On the first rung of the ladder, he began to question his bravado. The skin across his back felt as if it had been flayed.

The gunshots grew louder, more percussive, as they reached the deck. Cautiously they stuck their heads outside the forecastle door. Poor Faiwalati was obviously beyond help, but another transfixed body lay under the crane in a sea of broken arrows.

‘Oh Jesus, it’s Frank.’

Douglas lay splayed on his right side with one arm stretched out. The other hand was clutching feebly at a long arrow embedded in his chest.

‘Don’t pull it out –’

Mia broke off as a bullet struck the top of the doorway and whined away. Nash was bracing himself to run the gauntlet when Mia clamped a hand on his shoulder.

‘You can hardly walk.’

Before he could argue, she dashed across the open deck to crouch beside the stricken Douglas. Loud whistles were followed by a volley of arrows which crashed down around her, snapping and skipping away. How they missed, Nash would never know.

‘Get out of there!’ he yelled, appalled by her exposure.

When she ignored him, he limped as fast as he could across the exposed deck and seized hold of Douglas’s ankles.

‘No!’ she shouted as he began to pull. ‘There’s risk of internal bleeding.’

The raw skin on Nash’s naked back cringed as another arrow thrummed past.

‘Too bad!’ he shouted back. ‘We’re getting out of here!’

Grunting with the pain, he dragged the stricken Douglas along the deck, while Mia did her best to cradle the embedded arrow and stop his head banging on the steel.

When they reached the relative shelter of the forecastle door, Nash collapsed in a panting heap while Mia took Douglas’s pulse. As she concentrated, two fingers pressed into his carotid, a curl of lustrous blonde hair fell down over her bumpy nose. Nash noticed that her eyelashes were incredibly long, dark and thick. It struck him that Mia was one of those women whose beauty kept revealing itself in new ways.

She looked up at him with a worried expression.

‘I need somewhere to work on him, Rob.’

He thought for a moment. ‘The mess?’

‘Good. But first I need to remove this shaft before it jags on something and rips him open. Can you find me a hacksaw?’

‘Seriously?’

‘Do I look like I’m joking?’ Her blue eyes blazed. ‘And get me the first aid kit, too.’

With M60 in hand and a thousand rounds of ammunition draped across his shoulders, Boerman stormed back under heavy fire to find the helicopter cold and still. Studded in arrows, it resembled a novelty pin cushion.

‘God damn it, man!’ he shouted at Hartono, who was still cowering under the landing deck. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’

‘He won’t budge,’ said Sura bitterly. ‘He’s a pathetic coward.’