Read Chapter One Free

                                               CHAPTER ONE: HOW IT STARTED

                                              Somewhere in Southeast Asia, 1969

Something big was about to happen. The hairs on my neck prickled with a sudden, electric warning. Adrenaline from our chaotic sprint still scorched my veins, but the truth was terrifying—I had lost my bearings hours ago.

Ahead, a harsh clearing was slashed into the jungle. Seventy-five meters away, the suffocating tall grass gave way to a rushing stream, cut by a fragile, old log bridge. On the far side, a dirt track vanished into a wall of dense tree line. The sun blazed in a clear blue sky now, a mocking contrast to the weather. I marvelled at how the sky could vomit so much rain in such a short time—my first glimpse of actual sunlight in three agonizing hours.

Kneeling in the brush, the wet earth seeped through my trousers. My olive-green shirt hissed with steam as it dried against my skin. The only sound above the gurgling water was the frantic, ragged rasp of my own breathing. The 9lb SLR, resting over my knee, I fingered the trigger and safety catch, a little click and it was off, a little click and it was on.

“You OK, Johnny Boy?” Pat whispered, the sound low and scraping. “Take deep breaths. What will be, will be.”

“Thanks, Pat. Stop talking a load of bollocks,” I hissed back, my jaw tight. “Where’d you get that from, a Chinese cracker on Bugis Street?”

He ignored me, locking his eyes forward. I looked down at my hands. They were trembling violently. I clenched my fists, burying my fingernails into my palms to force the tremors away. All that panicked running had left my kit saturated with sweat and warm, tropical rain—nothing like the freezing downpours of the UK. Water dripped heavy from the canopy, pooling on my eyebrows until a quick, desperate shake cleared my vision.

Spike reckoned we were in for a proper scrap. I forced myself to believe he was exaggerating, just trying to put the wind up the new boy. I wasn’t scared. I couldn't be. Pat’s fatalistic nonsense meant nothing to me. He was twenty-eight—eleven years my senior—which at my age, not quite eighteen, made him a relic from another world.

I crouched lower, with a perfect, lethal view of the bridge, half-convinced this was just another elaborate, cruel exercise. But deep down, the horror knew better. It was real. I had seen the slaughtered bodies of Zoe’s family. I could still smell the copper. I remembered her father’s shoulder, cleaved clean from his torso like butcher’s meat.

My mind fractured, flashing back to the camp hours earlier.

“Marine Roberts, you’re underage,” the troop commander had snapped. “You are staying in the village to guard the kit.”

The memory burned, a hot wave of pure humiliation flushing my cheeks as I stared at the real jungle ahead. “Fucking what, Sir? Pat and Spike say we’re under strength. My mates need every rifle.”

“Mind your language, Roberts.”

“Yes, sir. But I am over seventeen and a half. Within the corps, I am officially an adult. I volunteer to go.”

The officer’s grim, humourless smile echoed in my head. “Join your section, Roberts. And for the love of God, do not get killed—not even a little bit—or my career is over.”

I’d turned to Pat immediately, grinning with reckless, stupid pride. “There you go. They can’t separate us.”

“Jesus, you really are an ignoramus,” Pat had groaned. “What sort of fucking idiot volunteers for a war?”

“Come off it, Pat. Besides, it’s not really a war, is it?”

Not a war. I had expected this to mirror our bloodless exercises in Singapore. We'd wander through the ulu, completely miss the enemy, and pass within meters of each other without firing a single shot.

A sharp, brittle voice shattered the memory.

“Stand by. Select your targets and make them count.”

I snapped back to the brush. I looked up. Shit.

Streaming from the tree line on the far side of the bridge came dozens of men and women. They weren't a distant threat; they were moving fast. Some wore ragged partial camouflage; others wore green vests and headbands. Every single one carried a weapon raised and ready.

“Fuck me,” I muttered into the mud, the cold weight of reality dropping into my stomach. “They’re here. There's too many.”

“Now, Johnny boy,” Pat whispered, his voice deadpan, chillingly calm as the entire world narrowed down to the notch of our rifle sights. “You’re about to see just how naïve you are. Remember what the lieutenant said—don’t get killed.”

Then, the agonising silence of the jungle was ripped apart by a single command. A word that marked the abrupt, violent end of my youth, and the bloody beginning of my future.

“Fire!”

Nine rifles and a machine gun opened in a deafening, metallic roar, ripping a solid wall of copper-jacketed rounds into the first wave of bodies crossing the bridge.