Rogue Element

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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