Pincher Martin skirted the edge of the beach with his partner.  They remained under the cover of the palms.  Although there had been no sign of further mortar activity, or the mortar crew, they did not want to take any chances and they moved with care.  They rushed from cover to cover alternately: one would wait, providing some form of over-watch, the other would dash forward to a new location, and then they would swop roles and repeat the process.  From palm trunk to boulder, boulder to ferns, the men quickly progressed down the beach from the forest path to the last location that the children had been seen at. 

It wasn’t hard to find.  There was the litter of the survival raft, shredded by the last mortar round, lying discarded on the sand, washed up the beach by the incoming breakers.  Two pairs of footprints tracked from the water’s edge up into the tree-line, disappearing as the leaf litter became heavier in the shady confines of the forest.

“Look for sign,” he said unnecessarily to Dusty. “They’re only kids, shouldn’t be hard to run them to earth.  Can’t have got far neither.  Probably have ‘em in the bag by dinner time.”

“Yeah, right.  Believe it when I see it,” said Dusty.  “C’mon, man, we better get on with it, other wise that freaky woman’s going to get real mad.  I do not fancy taking on Munro.  There’s something’ not right about him.”

“You and me both,” Pincher agreed.  “Best hustle then!”

They combed the ground looking for signs of disturbance.  The toe of a shoe dragged through the leaves, leaving a furrow in the dry, sandy soil.  A line of broken ferns pointed like an arrow into the interior of the forest.  Freshly snapped twigs and sticks littered the ground following a trail that was obvious to the two trackers.  Even though there was little undergrowth near the shore, it was quite clear to the two men which way the children had gone.

They paused intermittently, checking their GPS compasses against their maps, squatting silently as they scanned the forest, looking deep into the shadows for danger.  Even though they were looking for children, assault rifles held across their chests, they were taking absolutely no chances, knowing as they did that somewhere on this god forsaken rock was a group of hostiles with heavy weaponry.

Their targets, Charlie and Carmen were currently lying with their backs against a tall banyan tree, drowsing fitfully in the heat of the morning.  Exhausted after their escape, as well as the lack of sleep all night, they had stumbled into a tiny clearing, up hill from the beach, overlooked by the huge, spreading tree.  The banyan’s trunk twisted round up from the ground so that it towered over the clearing, supported by a writhing mass of aerial roots that descended from high up amongst its branches like tentacles, giving it a slightly sinister character.  They collapsed against the trunk, intending to rest for only a few minutes in the wet, stifling heat of the rain forest.  An hour later they were still there.

It was the smallest of disturbances that woke them from their slumbers.  Charlie leapt up, helping and brushing furiously at his shorts.  “Get off, get off!”  he cried anxiously.

Carmen started up, “What’s wrong! Wh…wh,” She caught sight of what he was doing and laughed.

“What’s so funny?” 

“Charlie, you’ve got ants in your pants!” Carmen snorted.

He carried on brushing at his legs, picking off any insects resistant to his sweeping hands.  “I’m not laughing, Carmen, these hurt!”  he said.  His pale legs were dotted with angry red spots.

“You’ve got ants in your pants and they’re making you dance!”  she chanted in response. With a flick of her hair, she shimmied round him and continued, “You’ve got ants in your pants and they’re making you dance!”

 It seemed as if the terrors of earlier in the day had happened to two other people.  Charlie could do nothing but grin as Carmen subjected him to her idiotic chant, especially when she ripped a fern frond from the ground and flicked it like a fan.  “Carmen…”  Charlie began but then froze.   From across the clearing came a sharp crack and the low rustling of something large moving through the dry leaves that littered the forest floor.

Carmen looked at Charlie, eyes wide with fear, and then turned her attention to the sound of the rustling as it came closer and closer to the clearing.  She felt utterly leaden, drained of energy and the desire to run.  Just let it come, whatever it is, she thought, I just can’t run any further.

They both peered into the foliage.  As they had progressed further inland so the undergrowth had become thicker.  The clearing was surrounded by paper mulberries, tall ferns like trees, fallen palms, deep green banana, thick stands of bamboo, and ever-present, ancient banyans, whose tangled roots obstructed movement through the forest.  This thicker growth now obscured any possible view that the children had of their intruder.  Slowly, the crackling got louder and nearer.

Carmen grabbed Charlie’s hand instinctively and squeezed it hard.  He looked at her, seeing the fear etched on her face that he knew was present on his own.

Just as it seemed that the rustling could not get any closer without seeing their stalker, there came a familiar snorting.  A small black pig with curving tusks emerged cautiously into the clearing.  Relief coursed through the children like the cold wash of water from a mountain stream.

“A pig!”  Charlie said derisively.  “What is it with pigs!”

“Isn’t he sweet?”  Carmen gushed.  “Look, he’s so tiny!”

Charlie turned and faced Carmen.  Was she mad?  What was it with her and pigs?  The poisonous little runt was equipped with some pretty fearsome looking tusks.  Whatever it was, it was not sweet, not with a face that looked like someone chewing on a handful of knives.

The pig paused and appeared to notice them.  It peered myopically with little black piggy eyes, sizing them up.  Coming to a decision, it squealed, turned tail and ran back the way it came, grunting and squealing all the while.

Charlie laughed, “Well, Carmen, it seems you are not Queen of the Pigs!  There’s one that’s not too keen on you.”

“How do you know he didn’t run because he smelt you?”  she said waspishly.

Charlie was about to reply when he thought better of it.  Squabbling was not going to help them now.  However, the ants and the pig had lightened the mood somewhat and he didn’t feel quite as drained as he did.  “Look, there’s no point in us arguing,” he said. “We have to decide what we are going to do next.”

Carmen slumped and nodded wearily.  “You’re right, but what are we going to do next?  We don’t know where my Dad is! Or Rick.  And we can’t go back to the Cat.  We don’t even know where we are.”

“No, but we do know where the Cat is.  I bet you that’s where we will find your dad and mine.”  He pointed downhill in the direction that they had come.

“We can’t go back there!”  Carmen protested.  “Those men will be waiting!”

“I know but maybe we could go around them?  Maybe we can go round in a big circle and head to one of those headlands at the edge of the bay.  I’ve been thinking that we could get a pretty good view of the Cat there, and the beach.  We could see anyone on the beach or on the Cat and stay undercover,” Charlie explained. “I’m pretty good at hiding, Carmen, I’ve had to do it a lot back home.”

“I don’t know, Charlie,” Carmen said.  “How do we know that there won’t be any of…,” She paused, uncertain of what to say, “Them…there?”

“We don’t but we can’t just stay here and wet ourselves.  I think we need to keep moving.  Why were those men on the Cat?  Why didn’t they just come aboard as if there was no problem?  I think our dads found out something pretty important and I don’t think our TV friends wanted them to do that.  I think they’re going to keep after us.  We need somewhere safe to rest up where we can keep an eye open.  We can’t do that here.  Look what just happened with the pig!”

“What about those explosions, Charlie?  What were those?” Carmen said anxiously.  “I don’t ever want to be near one of those again!” 

“I don’t know what those were but they took out those men that were chasing us.  Maybe the people who fired on them are on our side?”

“I don’t think so!  They kept firing after those men were hit.  If they’re on our side they have a pretty funny way of showing it!”  She opened her mouth as if she was going to say something else but she was suddenly stopped. 

From away down the hill came the distant barking, stuttering clatter of an automatic weapon letting rip.

The children dropped to the ground, whimpering.  Carmen pressed her hands to her ears, trying to shut out the gun fire.

“Whatever we do we can’t stay here!”  Charlie hissed.  He grabbed her by the wrist, picked up the yellow case that he had dropped by the banyan, and pulled her roughly out of the clearing, heading further uphill.

“Target right, two O’clock, twenty-five metres, moving right!”  Dusty Miller barked nervously, peering through the drifting cloud of gun smoke, as he tracked his quarry with his rifle.  The reports of his shots rang in his ears.

“Hold fire, hold fire, you bleeding plonker!”  Pincher Martin roared.  “It’s a flipping pig!”   He stormed over to Dusty and yanked his rifle down by the barrel.  “What do you think you’re doing?  We were told to track and capture the kids, not flaming execute ‘em!”

“Sorry, Pincher!”  Dusty apologised.  “It’s just, I don’t know, I got nervous.”

“Nervous!  Nervous!  What kind of berk have I got with me!  You don’t start shooting around me ‘cos your nervous!”  Pincher snarled.  With that, he pulled Dusty up close to his face by his webbing and bared broken, yellow teeth, spitting out “If I can’t trust you with my six, then I’ll bury you here and now!  Capiche?”

Pale-faced, Dusty nodded agreement.  Pincher Martin in his fury was an intimidating man to say the least. All he wanted was a quiet life and Dusty was not entirely happy with the way this job was going.  It felt like it was starting to unravel at the edges.  He had been on contracts before where things had gone very wrong, very quickly, and this one was beginning to feel the same.  He had vowed never to get involved in anything really dangerous again - his nerves just wouldn’t take it - and he had originally intended this to be his last overseas field op.  Something nice and quiet with no loud noises.  Now he was chasing a couple of kids he quite liked for a man he really didn’t and a witch of an employer, who scared him rigid.  Not only that, but two really good blokes had bought the farm in the morning and no-one seemed to be bothered by it.  Who wouldn’t have a few nerves?

“You got it together then?”  Pincher said brusquely.

Dusty nodded.

“It’s not as if you hit anything anyway.  Flipping pig took off through the bush.” Pincher pointed in the general direction that the escaping swine had taken, deep in an almost impenetrable thicket of twisted saplings that pushed hungrily towards the forest canopy, desperate for sunlight.  As they had followed the children’s tracks up hill, the forest’s character had changed.  It had become hotter, wetter and more tangled.   Vines grew down from banyans, twisting into increasingly thicker undergrowth.  They could follow the children’s tracks relatively easily but the thicker undergrowth slowed them down, forcing them to hack a path with their razor sharp parangs.  Where the children could ease their way under low branches or squeeze between bamboo, the men had to cut their way through.

“Well it’s not as if those kids are gonna get caught by themselves.  Time to saddle up, Dusty,” Pincher said.  “Keep your eyes peeled and for crying out loud, keep your piece’s safety catch on!”

The two men pushed on, parangs swinging in constant, rotating motion, slashing through the undergrowth.  Slowly, inexorably, they were closing in on Charlie and Carmen.

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