‘You asked me how I know all of this stuff,’ said Mac. ‘I learned it because those warrant officers knew more than me, and they didn’t let me forget it.’
‘Touché,’ said Lance.
Tranh arrived back thirty seconds before Jon. ‘Smaller footpad this way, boss.’
Halfway up the mountain, Tranh moved back from his position at point.
‘Think we have company, boss,’ said Tranh.
‘How many?’ said Mac.
‘One, I think,’ said Tranh. ‘Right flank.’
‘Okay.’ Mac drew Jon in from the sweep. ‘I’ll pull back and get on his tail. You guys go slow and be ready, okay?’
The troop moved on and Mac held back, padding quietly to the right of the footpad, hoping to come up behind the shadow. After fifty metres of poking through the dappled blackness of the jungle, Mac found a slight trail only evident from cracked twigs and a boot print in the damp soil. Kneeling, Mac looked at the pattern: American, like the boots he was wearing.
Breathing through his nostrils, Mac eased off the rifle’s safety lever and selected full auto. He advanced in a crouch, his injured leg burning with pain, his fatigue playing tricks on his ears: was that a monkey or a man? A rifle being cocked or a bird?
The trail was clear and as he adjusted to the darkness, he sped up, hearing the occasional sound of his troop to his left.
The sweat ran off his face and from under his boonie hat as he paused behind a twist of vines. Across a clearing was a man’s shape, in dark fatigues, crouched behind a tree and focusing at where Tranh and Jon would be walking with Lance.
The figure moved into the darkness of the trees and Mac skirted the clearing, quickly closing on the tree the soldier had stood behind. Ducking out for a look, Mac swore under his breath: he’d lost the man.
As he scanned for a trail, Mac’s breathing was laboured. He was exhausted and he could feel the first inklings of heat distress as he started mouth-breathing — a rasping pant that meant the brain was not getting enough oxygen.
Forcing himself to breathe through his nose, he calmed the cycles and stopped it turning into hyperventilation. Then, moving forwards, he found another boot pattern in the moonlight and moved to his left, squinting to see through the foliage and the dappled light.
Following the trail through a muddy watercourse, he climbed the other side and lay on the crest, looking over.
As his head raised over the low ridge, Mac’s quiet world was smashed by the rattle of automatic gunfire. At his eleven o’clock, cordite puffed and foliage snapped as shots were exchanged.
Running down the small rise, Mac raised his weapon and got a shoulder on it as he came around a larger tree and found the man in the dark fatigues in a hide behind a fallen tree.
‘Drop it,’ said Mac, aiming at the back of the shooter’s head.
The man’s weapon was placed on the log but still within reach.
‘Cease fire — cease fire,’ yelled Mac at his own guys. ‘I said drop it, not place it on the log,’ he said, panting for air, and the man hesitated.
‘I mean it, Sammy,’ said Mac, stalking forwards and pressing the G36 barrel to Sammy Chan’s head. ‘Just drop it.’
The M4 was hurled sideways, and Mac stood back as Sammy got to his feet, hands on his head, and turned to Mac.
‘You love to fuck it up for me, don’t you, tough guy?’ said the American, as Jon and Tranh arrived.
‘And the other one,’ said Mac, gesturing at the canvas rifle bag between Sammy’s shoulder blades.
Dropping the canvas bag, Sammy put his hands down. ‘Keep the M4 — but I want that one back.’
‘Deer season?’ said Mac.
‘No, McQueen,’ said Sammy, whose face still showed the results of an evening with Grimshaw. ‘Not deer.’
A noise erupted above them and they turned. The outline of a helicopter hovered across the forest canopy, a door-gunner peering down into the trees.
Mac dived for the cover of the log as the air filled with bullets. Trees and vines were turned to splinters as Mac dragged Sammy by the scruff of the neck to join him under the fallen tree.
‘Red Dog, Red Dog,’ said Mac into the radio mouthpiece. ‘Red Dog — copy? Over.’
‘Blue Boy, this is Red Dog,’ came Bongo’s voice, as a hail of .50-cal slugs hit the log above Mac.
‘Red Dog, we need cover. Repeat, need cover from a bird.’
‘Got your six, Blue Boy,’ said Bongo calmly. ‘Heads down, brother.’
Looking across the clearing, Mac saw Tranh and Lance jammed in behind a tree, but he couldn’t see Jon. As Mac used his hand to indicate head down, Tranh nodded and grabbed Lance by the shirt, pulling him down.
Another strafe painted across the jungle, felling a mid-size tree and making the log above Mac jump.
Shutting his eyes, feeling stupid for walking into a trap, Mac waited for the bullets to stop.
The sound changed and then the guns were still firing but not at the ground. The thudda-thudda of the .50-cal was joined by a whistling, screaming crescendo and the sound of steel being torn apart resounded around the jungle as torrents of brass rained into the canopy. Squeezing out of his hide, Mac looked up and watched the attack helo swirling around like a burning hula hoop, its tail rotor shot off by the smaller helo, which had plumes of white fire bursting from its undercarriage.
The shooting stopped and the attack helo dropped out of the sky, its engines still screaming at high revs as it crashed into the bush fifty metres away and exploded.
‘Blue Boy, Blue Boy,’ said Bongo over the radio. ‘Bandits down — free to proceed.’
‘See the house, Red Dog?’ said Mac.
‘Just over the ridge, Blue Boy,’ said Bongo. ‘Bandits engaged.’
Chapter 68
The smell of burning kerosene wafted through the jungle as Mac led the team to the ridge and looked down. On the other side of a small valley, three hundred metres away, sat the plantation house of the Sanderton Estate, a few lights winking in the dark.
Lifting his night-glasses, Mac saw a large veranda on the near side of the house, below which was a terrace lawn with a .50-cal machine-gun tripod-mounted behind sandbags. As he watched, a team of seven soldiers ran down the side of the terrace lawn into the gorge between Mac and the house, their bodies leaving faint green trails in the lenses. Two soldiers wandered to the .50-cal, talking.
‘Sammy,’ said Mac, not taking his eyes from the glasses. ‘How about taking out the .50-cal nest with that deer rifle of yours?’
‘Got a range?’ asked Sammy, unclipping the canvas bag and pulling out the olive-drab rifle with an optical sight the size of a soup can.
‘Glasses say two hundred and eighty-three metres,’ said Mac, tapping the button to get a range on where he’d focused. ‘Can do?’
‘Can try,’ said Sammy, lying on the carpet of leaves beside Mac and extending the bipod under the barrel.
One of the soldiers at the .50-cal lit a smoke and grabbed the machine-gun’s handles.
‘Got him, Sammy?’ said Mac, as the American twirled a knob on the gun’s sights and settled back into a solid shoulder.
‘That smoking is a deadly habit,’ said Sammy, steadying the DMR — a Designated Marksman’s Rifle, usually an M14.
Refocusing on the machine-gun nest, Mac saw the soldier take a drag on his smoke. The DMR clicked and thumped beside Mac and in his glasses, the gunner’s body fell backwards without a head and the offsider stood, confused, then threw down his cigarette and grabbed the .50-cal’s dual handles.
Sammy’s DMR spat again and the offsider’s left arm threw back at an unnatural angle. The DMR coughed once more and there was a third eye in the shooter’s forehead.