Sword of Allah

Western Highlands, Papua New Guinea

‘This looks bad,’ said Sergeant Tom Wilkes of the SAS, the Australian Special Air Service Regiment, thinking out loud. He was referring to the road ahead. It snaked up across the mountainside, a ribbon of orange mud that sucked at the tyres of the Land Rover and slowed the convoy’s progress to a walking pace. Wilkes repeatedly ran the flat of his hand across his short-cropped brown hair, vaguely reassured by the rough prickling on his palm. It was a habit he wasn’t aware of, something he did when he was stressed or concerned.

‘How did I know you were going to say that?’ said Ellis, used to his sergeant’s mannerisms. The jungle of the New Guinea highlands lay around them, heavy with the daily monsoonal downpour that had only just let up. The green mass pressed in on the road, overhanging it, trying to suffocate it, reclaim it. The Land Rovers bounced over tree roots that gave the tyres momentary purchase before the wheels sunk to their axles once more in the cloying mud. It was the perfect place for an ambush. Wilkes turned around briefly to check on the passengers cramped together in the back seat.

Bill Loku, the member of parliament for these parts, had been happily pointing out various landmarks in the low country, but as the altitude had increased, so had his unease. He said, ‘Mi gat wari. Mi laikim stap.’

‘He’s worried, wants to stop,’ said Timbu, the translator.

‘Not here, mate,’ said Wilkes looking out the window. ‘We can’t turn around.’

Loku sat in the back of the Land Rover with Timbu, Lance Corporal Gary Ellis and Trooper James Littlemore. It was hot, cramped and uncomfortable, but there were more pressing concerns than mere comfort. The politician looked decidedly tense, eyes darting left and right, shoulders bunched and rigid. Everyone felt it — the certainty of being spied on, watchful eyes hiding in the jungle, waiting for the right moment. Not everyone was happy with the government’s performance, and in these parts unhappiness was apt to be expressed in a most violent way. It was Loku’s first return visit to the highlands since taking up full-time residence in Port Moresby, the capital city of Papua New Guinea.

Wilkes could only just penetrate Loku’s accent, and the fact that he slipped in and out of the local pidgin English didn’t help his understanding any. But Wilkes didn’t need to be a linguist to know when a man was shitting himself. ‘Isn’t this where those coppers were shishkebabbed?’ asked Ellis innocently.

‘Yep,’ said Wilkes, turning around and giving the lance corporal a frown that said, ‘Put a sock in it’. Ellis was baiting the pollie, only Loku’s English was awful and it was unlikely he knew what ‘shishkebab’ meant anyway. Ellis was talking about an incident that had happened two days ago. A police vehicle had been cut off on this very spot. The two policemen had been found a few hours later by more police sent to investigate the radio silence, their horribly mutilated bodies speared many times. They had also been decapitated: headhunted. The whole area was regressing. Violence had gripped the country during these elections and many feared that total anarchy was just around the corner.

‘Tell me again why we’re here, boss,’ said Ellis.

‘It’s called “being a good neighbour”,’ said Wilkes. They’d been given the speech already — all the public relations reasons why — by the prime minister and the leader of the opposition, back in Townsville before deployment. The government of Papua New Guinea, anxious to have full and free elections with as little intimidation from disaffected people as possible, had called on Australia for assistance. On one level, the newspapers said Canberra felt obliged to help, because Papua New Guinea had been an Australian protectorate up until 1975, whereupon it had become a nation in its own right. But the truth was, PNG was dangerously unstable and what if the place became a failed state right on our doorstep? Well, the politicians were predicting dire consequences for Australia if that happened. Apparently, it would be the end of civilisation as we knew it.

So, Australia had responded to the call with a program that included a full troop of SAS soldiers for protection purposes — thirty-two men plus an S70 A9 Blackhawk helicopter. Not much of an assistance program, really, but this new request for military aid was nevertheless not an easy one for Australia to fulfil. Nearly all its limited numbers of elite Special Forces troops and transport squadron aircraft were committed in actions elsewhere — Afghanistan, East Timor, Thailand, the Philippines, the Gulf, the Solomons, South Korea — and it had become necessary for the Australian Defence Force command to recall soldiers resting up after tough deployments in order to put this meagre force together. Tom Wilkes had been one of those given the short straw, barely recovered from his last gruelling mission. Sergeant Wilkes involuntarily traced the rude scar that ran from his ear, snaked around his cheek and ended under his neck, the permanent calling card left by an Indonesian bullet that had ricocheted off a rock, splintering into fragments and flaying his skin. The heat and humidity were making the scar itch. The stitches had only been removed three weeks ago and the nightmare in the jungles of Sulawesi was still fresh in Wilkes’s mind.

The SAS troop had been split up and farmed out to various politicians touring the country, providing them with personal security, and augmenting the local troops when required. On this particular job, Wilkes, Ellis, Littlemore and Trooper Stu Beck were to be the Loku party’s personal guard for the duration, and rode in the second of the four-vehicle convoy. In the Land Rover up front, sweating it out with a couple of very large PNG soldiers, were Troopers Chris Ferris, Terry ‘Smell’ Morgan, Mac Robson and Al Coombs. Bringing up the rear were two larger four-wheel-drive trucks hauling ballot boxes, tables and chairs, various supplies, a few more PNG soldiers, the main opposition candidate, plus a skeleton television crew and their gear.

Wilkes felt as edgy as anyone in the convoy. All it would take was a mine under the lead vehicle to disable it, and then everyone behind it would be at the mercy of enemy forces. A few well-placed light machine guns in the trees and there’d be no escape. Wrong millennium, Wilkes reminded himself. Think bows, arrows and spears. It would have been far more practical to have had the Blackhawk on call for this op, dropping them off where required, but it had to service the entire operation across the rugged spine of Papua New Guinea, an area generally known as the highlands. It was hot, but that didn’t account for the profusion of sweat pouring from them. The vehicle behind, a Ford of indeterminate vintage, backfired. Everyone in the convoy with a firearm involuntarily fingered the safety.

‘Yu laikim Nu Guinea?’ Loku asked Wilkes, but he appeared less interested in what the Australian thought of Papua New Guinea than he was in examining the surrounding jungle.

‘Yes, sir, laikim tumas,’ said Wilkes after a moment of translating the question. It was only his second day back in PNG and it took a while for his brain to attune itself to pidgin English, the language spoken thereabouts. He’d been to PNG before, to lay a wreath at the cenotaph at Kokoda. His grandfather had been a member of 11 Platoon 39th Battalion, one of thirty lunatic Australians who’d stood against the might of the advancing Imperial Japanese forces in World War II. He’d been armed with a revolver. His grandfather’s sacrifice was one of the many selfless acts that had helped stop the enemy dead in its tracks there. PNG had changed little since those days. It was a beautiful, wild and primitive place, with only small parts of it even dimly aware that they were living in the twenty-first century.

Loku nodded then lapsed back into silence, the attempt at conversation failing. The jungle bounced past, slapping wetly at the Land Rover. The edge was coming off the heat as the convoy climbed. Fingers of white mist curled over the ridgelines and slid down the steep valleys. And then the road suddenly widened into a clearing and the jungle receded. The Land Rover ground past two naked young boys, who stood and gawked at the vehicles. The boys were accompanied by a man wearing nothing but a piece of twine around his hips that held a large, hollow root over his penis — a koteka — and a piece of curved, cream-coloured bone through his nose. Highlanders. They were the colour of roasted coffee beans, the man’s body as hard and shiny as burnished wood.

‘They don’t look very pleased to see us, boss,’ Ellis observed. ‘They obviously don’t know that their politician’s in town, and he’s chock-full of promises.’

‘Gary…’ said Wilkes threateningly. None of the highlanders were smiling. That was strange. In Wilkes’s experience, the highlanders were usually friendly and inquisitive. It was rude to look directly at the women but no such strictures were placed on the men. Perhaps the welcome would warm up when they arrived in the village’s centre, he thought.

The convoy wound through the settlement. The buildings, if they could be called that, were little more than woven grass huts. Small fires smoked here and there, giving the place a cold, bluish tinge. Pigs squealed as they rooted about for food. Still no smiles. Wilkes wondered what Loku and his government had done to earn the displeasure being shown. All the men were armed with spears and clubs.

‘I don’t think much of their welcoming committee,’ said Trooper Littlemore, feeling edgy. Wilkes agreed with a nod. If he was concerned, Loku worked hard not to show it. Wilkes admired him for that — he knew the man was shitting himself behind the smile. Loku happily waved out the window as, no doubt, the fellow politician in the vehicle behind was doing. The younger children hid behind their mothers, who then herded them away.

‘Where are all the women and kids going?’ said Ellis. Wilkes had noticed that too. The village was now clearing of all but the men. The atmosphere was tense. Wilkes didn’t need to check the M4/203 in the crook of his arm. He knew its magazine was full, and there were rounds for the underslung grenade launcher in his webbing. For this mission he’d chosen this weapon over the Minimi machine gun, his usual choice, because of its compact size and versatility. The convoy ground to a halt in the centre of the village but no one came forward to greet them. The drivers turned off the ignition and the air was eerily silent.

The plan was that Loku and Andrew Pelagka, the opposition politician hoping to wrest this seat away from the incumbent, would meet with the village elders and, through Timbu, the interpreter, present their various policies. A ballot would then be set up and, after the village elders had told everyone who to vote for, polling would start. Wilkes and his men would ensure no harm came to Loku and Pelagka, while the PNG soldiers guaranteed that thuggery aimed at intimidating voters to cast against their wishes didn’t occur.

This was the way democracy worked in countries that didn’t quite get the concept, thought Wilkes. But up here in this remote part of the world, the whole notion of democracy seemed alien and ill-fitting, like trying to get these people to swap their penis gourds for business suits. How many times did the villagers here even see someone from Moresby, let alone a white man? The best thing the government down on the coast could do for these people living high in the mountains, and fifty thousand years in the past, was to keep civilisation away — loggers, McDonald’s, the whole mess — for as long as possible. But Wilkes’s point of view was his own. He was entitled to have it, but not to enforce it. He was an instrument of someone else’s will — Canberra’s — and through it, the people of Australia.

‘C’mon, you blokes,’ said Wilkes. ‘We can’t sit in here picking our noses for the duration.’ The men grunted, cracked the doors open and climbed out of the vehicles. A few of them stretched. At least it felt good to stand and move around. Then the soldiers unloaded the trucks. The PNG troops milled about together, some taking the opportunity to urinate on the wheels of the trucks. Loku, Pelagka and Timbu walked towards a group of the warriors. Sergeant Wilkes gave the hand signal to form up and the Australians moved quickly to back up the politicians, but not too close and not in a threatening way. No one wanted to spook the tribesmen. The men kept the muzzles of their weapons pointed at the ground.

Timbu strode confidently towards the man who must have been the chief. The old guy had wiry white hair pulled back on his head, revealing a high intelligent forehead. Bright bird-of-paradise feathers buried securely in his hair flitted when he moved his head. Strings of teeth, bone and more feathers hung around his neck, along with what looked like the face of an altimeter from an old aircraft. His body was lean, the skin loose in places as if he’d shrunk slightly. There were many scars on his body, the legacies of countless battles and accidents. It was a hard life, yet somehow, through jungle smarts and toughness, the old man had survived it all. The chief was surrounded by younger men, all with the physiques of Olympic middle-distance runners — muscled, but not muscle-bound. They, too, were scarred by various life and death contests. The men smelled sour and acrid, a combination of animal and smoke, and something else familiar that Wilkes couldn’t quite place.

Timbu appeared to know their dialect. The exchange between him and the chief was loud and animated. Sergeant Wilkes glanced at the men who must have been either the chief’s sons or his bodyguards, or maybe both. The warriors, he realised, were sizing up him and his men. They appeared confident and cocky, almost haughty, but there was fear, too — fear of the unknown. How many third millennium soldiers had these people seen? Hidden way up here in the clouds, probably none.

Wilkes took in the village at a glance. The women and the children had completely vanished now. Only the men were left; a line of soldiers and a couple of civilians squared off against a much larger force of near-naked warriors looking increasingly belligerent and excited, muscles twitching with adrenalin overload.

‘Got any ideas, boss?’ asked Lance Corporal Ellis in Wilkes’s ear, keeping his eyes on the villagers.

‘Smile. Look happy,’ Wilkes replied.

Ellis did as he was told, but it was a tight smile and there was no amusement in it. He’d seen several warriors on the edge of the gathering raise their spears and point them in the direction of Timbu, Bill Loku and Andrew Pelagka, and it had taken Ellis a supreme effort of willpower not to respond by shooting the warriors dead before they got their spears off. Of course, Ellis knew had he done that, it would have been the match that blew the powder keg.

Suddenly several shots rang out, explosions from somewhere behind the treeline. ‘Jesus!’ said Littlemore. ‘Does that sound like military assault carbines to you blokes?’ No one answered. They were too busy scoping the treeline, looking for the source of the gunfire. Then followed a howling scream, a terrifying noise that sent the warriors in the village scattering for cover. Several natives threw their spears blindly at the trees as they ran helter-skelter. The PNG soldiers also ran, some even bumping into each other in their efforts to vacate the open ground of the village centre. Sergeant Wilkes and his men dropped to their knees in the confusion, sighting down their M4s and machine guns ready for whatever was about to burst into the open. The eerie howling grew louder still and then a swarm of painted and feathered warriors erupted from the cover of the dense jungle, screaming, waggling their tongues, running at full tilt towards the village centre.

Wilkes assessed the situation fast. ‘Ellis, Beck, Robson! Get the civilians under cover. Go!’

The two SAS troopers gathered up the politicians and the guide and herded them, running at a crouch, behind some heavy logs.

A spear thudded into the soft ground at Trooper Littlemore’s feet, frightening the crap out of him. Never in a million years did he expect to die on the point of a firehardened, barbed tip. The man who hurled it kept coming towards him, some kind of feathered club held high in his hand, ready for the death swing. Littlemore had no choice. He let off a short burst with his Minimi. Slugs smashed into the man, hurling him backwards into two of his mates.

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Wilkes above the din. ‘Aim fucking high!’ He saw a couple of PNG soldiers fall down as they ran, one whose leg buckled under as it broke clean below the knee.

After a moment of confusion, the SAS men recovered their equilibrium. The politicians and other civilians secured behind the logs, Ellis and Robson rejoined Wilkes and Littlemore. They then split into twos and fired close to the marauders, but not at them, pulverising the trees around them and turning the ground at their feet into boiling cauldrons of earth and hot steel jackets. The PNG soldiers had also begun to organise themselves and were returning fire.

Wilkes popped a grenade from his webbing and loaded it into the underslung M203 launcher. He aimed quickly and then fired, lofting it behind the charging tribesmen. The HE round hit the open ground where Wilkes intended, exploding with a deafening pulse that spooked a dozen warriors, who turned and fled back into the trees. The concussion stopped several more warriors, who stood and shook their heads, deafened and disoriented.

‘What the hell are these people doing with AK-47s?’ yelled Littlemore. Wilkes didn’t answer because he had no idea. But the fact was they had them, and a round fired by a primitive warrior could do as much damage as a round from a professional sniper if it hit the right spot. Fortunately, though, they had no training and hitting a target from a distance of two hundred metres with a rifle as powerful as a Kalashnikov wasn’t easy even if the finger on the trigger was experienced. Adding the confusion of battle made the task of aiming accurately even more difficult, and if the shooter was running, well-nigh impossible. It was not surprising, then, that despite the considerable amount of lead flying about, none of the SAS was killed or wounded. But Wilkes knew that this situation would change rapidly if the attackers were permitted to close with his men. No skill or experience hitting the bullseye was necessary when the bull itself was at point-blank range. ‘C’mon, you blokes. Start earning your pay,’ he said. He made a few quick hand signals and his men took the offensive. They moved about, never staying in the one place more than a few seconds. This willingness to move confused the painted warriors, making their targeting even more erratic. As soon as they stopped and took aim, Wilkes’s Warriors would fire on them from an angle they didn’t expect. With the benefit of surprise lost, the initiative passed to the defenders. Wilkes and his men kept splitting off at different angles, firing, moving. The attackers soon had no idea where to concentrate their attack. Withdrawal was their only option.

Trooper Beck had a lucky escape. He rolled out from behind a grass hut, coming to the kneeling position, and found himself looking up into the black eyes of a warrior less than three metres away, the smoking muzzle of the man’s AK-47 pointing a little over his head. The highlander had just fired a burst from the carbine. All he had to do was drop the weapon slightly, squeeze the trigger and Beck was dead. Beck brought his own weapon to bear on the warrior — it took an age to come around, turning, turning — and Beck expected at any instant to have his lights burned out as he registered the muzzle flash. But it never came. The two men glared at each other, the warrior’s nostrils flaring like something wild and dangerous as he breathed. Beck was mesmerised by the sight of the man, fierce and proud, and spectacularly adorned with technicolour feathered plumes and red, yellow and white paint. It would have been like shooting a lion or a tiger, only this man was something rarer, a migrant from an age lost to modern civilisation. In that instant, Beck felt a distant connection with the proud and dangerous warrior. The SAS trooper registered the highlander’s finger squeezing the trigger repeatedly and he realised that he should be dead. The weapon’s magazine was spent. The tribesman knew he’d lost this encounter when the rifle in his hands refused to fire. He flung it down, turned and ran, disappearing into the jungle, gone in an instant like a dream that dissolves into an uncertain waking memory.

‘Shit,’ said Beck. He blinked several times and sucked in a lungful of the wet mountain air as his heart pounded. He felt like a man who’d played dead while a bear sniffed him over, expecting the ruse to be discovered at any moment. ‘Shit,’ he said again under his breath. He stood and looked around, regaining his composure in time to see a band of naked men from the village charge into the bush, giving chase to the retreating marauders. They’d picked up some of the dropped weapons and were firing them on the run, chasing the attackers. Two warriors from the village fell from the pack as they ran, victims of friendly fire, just as the melee reached the treeline. The party giving chase disappeared from view at that instant, but their path through the dense bush was marked by the clatter of semiautomatic fire that frightened birds from the trees.

‘You okay, mate?’ said Wilkes, trotting over to Beck. ‘You’re one lucky bastard. Did the bugger hypnotise you or something?’

‘Dunno, boss. Maybe,’ said Beck.

Beck leaned down and picked up the dropped AK-47. He expelled the magazine and checked it. Just as he’d thought: empty. The selector was on automatic fire.

‘If it’d been set to single shot, there might have been something left in the till with your name on it,’ Wilkes said. He held out his hand and Beck passed him the weapon. He turned the carbine over and the two men gave it a cursory examination. It was old and filthy with a stock deeply scarred from years of abuse. The blueing on the barrel was also removed in places and rust eggs spotted the metal here and there.

‘The bloke on the other end was lucky this didn’t blow up in his face,’ said Ferris, looking over Wilkes’s shoulder. ‘What the hell are these bastards doing with Kalashnikovs anyway?’

‘Is there an echo around here?’ said Wilkes.

‘What?’ Ferris asked.

‘Never mind,’ said Wilkes, passing him the weapon. ‘I’d like to know where this came from, and how it got here.’

‘Yeah, well, knowing the important questions is why you’re the leader of our merry band of wankers, Sarge.’ Ferris handed the carbine back. Originally called Wilkes’s Warriors, the sergeant’s troop had been renamed Wilkes’s Wankers when they were in East Timor, and the epithet had stuck.

‘Come on,’ said Wilkes, ‘we’d better see how the rest of our party is enjoying themselves.’

‘What are we going to do about the locals?’ Robson said, nodding in the direction of the popping gunfire.

‘Not much we can do. We’re not here to sort that one out. We’re on protection duty, remember? So we’d best go and protect.’

‘All our guys are accounted for,’ said Lance Corporal Ellis jogging over. ‘A couple of the PNG boys are wounded, though. Stray shots. Nothing serious. Nurse Beck, you might like to see to ’em.’

‘Yep,’ said Beck. He turned and ran back to the Land Rover to get his first aid kit.

‘There’re ten dead — four defenders, six attackers,’ said Ellis, continuing his debrief. ‘Loku, the other pollie and the interpreter are okay, but shaken up.’

‘Could be worse,’ said Wilkes.

‘Sorry about shooting that bugger, Sarge,’ said Littlemore, disappointed with himself.

‘It was you or him, wasn’t it?’

‘Yeah, I know, but…’

‘Let it go, Jimbo. Did your best.’

The SAS were the elite of the Australian Army, trained to kill but not killers. There was a big difference and Wilkes’s men were proud of their level of professionalism. Littlemore had just ended the life of a man wielding a stone-age club. If nothing else it was a terribly uneven contest and he didn’t feel good about it. Five more warriors lay dead in the village centre, shot by the PNG troops who were a little less concerned about sparing their countrymen’s lives.

Wilkes’s men stood in a loose group, heads swivelling about, prepared for trouble. ‘How’s everyone for ammo?’ asked Wilkes.

The men checked their webbing and most shook their heads. They’d expended much of their personal stores. Frightening people away took more bullets than killing them. Wilkes didn’t like to be low on ammunition, especially when the jungle around them appeared to be full of people with twitchy fingers. He had half a magazine left — fifteen rounds. He could still call on his trusty pump action Remington, and he had plenty of heavy #4 buckshot to go with it. He also had five HE grenades left for the M203. Wilkes admonished himself for not having a few flash-bangs in his kit. As their name suggested, flash-bangs made a hell of a noise when they went off, as well as making a blinding flash. They were designed primarily for anti-terror work, for disorienting terrorists without killing innocent civilians. A few of them would have come in handy during a skirmish like the one they’d just experienced, stopping the invaders cold, and maybe saving lives on both sides.

Bill Loku, Andrew Pelagka and Timbu walked over, dusting themselves down.

Wilkes gave the civilians a quick once-over. They were dishevelled and muddy, but otherwise unharmed. He asked anyway, directing the question first to Loku: ‘Yu oraet, sir?’

The politician nodded, sweat beads glistening on his black skin.

‘Mr Pelagka?’

‘Yes, mi okei tenkyu.’

‘Timbu?’

The translator nodded.

Wilkes next turned his attention to his men. ‘How about you blokes? All OK?’

‘Fabulous, boss,’ said Beck.

‘Same,’ said Littlemore.

Ellis nodded agreement.

The headman of the village walked towards the group, taking broad steps, his composure not in the least affected, as though the events of the past half an hour were nothing too extraordinary. Indeed, he seemed more interested in Wilkes’s M4. He pointed at it and spoke in a language that was utterly foreign, barely moving his ancient lips. Timbu spoke to him, and they conversed back and forth. Finally, in unaccented English that continually surprised Wilkes, Timbu said, ‘The chief wants many guns like yours, Sergeant, so that he can bury his enemies. Can you show him a grenade? He saw you fire one and wants a closer look.’

Wilkes prised one from his chest webbing and handed it to the chief. It was perfectly safe. The device had to spin clockwise at quite high rotations to arm itself. The chief felt its weight in the palm of his hand, then threw it up and down carelessly a couple of times. He spat a crimson quid of betel nut and saliva on the ground at his feet before speaking again.

‘The chief is amazed that something so small can lift several men off the ground and throw them around like sticks. He says it’s truly magic of the gods, but can’t decide whether those gods are good or evil.’

They might be primitive people, but that didn’t dull their perception any. Wilkes said, ‘Tell the chief I admire his wisdom, Timbu.’

Timbu translated and the chief nodded, handing the grenade back. Next he beckoned for Wilkes’s weapon. The sergeant first checked that the chamber was empty and the safety on before he handed it over. Again, the chief felt its weight then brought it up, pulling the stock back into his shoulder and lining up his eye behind the sight. He muttered something.

‘He doesn’t like it. Says it feels light — not very strong,’ said Timbu.

The old man handed back the carbine. ‘Can you ask the chief where the jungle people get their guns from?’ Wilkes asked.

Timbu nodded and spoke in the strange, mumbling tongue and the chief replied. ‘Men from Papua — Indonesians,’ he said, nodding towards the west. ‘They come with guns and barter for the marijuana that grows wild here. It’s very powerful.’

‘It’s called New Guinea Gold. It’ll blow the top of your head off,’ said Ellis, chipping in.

‘I suppose you’re going to tell me next that you’ve never inhaled,’ said Wilkes with a smile.

‘Actually, I knew a bloke who knew a bloke whose sister’s boyfriend had the stuff once,’ said Ellis. ‘And he didn’t do the drawback.’

‘Yeah, right.’ Stale marijuana smoke. That was the smell Wilkes had recognised earlier but couldn’t quite place.

Timbu talked some more with the chief, nodding occasionally and asking questions. The chief became quite

animated.

‘What is it?’ Wilkes asked.

‘The Indonesians first came about a year ago with just a few weapons and gave them to a small village over the ridge,’ said the translator, pointing north. ‘In return, the people gave them food and herbs, which probably included marijuana. Six months later, the Indonesians returned, this time with several crates of weapons and boxes of ammunition, and bartered the lot for bales of pot. The guns proved a big success with the locals. They could kill at great distances — much better than spears, but there were a couple of accidents. The chief says he heard one man blew his hand off accidentally, and two boys shot each other dead playing with them, but the weapons had allowed the small village to finally exercise payback on a much larger neighbouring village they’d been warring with for some time.

‘The Indonesians came back again a couple of months later with still more guns, wanting more drugs. This time they struck a deal with the larger village. The following day, a raiding party wiped out the smaller village — everyone — men, women and children. Fewer warriors use the traditional weapons around here anymore. They all want carbines. A lot of people are dying— it’s very sad.’

Wilkes nodded. Sad was an understatement. ‘Ask the chief why his village doesn’t have rifles yet,’ he said.

Timbu put it to the chief, who hawked loudly onto the ground before answering.

‘The chief says it’s the road. It scares off the traders. That’s why this village is one of the last in these hills to get them. But the chief thinks his village will get rifles soon. They must have them to deter attacks.’

The chief began to talk again, smiling, patting Morgan and Littlemore on the back. Timbu said, ‘The chief wants us all to be his guests tonight, and he is sorry that he didn’t make us feel welcome when we first arrived. He didn’t know we were such good fighters.’

Wilkes scratched his forehead. He wasn’t keen. This wasn’t supposed to be the SAS show. He looked at Loku and Pelagka. Bill Loku took over, speaking up in pidgin, smiling, using plenty of friendly gestures and back-patting of his own to get his point across. Striking up a rapport with these people was his reason for being here. Politicians — the same everywhere, thought Wilkes.

Timbu translated for the politicians and the chief smiled broadly, showing a mouth full of red and black teeth, the legacy of a lifetime of chewing betel nut.

But it wasn’t all happiness. The wives, mothers and sisters of the two villagers felled at the treeline by friendly fire began to mourn their dead. They howled over the men. Timbu said, ‘Aside from the emotional loss, losing their men is going to cause those women real hardship. They’ll have to rely on the generosity of the village to survive.’

Wilkes nodded. ‘If it’s not a rude question, Timbu, I’ve been meaning to ask — where’d you learn to speak English like that?’

‘My parents came from this area. Our village got torched when I was a baby. A payback raid over a pig. My parents were killed. An Australian patrol officer found me and adopted me. Went to a private school in Sydney. Political science at Sydney University, then back to Port Moresby, and here I am.’ He said it as if there was something about his life’s journey that was inevitable.

‘Is “payback” what it sounds like?’ asked Littlemore, who’d never been to PNG before and didn’t know much about the place.

‘Yeah, it’s exactly what you’d think it means. You do something to me, and I pay you back. Unfortunately, the way they practise it here, you pay me back and then I pay you back and on it goes, round and round. Used to be pretty bad before the Lutheran missionaries began converting the area and settled things down. But looks like it’s gonna get bad again with all these guns about.’

‘Yep,’ said Wilkes, looking at the dead highlander twenty metres away curled on the ground in the foetal position, his warpaint running with his own blood. PNG troops laid three other dead warriors beside him. ‘So what are you doing up here, Timbu?’

‘This was my home,’ said Timbu. ‘Not this village, but these hills. Come back every chance I get.’ He looked around, taking in the surrounds, and Wilkes could sense the man’s loss. ‘Now I work for the government as a translator. When I heard Bill was heading up here to kiss babies, I put my hand up to come along. I speak English, Indonesian, pidgin, a couple of these highland dialects and a smattering of menu French to impress the chicks.’

‘Don’t think you’ll find much foie gras round here,’ said Wilkes. He sized Timbu up professionally and decided it would be much healthier to be his friend than his enemy, for Timbu was a big man, five or six centimetres taller than Wilkes, and just as stocky — around a hundred and ten kilos in weight. He guessed Timbu was around thirty to thirty-two years old, a few years older than himself, and built like a rugby player — maybe a second rower, Wilkes thought — with a good strong face, a broad nose and teeth so white they appeared to be lit from the inside.

‘Boss,’ said Beck, interrupting.

‘Stu?’

‘Got three wounded PNG men. Not seriously. Two flesh wounds — both thigh shots — and a fractured tibia and fibula. The bullet’s still lodged in the bone. Should medivac ’em out.’

Wilkes nodded.

‘We’ve got no morphine, just a basic first aid kit — a few dressings and that’s it.’

Wilkes heard the men crying out when their pain became too much for them to bear. ‘Gary?’

‘Yo.’

‘See if you can get that Blackhawk up here pronto. Tell ’em we need medivac.’

‘On it,’ Ellis said.

‘And while you’re there, see if you can get a patch through to regiment. Give ’em the serial number on this rifle and see what they can do with it,’Wilkes said, tossing Ellis the carbine.

‘Sure, boss,’ said Ellis, who then turned and jogged off to the truck to get on the satellite videophone — the vone — and make the call.

Gunfire cracked from the treeline. Wilkes turned to face the source. It was the men who’d chased the marauders off into the jungle, returning. They seemed pretty happy with themselves, laughing and shooting the weapons they’d won skywards as they strolled back into the village centre. One man was being carried between two others, his foot a bloody red mass. Beck walked over to meet the approaching war party, Timbu following. ‘Put him down here,’ Beck said. The wounded man was laid on the damp earth and Beck rummaged in his satchel for swabs to wipe away the clotted blood. The warrior stared straight at the sky, eyes fixed and wide. He breathed short, quick breaths through his teeth, flecks of white spittle blowing from his lips. Yet, he made not a sound. ‘Sorry, mate,’ said Beck. ‘I can’t give you too much help, I’m afraid.’ Beck admired the man’s courage and cursed the fact that he had no morphine to end yet another unnecessary battle with pain.

An old woman, naked but for thin baggy cotton shorts, with hair the colour and texture of steel wool, pushed through the tribesmen, muttering. She carried a banana leaf on which were collected small piles of berries, leaves and beetles. She knelt beside the wounded man, placing the banana leaf on his rigid stomach. She gathered the nuts and leaves, put them in her mouth and began to chew. After a minute, she knelt over the man’s face and let a gob of purple spit fall from her lips onto his clenched teeth. He swallowed and, within a handful of seconds, relaxed into a deep sleep. Beck watched on, open-mouthed. The old woman spat the masticated quid on the ground, took one of the insects, a large orange beetle, bit off its head and chewed. She screwed up her face — Beck could only imagine the taste — and spat on the ground again.

‘The beetle’s head contains an antidote to the sleeping,’ said Timbu. ‘But its body is pure poison — a nerve toxin. They mash a few of ’em up and dip their arrows in it. Handy when your dinner’s up a tree. One scratch with that stuff and it’ll fall onto your plate.’

Beck was intrigued. He knew there were many species of plants and animals that had medicinal qualities undiscovered by western medicine. And he’d seen that beetle many times before throughout the Asia — Pacific region, yet he’d never heard of it having the properties it apparently possessed.

Timbu spoke to the old woman, who replied tersely before pointing at the shattered foot. ‘Apparently you’ve got around twenty minutes before the pain finds its way through the medicine. She says you should remove the bullet before he wakes, because she says she’s not doing this again,’ he said, screwing up his face, mimicking her.

Beck didn’t say anything, silently agreeing that eating live beetles was not something he’d want to make a habit of. He wondered what on earth was in the collection of nuts and leaves that, combined, had acted so fast and so completely to knock the patient out.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said Timbu, ‘but you’ll never find out. It’s considered magic and they guard it jealously.’

Beck shrugged and got to work. He poured antiseptic on his hands, and then felt around in the flesh and bone of the man’s foot with his index finger until he found the slug. It was difficult to reach. He cut the skin further with a scalpel, working quickly, and then dug out the bullet, again using his index finger. He could feel that many of the delicate bones were broken. It must have been a ricochet, tumbling elliptically as it penetrated the skin, smashing its way in. The warrior would also have to make the trip in the chopper to the hospital at Mt Hagen. Beck did the best he could, dousing the wound with antiseptic and applying a pressure bandage to help stop the bleeding and keep the flies off. When the patient woke, the pain would be excruciating. ‘You know, it’ll be touch and go whether you keep this foot, sunshine,’ Beck said to his unconscious patient. Infection would be the major concern, ironically possibly introduced by his probing finger, but there was not much else he could do. When Beck was finished, he sat back on his haunches. ‘Okay, next,’ he said. Timbu told the villagers that Beck was done. The men picked up their wounded comrade and began to carry him off.

‘Better explain he has to go to hospital, Timbu. On the helo. They should carry him over there. Put him with those two blokes,’ said Beck, pointing at the sedated PNG soldiers who were also now miraculously sleeping like babies after having been visited by the beetle woman.

‘Boss, the helo will be here in twenty,’ said Ellis, panting from his run to and from the vehicles.

‘Good,’ said Wilkes, distracted. He’d noticed the TV news crew filming, using the activity of the SAS as background and that was a concern. It annoyed him. He walked over, careful not to be within the camera’s frame.

‘…violence continues to be a feature of these elections, but now there’s something new. The primitive highland warriors, people happily living a simple hunter — gatherer existence for thousands of years, are armed with modern military rifles. And they’re using them…on each other. This is Jim Fredrickson in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, for NQTV News…’

‘How was that, Barry?’ said the journalist to the producer after a few seconds’ pause to let the tape run.

‘Looked good to me,’ said the cameraman.

Barry gave the thumbs up.

‘Look,’ said Wilkes, walking up to the crew as the man called Barry checked the sound equipment, ‘I appreciate that you blokes have a job to do, but I asked you to keep us out of your reporting.’

‘I know. Don’t worry, Sergeant,’ said Barry. ‘The background is way out of focus — just a bit of colour and movement, that’s all. I can assure you that you and your men won’t be recognisable.’

‘Okay,’ said Wilkes. Anonymity was important to the SAS. If they could be identified by any bad guys, there was always the chance that revenge might be exacted on them through a hit on their friends and family in the future.

‘Hey, now I know where I’ve met you before,’ said Barry. ‘It’s just dawned on me.’

Wilkes cocked his head to one side. The guy did look familiar.

‘Well, we’ve never actually met, but aren’t you with Annabelle Gilbert?’

Wilkes didn’t answer. He was uncomfortable about having his professional and private lives mixed.

‘Yeah, I’ve seen you around the station a couple of times. Barry Weaver, producer,’ he said, holding out his hand.

Wilkes reluctantly shook it. ‘Tom Wilkes.’ He remembered that Annabelle had mentioned Weaver in the same sentence as ‘sleazebag’.

‘Look, Wilko, don’t worry about us,’ said the producer, putting his arm around Wilkes’s shoulders as if he’d become his new best friend. ‘We’ll do the right thing by you. And, by the way, I reckon you’d have to be the luckiest man on this planet.’ Weaver jiggled his eyebrows up and down repeatedly — suggestively — so that there was no mistaking why he thought Wilkes was so lucky.

The helo arrived with the familiar thump-thump, distracting Wilkes. Ellis came over.

‘That was quick,’ said Wilkes.

‘It was already airborne and close by, boss. Mt Hagen thought it better to pick the wounded up now and ferry them in, rather than turn the bird around and collect a medical crew.’

Wilkes looked at Beck.

‘That’s okay with me, boss,’ said Beck with a shrug. ‘The patients are as stable as I can make them, anyway.’

Wilkes nodded. Fair enough. He walked Ellis out of earshot of the producer. ‘Listen, when the help leaves, find some excuse to get that news crew on it will you?’ Fuck ’em. They had their story, didn’t they?

Twenty minutes later, the Blackhawk lifted off, carrying away the wounded and the news crew. Barry waved goodbye from the helo’s open door. From a distance, Wilkes and Ellis watched. Ellis yelled over the noise of the helo’s departure, ‘Told the producer guy the trucks had broken down and that we were going to have to walk out through this,’ he said, indicating the impenetrable wall of jungle nearby.

‘Yep, that’ll do it,’ said Wilkes, feeling relieved enough to return the friendly wave.

The tribespeople had gathered to watch the wounded men being loaded into the Blackhawk. They were all familiar with helos. The villagers about to get a ride in it were considered lucky, for this was seen as a real adventure. As the Blackhawk rose from the grass clearing, a small boy started spinning with his arms out, imitating the aircraft, and soon every child was doing it — spinning until they fell over, dizzy and laughing.

The smoke of several fires hung in the village at about waist height. Night fell quickly at this high altitude, and so did the temperature. The soldiers came prepared for it with khaki flight jackets, the same type used by military pilots. Timbu and the politicians threw on jumpers. Most of the locals ignored the cold, going about their business near-naked. Some of the older folk and the youngsters had grey blankets wrapped loosely around their shoulders. The days were hot, but the nights cool.

‘Ples bilong yu?’ asked the chief as he took a seat beside Wilkes. Where are you from?

‘Mipela bilong Ostrelya,’ said Wilkes, a bit of pidgin coming back to him.

‘Yu marit o nogat?’ asked the chief, making small talk.

‘Mi no marit,’ said Wilkes, hoping the question was not a prelude to the chief offering him a daughter. ‘Mi gelpren,’ he said.

The fact that Wilkes had a girlfriend seemed to satisfy the chief, who then turned away to answer a question Pelagka put to him about the health of his people.

The PNG soldiers kept to themselves, friendly but uninvolved. Eventually, dinner came. Wilkes and his men weren’t keen on eating the local food and would have preferred to stick with their ratpacks — pre-packaged ration packs — but both the chief and the politicians had been insistent. The first course arrived on bark platters and consisted mainly of baked sweet potatoes, and various cooked taro roots and bananas. Then came the meat.

‘Mmm, delicious,’ said Ellis, tucking in before anyone else. ‘What is it?’

Timbu asked the chief.

‘Longpela pik,’ said the old man.

‘What’s that?’

‘Man,’ said the interpreter.

‘Oh,’ said Ellis with a full mouth. And then the penny dropped. ‘What?’ He spat the mouthful into the fire, and wiped his mouth and tongue on the front of his shirt.

The chief rocked with laughter then spoke animatedly.

‘He says his village has never practised cannibalism,’ Timbu translated, ‘but that plenty of villages in this area have, even up to fairly recently. He says there are rumours the village that attacked them today still practises it occasionally, but personally I doubt that.’ Timbu turned to the chief and said, ‘Mipela laikim tumas dispela kaikai na longpela pik.’ We enjoyed the meal, especially the long pig.

‘Can you ask the chief why they were attacked today?’ Wilkes asked.

‘Already have — payback. No one can remember how it all started. They’ve been fighting back and forth for years. Only now, one side has guns. Back when they used spears, there’d be a few injuries, the occasional death. Now it’s not unusual for ten or fifteen men to be killed and the same number wounded in a simple skirmish. And then there are all the accidents with firearms, like we saw today.’

‘Yeah,’ said Wilkes.

‘What happened when these men chased the others into the jungle?’ asked Beck.

Timbu spoke at length with some of the young men who had gone on the raid, the conversation becoming quite excited.

‘They didn’t get anywhere near the other village,’ he said. ‘It’s a good day and a half’s trek away, maybe more, through the jungle and over a high ridge to the north-west. There was a bit of a skirmish in the trees not far from here, which is where the man took a bullet in the foot. They broke off the chase because they came across a party of Asians they believed were heading to the enemy village. These people from over the border in West Papua have a bad reputation for being cruel and vicious, so the men came back.’

The Australians looked at the faces of the people around them. Most were smiling broadly, innocently. Wilkes knew he couldn’t do anything to help them. It’s not your fight, Tom. ‘Did you say a day and a half’s journey from here?’

‘Give or take.’

Wilkes was due to go back on leave after this job, along with the rest of his men. They’d bloody well deserved it. He’d had a few plans to go away with Annabelle, his ‘gelpren’. If he were a few days late, would that matter? He knew the answer to that — yes, it would. ‘Timbu, you say you know these hills. Do you know them well enough to get us to that village?’

Timbu looked at Wilkes and wondered what the soldier was thinking. ‘No, afraid I don’t. The jungle out there’s so thick you could walk three metres from the edge of a village of a thousand people and not know it’s there. One of these men could take you,’ he said, indicating the locals, ‘but I’d have to go with you as interpreter.’

‘How about it? Feel like a stroll?’

Timbu took a deep breath. ‘It’s tough out there, in the jungle, but I guess you know that,’ he said.

Wilkes nodded.

Laughter and squeals of delight interrupted them as the women of the village presented gifts to Loku, Pelagka and the soldiers: their very own kotekas. Sergeant Wilkes was given the largest of them all, and there was much backslapping and eye-rolling to go with it. When the food and presentations were over, the village men lit enormous marijuana cigars. Wilkes and his troop declined when offered but the smoke hung around the fires and the conversation soon became quite silly even between those not dragging directly on the enormous cigars.

Wilkes’s Wankers had accompanied Loku and his party back to Mt Hagen when the voting had concluded. But now they were heading back to the village, returning with the wounded highlanders, who’d had their injuries dressed.

The village looked small from above as the Blackhawk descended through a thousand feet towards it. Wilkes preferred the view from above rather than the blind approach on the track through the jungle. The village was cut out of the surrounding bush, the terminus for the road, the end of the line. If you wanted to go any further, it was machete time.

He checked the man on the stretcher beside him. The wounded foot was set in a fibreglass cast, a big ski boot. The man appeared anxious, eyes darting left and right. Sergeant Wilkes smiled at him, hoping to provide some reassurance that the popping between his ears was normal. The highlander had been reasonably calm once the helo was airborne and settled into its cruise, but he’d been unconscious during his first chopper ride, so the descent was a new experience. He heaved once and then vomited on himself before Littlemore could get a bag under his chin.

‘Poor bugger,’ Beck yelled through the din.

‘Why?’ said Sergeant Wilkes in Beck’s ear. ‘He looks pretty comfy to me.’ Wilkes envied the man his stretcher. Sitting on the bare floor of a Blackhawk was one of life’s lesser experiences as far as he was concerned. Squatting on your pack was the only alternative. Timbu chose the hard, unforgiving deck. Lance Corporal Ellis and Troopers Littlemore and Beck had decided to come along, giving up some leave to do so. They each had enough ratpacks to last five days in the jungle. With the exception of Timbu, who didn’t know one end of a pistol from the other, the men carried weapons — Minimis for Ellis and Littlemore, M4/203s for Wilkes and Beck. Technically speaking it was illegal for the Australians to be carrying firearms because they were not working in an official capacity but, in the unmapped reaches of one of the most unexplored mountain ranges on earth, it was unlikely they’d be pulled up and questioned about it. And it would have been plain dumb not to bring them. They’d be tracking people who were armed to the teeth, and not likely to be friendly. This time, Wilkes also brought along a few flash-bangs.

The Blackhawk flared twenty metres from the ground, and its downwash flattened one grass structure and blew away two more. The young boys and girls from the village gathered dangerously close to the helo and spun around, arms outstretched, until they fell over giddy. A large number of men and women also came to greet the helo, this time armed with smiles rather than spears, led by the chief. The men hopped out of the Blackhawk, then turned and hauled their packs out. The pilot and co-pilot checked that their rotors were clear, the pitch of the thump-thump changed and the large, heavy machine rose from the ground on a swirling cone of dust, leaves and grass. The chief walked towards them with both hands outstretched in welcome. ‘Gude,’ he said. Hello.

Wilkes returned the pleasantries. ‘Moning. Yu stap gut? Good morning. Are you well?

‘Mi stap gut,’ said the old chief, nodding and smiling. The men shook hands warmly as if the parting had been for months rather than a couple of days. When the chief could be heard more clearly against the noise of the departing helo, he patted Wilkes on the back and said, ‘Taim san i go daun i gat bigpela singsing.’

He wants us to stay tonight for another feast, Wilkes thought, taking a few seconds to translate what was little more than a mumble and formulate a reply: thanks, but we’ve got a long road ahead and we need to hurry. ‘Nogut, tenku. Rot i longpela. Mipela hariup.’

‘Hey, not bad,’ said Timbu.

‘Can you ask him about a guide? Got no idea how to say that,’ said Wilkes a little self-consciously.

The old man nodded occasionally as Timbu spoke. He then addressed the Australians and Timbu translated: ‘He understands that we’re keen to be on our way. And he’s lending us one of his sons to be our guide.’

The chief turned and said something quickly to his people, and a boy of around fourteen stepped forward. His black skin glistened with sweat in the morning heat. There was not an ounce of fat on him. His face was open and friendly beneath close-cropped hair bleached an ochre colour. Overly large teeth crowded into a mouth that stretched from ear to ear as he grinned. A small collection of ornaments hung from his neck and, around his waist, the penis gourd. ‘Nem bilong mi Muruk,’ he said.

‘Tom,’ said Wilkes, shaking the boy’s hand. ‘Mi amamas long mitim yu, Muruk,’ he added politely. Pleased to meet you.

‘Er…don’t know whether you’ve noticed, boss, but he’s a boy,’ said Ellis, knowing how arduous the next few days would be.

‘To them he’s a man,’ said Timbu. ‘And if you don’t accept, the chief will think you question his judgment, which would be considered rude. Besides, this is the boy’s home. The jungle’s the kid’s backyard. There’s no way the chief would put him forward if he didn’t think he was man enough for the job.’

‘Sounds reasonable,’ said Wilkes. ‘Tell the chief that we’re honoured his son will be our guide.’ He knew that sending his son wasn’t such a big deal, but it didn’t hurt to be polite. The people here were polygamists. The chief had maybe twenty wives and God knows how many offspring. Half the men in the tribe were probably his.

Timbu thanked the chief and the village men mingled with the soldiers, nodding and smiling.

‘We should get going, eh?’ said Sergeant Wilkes after a few minutes. It was already 0900 hours and he was impatient to get underway. Just because he and his men were now officially tourists in PNG rather than soldiers on duty for the Australian government, it didn’t mean they could relax. That they weren’t performing an official task meant this ‘mission’ would not have the benefit of any intelligence. Time was therefore of the essence. The last contact with the gunrunners was just a few days ago. After further questioning of the warriors from the village who’d seen these foreigners, there was no certainty about whether they were on their way to conduct business, or leaving after having concluded it. And if they were heading out, what was their destination? The more Wilkes considered it, the more he thought that perhaps he was on a fool’s errand, and should be sitting on a quiet beach somewhere with a cold beer on one side and Annabelle on the other. Indeed, once they’d left the highlands, Wilkes had had second and third thoughts about becoming further involved in this guns-for-drugs mess. They could conceivably land in a shitload of trouble with the authorities back home. But then Wilkes took another look at the innocent faces around him and knew he was doing the right thing. Okay, so there was no way he and his men could single-handedly stop the flood of modern weaponry into these hills, but maybe they could discover something that would make this exercise worthwhile, even if just for this one village.

Muruk approached the Australians and shook each man’s hand in turn, learning their names as he went. The boy’s grip was strong. He said something to Wilkes, who then looked helplessly at Timbu. ‘He said he’s packed and ready to go now,’ said the interpreter.

‘Good,’ Wilkes said.

‘Rockin’,’ said Muruk.

Wilkes and Timbu blinked wide-eyed at the young man.

‘Radio,’ said Muruk by way of explanation as he ran off to one side and picked up a bilum, a shoulder bag made from woven grasses.

‘Jesus,’ said Beck, who’d caught all this. ‘Bloody Elvis has a lot to bloody answer for, don’t he?’

Muruk returned and Timbu said an official goodbye on behalf of them all. The chief and the rest of the village waved, and kept waving right up until they followed Muruk into the jungle. A dozen paces into the thick ground cover and Wilkes turned to look behind him. The village had gone, hidden utterly from view. Timbu had been right. Within a few short steps, the jungle had swallowed them so completely it was if they’d journeyed into it for days.

Sounds filled Sergeant Wilkes’s ears — a chorus of birds, crickets, geckoes, the swish of lizards and snakes slithering through grass. He breathed deeply, taking in the wet heat he knew so well. The combination of jungle smells and sounds combined to send an unexpected shiver up his spine. Wilkes was suddenly reminded of his troop’s most recent mission into the centre of Sulawesi, where they’d rescued the survivors of a downed Qantas plane. There, they’d come up against the Kopassus, Indonesia’s infamous special forces troops. The mission had been successful, but it had also been murderous and two of his men had been killed. Until then, Wilkes had embraced the jungle completely, welcoming it as a second home. But now the press of wet leaves, the razor grass and the three levels of canopy overhead also held brutal memories that forced their way into his dreams and made him wake to the sound of his own screams. Virgin jungle was a place of death, of destruction, revealing its secrets only when it had worn down the mind and left it vulnerable. Sergeant Wilkes took a deep breath and shook his head: get a grip on yourself, pal — come unglued afterwards, when you’re sitting on that beach with Belle.

An hour later, Tom Wilkes was feeling more like his old self. The notion that the jungle had some kind of malevolent consciousness had receded and he was starting to enjoy the walk. The deep bush of the New Guinea highlands was a botanist’s delight, with orchids everywhere, and of every colour: purple, yellow, white and red. They flowered on the ground and in the trees. Some were large and some small. Some were openly parasitic, their delicate white tendrils tapped into the life force of host trees and shrubs; some apparently taking nutrients from the air itself. And all the while, the infinite diversity of song rang out from a spectacular range of birds of paradise, their intensely coloured plumage visible from a considerable distance. It had been too long since Tom had been in the jungle just for the pure joy of it. Okay, the environment held its dangers, but at least this time one of them wasn’t camouflaged enemy special forces. And that was a pleasant change.

Muruk took them along paths that were hidden by the jungle, the byways rather than the highways. The climb over the ridge was relatively easy with no need for ropes or pitons, but the altitude, well over three thousand metres, left them breathless. Standing on the top of the ridge, Sergeant Wilkes looked back towards the village. The view was spectacular, as if some titan had taken a giant bucket of greenery and splashed it into the valley, the foliage sluicing up the mountainsides towards them. Muruk’s village could be seen clearly, appearing like a sloppy crop circle cut into the vegetation by drunken aliens.

Muruk and Timbu chatted briefly in the village dialect.

‘Muruk apologises for the cold,’ said Timbu, ‘but says going this way will slice half a day from the trek.’

‘Hamas taim long go long?’ asked Beck, who was starting to pick up a few words of pidgin. How far to go?

‘Klostu liklik,’ said Muruk.

Beck nodded, but obviously with no idea of what the boy had said.

‘He said, literally translated, “fairly near”. But around here, normal concepts of distance don’t mean much. We might still be walking this time tomorrow and Muruk will still be saying, “klostu liklik”,’ said Timbu.

Littlemore swigged some water from a flask. Ellis pulled a fleece from his pack. Beck shrugged. ‘Well, tell Muruk we’re enjoying the walk anyway.’

‘Sweet,’ said Muruk, smiling broadly, again taking everyone completely by surprise.

‘He says he doesn’t understand English — picks up on the sentiment. But I think maybe he’s having us all on,’ Timbu said, patting the boy on the shoulder.

The wind was up on the high exposed ridge, adding a chill that made it uncomfortable to stand still, yet Muruk appeared unaffected by either the altitude or the cold. Wilkes wondered if the young man felt the elements the way he did, or whether the hard life in the bush had inured him against them.

The jungle on the far side of the ridge was no different to the bush around Muruk’s village, but the young man moved through it far more carefully. This was not his turf, so it paid to be cautious. It was late afternoon before Muruk called a halt to the march. They stood amongst a stand of trees and ferns and towering marijuana plants with heads as thick as a man’s wrist, covered in the characteristic red hairs of the local variety.

‘Wow,’ said Ellis, examining a plant. ‘There’s a shitload of short-term memory loss here.’

There was no order to the plantings that Wilkes could see. Handfuls of seeds had probably been thrown here but, other than that, the stuff was growing wild. And it was everywhere. Muruk spoke with Timbu, who then turned to Wilkes: ‘Muruk wants to find a place to bed down overnight. He doesn’t want to get too close to the village in the dark — we may be discovered. He says this is a good place to stay. The plants are not harvested at night.’

‘So we’re close?’ Wilkes asked.

Timbu nodded.

‘Em ples — em i longwe o nogat?’ Wilkes asked Muruk directly. The village — how far is it?

The boy held up a finger, indicating an hour.

‘I want to use the night for cover — see our gunrunning friends in action,’ said Wilkes.

‘Yes, but don’t you think…?’

Sergeant Wilkes pulled a pair of NVGs from his pack and handed the binocular device to Timbu. ‘I’m not suggesting we go there stumbling around blind,’ he said.

Timbu turned the unusual device over in his hands. ‘Hey, seen these in the movies,’ he said. ‘How do they work?’

Wilkes held out his hand and Timbu returned the NVGs. ‘There are different types. This is two in one. It can be used as a low-light accentuator that gathers the available light and strengthens it. Or, flick this switch,’ he said, depressing a heavily rubberised button, ‘and it will emit its own light, painting the area ahead. You only use this mode when you’re sure the bad guys aren’t wearing them too, because they’ll also be able to see this light source.’

Timbu put the NVGs on over his head and tried to focus them. The lenses glowed iridescent green. ‘Can’t see a thing,’ he said.

‘’Cause it’s still daylight — too much light.’

Timbu looked like some kind of bug-eyed alien with them on, his coils of thick black hair standing out between the head straps and falling around the intricate dual lenses. ‘Okay. I’ll try and explain these to Muruk. Can I borrow this set?’ he asked.

‘You hang on to that pair, I’ve got a spare. And Ellis has an extra set for Muruk.’

It was late afternoon and the night would come down fast. Sergeant Wilkes figured they’d get about thirty minutes of twilight before complete darkness settled in. ‘Okay,’ he said to Ellis, Beck and Littlemore. ‘Let’s have some scoff. We’ll get this show on the road in about…’ he checked his watch, ‘forty-five minutes. Cache the gear here. Don’t worry about burying it,just secure it. Take only what you need: weapons, water, NVGs.’

‘Roger that, boss,’ said Ellis, Littlemore and Beck nodding.

Wilkes marked their position on his hand-held GPS.

Half an hour later, fifteen minutes ahead of time, the troop was silently on the move. Muruk had adapted quickly to the NVGs, curiosity overcoming his initial fear, the technology totally beyond anything he’d ever experienced or imagined. They used the painting mode because there was barely enough light under the canopy to accentuate. Wilkes had been right. It was a black night. To be on the safe side, they would switch modes just before reaching the village.

After they’d walked for about forty minutes, Muruk pulled up and whispered to Timbu quietly.

‘The jungle ends ten paces that way,’ said Timbu, keeping his voice low and pointing off to his left. ‘Muruk says we should circle around the village and come at it downwind. He says these people are renowned hunters and he doesn’t want to give them the opportunity of picking up our scent.’

Wilkes nodded, appreciating the boy’s caution. ‘I want to get as close to the village centre as possible.’

Timbu spoke quietly to Muruk.

‘No problem. He says he knows this village well. He and a few of his brothers and cousins used to dare each other to come here — a test of bravery. Says he once walked right through it, from one end to the other; in broad daylight, no less.’

‘Ask the kid if he wants a job,’ said Wilkes. ‘Okay, the deal is this. I don’t want you or Muruk put at unnecessary risk. Stay back beyond the treeline. If you hear shouts and gunfire, you leave. No waiting around. Get back to the cached gear. If you need them, inside the front of my pack you’ll find two hand grenades. They’re no bigger than small Christmas decorations, but they’re not nearly as friendly. Hold the trigger, pull the pin, then throw. Trigger, pin, throw. You got that?’

Timbu nodded and took a few deep breaths, suddenly realising how serious things were.

‘Once you let the trigger go, you’ve got four seconds before the thing blows. Make sure it doesn’t hit a tree and bounce back at you. A hand grenade will stop a charging rhino and anyone following you will have second thoughts about the wisdom of staying on your tail.

‘And fuck-knuckles,’ he said, turning to his men, ‘remember we’re here to take nice, friendly pictures, not wage war. Keep your trigger fingers holstered unless things go to shit.’

The SAS men nodded. ‘Pictures, not war. And keep our fingers in Trigger’s shit. Right?’ said Littlemore.

Wilkes punched the trooper in the arm playfully. Doing stuff like this was an adrenalin rush, and Sergeant Wilkes’s men enjoyed the ride.

‘Okay, let’s turn these things off now and go with the available,’ Wilkes said. The soldiers turned their light sources off. Wilkes hit the switches on Timbu and Muruk’s devices. Wilkes glanced in the direction of the glow indicating the village’s presence through a wall of jungle. These things really were magical, he thought, wondering how fighting forces ever got by without them.

Muruk took the lead once more, silently picking his way around the edge of the treeline for ten minutes before sitting back behind a giant hardwood. He gestured towards the village. Wilkes followed the direction of the lad’s eyes. There, about eighty metres away between two structures, a green fire blazed. Wilkes adjusted the NVGs to compensate and people appeared in the glow. It was the village centre and some kind of gathering was taking place. The structures closest to him — grass huts, for the most part — appeared deserted.

Muruk caught Wilkes’s attention. He cleared the ground at his feet and sketched a quick map of the village. He drew a line from the edge of the village that threaded through several huts, then made the hand signal he’d seen Wilkes use to go forward. Wilkes nodded that he understood and spent a few seconds making sure of the track, glancing up at the route he’d be taking then down at the map. And then he was gone, Ellis following behind. Littlemore and Beck paired up to do the overwatch, their weapons off safety, covering their comrades from another angle.

The hut Muruk had directed the Australians to was the perfect observation point, just off the centre of the village. It was some kind of enclosure for seasoning timber and, because of that, was sturdier than most of the huts around it, constructed from hardwood rather than woven grasses. Wilkes remembered seeing one just like it in Muruk’s village, only this hut was not being used to dry timber. Instead, it was stuffed with cannabis plants hanging upside down. The place reeked of wet pot. Ellis playfully took one of the giant heads in his hand and shook it, introducing himself, and his hand came away coated in sticky cannabis oil.

The smell of the drying plants would have been unbearable but for the many air holes in the walls. Wilkes and Ellis lay on the dry, dusty earth floor, each finding a hole from which to look out, and took off their NVGs. There was plenty of light from the fire to see what was going on without the devices.

‘Bugger me,’ said Ellis in a whisper.

Sergeant Wilkes was no expert on the ethnic differences between the various peoples of South East Asia, especially at night from a distance of thirty metres, but the man demonstrating the use of a nine millimetre semiautomatic pistol to an enthralled crowd of near naked, befeathered men was certainly not Papuan.

Wilkes and Ellis watched as the man stripped down the weapon and then expertly reassembled it before inserting the clip in its stock. He pulled back the loading mechanism, which chambered a round. Aimed. BANG. And half a pig’s head on a post set up for the demonstration blew clean away, splattering several men sitting close by with brains. The tribesmen jumped at the noise of the explosion that filled the clearing. Then they all laughed heartily, obviously delighted with the new device soon to be placed in their own hands.

‘Jesus. Hand guns,’ said Ellis.

‘And mercury tips to go with them,’ said Wilkes. He pulled a credit-card-sized camera from his top pocket and began taking photos of the gathering. Ellis jabbed him lightly in the ribs with an elbow and pointed at two large crates. They contained enough hand guns to arm two platoons. Ellis also indicated that Wilkes should photograph the small mountain of bulging hessian bags he’d spotted stacked to one side of the clearing. New Guinea Gold, ready for transport.

‘How much do you reckon that would be worth on the streets?’ asked Littlemore. They were witnessing the exchange. An Asian man took a pipe from his pocket and dipped it in a bowl presented by one of the highlanders. He then sparked up a lighter and dipped the flame into the pipe’s cone. He exhaled a vast cloud of thick smoke and sat back. The gathering held its collective breath, waiting for some reaction from the man. After a long minute, the Asian said something Wilkes didn’t understand, but it was obviously positive. The villagers nodded and smiled, and then rushed the crates for their pistols. At least the traders had the good sense not to hand out any ammunition.

After the excitement faded, the bowl and pipe passed from man to man and soon nearly everyone in the gathering was stoned. Several natives rolled enormous cigars and filled their lungs with the pungent, mind-altering smoke. After an hour of cackling laughter the second phase of the drug kicked in and most of the users fell asleep.

‘Come on,’ said Wilkes. ‘Seen enough.’

They edged back from the air holes, refitted the NVGs, and silently crept out the door and into the path of two enormous painted men staggering back from the evening’s entertainment. The four men looked at each other for what seemed like an age. The natives were obviously frightened by the appearance of the startling bug-eyed strangers. For their part, Wilkes and Ellis were unsure what to do with the warriors they’d stumbled into. They didn’t want to kill these men, but at the same time they couldn’t afford discovery. Ellis went for his man first, attaching a sleeper hold that cut the blood supply to the brain by pinching off the carotid artery. Wilkes chose a quicker option. He launched himself, ramming his forehead into the man’s chin, instantly punching his lights out.

Ellis brought his opponent quietly to the ground, the black man’s feet twitching as he slipped from consciousness.

‘They won’t know what hit ’em,’ said Wilkes, relieved at least that the inert pair at their feet would live to see another day.

‘Love to hear how they describe what they saw,’ said Ellis, adjusting his NVGs and turning on the unit’s light source. ‘Honest, chief, we wuz attacked by men from Mars…Yeah, sure — you bin smokin’ that whacky tobacky again, ain’t choo?’

The two soldiers made their way quickly back to the treeline without further incident. Timbu and Muruk were waiting for them, as instructed.

‘That was lucky,’ said Timbu. ‘Thought the cat was out of the bag for sure, then. Get what you wanted?’

‘Yeah. Scary stuff, I’m afraid,’ Wilkes said.

‘I’d like to know how they get the drugs out of here. Maybe there’s an airfield nearby somewhere.’ Ellis propped the goggles back on top of his head and rubbed his eyes. The NVGs were hard work. They offered almost no peripheral vision, presenting the world as if through a narrow green tunnel. The things always gave him a crushing headache.

‘Yeah…’ Wilkes realised the job was only half done. They were going to have to tail the gunrunners and see where they ended up. ‘Damn,’ he said to himself. He was supposed to be back in Townsville the day after tomorrow. Annabelle would be pissed off. Again.

Sergeant Tom Wilkes rolled out of his hammock two hours before dawn. No one needed waking. Within moments, the men were all quietly repacking their gear. Muruk led the way back to the enemy village, the NVGs looking totally out of place on a young man wearing a penis gourd.

The soldiers knew things would be different as they approached the village this time. The two men they knocked on the head would have sounded the alarm and guards would undoubtedly be posted. Muruk kept them away from the trails, which made the going more difficult.

They arrived within twenty minutes of the village just as the sky in the east lightened to purple. The bush crawled with highlanders stalking soundlessly through it with AK-47s, and some with pistols. The advancing dawn eliminated the advantage of the NVGs. Muruk brought the party in a wide arc around the village, but they couldn’t get any closer. Wilkes wanted to get on the trail of the gun traders, or at least see in which direction they were headed.

‘Timbu, ask Muruk if there’s any higher ground around here that’ll give us a view of the village.’

The interpreter put it to Muruk, who gave Sergeant Wilkes a nod. Half an hour later the men climbed a volcanic outcrop with the jungle spread out below. The soldiers pulled out their binoculars. Wilkes could clearly see the traders, maybe a dozen men, leaving the village. Behind them snaked a trail of natives toting the sacks of marijuana slung between poles. The scene reminded Wilkes of old Tarzan movies. The party was departing to the north, on the opposite side of the village to their observation post. Wilkes and his men kept watching until the column disappeared from view, in case the initial direction taken was a ruse and they doubled back.

By midday, they had picked up the trail. It wasn’t difficult. The traders were lazy bushmen, and perhaps confident that whatever they met in the jungle they had more than enough firepower to contend with. Wilkes had Muruk take them on a parallel course — close enough not to lose contact but far enough apart so that the two groups wouldn’t stumble on each other. That made their passage through the bush difficult. It was dense, and becoming more so. The traders had it relatively easy, taking the paths maintained by the tribesmen that moved between neighbouring settlements for trading and warring. At the end of the first day’s trek, Wilkes and his men were exhausted keeping up with the gunrunners. By the end of the second, they had begun to fall behind. The drop in altitude brought a marked increase in the thickness of the jungle. And the heat. There was no way to move without the help of a machete. They only managed to stay in touch with the traders by carefully probing forward after dark with the NVGs and establishing the whereabouts of the camp.

An hour into the third day, hacking their way through vines and scrubby bush that, at times, presented an impenetrable barrier, they found something interesting.

‘What is it?’ Timbu asked, sawing though a branch that had grown against a hatch, pinning it shut.

‘It’s a plane, obviously, but what type?’ said Wilkes, shrugging, staring at the museum piece in amazement.

‘It’s a US Army Air Force B-17. Heavy bomber workhorse for the Allies in World War II,’ said Littlemore. ‘My grandad was a Yank, flew one of these babies. Have we got time to check it out, boss?’ He took in the wreck wide-eyed.

‘Didn’t know that,’ said Wilkes. ‘About you being a Yankee-dog.’

‘Yeah, well, Pop was stationed in Townsville for a while — met an Aussie. They shagged. Nine months later, my dad poked his head out.’

‘Go for it,’ said Wilkes, his camouflaged face cracking a grin. ‘You got ten.’

‘Thanks, boss.’ Littlemore ducked inside the hatch. Beck followed.

The people they’d been tailing for over two days were heading north, probably trying to link up with a river that would take them to the sea, no other way out that Wilkes could see. He shrugged, and followed Timbu and Muruk inside the wreck. There was time.

Even though it was well over fifty years old, the aircraft was in remarkably good condition. The waist machine guns still contained ammunition and many of the plane’s surfaces held their paint. The men quickly realised that they were inside a gravesite — there were several piles of bleached bones and rotten fabric.

‘Doesn’t look like this baby’s last moments were too pleasant,’ Littlemore whispered to Wilkes. He pointed to large sections of the fuselage blackened with soot. ‘Been a fire. Check this out.’ He toed a large pile of brass shell casings on the floor. They were several centimetres deep in places.

Aside from the fire damage, the fuselage was riddled with holes from cannon shell and shrapnel, punctured jagged alloy indicating the force of the incoming enemy fire. None of the men spoke inside the plane out of respect for its long-dead occupants. The jungles of PNG held many such downed aircraft, thought Wilkes, remembering the altimeter face jangling from the chief’s neck. He whispered to Beck to recover any dog tags he could find, and left the aircraft to get his camera. There were probably friends and relatives back home in the US who were still hoping that, one day, the fate of their loved ones missing in action would be known.

Sergeant Wilkes circled the plane, taking photos, especially of its identification markings. The plane still had all its engines, although the wing outboard of the starboard engine was missing. He considered marking the B-17’s position on his GPS but decided against it. Best to let the old girl remain hidden. Once wreck hunters knew of its whereabouts, it would be stripped for souvenirs.

A short while later, they were back on the trail. Beck had found four dog tags, which Sergeant Wilkes had placed in his pack. Littlemore told him the B-17 had a crew of nine. Perhaps the other five men had parachuted out of the plane before it crashed. It was a mystery Wilkes knew they’d never solve. If nothing else came of this little detour, he told himself, bringing these men home had made the trip worthwhile.

Muruk suggested that they climb again to get their bearings. They’d just passed another volcanic outcrop, so they backtracked. The view from its summit was panoramic and their hunch had proved right. The gunrunners had made for a river and a large, sprawling village, no doubt a trading hub for local commerce, that was hacked out of the jungle. Canoes of varying sizes plied the slow-moving black waters. The bad guys were making for the sea.

‘We’ll let them keep their head start,’ said Wilkes, peering through his binoculars. ‘We’ll bivouac here the night and keep watch. Two-hour shifts.’

‘Roger that, boss,’ said Ellis, observing the comings and goings along the river through his own pair of glasses. The gun traders would buy boats, if they didn’t have them set aside already, and float their cargo downriver. The village itself was still a primitive one. No electricity that he could make out, so no communications and no law enforcement. The Wild West. Still, it was unlikely that the gunrunners would just waltz into town toting a couple of dozen sacks bursting with ganja. That meant they also had to be camped somewhere in the bush, and close by. It would be a tense night.

But the night passed uneventfully. Sure enough, at dawn six long dugouts slipped from the river bank and slid down the inky waters, heading for the coast. The dope was piled up in the centre of the canoes, a man paddling fore and aft. Sergeant Wilkes didn’t say anything, didn’t need to. He and his men were packed and ready to move, and this time it was down the main trail, so at least the going was easier. They hadn’t gone far before they passed the warriors that the smugglers had used as porters, on their way back home. There was plenty of eye contact, but no recognition from the warriors. Wilkes noted the change in Muruk’s easy gate, his muscles flexed and ready to fight. These were the enemies of his people, men who had killed his brothers and sisters and cousins. It was all the lad could do to hold himself in check.

Muruk and Timbu bargained with traders in the village for craft to take them downriver. The price was remarkably good, something Timbu attributed to the fact that he was accompanied by men bristling with weapons they obviously knew how to use. ‘I should take you guys shopping more often,’ he said to Wilkes as they pushed the primitive boats off the mud and into the slow-moving water. Wilkes, Timbu and Muruk took one boat, Ellis, Littlemore and Beck the other.

According to conversations Timbu had had with locals, the coast was half a day’s paddle away through increasingly steep volcanic gorges and, sure enough, the low-lying jungle soon gave way to the rugged, towering cliffs they’d been told about.

‘Jesus,’ said Littlemore as they paddled through them, jagged black volcanic walls rising out of the river like enormous steak knives.

They weren’t alone on the river. Tributaries joined the main flow, bringing other natives paddling downstream. Sergeant Wilkes didn’t have a plan, and that was making him uncomfortable.

‘What are you thinking, boss?’ said Littlemore, his dirty red hair burning like copper in the tropical sun. He sensed Wilkes’s disquiet.

‘Not sure, to be honest,’ said Wilkes. ‘Our friends are heading somewhere. When we get there too, what do we do? Just paddle up and ask what they’re up to?’

‘Yeah, see what you mean,’ said Ellis, the canoes side by side.

‘We know we’ve got a half-day’s paddle ahead of us,’ Littlemore said. ‘Before we reach the sea, maybe we should ditch the boats and hoof it.’

‘That’s what I’m thinking,’ Wilkes said, looking up at those basalt steak knives. The thought of climbing them didn’t appeal at all. The river was far easier but potentially far more dangerous. He didn’t see that they had any alternative.

‘We should also hug those cliffs, I reckon,’ said Beck. ‘If we come round a bend and see something no one wants us to, we don’t want to be stuck in the middle, out here in the open.’

‘Yep,’ said Wilkes. He looked at his watch. ‘Okay, we’ll stay on the river a while longer, then go overland.’ The men nodded agreement. Wilkes dug the blade of his paddle deep in the oily water and made for the base of the cliffs.

The sun was directly overhead, beating down fiercely, when they beached their craft on a bank of silt. They were getting close to the sea — the waters had become tidal. They pulled the boats high into the mangroves, above the high-tide line. The men knew they’d had it easy till now and things were going to get tougher. The volcanic cliffs would be difficult and dangerous to climb without ropes. They also had to climb with full packs. Sergeant Wilkes felt sorry for Timbu and Muruk. They were not SAS and he was asking a lot of them.

An hour of hard climbing later, they reached the top of the cliff face. There were enough handholds and footholds to reduce the danger of the climb, but the volcanic rock was sharp and unforgiving. It was also bakingly hot. Wilkes and his men had shooter’s gloves to protect their hands. Timbu and Muruk had to wrap cloth around theirs, but only after their palms and fingertips had lacerated and blistered, especially Timbu’s, his hands gone soft from city living. At the cliff’s summit, they could see that there was too much traffic on the river, and on the tributaries flowing into it, to be an everyday occurrence. And all of it was heading in the one direction. Another hour’s climb and they knew exactly what was going on.

‘Shit,’ said Beck, ‘look at that.’

A deep green bay ringed by the volcanic cliffs spread out below them. And in the centre of the bay, an old white cargo ship with a hull bleeding rust swung slowly at anchor, rising and falling on a lubricious swell. A steady stream of native craft plied to and from the vessel.

‘Jesus, all that’s missing here is Greensleeves,’ said Ellis. ‘Mr Whippy’s in da house.’

‘You had a strange childhood, mate,’ said Beck, nose wrinkled under the binoculars as he squinted into them.

‘No, seriously. The Mr Whippy guy in my neighbourhood got busted for dealing pot. The parents became suspicious when the fifteen year olds got more excited than the six year olds every time he drove down the street.’

‘You’re full of crap sometimes, Gary,’ said Beck, snorting.

It was a truly astonishing sight. About thirty dugouts were clustered around the ship and bales of marijuana were being passed up into the hands of waiting crew, in return for which a rifle was handed down. The gunrunning/drug-smuggling operation going on here was far bigger than Wilkes had suspected. Papua New Guinea was a primitive land on the verge of anarchy with many parts of its society breaking down. What effect would a few thousand guns dumped in the place have? Wilkes had witnessed enough of the effects on Muruk’s people to have a point of view on that.

‘Can I look?’ Timbu asked.

Wilkes handed him the binoculars and took out his camera. More tourist photos for the people back home.

Timbu took a deep breath and exhaled. ‘This is very bad,’ he said.

Wilkes nodded. ‘Yes, it is.’

Muruk picked up the sound first and shook Wilkes. The sergeant stopped taking snaps and looked up. ‘Wasmara?’ he said. What’s the matter?

‘Balus,’ said Muruk. Aeroplane.

Wilkes couldn’t hear anything at first, and then he caught it — a distant buzzing. It got louder quickly. Whatever it was, it was approaching fast.

‘Is that a helo?’ asked Beck.

And then the chopper burst through the sea opening between the cliffs and banked hard to stay within them, scribing a tight circle around the ship: a BK-117 Eurocopter. Wilkes snatched his binoculars from Timbu, who was staring at the helo open-mouthed.

‘Now, that’s flying,’ said Littlemore.

Tape covered over the helo’s registration markings. Whoever it was didn’t want to be identified. A man hung in the open doorway facing the ship. ‘What the hell is that guy doing?’ Wilkes asked no one in particular. The helicopter swept around the bay, its jet turbines roaring, blades beating the air with a deafening clatter.

The helo’s sudden arrival had an immediate effect on the ship’s company. They started firing up at it with hand guns, rifles — whatever was available and loaded. Wilkes watched as a man sprinted to the forward deck and threw back a tarpaulin. A large calibre machine gun mounted on a pillar lay beneath it. It looked to Wilkes a lot like the US .50 calibre M2 heavy machine gun. If so, the chopper was in a lot of trouble, especially if the gun was loaded with SLAP rounds. Saboted light armour piercing ammo would turn a civilian chopper with no armour plating into confetti. The man cocked it, aimed and fired, and a new sound filled the bay. High velocity slugs spewed from the weapon peppered with red tracer rounds that reached up for the helo. The machine gun followed the chopper as it circled, a spray of bullets pulverising the rock barely metres below Wilkes and his men.

‘Jesus Christ!’ said Littlemore as he scrabbled for cover, his face cut in several places from flying stone chips.

The pilot jinked his aircraft around in an attempt to fool the ground fire. At first he succeeded, the tracer missing its mark. But soon the man behind the machine gun began to lead the target rather than follow it. The helo made three circles and was heading back for a fourth when its aluminium skin was punctured repeatedly by the deadly fusillade. A loud mechanical bang followed a screeching whine that filled the bay. Smoke poured from the helo’s jet exhausts and black transmission fluid fouled its flanks. One more blast from that machine gun and the 117 was fish food.

Wilkes cracked the launcher, punched in a flash-bang, aimed and fired. The trackless ordnance arced towards the ship below and exploded above its decks with a thunderous crash that echoed around the bay. Some of the men dropped their guns and took cover, thinking they’d come under attack from some massively powerful gun or mortar. The man firing the machine gun dropped to the deck, hunching his head into his arms.

As it scrabbled desperately for height, the thump of the helo’s rotor blades thrashing the air combined with the screeching howl of jet engines tearing themselves to pieces. The aircraft somehow managed to clear the lowest of the volcanic spurs ringing the bay and then disappeared from view behind it. Wilkes and the others held their breath, waiting for the explosion the helo would make when it hit the water.

And then…nothing. The deafening noise that had filled the bay only moments before evaporated with a few final small arms pot-shots in the helicopter’s general direction. The crew wandered about the ship, dazed, holding their ears. Wilkes trained his binoculars on the man who had fired the machine gun. He wasn’t Asian, and he wasn’t a local. A thick beard covered his face and a baseball cap kept his eyes hidden in shadow. ‘Who are you?’ Wilkes said quietly. Within half an hour, the commerce was underway again: bags of dope for a rifle. It was as if what had just happened, indeed, what was happening, was the most normal thing in the world.