Rogue Element

Geysers of dirt rose from the ground in front of Wilkes. One of the slugs splintered as it hit a small outcrop of rock, a fragment burrowing into the skin at the point of Wilkes’s chin. It flayed the skin from his jaw and opened up his cheek before exiting below his temple. Blood gushed down his arm and made the stock of his Minimi slick. Wilkes was in shock. ‘Shit, I’m hit!’ he said. He shifted his weapon to his left hand and brought his right hand up to hold the side of his face together. The pressure stopped the bleeding. Wilkes retreated, finding cover behind a rock. Beck joined him.

‘Cool, boss,’ he said, checking the wicked gash.

‘Yeah, yeah. Don’t tell me, chicks dig scars,’ said Wilkes.

‘Team it with an eye patch,’ Beck advised, closing the wound with a couple of drops of superglue.

Wilkes felt no pain. There was too much adrenaline in his system.

Flashes. Slugs slapped through the foliage by Beck’s shoulder. There. Wilkes could see them off to one side of the clearing. The Indonesian position was vulnerable to a grenade. It took a second for the sergeant to react. He ran the five metres to Coombs, who was lying on the ground groaning, and exchanged his weapon for the wounded man’s M4 propped against a tree. Ellis’s Minimi fired into the foliage concealing the enemy. Robson did the same from behind his rock.

Wilkes’s men were quick to recover their equilibrium. They formed pairs and began firing and moving through the tree line around the edge of the clearing, one covering the advance of the other. The hostile bursts of fire slowed quickly, the attention of the enemy diverted, and no doubt surprised, by the speed and focus of the counterattack.

Bang. A claymore went off in their rear. Screams. Some Indons had run into their perimeter security. Robson smiled.

Wilkes freed M203 grenades from Coombs’s chest webbing. He cracked the launcher, fed in a round, and waited for muzzle flashes to provide him with a target. There, a tracer round originating from behind a particularly dark bush opposite.

Wilkes launched the grenade, the butt kicking against his shoulder. The round arced towards the trees, spinning, the revolutions arming the fuse. Boom. A vicious smudge of grey smoke appeared behind the trees he’d fired into. Wilkes chambered another round and squeezed the trigger. Kick. Boom. A scream. Muzzle flashes, twenty metres further left this time. The M4 kicked again. Boom. Morgan was running at a tangent to the hot area, hoping to outflank the Indons. His weapon was not shouldered. It was next to useless to run and fire, it slowed the shooter down and made aiming impossible. Morgan would find cover, locate the enemy, and then hopefully pick them off from an angle they’d least expect.

Littlemore was kneeling at the tree line, putting down covering fire while Morgan ran. Quick bursts. He counted off the rounds in his head. He always packed magazines with tracer second to last. When he saw it fired, he changed magazines. That way, he wouldn’t get caught without any change in the till. Tracer. Magazine empty. Release. New mag. Quick bursts. Tracer.

Now Littlemore was up and running around the edge of the clearing, towards the trees opposite. Wilkes could see Chris Ferris also taking cover behind a hardwood blanketed in luxurious, thick moss. Enemy fire was all around him. He watched Ferris pop his head around the trunk. Once. Nothing. Twice. Nothing. He then turned and broke cover, unexpectedly coming round the other side of the tree. A spray of bullets answered his move but the rounds found only air. Ferris was too quick, too wily.

Wilkes made his way back to Coombs and the others. Coombs had been hit in the leg. Fortunately, the blade of his machete had deflected the bullet, but the force of the round had been the equivalent of having his leg thumped with a sledgehammer. Coombs thought his femur was broken. Wilkes gave it a cursory check. It wasn’t, but Coombs wasn’t going to be ballroom dancing anytime soon. Curry, however, looked bad. Shoulder wound. The woman was okay. He thought she’d been shot, but it was just her reaction to the incoming fusillade. She had wasted no time dropping to the ground — that had probably saved her life.

But the prisoner was gone.

Mac had also moved back to check on Coombs, Curry and the crash survivors. He gave Wilkes a reassuring nod. He fired off a burst from his Minimi at the muzzle flashes, showering Suryei and Joe with hot, spent cases.

Experience had kicked in. Panic was gone. Boom — an explosion from the opposite side of the clearing. A scream. Another claymore. Another scream.