Mark Abernethy: Double back

Turning back, Mac caught the look of surprise on LeClerc’s face clearly through the plexiglass faceguard. In slow motion, the flamethrower’s nozzle came up level with Mac as he lurched towards it, throwing the nozzle up and to his left as LeClerc hit the juice. Fire squirted ten metres upwards, setting the huge truck tyre alight as the two men hit the dirt, struggling for control of the flamethrower. The heat blasted Mac’s left hand as he loosened his grip and he threw a right elbow into LeClerc’s faceguard. The plexiglass barely moved and LeClerc let go another squirt of the flamethrower, scorching Mac’s eyebrows as the column of ignited gasoline flew just a foot past his face and into the undercarriage of the truck.

LeClerc kicked Mac in the solar plexus and brought the flamethrower around. Deflecting the nozzle with his left forearm, Mac threw a knife-hand into the Saffa’s throat and jerked the flamethrower nozzle up under the South African’s chin. They struggled like that for ten seconds, Mac trying to get his fingers into the trigger guard, LeClerc attempting to move the flamethrower from his throat as pieces of burning rubber fell off the truck tyre and landed around them.

The Saffa was strong and they clinched in the dirt, until Mac spat in his adversary’s faceguard. The Saffa lurched away instinctively, allowing Mac time to dig his finger under the fireproof glove and push his finger down on the trigger. A torrent of fire erupted out of the nozzle, melting LeClerc’s face off his skull.

Rolling seven or eight times away from the burning, screaming man, Mac grabbed a handful of dirt and quickly rubbed it through his hair like shampoo – paranoia about invisible fire still strong all these years after his time in the Royal Marines. The skin on the left side of his face pulsed agonisingly, but he was still in one piece and not alight.

Reaching for his Heckler lying on the clay, Mac surveyed the scene, gasping for breath. The radio crackled: one of the soldiers at the admin block giving a sit-rep and asking Berger for orders.

‘Hold your positions; hold your fire,’ said Mac in his best Saffa accent.

In the silence that followed Mac moved forwards, past Berger prone on the ground, as the giant truck became fully engulfed in flame. At the entrance to the demountable quarters, he paused and knocked. After a few seconds, a torrent of Trotskyite campus-babble flew back at him, containing references to neo-colonialism and the Wall Street oligarchy.

‘Yeah, yeah, mate,’ panted Mac. ‘It’s me – let me in.’

The door opened a fraction and Mac pushed through into a dark, air-conditioned boot room.

Kaui’s face loosened and he lowered his Kalashnikov. ‘Shit, McQueen – who brought the matches?’

Mac leaned away as Kaui winced at the sight of his throbbing left ear. ‘Nice effect with the eyebrow too, mate,’ he laughed. ‘Who needs two of them anyway?’

‘It’s gone to shit, Kaui,’ said Mac, checking the Heckler, a little embarrassed that he’d changed the scenario so dramatically with no Plan B. ‘Need a getaway car.’

‘What, we don’t get to hand over the hostages?’

‘These guys don’t want to talk,’ said Mac.

In the next room a window smashed and the rhythmic slapping sound of a. 50-cal machine-gun started up. Moving to the portal window in the door, Mac looked out and saw what OPM’s. 50-cal was hammering at: Berger’s Black Hawk was hovering in from behind the mine trucks, looking for the best vantage point while trying to stay clear of the machine-gun fire.

Moving to the rear window of the boot room, Kaui checked for soldiers in the lane between the living quarters and the rainforest. ‘So what happened to the mercs?’

‘Dropped a few of them,’ Mac mumbled sheepishly.

‘A few?’ said Kaui.

‘Two or three.’

‘Shit!’ the Papuan grinned. ‘Alan McQueen joins la causa.’

‘ Merdeka!’ Mac said – Independence! – as the door-gunner from the helo opened up, turning the demountable into Swiss cheese.

‘Got a grenade?’ asked Kaui from his crouched position at the back door as the demountable became a blur of splinters.

Handing it over, Mac whispered, ‘How many?’

Kaui indicated two with his fingers. He pulled the pin on the small green canister and simply threw it left around the corner of the door without looking. The babble of panicked men sounded from the rear of the demountable and then the explosion tore through the forest and smashed a window in the quarters.

Yelling for the other OPM lads, Kaui leaned through the back door and scoped the area with his rifle. The OPM thugs ran through in a crouch, one of them leaking blood from a wound above his left eye. Kaui yelled a command at the taller one – Albert – who led the other two operators out the back door towards the rainforest.

Dropping to his stomach on the floor as the bullets whistled and slapped, Mac followed Kaui on his elbows into the common room, the walls coming apart in pieces the size of VHS cassettes. Bound and gagged hostages stared at Mac and Kaui from their position near the front windows of the destroyed common room – it had once been the social centre of the mine and was now a mess of smashed glass, ruined TV screens and spilled whisky. Several mine workers were injured where they sat huddled on the floor and Mac could hear moans and tape-muffled screams as the door-gunner stopped shooting.

‘They’re coming in,’ said Kaui, slithering to one of the RPG boxes as both mercenary helos advanced. He handed Mac the rocket-propelled grenade launcher, with its big ugly knob of explosive on the tip of the rocket. As the Papuan crawled to the next RPG box, the door-gunners opened up again, making Mac and Kaui dive flat to the floor.

‘Time to ride,’ muttered Kaui, giving up on a second RPG.

Crawling back to Mac, he took the RPG, flipped up the back-sights, hit the safety and rose to a classic kneeling marksman stance, the RPG across his right shoulder, its sights lined up with his cocked head. One of the Korean maintenance engineers sobbed with terror as Kaui rose slowly to the level of the windowsill so he could see the helo. After a split second of mutual recognition between himself and the door-gunner, Kaui squeezed the RPG trigger and the rocket whooshed out of the common room and through the truck flames, leaving a wispy trail of vapour for fifty metres before hitting Berger’s Hawk just behind the engine bulkhead. The twin sounds of the engine depowering and the expanding fireball filled the mine crater, and then pieces of the helo were raining on the demountable roof.

Mac followed Kaui at a run as a grenade sailed through the air and bounced off the frame of the common-room window onto the claypan outside. They leapt through the back door and kept running into the jungle as the grenade lifted a section of the roof and automatic rifle fire ripped into the building.

Sprinting across a sand and clay track, through a boggy creek bed, they reached one of the mine’s outlying service buildings. The massive sliding door was open, revealing a two-storey gas-powered turbine that created the electrical power for the Lok Kok mine. Idling in front of the building was a silver Nissan Patrol 4?4, Albert behind the wheel gunning the engine impatiently.

Kaui jumped into the front passenger seat and they lurched into the rainforest, the Patrol bouncing and screaming for grip on the goat track that passed for a road in West Papua. Beside Mac, the OPM operator with the head wound sagged sideways as he lost consciousness. Kaui fumbled around for the first-aid kit that most mine vehicles carry and found it in the centre console. The fourth Papuan held up his friend and Mac tore open the first-aid pack and went to work on the wound, getting it cleaned out and then patching and bandaging the whole thing. When Mac had finished on the Papuan’s injury, Kaui gestured for his friend to work on Mac’s scorched face, which was hurting like hell. There was a burns lotion in the kit and it stung as the Papuan applied it, then slowly it dulled the pain.