowing a gale up there.’ It was breathless as usual at ground level. A cloud drifted across the sun and took the ferocious burn out of it. Joe unshouldered his rucksack and dug around for a bottle of water. They were all empty.

‘I’ll carry that for a bit if you like,’ said Suryei, holding her hand out for the rucksack. Joe thought about protesting, but then handed it over. Joe swung his axe through the air a couple of times. It felt good to have unrestricted movement, and he was now used to the weight of this souvenir from the 747. It had become his link with reality, reminding him that there was a world out there that he’d been wrenched from only days before. His axe. He swung it again. It was actually a pretty useful weapon, as one of the soldiers he’d introduced to it could attest. He swung it again and felt a vague primal surge.

‘Er, Conan?’ Suryei was looking back at him impatiently from the edge of some thick, chest-high grass. ‘Can we go now?’

A red light illuminated. Minus one minute to the drop. It had been a good twenty minutes since the LM had helped
the men locate their ropes and loop them into their wrap-racks. The MAG would fast-rope down together in one wave. It was necessary to get the soldiers out and off quickly so that the V22 could leave the area pronto. Hovering stationary over the drop zone would make it an easy target for forces equipped with portable, hand-held Stinger missiles, or even just well-aimed rifle fire.

The designated LZ approached, the coordinates of which had been nominated by Wilkes and punched into the Osprey’s nav com. The pilot repositioned the switch that fixed the angle of the nacelles on the wingtips and they began to rotate to the vertical. The Osprey’s flight computers countered the aircraft’s natural tendency to alter its altitude as the thrust vectors changed, feathering the aircraft’s control surfaces to maintain level flight. The resultant forces slowed the aircraft, bringing it to a hover twenty metres above the swirling canopy. Total flight time from the
Kitty Hawk
: just one hour and fifty-five minutes.

The Jump Jets cruised high overhead, sweeping the area for bandits, conserving fuel. They were capable of hovering with the V22, behaving like helicopter gunships, but only for the briefest period. In hover mode, the AV-8’s wings provided no lift whatsoever, so an enormous amount of fuel was burned to keep the aircraft aloft. Besides, there was no point putting more aircraft than necessary in the hover position vulnerable to ground fire. The pilots hoped the EA-6B Prowler had done its job, blinding Indon radar. Three Super Hornets might well be orbiting fifteen minutes away but if a flight of F-16s jumped them now, they’d be thirteen minutes too late.

The wind made it difficult to maintain position. The
Osprey slid left and right, bobbing high and low as thirty-knot winds knocked it about. Wilkes gave his men the signal and they leapt forward into the air from the V22’s ramp. From the ground, the soldiers might have looked like baby spiders jumping clear of their mother. Their heavy packs swung below them, attached to their abseiling harnesses with karabiners, so that the weight of their gear didn’t hinder their control and manoeuvrability, or break their legs when they hit the ground.

The men dropped to the canopy and hung suspended above it. They lowered themselves slowly through the uppermost leaves and branches until they could see a clear path to the ground fifty metres below. When each man was satisfied that his progress wouldn’t be impeded, their journey down continued.

Suddenly, a wind gust that would have measured more than forty-five knots lifted the Osprey several metres and shouldered it aside. The men, still attached to their ropes fastened to the buffeted aircraft, were pulled through branches like floss through teeth.

Kevin Gibson was unlucky. He was threading his way through the fork in a heavy branch when his rope pulled him up, then dropped him. The fork caught the lower lip on his helmet as he fell through the narrow opening. The additional weight of his pack hanging from his abseil harness ensured that his neck snapped cleanly, cutting his spinal cord. Gibson wouldn’t have had time to notice anything amiss before St Peter was giving him his room number.

Wilkes could see that Gibbo was in strife. The man was swinging forward on his rope in that odd way, arms hanging limply. He then bashed into a tree trunk twice but did
nothing to prevent the impact either time. After the second collision, the tension on his rope released and Gibbo fell the last fifteen metres, accelerating rapidly.

None of the men shouted out when they saw him fall. It would not have been a smart thing to do. If enemy troops were in the immediate vicinity, the noise of the aircraft would have had them searching the canopy overhead.

Wilkes’s eight remaining men arrived safely, meeting at the base of a hardwood giant. They instantly fed the rope through their wrap-racks to release the tension, so that the V22 pitching around in the wind overhead wouldn’t bounce them off the ground. They then released the karabiner that secured the wrap-racks to their harnesses, and the umbilical cord of the webbing that attached them to their packs.

Wilkes checked his men, counting heads as he went while snippets of conversations he’d had with Gibbo flashed into his mind.

‘Jesus Christ, Gibbo,’ said Ellis, bending over the body of his friend and comrade. They were drinking buddies, both single and loving it.

The others knelt beside the fallen trooper and gave him a minute of silence out of respect. He was a good soldier, one of
them.

Wilkes kept to the schedule for the moment, ignoring his fallen comrade. He clicked the ‘send’ button on his TACBE three times, the agreed signal that they were on the ground and released from their ropes. Almost immediately the ten ropes, dangling from the canopy like strands of black spaghetti, rose up through the trees. The ear-splitting noise of military jets and turbofans receded quickly. It would be smart to vacate the area as quickly as possible.

Gibbo’s body would probably have to be left behind, but in the meantime they didn’t want to telegraph to the enemy any more than was absolutely unavoidable that foreign troops were in the house. Burying it would stop scavengers being attracted, a gathering of which might be an invitation to any Kopassus in the area to investigate. Deny the enemy as much intel as possible, for as long as possible.

Wilkes turned, taking in their position. There was no point burying Gibson here. They had to put some jungle behind them and the LZ as a first priority. ‘Morgan, you and Littlemore divvy up his pack. Mac, you and Beck carry him between you till we find a spot to cache the gear.’

Robson was already fashioning a crude stretcher for the body. ‘Silly bloody prick,’ he muttered. The bastard should have been more careful. They all knew the risks involved and embraced them readily, but that didn’t make it any easier when one of them carked it. And Gibbo had been popular. He was the tallest man in the group, the rest being more compact types. He was unbeatable in the line-outs when the rugby season was on.

With Gibson’s gear divided and the body aboard a stretcher fashioned from saplings and rope, the MAG moved off through the jungle with an easy, practised rhythm, despite the weight on their backs. Wilkes noted that there were plenty of small spiders’ webs strung across the spaces between the grasses and fern trees, an indication that these tracks hadn’t been travelled recently. Half a kilo-metre from their LZ, the men came across three enormous hardwoods that formed almost an equilateral triangle, with a copse of waist-high ferns in the centre. The ground
was high, reasonably dry, and soft – the perfect place to cache their gear and bury the body.

Chris Ferris and Greg Curry freed their trenching tools and dug the depression to the required depth. The men went through their rucksacks and removed duplicated gear. They placed it in heavy-duty plastic garden bags to protect it against moisture and dirt and lowered the bags into the hole. Gibson’s body went in last. The men needed to be able to travel fast and light. If they succeeded quickly in their mission, the gear would be left to the worms.

‘Come back for you later, bud,’ said Ellis, tossing a handful of soil on the mound.

Ferris topped off the cache with a claymore set to explode upwards should the hidden mound be disturbed by unfriendlies. The exercise took seven minutes. They were practised.

Now, loads considerably lightened, the men were ready for business. The order of march was different this time. Wilkes formed his men up in a line abreast to sweep through about sixty metres of jungle. Each man confirmed that his field radio was both transmitting and receiving by answering a quick roll call.

Wilkes swept the area. He picked out cicadas, birds, spiders and even stick insects. His brain processed the images and noted any colour or movement at odds with its surroundings. Untrained eyes found it almost impossible to differentiate military camouflage from the surrounding vegetation, especially if the wearer was stationary, but Wilkes’s eyes were sharp and well trained. They registered the pattern and recognised it for what it was – man-made. Wilkes would have made a good sniper, except that there was a little too much waiting around in that profession for his liking.

This jungle was beautiful, virgin. Wilkes breathed in the heavy, moist air. It was easy to imagine that they were the only humans in this, a primordial forest. The jungle was a good place to be if you knew your craft. He saw a fishtail palm. It looked a bit like the sago palm, only it had a couple of beards covered in tasty-looking fruit that hung from its umbrella of fronds. The fruits were extremely poisonous, but a sago-like pulp could be extracted from the palm’s trunk. You had to
know
, and it was as simple as that.

The palm towered thirty metres towards sunlight that burned through a hole in the canopy left by a giant tree which, succumbing to termites, had crashed to the jungle floor, flattening many smaller trees as it fell. He paused beside the monstrous fallen trunk and noted the position on his GPS. At a pinch they could use this place to RV with the V22 later. Indeed, it was not that far from the spot the V22 had set them down, nor from their cached gear.

He wondered what foods the survivors of the air crash had been living on. It would be easy to die of starvation in the jungle if you had no idea where to look for food. But most likely you would die of poisoning, the desire to eat overwhelming the fear of the unknown. Many things that appeared edible could kill painfully. He trod on some fungi that looked suspiciously like
Amanita phalloides
, the death cap mushroom. Wilkes knew his fungi – had to, it was part of essential survival training – but it was easy to get it wrong. Species that were edible often had deadly cousins and it was not always easy to tell the two apart.

The jungle was alive with sound. Cicadas screamed, birds sang, macaques hooted and squealed, and the ground rustled with movement. It took some getting used
to – filtering the noise so that anything man-made could be distinguished. It was nearly an impossible task. The soldiers they were up against were professionals, like themselves. They knew, as did Wilkes’s men, how to move through the environment without announcing their presence. Perhaps, Wilkes hoped, providing their LZ had been out of earshot, they would still hold the trump card of surprise, the opposition believing they had the jungle to themselves.

Wilkes’s men moved soundlessly to the edge of the clearing made by the fallen giant and melted into the bush, their senses tuned and sharpened by hard experience. They were the hunters now.

There was something familiar about the area, but Suryei couldn’t put her finger on it. She thought she must have been imagining it – one grove of ferns looked like every other grove of ferns. There was nothing on the ground to indicate that they’d been in this area before. Perhaps it was a combination of details – a tree next to a rock beside some tall palms on an area of ground that sloped away from a sharp rise. Whatever it was, there was something about this place that
felt
familiar. And dangerous.

Suryei slowed her pace and held up her hand for Joe to stop. There was something, something not right . . .

The trail narrowed somewhat beside a hardwood giant and sloped steeply. They picked their way down, careful not to make any noise or slip on the muddy carpet of rotting leaves. At the base of the rise the trail flattened out and then widened into a small clearing with two towering trees standing in it.

Suryei noticed an odd shape on the ground, like a giant
cocoon. The cocoon moved and groaned. And then she realised why the area had been so familiar. There was the thorny bush in the centre of the clearing where they had rested on the first night, a lifetime ago. The cocoon was a man wrapped in a blanket. Joe and Suryei remembered the events of that morning as if from an old movie. This was the man who had urinated on them and then been bitten by the cobra. He didn’t sound well.

‘Let’s go,’ said Joe, feeling more vulnerable than usual in this familiar place.

‘Hang on,’ she said, her curiosity getting the better of her judgement.

Suryei approached carefully and bent over him. He groaned again. He was lying on ground that had been cleared of leaf litter. The man was conscious enough to open his eyes but evidently had trouble focusing them. Eventually his bloodshot eyes met hers but there was not a shred of recognition in them. He was no longer a soldier. The snake’s venom had reduced him to a basic level of consciousness. His lips were black and cracked; a track of dried spittle ran away from the lower corner of his mouth. The man’s tongue, dry like the head of a lizard, moved over them continuously.

Suryei signalled to Joe. He was reluctant to step into the open, away from the protective cloak of the jungle. He made his way nervously over towards them.

‘Water. He’ll die otherwise,’ said Suryei going for one of the bottles in Joe’s rucksack. Fortunately, they had only just refilled them and the water was still cool.

‘Cobra venom dehydrates,’ Suryei said quietly. She dripped some water on the man’s tongue as it flicked out, cracked and swollen. He responded, groaning a dry, hoarse
sound. She poured a little more water into the man’s mouth. His Adam’s apple moved up and down then spasmed as he coughed weakly. The coughing stopped. More water. The lizard came out again to drink.

‘He’s in a bad way,’ Suryei said. ‘We should leave some water and go.’

‘Go, yes. Good idea,’ said Joe, anxious to be far away from this place.

A sound came from behind them. It was a metallic sound. The jungle didn’t make noises like that. Joe and Suryei both glanced over their shoulders. A man stood in the clearing, smiling. Joe looked down the barrel of a gun for the third time in as many days. He was still failing to find the experience a pleasant one.

The soldier gestured at them with the weapon to move away from his comrade on the ground. They moved slowly. Joe realised that both their hands were raised in the air. It had been an automatic reaction. They shuffled step by step off to one side, presenting their armpits to their captor.