Diving in the dark of the night would be a disorientating experience for most divers.  However, Rick and George were no strangers to covert operations into potentially hostile territory.  Suspended in the blackness of the warm ocean, feeling the pulse of the waves, hearing the rush of air bubbles as they passed your goggles with every breath, it was easy for the novice to be lulled in to a dreamlike trance.  Not so for Rick and his long-time partner in many crimes.  Using illuminated divers’ compasses to assist with direction, they struck out for the shore after briefly orientating themselves by the Catalina’s port float.  With long, practiced, easy strokes, they quickly found their rhythm and made quick progress towards the shore.  As their eyes adjusted to the night, they could see the moonlight flickering across the waves above, filtering down into the shallows of the gently sloping seabed in silvery blue beams that rippled with the movement of the ocean. 

            When they reached the beach they paused, holding position under the surface as the surf tossed them to and fro.  Rick slowly popped his head above and let himself be pulled this way and that by the sea.  An interested observer would see very little above the waves but a black dot moving in time with the ocean, and that only if they looked very closely.  The way Rick held position was to mimic the action of a seal whilst he could make a careful survey of his landing zone, a little trick he had learned many years before.  He had often found this useful when coming ashore at night when the reception he expected to receive may not have been the friendliest.  Whilst he drifted with the waves he removed his flippers and held them in his hand.  George’s head emerged beside him.  Rick signalled to George to follow him.

            The beach was empty, a strip of brilliant silver in the moonlight.  Two shadows emerged from the sea and paused at the water’s edge, letting the water break around them, kneeling to minimise their visibility.  Satisfied that no cry of alarm had been sounded they darted up the beach into the shadows beneath the forest.  They stopped beneath a particularly tall palm that had fallen at some point in its history yet had carried on growing, forming a strange, J shaped trunk.  Quickly, they removed their gear and stowed it in the space beneath the curving trunk and dragged some old, fallen fronds over the kit.  The hiding place would not fool anyone in daylight but was perfectly serviceable until dawn.

            Rick crept back down to the edge of the beach and stayed in the night shadow of the forest.  He glanced along the beach to the track that the TV people had taken, lined it up with the Cat and the J shaped palm and placed all these locations into the 3D mental map of the island that he had begun to form unconsciously on arrival.  He had already noted the relative positions of landmarks with the prevailing winds; the best approaches for a boat as well as the Cat; the central volcanic peak and the position of the three navigable bays; the location of the TV crew’s camp on rising land half a click into the forest to the north of the beach.  Now he plotted his new position, which he noted as his ERV, or emergency rendezvous, and made a careful note of key features above the high tide line on the beach: a rocky outcrop here, a fallen palm there.  Happy that he could find his way to the ERV in the dark, he motioned for George to join him.

            “The wild life is pretty vocal here, George.  We’re gonna have to go quietly.  I think we need to bear three-five-zero for just under half a click.  We’ll either hit the track or come to the edge of their camp.  Say one hour?”

            “I’ll take point if you have my six.  You keep it quiet, Rick, you always blunder round like a wild hog in a church!”  George hissed.  With this the big islander checked his compass and started forward, carefully and slowly placing his feet as he stalked between the trees and palms of the forest.  As he made each step, he brushed away a little patch of the forest floor with his toes so that he did not put his full weight on a dry stick, cracking it, and sending the sharp report across the forest, alerting any lookout who may be keeping post.  For a big, big man, George moved with fluidity and grace.  Silent, wraithlike, he passed beneath the trees like a dream.  Rick shook his head in admiration; George really was one of the best at this sort of thing. 

After letting George move about ten meters to the front Rick started off behind, mimicking George’s movements, sliding into the shadows beneath the trees, keeping away from the patches of moonlight that made it past the canopy of the forest above and wincing every time his feet disturbed dry leaves, or crackled over fallen palm fronds.  Even with his experience of this sort of work, he knew he would never match George for skill.

Taking the lead as path finder, George set the pace.  It was slow, hot work in the forest.  The ground beneath the trees was relatively open, with little in the way of dense underbrush to hinder their progress, but once they were away from the cooling night breezes that blessed the beach, they plunged into the stuffy and still air of a tropical forest. In a short space of time the dampness of their clothes was due not to the soaking from the sea but the sweat that dripped off them as they laboriously made their way to their target.  The stillness of the air only added to their tension and both men listened intently to the sounds around, senses sharpened and tuned to the tell-tale little noises or scents of other humans in the vicinity. They strained to filter out the all encompassing white noise of the forest’s insect life, the rustling of birds in the brush or branches above, or the random scurries of smaller animals dashing away suddenly, and tried to pick up the soft but sharp clicks and rattles of man-made objects striking one another. 

Stalk, pause, listen and move on.  The old familiar routines came back to Rick as they made their way through the forest.  Although time seemed to pass slowly, Rick knew they were making good progress. 

Eventually, after a little less than an hour, George paused.  He squatted down and motioned for Rick to move up and join him, where he pointed a little to their right.  Rick looked and listened. The trees ahead appeared to be backlit by a soft orange glow and faint sounds of low voices could be heard, punctuated by occasional barks of laughter.  The TV crew’s camp was their destination and they now proceeded to it with particular caution.  They kept behind trees or crawled on their stomachs between them, using folds in the ground or brush as cover, making sure that their movements would not be noticed in the light from the camp.

Gradually, they made it to a position under a low spreading shrub whose leaves cast sharp shadows in the firelight that flooded the camp, which concealed them as effectively as a camouflage net.  It was a little way into the forest from their target and they could observe the TV camp unnoticed.  They did not need to talk, nor could they risk it even with all the noise that the TV crew were making.  Instead they used a simple series of hand signals to focus attention on to particular areas of the camp or individuals.  Silence was imperative.  They could not assume that their suspicions were unfounded, so they assumed that the worst they could imagine was fact.  If there were sentries keeping watch they would get no clue to Rick and George’s presence from incautious whispering.  If there was no watch being kept then Rick and George still lost nothing from their caution. If they were wrong, but remained undetected, it would save any embarrassing conversations later.

At first the TV crew’s camp seemed perfectly normal.  Open sided tents had been set up for the twenty individuals of the camp.  Within the tents, lanterns illuminated hammocks or camp beds draped with mosquito nets.  Some seemed occupied by individuals reading or peering at equipment.  No-one appeared to be asleep.  One tent was for a kitchen and another had been set up to shelter the crew’s kit, which seemed unnecessary since most of it was packed in weatherproof flight cases but it spoke of organisation and care.  Mr Winthrop-Smythe had certainly given Rick the impression that he was a capable man and here was the proof.  The full crew had only been assembled on the island for four hours at the most.  They had had a long, hot, tiring and uncomfortable journey and yet here they were, resting in a precisely organised camp, kit stored away, hammocks hung, in a manner that spoke of soldiers rather than television people.  It was all so very military that Rick was relieved to see the large fire in the centre of the camp that some of the crew were sat around chatting.  It was their voices that George and Rick had heard.  If there was one thing that would ruin someone’s night vision, it was sitting around a fire at night, shooting the breeze and staring into those hypnotic shifting flames.

Two men walked into view from the equipment tent and approached the men at the fire.  It was Winthrop-Smythe and J J Jones.  Winthrop-Smythe seemed agitated and his voice carried over the noise of the fire side chat, “I don’t care if he is one of the best he’s still a blasted cretin!”

“Well, no harm done, boss.  And he’s learning who’s in charge,” Jones replied.  “He did say that he challenged his target.  He only fired because it did not respond.”

“No harm done?  He let off three rounds into the forest at some kind of glowing shape!  I’m not really surprised it didn’t respond because it wasn’t flaming well real!”  Winthrop-Smythe sounded exasperated.  “My old sergeant would have beat him bloody!  As it is he’s got off lightly with all night on stag.  God knows if that fat fool of a pilot and his dim friend heard it.  I can only presume that they didn’t since they haven’t come trotting up to camp to enquire after our health.”

Rick turned to George and grinned, patting his gut. He was happy that his suspicions had been confirmed:  these men were as much ‘TV people’ as he was a leatherback turtle. However, something in George’s face stopped the smile.  George pointed in the direction of the camp and held up one hand. He flashed five fingers at Rick: once, twice, thrice but on the fourth time he only held up four. 

Rick began to scan the camp for his target.  They had brought twenty people but George had only been able to spot nineteen.  Where was number twenty?  He still listened in to Winthrop-Smythe and Jones’ conversation but now he wanted to urgently confirm George’s tally.

“…confirmed one thing, boss: the kit that we’ve been supplied with works.”  Jones was talking.  “Once Bravo has gone we can set up a range and get everything dialled in, from the AK’s to the sniper team.”

“Well at least we have that to be thankful for.” 

Rick could see eight in hammocks, four round the fire, one loitering at the edge of the camp by the track, two washing up in the kitchen tent, two in the equipment store inspecting open cases against paperwork on a clipboard and lastly Winthrop-Smythe and Jones standing no more than ten metres from George and Rick’s hiding place.   Where was number twenty?

“Eh bien, cheries, why would you be lying on your bellies there?”  The Frenchman’s voice rang out quite clearly behind George and Rick, followed by the sinister oily slip and click of a rifle being cocked.  “Now don’t try anything too foolish and stand up slowly with your hands behind your heads!”

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