Again it was necessary to accelerate and, as Ansell flogged himself to keep pace with MacConnachie, the returning pressure of panic forced itself up in his throat, halving what little air his gaping mouth could capture. They had run for many minutes without pause, and there seemed no escape from their predicament: either they would surrender, or they would be burned to death. His whole body pulsated in sympathy with his wrenching heart and, although it was the running that was breaking him, he was only distantly and dizzily aware of this activity. Some part of him inside was about to rupture explosively.

Slack-kneed and flagging, MacConnachie watched the helicopter through a haze of discomfort and strain, cursing uselessly at the frustration of their position. He was coming to a stop, they would have to recover their breath and their wits. There must be a way out, there must be.

Neatly and methodically, the pilot and navigator were sowing a fresh line of incendiaries across their front, but this time far enough distant that MacConnachie could not hope to reach them before they had taken a thorough hold in depth. Even in the time it took him and Ansell to travel another thirty feet, the thin, swirling smoke had sprung all across their front. He came to a stop, gasping, ‘You bastard! Oh, you bloody bastard!’

Ansell ran straight into him, and they crashed together to the ground.

For some moments they lay as they had fallen: MacConnachie half-supported by his arms as though unwilling, even in this extremity, to adopt a posture of complete exhaustion; Ansell collapsed across his legs, their bodies whooping with the involuntary, racked undulations of landed fish. Then MacConnachie began to fight back in blind anger, crushing his own body into submission to his will, wrenching Ansell’s into a sitting position.

‘Sit up! Sit up, damn you!’

Ansell’s head flopped about, his neck corded with strain, the breath rushing in and out tormentedly between his clenched teeth.

‘’m all right… A’righ…’

But when MacConnachie released him, he began to teeter back and, renewing his grip more firmly on the front of Ansell’s native coat, MacConnachie shook him again until the teeth parted in complaint and clashed together.

‘Sit – up – damn – you – will – you – sit – up!’

‘ ’kay – ’kay!’

Ansell, face shocked and dazed, put his hands down on MacConnachie’s arms to restrain him and, when this support was removed, continued the gesture until, fumblingly, he touched the earth. But he remained upright under his own power.