Kaboro headed aft in a low crouch along the port side of the ship to rally the defence. Two of Singkepe’s soldiers were mindlessly hosing the grassy bank with their M16s.

‘Pick your targets!’ he roared. ‘Conserve ammo!’

Near the stern, he encountered the body of Singkepe’s signaller. An arrow had severed his jugular and a huge blood slick covered the deck. Sidestepping the treacherous mess, Kaboro grabbed the dead man’s M16.

Under the edge of the helicopter pad, the Indonesians were taking cover.

‘Get below!’ Kaboro yelled at Sura. ‘It’s not safe up here!’

Without waiting for a response, he pressed on to the starboard side. Here, the arrows scattered across the deck were so thick that he lost his footing and almost fell.

‘Space yourselves,’ he barked at two of his sailors huddling behind a vent peppered with bullet holes. ‘Find a firing position and defend the ship.’

Catching sight of an arrow winging its way towards him, Kaboro ducked to let it bounce off the steel bulkhead above. When he stood up again, a blast of hot buckshot tugged his shirtsleeve.

Kaboro spotted the shooter – an old tribesman crouched down by the water’s edge, grinning gleefully while he reloaded a home-made shotgun. Kaboro shouldered the M16 and fired a three-round burst. The old man was still smiling when the high velocity 5.56 mm bullets tore his head apart.

Crouched behind the thick wall of Boerman’s body, Sura clung tightly to his belt while he scanned the scene with a practised eye.

‘There’s no more than twenty of them,’ he told her.

‘How do you know?’

‘Rate of fire.’

‘Shouldn’t we get below?’ Hartono’s eyes were wide and staring, and his breath was foul with fear. During prayers, one of the first arrows had missed him by centimetres and thudded into the tail of the Jet Ranger.

Ignoring him, Boerman turned to Sura. ‘The mist will soon clear. You have to let me do something.’

Sura chewed on her lower lip before shaking her head.

‘We can’t risk exposure until the ship is free . . .’ Extended firing made her pause. ‘Let Kaboro do the fighting, it will whittle down his forces.’

Boerman snorted in contempt. ‘Listen to their fire control. These idiots haven’t got a clue. We’ll be picked off one by one.’

As if emphasising his point, a bullet smacked through the helicopter’s skid, leaving a puckered hole. Sura suddenly saw the Avenue Montaigne slipping away.

‘What do you propose, then?’

Boerman’s face took on an evangelical cast. ‘Regain the upper hand and flush them out into the open. To do that, we need height.’ He nodded at the helicopter.

‘Do it, Jaap.’

Boerman reached out and seized hold of Hartono’s shirt front.

‘Have the chopper ready to go in three minutes. You hear me?’