Rogue Element

It had taken Sergeant Marturak and his men at least fifteen minutes to advance in stealth to the creek. He had rarely seen such thick jungle. The current had carried the two soldiers gently downstream, scraping them occasionally along the bottom of the creek bed. They were not pretty corpses. His men quickly buried them under cairns of smooth black river stones.

The fact that two of his soldiers had perished in this way made Marturak angry. He wondered how the creek had been set alight. Was it an accident brought about by their own stupidity, or was there some kind of booby trap? Whoever it was had been close to his men when the explosion had killed them — the discarded empty water bottle proved that. Sergeant Marturak had not the slightest doubt that he would catch and kill the perpetrator, but who and what was he up against here? He found the entrance to a tunnel in the bush and sent two men into it.

The jungle was not an ideal environment for the NVGs. They worked best when there was some open space with large areas of contrast against which the distinctive shape of a human could be painted. In the thick bush, there were just too many confusing planes and shapes of green, and these often began inches from the lens of the goggles. Also, the NVGs cut peripheral vision down to a paltry twenty percent. It was like peering through a long black tunnel.

Sergeant Marturak swung his head slowly left and right. He couldn’t see any of his men despite the fact that they were close, only five to seven metres on either side of him. He saw numerous pairs of astonishingly large, round eyes flashing bright green in the fork of a tree — tarsiers, small primates. He removed the goggles and fed them into a pouch off his webbing. The things were more trouble than they were worth. He concluded that he would be unlikely to catch his quarry at night unless he was lucky and they (yes, maybe it was a they) were stupid.

* * *

It was difficult to find anything in the complete darkness. Joe wondered what his hands must look like. They felt greasy, slick from the blood oozing from countless cuts. The pain almost didn’t bother him any more. He was tired, a fog insulating his brain. They felt through the darkness with their hands, stopping every couple of metres to listen.

Unfortunately, noise was all around them. There were monkeys — he assumed they were monkeys — chattering high in the trees, coughs and snarls from the kind of animals that sounded as if they might like eating meat, and once there was the sound of something very large and heavy brushing aside the undergrowth. Suryei froze.

‘Snake,’ she said. That was a good reason to freeze in Joe’s mind too. He wasn’t phobic about them but they weren’t exactly his best friends either.

Suryei whispered behind him, ‘This place is crawling with them.’

‘Don’t you mean slithering?’ Joe said quietly to himself, suddenly very careful about where he put his feet and hands.

After about half an hour of inching through the dense growth they stopped in a small clearing. ‘I think this will do us,’ said Suryei. ‘Bed.’

Joe manoeuvred himself beside her and he reached out in front of him, into the darkness. The pain of the barb that immediately stabbed into his open palm made him cry out. ‘Shit!’

‘Careful,’ said Suryei softly, and too late. It was impossible to see it in the darkness, but the bush Suryei was suggesting they sleep under seemed to be nature’s answer to razor wire. It was tough and vine-like, with plenty of thick foliage, and lethal two-centimetre spikes protruding in every direction. The vine also bore some kind of bulb or fruit, and the spikes were obviously employed to protect it.

‘I am not a bloody swami, Suryei. This is a bloody pincushion.’ Joe stretched his hand into the dark again, more carefully this time. He isolated one of the barbs. It was a weapon, the kind of flora you gave a wide berth, not snuggled into. He’d been hoping for a pile of soft leaves at best, or maybe a fork in a tree at worst.

‘We need protection and this bush will provide it. Have you seen those little fish that swim between sea urchin spines?’ she asked condescendingly. ‘Well, think like a little fish.’

He wondered how the hell they were going to get on the other side of those barbs without being skewered.

‘Give me your shirt,’ said Suryei. Joe was too tired to say anything smart about her request. He just did as he was asked. He could dimly see her wrap it around her hands, grab a section of the vine and lift it up. ‘Come on,’ she said impatiently. Joe wriggled under the mass of vine Suryei was hoisting. Once inside, he had to agree it made sense. No light whatsoever made it into the centre of the bush, and as there was no fruit on the inside, there wasn’t a requirement to protect anything, which meant fewer thorns.