MacConnachie, too, stopped, and both concentrated all of their sensory perception into their ears. After a moment or two, they heard the unmistakable swishing cut of helicopter blades.

‘Chopper!’

‘Yes. About a mile away.’

‘Could be less. Damn.’

‘Do we hide, or press on?’

‘I don’t like being stuck down here.’

They were enclosed on all sides, most severely to the front and left. MacConnachie pointed to a scar that ran up the main feature just right of their line of march.

‘We’ll go up that,’ he said, and set out. Ansell followed. He could see that the scar was well grown with brush, and would provide some cover when the time came. He said,

‘The chopper’ll be doing a box search, going back almost as far as it comes forward. We should get a fair way up.’

‘He’ll be well ahead of the infantry, too. They’ll try to spot us first, then fly the Goons in to catch us.’

The scar proved a much different proposition close to. The scrub was tight-knit, difficult to climb through, and the earth, more powdery than Ansell had suspected, threw up choking billows of dust. With the blazing sun well up in the sky now, and heat coming back at them from the ground, they began to sweat profusely as they scrabbled upwards, bent double, clutching at the rough growth for leverage. Ansell, glimpsing MacConnachie, saw that progress was doubly difficult for him, since he had the case as well as the gun to deal with. The solution he had arrived at was to tuck the case under his gun arm, leaving the other free to claw with; but this sent him constantly floundering to knees or stomach as his boots skidded over the brush and support failed him. Ansell’s own discomfort was compounded by the need to look constantly over his shoulder for a sight of the helicopter. After twenty minutes, he saw it.

‘Freeze! ’

He knew from the immediate silence that MacConnachie was holding himself rigidly in whatever position the order had caught him. Ansell himself watched the chopper’s manoeuvring, peering through the heat and dust, trying to shield any glare from his face with a hunched shoulder.

The helicopter slid lazily to left and right across their line of march, an insect tasting the air for a scent of its prey. At the moment it was also moving forward but he knew that if he waited it would dance back to complete the box it was engaged on, before advancing again into the next square pattern. He could hear no other rotors, which suggested that the Goons were short of air power and, unable to work overlapping boxes of search, were spreading the net as wide as they could until they unearthed a specific trail. How right MacConnachie had been to say that invisibility was everything.

At length the helicopter fell back below the last crest, and Ansell shouted up to MacConnachie,

‘All clear! Let’s hide!’

‘Left! Go left!’ MacConnachie called back, starting to wriggle in that direction. Ansell could see that just above them the scrub grew thicker to that side, and he burrowed after MacConnachie deep into the crackling brush. They settled face down, hidden from one another but only three feet apart, waiting for the chopper to return. With the baked earth so close to his cheeks, and the brush packed tight about him, Ansell began to feel acutely claustrophobic in the heat, tormented by the dust that caught at his throat and prickled in his nostrils. With infinite caution, he readjusted his position so that he would be able to look at the sky. He had discovered months before that, so long as he was able to make tiny movements of this kind, he could hold back the build-up of pressure out of all proportion to the size of the movement itself. Somewhat comforted, he waited.