The first night I found us a middling sort of campsite out of the wind. We set watches, and had no fire – best to be tactical and quiet. I never sleep that well in the bush, wake every hour or so. Probably around three I woke and checked on the watch. Vance was sitting with the pistol in his hands, his head slumped forward, snoring. I took it gently from his hands, and pushed the hilt of it against his neck, then slapped his face to wake him.

"If I were an enemy," I whispered, "That would be the barrel, not the grip, and you'd be dead right now, killed with your own weapon. A bit fucking embarassing that'd be, wouldn't it?" I couldn't see his face in the starlight, but he seemed rather put out. Not really his fault, a watch should be two men, not one. They help each-other stay awake. One bloke on his own can't do it, whatever Squashenegger does in his movies.

The next day we marched on, and came to a road which'd obviously been traversed recently. There were tyre tracks, both four-wheel-drive and motorcycle. We followed them along and they stopped at an intersection in the road, a bit of clay dirt somewhat higher than a lot of the surrounding terrain. Maybe a radio point? We pulled back away from the road and laid up among some bushes, to wait and see if anyone came along. Vance and Jarrah murmured a few words to each-other and started giggling. I tossed a small rock in their direction, and they went quiet and looked over at me. I glared back, putting a finger to my lips for silence, then a finger across my throat – whether I was threatening them with me or the enemy I don't know.

We sat there the rest of the day, the sun hot and the bush dry around us, flies buzzing about. No sound of men except Vance' farts and ball-scratching, the call of birds harking across the valley. In the late afternoon just as I was thinking of getting out of there, we heard a rumble from the north, vehicles. I motioned everyone to hunker down as close to the earth as they could.

Two Rovers rolled up, the first with a bloke on the back with a bolted-on thirty calibre machinegun, the second with a big-arsed radio antenna flapping about. Another two blokes were on motorcycles. They were all Army vehicles, painted up in Army drab green. The blokes were wearing old Army uniforms, all green, and carrying old rifles slung – SLRs, not Steyrs – that meant 7.62mm rounds semi-auto instead of 5.56mm auto. The lead vehicle stopped about ten metres away from the intersection, the second vehicle stopped dead, and a bloke got out to pull down the aerial, screw on a second one to extend it, then pop back in. The bikers didn't drop their kickstands, but just put their feet down and looked around, engines idling. They obviously didn't expect to be here for long. The guy on the thirty cal leaned on it and lit a smoke, exchanging a bit of banter with one of the bikers.

After about fifteen minutes, the radio guy got out and pulled down his aerial entirely, both Rovers did about a six-point turn, and the bikes turned around, too, and all went trundling off back north. We waited for ten minutes, then as the sun set walked back up the hill. I found us a lay-up point for the night, there was a bit of a crevice in the rocks. We settled down and discussed what we'd seen in the day. I quickly realised why I'd been hired – these blokes had no idea about military practice or equipment, things that seemed obvious to me weren't to them.

"Well, radio waves don't go through hills. Sometimes they get blocked. So to send a message you might have to go somewhere high, or extend your aerial like you saw those blokes do. Now, what did we see? Well, we saw two Rovers and two bikes. All were obviously military, though a bit old. Same goes for their uniforms and weapons. Probably they found some old Army Reserve base, picked up a bunch of stuff packed deep in grease, cleaned it up and are organising themselves an army. That they're sending messages like that – that tells us they've a network. Could be a radio test of just that base, but more likely they've a headquarters somewhere else and this is just where they're building up their working kit. Their blokes didn't look too switched on. Notice how the bikers didn't get their weapons in their hands when they stopped, and how the bloke on the gun didn't stand behind it alert, but just had a smoke. That's untrained blokes. Any trained soldier would be sorting them out, this is just some dickheads who found a base. So we know they have good equipment, but poor training."

After my little lecture they were loking pretty bored. This made me feel a bit pissed off and embarassed, so I told them, "Anyway, with those blokes close by it'd better be double watches tonight. Always two men on." They groaned and swore, I looked at Vance and he shut up, probably remembering some cold steel on his neck.

I showed everyone how to use the pistol, and made sure that whoever was on watch would have it. No watch for Zarah, naturally, she was just an observer...

During the night I was awoken by a gunshot. By instinct, I cried out, "stand to! stand to!" though nobody would know what the fuck I was talking about. I tumbled out of my sleeping bag and monkey-crawled over to where the blokes were on watch. Vaughn was down and clutching at her side gasping,, I touched her hand there and it was warm and sticky wet. I pressed her hand down harder, she moaned and I said, "Hold that tight, mate, keep pressure on it." Another gunshot and a round zinged past the back of my neck and into a tree beside me with a distressing thump. They were somewhere to my right, I dropped down and crawled some more. "Vance! Where the fuck are you?!" By the cool light of the gibbous moon I could see he was not five yards away, hunkered down beside a big log. He held his pistol to his chest, breathing hard. "Shoot them, fuck ya!" His eyes went wide, he lifted his head over the log, a shot went off, he dropped back down, pointed the pistol in the air and fired off several shots in succession. A lot of flashes in the night giving me blurry spots on my eyes, a shitload of noise but not much effect, though it probably made some poor possum up in the trees pee on his missus in fright.

"Bugger this," I said, and crawled over to Vance. "Give me that pistol!" I cried, he just looked at me with wide eyes. He stretched out around to the left and to the end of the log, nothing happened and he looked up, he was looking over to the crevice in the rocks where Jarrah and Chan were with Zarah, waking slowly and pulling themselves out of their sleeping bags.

"Chan! Over here! We've got a shot man!"

He started over, Vance leaned out as if to go to him, I never heard the shot just his cry and saw him fall. Then I was hit by an iron-hot sledgehammer in the right lower ribs, or so it seemed. The log wasn't as high as it seemed in the poor light. My side felt heavy, dense. "Motherfucker! He shot me!"

Not much choice, we couldn't sit here taking fire all night. We had wounded so we couldn't run. I called out from behind the log, "Oi! We surrender! We're unarmed! We ran out of rounds! We surrender, okay! Ceasefire, goddamnit!" In answer two shots came out. Bastards. But at least I had a good idea of where they were now, and I was pretty sure there were just two of them.

Chan was over Vaughn now, treating her wound. Jarrah was cowering in the crevice, clutching at his sleeping bag. The wound in my side was heavy, very heavy. I heard no fire, so I crawled a dozen metres to the right and looked as best I could. I could see nothing but bushes and forest. Then as the white blurs from Vance' pistol fire slowly eased away, I started getting glimpses of a dull green glow here and there – never when I looked directly at it, only when I looked away. And I thought I heard movement over there. Son of a bitch, I thought to myself, they've got night vision goggles. Hah, low-light amplifiers, I know how to fuck those. Another couple of rounds came our way. Fuck this for a game of soldiers! Can't see the cunts, have to make them blind, too. I crawled back to behind the log and called over to Jarrah. "Jarrah you cunt! Toss me my torch, it's in the top of my rucksack." He moved over to it and rummaged about for a bit, then threw it over. I tried to catch it but it dropped and hit my knee as I half-squatted up to get it.

This was insane, what I was about to do, but I don't see that we had any choice. I switched on the torch in my left hand, and took Trancheur in my right hand. I stood up, my side throbbing, and stepped over the log, shining the torch around to where I thought the firers were. The torch glinted off glass, and I heard a cry. That's one bloke's electrics fried for a couple of minutes, I thought happily, and started running as best I could towards the other, still shining the torch. I heard a few quick shots and felt the slam again, a sledgehammer in my guts. To my surprise I didn't fall down, just kept running. My torch found a bloke, I saw the flash of glass, low-light goggles on a bloke's head, a rifle in his hands. He rose, pulling off his goggles with his right hand, holding the body of the rifle in his left. "Dickhead! Keep your right hand on the pistol grip at all times!" I said as I swung the axe, striking him in the shoulder. I felt blade bite into bone and gristle, felt him fall back and down. I kicked his rifle away into the bush, the turned to my left to where I'd last seen the other one.

My torch found him, running away into the bush. I ran, he was much faster than me, but he tripped on a rock and fell. He cried out and started to turn over, and raised his arm to protect himself as my axe fell. I wasn't even thinking, just feeling, he shot me, we tried to surrender and he shot at us. Indignation and angry vengeance filled me as the axe fell, cutting him like so much meat, first his chest and then his face. It was just two blows but felt like twenty, my arm was tied, my shoulder stiff. The wound in my side throbbed, the one in my guts burned, I fell to my knees, my eyes watering and my vision swimming. I fell beside the man I'd killed, half-conscious. When I was running around my wounds didn't bother me much, as soon as I stopped they crippled me.

After that, Chan came along and bandaged me up. "We have to move," I said. "Shots were fired, someone might come looking for these blokes." Jarrah stood by him, trying not to look at the bloody ruin of man beside me. "Strip them of gear and let's go."

"The other one still lives."

"Good. Can he walk?"

"Yes."

"Then," I said, sitting up and immediately feeling blood flow from my side, "we have a prisoner of war. Tie him up and let's move, at least half an hour away."

We gathered our things and moved, me and Vance slowing the team down, but not as much as we would in daytime. As we walked I saw Jarrah stumble and clutch at his leg. I went closer to help him up, and realised he'd been shot in the hip – stupid bugger had said nothing. I held up his chin and looked at his face, it was pale and clammy – the guy was going in shock. "Chan!" He rushed over and we fixed him up as best we could then moved on.

The two soldiers we'd got had Steyrs, a couple of fragmentation grenades and of course the lowlight goggles, well-equipped. A few bits of paper I was too bleary-eyed to look at. So it wasn't all the crap old stuff they had. Still, they'd opened up on us for no reason, just trigger-happy. So they were either American or badly-trained, which comes to the same thing.

We went for an hour in the end, then rested. I'd planned for us to move during the day but we weren't up to it. The prisoner just looked scared. Of course, this was the perfect time to interrogate him. Some people think torture is necessary to get information from prisoners, it's not. When a bloke is captured, he doesn't know what's going to happen to him, he wants to tell you things, just so you'll like him and not cap him on the spot. A captured common soldier sings more than a drunken Irishman. But I was in no mood to question anyone, and anyway it wasn't my area. I look at the ground and weapons, I don't know about people much. Our prisoner of war was called Aaron Fuhler.

The trip back to Tradition was slow but uneventful. Captain Chad was well-pleased by our report, though wondering what to do. His instinct was to pass it up the chain for action, but with Fletcher gone, there was no more chain.

The blokes who'd attacked me in my tent turned out to be from Croydon, of all places. Old Carlos of the Free Riders still held a grudge. Their names are Wright Jones and Zachariah Kuchton, and they escaped while we were away. With Captain Chad I am not impressed.