Didge and the girl – Tani – went ahead, setting a pace that Bongo, Sammy and Mac struggled to maintain as they slid across mud and ducked low-hanging branches. Carrying backpacks filled with food and ammo, they wore Kevlar vests and carried their M4s across their chests. It was a cross-country tab of the kind that Mac had been forced to endure in the Royal Marines, and for some reason always in Scotland. But this was different: the humidity of the forest made their skin wet beneath their vests and the monkeys were much louder in the Cambodian forest than the deer ever were in the glens. ‘That Didge,’ said Sammy, panting as they forded a creek. ‘He ever slow down?’ ‘No,’ said Mac. ‘But if there’s any trouble in this bush, he’ll kill it long before it comes near us.’ After almost two hours of jogging along the jungle footpad, Mac followed Bongo up an incline and found Didge and the girl waiting and eating. Falling to the long grass of the clearing, they caught their breath as the moon passed in and out of cloud.
