Nash was half-drowned, half-naked and barefoot, but he ran the bank of the flooding Hoosenbeck as if in training for an Olympic 1500 metres on a rubberised track. He vaulted rotting logs and ankle-breaking boulders, scrambled over slippery ledges, ploughed unthinkingly through thick kunai grass. A large green python barely had time to rear, as he sailed over it. When his T-shirt snagged a vicious hooked vine it ripped it open, leaving three bloody lines down his chest.

With the roar of the waterfall plunging into the sinkhole growing louder, Nash forced himself to slow down as he pushed through fringing vegetation. He was desperate to get to Mia, but somewhere Jaap Boerman was waiting.

Creeping through a thicket of waist-high ferns, Nash’s eyes widened at the sight of the tattered remnants of the Kopassus camp, now wedged on a tongue of land between the sinkhole – now three quarters full – and the fast-running Hoosenbeck. The wreckage of the burned-out gunship lay like the crumpled remains of a cremated whale amid a carnage of charred and scattered bodies.

It was impossible to tell which one was Frank Douglas.

Nash forced his grief back down, determined that his sacrifice would not be in vain.

Cautiously he made his way through the camp, eyes peeled for movement. Not a tent was left standing, but Sura’s whiteboard and chairs were bizarrely standing intact, and the generator was still powering the arc lights, which had fallen into the mud. It was then that Nash trod on something in the mud. It was a small mattock the soldiers had been using to chop rough storm-water channels away from the waterlogged camp. Not much of a weapon, but better than nothing.

Near the block and tackle, Nash spotted a bright yellow roll of detonator cord, suspended on a tent pole spool lashed between two chair legs driven into the ground. A line of det cord snaked along the ground before plunging over the sinkhole edge.

A chill passed through him. True to his word, Boerman was wiring the sub.

Nash cautiously approached the edge and peered down through the tattered foliage. He was horrified to see the water had almost reached the access hole in the submarine. Once it poured inside, the section above Mia’s compartment would rapidly fill, and any chance of rescue would be dashed. The line of yellow det cord also ran down through the hole. Nash placed a hand on the block and tackle. It was quivering, the thin cable under immense strain.

Partially obscured by the overhang, swaying twenty metres above the jumbled log pile, Boerman was using a jumar to haul himself up. The big man was moving slowly. Perhaps fatigue had finally set in, or maybe he thought the fight was over.