Rogue Element

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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