“What’s for breakfast, small American man?” a cheery voice boomed in Rick’s ear.

He started, suddenly, blearily awake, finding himself lying on his side, nestling next to the big Tongan on the precarious platform. Rick felt ashamed as he sat up and rubbed his eyes. Some sentry he was! The first night that he had to keep watch and he had fallen asleep like some rookie. Furious with himself he swung his legs off the platform and stood up, stretching his back, working out the kinks he had acquired sleeping on a mattress of woven vines. As his anger subsided, guilt and anxiety replaced it. Anyone could have sneaked up on them! What chance would the children have if he and George were recaptured?

“Sorry, I must have nodded off.” Rick stretched, yawning and groaning at the same time. His muscles were on fire from yesterday's exertions.

“It’s OK. We had a hard day yesterday.” George paused then, almost shyly, added, “Thanks for looking after me.”

“No problemo, Big Guy. How are you feeling?”

“I’m all right, I suppose. Nothing that time won’t heal. Feel like I’ve gone ten rounds with Vladimir Klitschko!” Wincing, George rubbed his chest. “At least my ribs are only bruised, not broken. Now how about breakfast? Bacon, hash browns, eggs sunny side up and a stack of pancakes sound like just the ticket!”

“OK, we’re all out of delicious food. How about coconut water and last night’s left-overs?” Rick passed over the remaining pieces of breadfruit, looking at them mournfully as George started wolfing them down.

“Sounds great, what are you having?” George said through a mouthful of the starchy fruit.

“What you just had. Guess I’ll have to go take a look since you’ve gone and stuffed it all down your neck!”

George grinned. They both knew he didn’t mind looking for something new. The big man needed all the energy he could get after yesterday and the scraps of remaining breadfruit would serve only as a first breakfast. Rick would need to forage for more food to get them on the go for the day. If there was any chance of finding the children today then it could only be improved if they each had a full tank of gas.

“That’s pretty cool. Where did you find it?” George pointed at something standing upright against a nearby tree.

“Oh, boy! Do I have some news for you?” Rick said as the events of the night came back to him. He sauntered over to the tree where he had placed the ancient gun that he had found and started to relate what he had heard and seen from his vantage point above the forest. George nodded as Rick spoke and did not ask questions or interrupt. The news was vital. At least they knew where the mercenaries were and that they meant business. They also now knew that whoever else was on the island was not to be trifled with either. Rick and George would have to be careful. Two armed groups presented a significant challenge. However, now they were in contact with each other, Winthrop-Smythe’s priorities may have changed. It was possible the search would have been called off so that the mercenaries could re-orientate themselves towards the new threat.

Rick picked up the gun without really looking at it and carried it back to George so he could look at it. “And then I tripped over this old piece of scrap. God knows how long it’s been here but it almost gave me tetanus when I picked it up.”

“What do you mean scrap? It looks pretty good to me.” George rubbed dirt off the old rifle with the hem of his tee shirt. “Sure, it’s dirty but with a bit of a clean it comes up like new.”

Rick took a double take. He had not really looked at the gun before he had given it to George but now he could see that the item that George held in his hand was very different to what he thought he had picked up in the night. Even with the absence of light he had known just how rusty the metal work had been and how worm eaten the woodwork was. He had felt it crumbling under his fingers for goodness sake! What George was holding was dirty, with clumps of earth stuck to it, which the big man was scraping off, but it looked like it had only just come out of an armoury. The stock was solid, undamaged wood and the dark gunmetal was unstained by rust. As he looked closer he could even see gun oil gleaming on some of the exposed moving parts. What took his breath away was the brightness of a clip of brass cartridges that poked up from beneath the flap of a pouch strapped on the butt and the pristine, polished leather of the rifle’s strap.

“It looks like someone just dropped this,” said George. “And I mean only just dropped this, like, in the last five minutes. There aren’t even any rust spots on the metal work from a night out in the dirt.”

“George, there’s something pretty weird going on here. Last night that was a wreck. When I picked it up it was falling to pieces and was seized up. I could feel the rust; it was flaking in my hands!”

“Maybe you just mistook the dirt for rust?” George cycled the rifle’s bolt back and forth, ejecting a golden cartridge into the air that gleamed brightly as it caught the sun before it fell into the grass. “Look, it’s not even jammed!”

Rick looked on in wonder. What was going on? Confused, he took the rifle off George and he looked at it with an archaeologist’s eye. There was an accumulation of dirt on it that made him think that the gun had been lying on the ground for a while. Looking down the barrel he could see that it had silted up so much that it was blocked. Mud encrusted the recesses of the stock, metalwork, strap and pouch. It looked as if it had been lying on the ground for years. Why wasn’t it rusty? Why did it look so new?

“It’s an M1 Garand, in case you were wondering,” George said. “Standard issue of the United States Marine Corps in World War Two. It’s a neat piece of kit. I shot them a few times when I was in the Regiment. Rugged, accurate and reliable,

they stayed in service right up to the Vietnam War.”

Rick nodded. There was usually only one reason for finding old war material on Polynesian islands and that was because the island had either been used as a base by occupying forces, or that there had been fighting. Solitude did not fit this pattern, though. It was off the beaten track and had not acted as a staging post for either side. In fact it was further out than the farthest extent of Japanese conquests during the war. He had studied the local area simply out of curiosity when he had first arrived on Tonga. He had dived on the wrecks at Chuuk Lagoon. He had even visited a few of the preserved remains of the fighting on Tarawa and Guadalcanal. Solitude was too far to the South and too far to the east for it to have been involved in any fighting, as far as he knew. There was certainly no mention of it in the Tongan archives he had looked at.

Perhaps the rifle had been dropped in a previous expedition? It would explain things apart from the absence of rust. It could be that the other group on the island had dropped it. That was more likely, but they must have been here for a while judging by the accumulation of dirt. It still did not explain the absence of rust. The rifle was a conundrum to say the least.

“It could be pretty useful, Rick. Why don’t I try cleaning it up, see if I can make it safe? At the worst I just might be able to make it look like it means business, even if we aren’t going to shoot it,” George said. “We might need it to keep the kids safe.”

“All right. If you get on with that, I’ll get breakfast.”

Rick foraged for about half an hour, turning over the rifle’s puzzle in his mind. He still could not form any adequate explanation that he had not already considered. One thing was certain, though: George and he now had a real bargaining tool. The gun was much more useful than grenades. It was much less indiscriminate. Now he had something he could negotiate with. He had a suspicion that negotiating with a rifle might be the only way to get the children away from Solitude.

He got back to camp with another armful of green coconuts and breadfruit. George had stripped down the rifle and was busy cleaning parts with a cleaning kit he had found in a compartment in the butt. Every now and again he would whistle through his teeth, shake his head in admiration and make a comment on the pristine state of the gun.

Within a short space of time the rifle was reassembled, clean and as far as George could tell, fully functional. However, he did remark to Rick that he would be a fool to use it since he had absolutely no idea how long it had been on the ground. They ate silently and then dismantled their camp, doing their best to conceal evidence of their bivouac. There was no way that they were going to leave any sign of their whereabouts.

Where next? They had to find the children but the problem was they had no idea where they would be. Looking at the forest around them and beneath them they realised what a big task they had, even on such a small island as Solitude. From their elevated position looking down on the forest below, the canopy was too dense to see the ground beneath. The forest was too dense to see much further than thirty or forty metres if you were within it.

George offered the idea that Carmen would head to high ground, since he had taught her that amongst her other survival skills. In a conventional survival situation she could signal for help to a passing ship or plane from high ground. It would be a good idea to get to the high ground before the children since any such signal would draw the mercenaries to them like moths to a flame.

“Which high ground do you think they’ll go to?” Rick asked.

“The highest. She’s been taught it’ll give her the best chance of being seen.”

As one, they both turned their heads and looked up the slopes to the top of the volcano. It seemed like as good a place as any and it was as far as it could be from the site of the night’s shooting.

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