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Hoplite, and no way of making radio contact with him, the E & E would have to be all the way back to Freetown through seventy miles of rebel-controlled, hostile territory. Hopefully that would remain a last resort.
    Shepherd briefed the Czech pilot and within an hour the team was in the air and flying towards
    the arms dump. Jerzy kept at low level, skimming the treetops and scattering startled animals as the helicopter flew overhead, its rotors whipping up storms of red dust from the open ground.
    Beyond the capital the country looked fertile, with tall trees, broad rivers, savannah grassland with fields of elephant grass and villages of round huts, walled with wattle and daub and roofed with palm thatch. Very little of the land was being cultivated, though, and while they did see one small, neatly furrowed field for growing mealie, most of the patches of cleared land were slowly reverting to jungle.
    The marks of war were everywhere: ruined buildings, burned crops and abandoned villages, and though a few orange and mango trees still grew, they were often surrounded by scorched marks where huts had been burned to the ground. The few people visible working the remaining fields all looked very old or very young.  Everyone they saw carried a bush knife and most, even children and old men, had new looking rifles. They were all desperately thin and dressed in rags - some had no clothes at all.
    The Hoplite crossed a ridge but then followed the slope down into a broad, shallow valley, meandering towards the sea. A sluggish river ran through it, draining the swamp that they could see in the distance. In the middle of the swamp was the island where the rebel arms dump was hidden amid a sprawl of dense vegetation, vivid green against the browns and greys of the dry hillsides in the far distance.
    Jerzy put the helicopter into a hover and dropped them in some scrubland, a safe distance from the swamp. As he clattered into the air and swung away, back towards Freetown, the SAS men took stock of their surroundings before moving forward on foot towards the swamp. They walked in single file, with Shepherd as Lead Scout and Jock as “Tail End Charlie”, while Geordie and Jimbo watched right and left from the middle of the column.
    The scrub thickened and became forest, its dense foliage reducing visibility to no more than a few yards. They used their other senses to compensate for the lack of vision, pausing every few yards to listen and scenting the air for any human trace.
     Shepherd called a halt as he glimpsed the glint of water between the trees. ‘Silent routine from here,’ he said. They fanned out at the edge of the water and began to move through the swamp, so slow and stealthy that barely a ripple disturbed its surface. They communicated with each other only by sign language and faint clicks of the tongue that from more than a couple of feet away were lost among the buzz of insects and the calls of birds in the canopy above them.
    Leeches hanging from leaves and stems twisted towards them as they sensed the heat of the SAS men’s bodies. A water-snake traced the sinuous course across the surface of the water in front of them and clouds of mosquitoes hovered everywhere, kept at bay by the insect repellent the patrol had plastered onto their exposed skin and clothing.
    The water had been up to their chests at the deepest part of the swamp but the level was now falling and ahead of them Shepherd could now see the sloping ground at the edge of the island. He gave a caution signal to the others then inched forward, refocusing his eyes, trying to see through the screen of foliage. The rebel guards, bored and restless, gave their locations away by their noise and movement and the patrol were able to slip past them undetected.
    They spent some hours checking out the area, locating the rebel huts and the arms dump, and identifying stacks of mortar bombs and artillery shells. There were also sacks of rice, salt, and other foods,