The jungle doesn’t breathe the way you think it does. It hums. A low, wet thrum of insects, leaf drip, and distant bird calls that older diggers still hear in their sleep 40 years later. It’s a sound that gets inside your head. Not loud, never loud, but constant, pressing, like tinidis made of nature.

 Some bloss said it drove them mad. Others said it kept them sane. That baseline hum reminding them the jungle was alive. normal, not about to explode into contact. In Fuakt Thai Province, 1969, a six-man SAS patrol moved through that hum like ghosts. Boots finding purchase on root systems that twisted through the red clay soil like arthritic fingers.

Weapons angled down at 45° to avoid catching on. Wait a while. vines, eyes scanning the middle distance where shadow becomes shape and shapes could mean death. The patrol leader, we’ll call him blue because that was his nickname and his real name doesn’t matter anymore, had learned to read jungle the way his grandfather read weather patterns on the riverina plains.

You didn’t just look at it, you felt it. The temperature of the air told you if water was close. The direction insects flew told you where disturbance had occurred. The pattern of bird calls told you if humans had passed through recently or if you were alone with the green hell that stretched in every direction. They had been out four days.

Long range reconnaissance. The kind of patrol where you don’t speak above a whisper. You don’t cook anything that makes smoke. And you sure as hell don’t leave a trail that anyone with half a brain could follow. Your rations were cold. Your water was warm and tasted like iodine tablets. Your socks had rotted through on day two, and now you were walking on blisters that wept fluid into boots that never ever dried.

 This was normal. This was the job. But on the morning of day five, Corporal Steve, the M60 gunner, built like a brick [ __ ] house, hands scarred from years of shearing before the army, noticed something that made his gut tighten in a way that had nothing to do with the tinned ham he’d eaten for breakfast. A vine chest high, bent at an unnatural angle, not snapped.

 That would be obvious. Amateur bent like fingers had tested its tension, found it wanting, and moved it aside with the kind of care that takes years to develop. The bend was fresh. The cellular structure hadn’t relaxed back yet. Maybe 30 minutes old, maybe less. He raised one fist, the universal signal for stop.

 The patrol froze midstep, weight still distributed forward on the balls of their feet, knees soft and bent to absorb any shift in balance. No rustling, no metal clink from equipment, no sharp intake of breath, just stillness. The kind of stillness that prey animals achieve when predators pass nearby. 5 seconds, 10, 20.

 Each man scanning his assigned arc of vision, finger resting alongside the trigger guard, not on the trigger itself because accidental discharge would mean death for everyone. The jungle continued its hum around them, indifferent to their presence. Then Steve saw the second sign, a heel impression in the moss near the base of a strangler fig.

that parasitic tree that grows around its host and eventually crushes it to death, which felt like an apt metaphor for this whole godamn war. The impression was small, precise, the kind of mark that comes from someone who learned to walk quietly before they learned to walk fast. The weight distribution was wrong for a man.

 Too much pressure on the heel, not enough on the ball of the foot, and the size, maybe a woman’s size six in Australian measurements. Small feet, light body. The patrol leader, Blue, crouched low and studied the ground with eyes that had tracked walabes through mulga scrub as a kid, and now tracked human beings through tropical rainforest.

 He didn’t need to speak. Every man saw it. They were being tracked and not by conscripts or poorly trained militia or farmers pressed into service with a week’s training and an old French rifle. These were the prints of someone who knew jungle the way a fisherman knows tide instinctively, patiently, lethally. The spacing between steps was too consistent to be amateur, too careful.

 The person who made this print had been moving for hours, maybe days, without making a significant mistake. That level of discipline spoke to experience, to training, to skill that matched or exceeded their own. The patrol had heard the stories. Everyone had female Vietkong trackers. Women trained in the art of human hunting deployed specifically against Australian patrols because Australian soldiers moved differently than Americans.

 The Americans, God love them, tended to crash through the jungle with the subtlety of a drunk bull at a rodeo. Lots of noise, lots of equipment clatter, lots of confidence that firepower would solve problems that require patience. Australians were different. They’d learned jungle warfare from campaigns in Papua New Guinea, in Malaya, in Borneo.

 They moved with a deliberation that came from understanding that in the jungle, the silent side usually winds. They used terrain. They thought about wind direction. They avoided ridgeel lines when possible and used them when necessary. They were harder to predict, harder to pin down, harder to kill. So, the VC adapted.

 They deployed trackers who were smaller, lighter, more patient. Trackers who could detect the faint smell of Australian soap, different from the soap Americans used. Trackers who could feel the residual heat from a bootprint. Trackers who could sit motionless for an hour just listening, just feeling, just knowing. What made Steve’s stomach turn wasn’t fear.

 He’d been scared before. proper scared. The kind where your bowels turn to water and you have to consciously prevent yourself from pissing your pants. This wasn’t that. This was recognition. Professional recognition. Whoever was behind them was good. Genuinely, dangerously good. and they were closing the distance with the kind of patience that meant they’d probably been following for hours, maybe since yesterday, accumulating knowledge about the patrol’s patterns, their timing, their habits.

 But here’s what the trackers didn’t know yet. Here’s what they couldn’t anticipate because it required a level of tactical audacity that most military units don’t possess. In the next 30 minutes, the SAS would do something the Vietkong hadn’t anticipated. They wouldn’t run. Running leaves obvious sign and broadcasts panic.

 They wouldn’t dig in and prepare an ambush. That would turn this into a firefight in terrain where enemy reinforcements could arrive faster than Australian extraction. They wouldn’t radio for support. Helicopters make noise that brings every VC unit within 5 kilometers running. No, they do something much harder, much riskier, much more professional.

 They’d loop wide, climb up slope through scrub so thick it would tear your arms to shreds. Move through wait a while vines that grabbed like barbed wire. Navigate terrain that would leave sign if you weren’t careful. And they’d be very, very careful and reposition themselves in a place no manual ever taught, no doctrine ever codified, no training exercise ever fully prepared you for.

Behind their hunters. This is the story of the day the Australian SAS turned a pursuit into a master class. The day they demonstrated that superior fieldcraft isn’t about being invisible. It’s about controlling the geometry of the encounter, about understanding your opponent’s assumptions and violating them.

 About staying calm when every instinct screams at you to react. And this is the story of the day. A team of expert Vietkong trackers, professionals in their own right, skilled and experienced and deadly, realized too late that the men they thought they were hunting had been studying them the entire time. This wasn’t about killing. It was about skill versus skill, patience versus patience.

 The kind of warfare that doesn’t make headlines but defines outcomes. And in that jungle on that morning, in conditions that would break most men, six Australian soldiers were about to prove why the SAS had a reputation that exceeded their numbers. Let’s go back 2 hours. Let’s understand how they got here.

 The patrol had been moving northwest along a ridge line. A calculated risk because rgel lines give you visibility and easier walking, but also expose you to observation. They were mapping suspected supply routes for the Ho Chi Min Trails local tributaries, the smaller paths that fed men and weapons from Cambodia into South Vietnam’s populated areas.

 Standard stuff. Eyes on the ground, ears tuned to anything that didn’t belong. A voice, an engine, the metallic click of a rifle being shouldered, the particular scrape of a pack strap being adjusted, anything that spoke to human presence in a place where humans shouldn’t be. They’d seen nothing unusual, no fresh footprints, no disturbed vegetation, no smoke from cooking fires, no smell of fish sauce or rice or the particular odor of human waste that lingers in jungle humidity.

nothing to suggest they were anything but alone in several square kilometers of green hell which in Vietnam often meant everything. Because the thing about the jungle is this. It hides everything until it doesn’t. You can be 10 m from an enemy position and never see it. You can walk past a bunker complex and mistake it for natural terrain features.

 You can pass within arms reach of a VC soldier lying in ambush and never know they were there until bullets start tearing through vegetation and bodies. The patrol knew this. They had all lost friends to it. Blok who had been walking point one moment and were bleeding out the next, cut down by fire from positions they’d never seen. The jungle was neutral.

 It protected everyone equally and punished mistakes without mercy. The first indication that something was wrong came from young Tommo, the baby of the patrol, 21 years old, fresh-faced kid from Western New South Wales, who’d grown up checking rabbit traps in salt bush country. He’d stopped to adjust his pack strap.

 The canvas was digging into his shoulder, had been for hours, would probably leave a permanent indentation in the muscle, and noticed something almost invisible while he was looking down. a single leaf torn rather than cut, lying up, turned on the trail behind them about 3 m back. The tear was fresh. You could see the bright green of the cellular structure, not yet oxidized to brown.

 The leaf had been torn within the last hour, maybe less, and it was lying unnatural side up. The paler underside catching light. That meant someone had brushed past it moving forward, torn it accidentally, and it had fallen in a pattern that wouldn’t occur naturally. Leaves don’t fall upturned, not unless disturbed by movement.

 Tommo didn’t say anything immediately. Didn’t want to spook the patrol over something that might be nothing. Could have been an animal. Could have been wind, though there wasn’t any wind under the canopy. Could have been a dozen things. but his gut said otherwise. He caught the patrol leader’s eye and flicked two fingers backward in the subtle gesture they used for possible sign behind us.

 Blue nodded fractionally, message received and filed it away. Didn’t react, didn’t change pace, just noted it and continued the patrol’s steady northwest bearing. An hour later, they found the tow drag mark. This one wasn’t ambiguous. This one was definitive. It was on a section of trail where the ground was soft red clay, the kind that takes impressions like wet concrete.

 And there, clear as a photograph, was the distinctive signature that Australian intelligence had documented and captured Vietkong training manuals. A heel impression with a characteristic forward scrape from the ball of the foot. Female recruits in certain VC districts were taught to move heel first in thick cover, dragging the ball of the foot forward to test for trip wires and pressure plates before committing full weight.

 It was smart tactical doctrine. Booby traps killed more soldiers than firefights in some areas, but it left a signature, a small one, easy to miss unless you knew what you were looking for. The SAS knew. They had been briefed on this exact pattern two months earlier. An intelligence officer had shown them photographs from a captured training document.

 Had explained that certain VC units, particularly those operating in Fuok Thai province, were experimenting with female trackers because they left less evidence of their own movement. Smaller feet meant lighter impact on soft ground. Lower body weight meant less disturbance of vegetation. And culturally, women in rural Vietnam were often more accustomed to moving silently through jungle than men because they’d spent their lives gathering firewood, fetching water, foraging, activities that required patience and quiet. Blue

knelt beside the mark, studied it without touching, then looked up at Steve. Both men’s eyes met. No words needed. They understood immediately what they were looking at. By the time they found the third sign, a faint handprint on a tree trunk, small enough to belong to a teenage girl, placed at exactly the right height for someone around 5’3 to steady themselves while navigating steep terrain.

 The patrol had gone completely silent, not the operational silence they had been maintaining all week, which was professional quiet with occasional whispered communication when necessary. This was different. This was the silence of men who just realized the jungle had eyes. And those eyes had been on them for hours, studying them, learning their patterns, accumulating intelligence that would be used to kill them or their mates somewhere down the line.

 This was the silence of prey recognizing they had become prey. Let’s talk about who these diggers were, because understanding them helps explain what happened next. The SAS patrol that morning wasn’t made up of supermen or Hollywood commandos or the kind of characters you see in movies where everyone looks like a male model with perfect teeth and improbable muscles.

 They were bloss, ordinary Australian men, most in their early 20s with a few pushing 30 who’d volunteered for the hardest military selection in the Commonwealth and somehow made it through when most didn’t. The patrol leader, Blue, had grown up in the Riverina district of New South Wales, that flat agricultural heartland where wheat grows to the horizon, and the only trees are the ones planted as windbreaks.

 His old man had been a wheat farmer who supplemented income by spotlighting foxes for bounty. Blue had spent his childhood and teenage years going out at night with a rifle and a spotlight, learning to move quietly through scrub, learning to read animal behavior, learning patience because you might wait 3 hours for one shot and if you it spooked your quarry through impatience, you went home empty-handed.

Those skills, the ability to sit motionless, to move without disturbing the environment, to read sign and predict behavior, translated directly to military field craft. When he joined the army at 19, the instructors at Kapuka Recruit Training Depot had recognized immediately that this kid from the bush had skills that couldn’t be taught in a classroom.

 By 21, he’d passed SAS selection. By 24, he was in Vietnam, leading patrols through jungle that made the Australian scrubland of his youth look like a manicured garden. Steve, the corporal carrying the M60 machine gun, had been a sheerer before he enlisted. Quiet bloke, didn’t talk much, hands like leather from years of gripping clippers and wrestling sheep.

 The kind of man who could tie complex knots in the dark purely by touch and tell you the weather three days hence by the way grass bent. He carried the 23 pound M60 like it weighed nothing. Had that particular combination of wiry strength and endurance that comes from physical labor rather than gym work. His arms were scarred from shoulder to wrist, partly from shearing accidents, partly from wait a while vines that grabbed like fish hooks, partly from a mortar fragment in his first month in country that had laid his left forearm open to

the bone, but somehow missed every major blood vessel. He’d been awarded a military medal for that action. Had continued providing covering fire with the M60 while blood poured down his arm. had refused evacuation until the patrol was secure. The metal sat in a drawer back at Newi dot. He never wore it, never mentioned it.

 That wasn’t his style. Tommo was the youngest, 21, babyfaced, homesick in ways he’d never admit to the older diggers. But he had eyes like a hawk and never missed detail. Growing up on a wheat and sheep property west of do, he’d spent countless hours helping his father spot and shoot rabbits that destroyed crops and competed with sheep for feed.

 You learn to see small movements, to detect patterns, to distinguish between windmall vegetation. Those were survival skills in Australian agriculture where rabbit plagues could destroy a family’s livelihood. In Vietnam, those same skills kept you alive. Tommo could spot a trip wire that other bloss would walk right into.

 Could see the subtle discoloration in soil that indicated a pungi pit. Could detect the two perfect camouflage of a bunker position. His attention to detail had already saved the patrol twice. Once spotting a pressure plate mine on a trail they were about to use. once identifying a likely ambush position based on broken vegetation that was slightly too uniform to be natural.

 He’d write letters home about the humidity, the weight of his pack, the way his boots never dried, the constant battle with foot rot and jungle rot, and every other kind of rot that turned your skin into something that looked like it belonged on a corpse. His mom kept every one of those letters, filed them chronologically in a shoe box, read them over and over when she couldn’t sleep for worrying about her youngest boy in that terrible place everyone on TV said was a mistake.

 The other three patrol members, we’ll call them Macka the radio operator, Jonno the medic, and Blueie the Younger to distinguish him from Blue the patrol leader, were cut from similar cloth. workingclass Australian men who’d grown up in places where physical toughness was expected, where you didn’t complain about discomfort, where mates meant looking after your mates even when you were barely holding yourself together.

These weren’t men trying to prove anything. They weren’t there for glory or political conviction or abstract ideas about democracy versus communism. Most of them couldn’t articulate why they had volunteered for Vietnam beyond vague statements about doing your bit or the armies where my mates are or seemed like the thing to do.

 They were professionals doing an ugly job with quiet competence. And right now that job had just become significantly more complicated because they’d realized they weren’t the hunters in this scenario anymore. They were the hunted. Now, let’s talk about the other side of this story because it’s important, critically important.

 We understand who was hunting them. This isn’t propaganda. This isn’t mythmaking. This is documented tactical reality that shaped how this war was fought at the ground level. The Vietkong didn’t employ female trackers out of desperation or political symbolism or because they had run out of men. Though by 1969, manpower was becoming an issue after the catastrophic losses of the Ted offensive the previous year.

 They did it because it worked. Because in certain provinces, particularly those with dense jungle and active Australian patrols, the VC discovered through brutal trial and error, that women made exceptional hunters for reasons that were both physical and psychological. Let’s start with the physical advantages because they were real and significant.

 Smaller foot size meant lighter impact on soft ground. A man weighing 75 kg leaves deeper impressions than a woman weighing 50 kg. Over the course of that difference more vegetation, compresses more soil, leaves more evidence. The female tracker goes through with half the signature. In jungle warfare, where being invisible meant staying alive, that advantage was enormous.

Lower body weight also meant quieter movement through vegetation. When you push through weight vines or bamboo thicket, the vegetation springs back proportional to the force applied. A lighter person disturbs less, creates less noise, leaves less evidence of passage. It’s basic physics, but in practical terms, it meant female trackers could move through terrain that would betray a heavier soldier.

 And then there was endurance. This surprises people who don’t understand physiology, but women often have superior endurance relative to body weight compared to men. They carry proportionally less muscle mass, which means lower caloric requirements for sustained lowintensity activity. In a tactical environment where you might be moving slowly for 12 to 16 hours straight, eating minimal rations, that metabolic efficiency mattered.

 Female trackers could operate longer on less food, which meant they could stay in the field longer, which meant they could track patrols deeper into their operational areas. But beyond the physical advantages, which were significant but not overwhelming, there was something else. Something the Australian diggers came to respect, even if they’d never say it outright during the war, even if it took decades before they’d admit it in interviews with historians. These women were patient.

Not patient in some stereotypical feminine way. Patient in the way that professional hunters are patient. The kind of patience that comes from understanding that rushing gets you killed, that the jungle rewards stillness and punishes haste. That good intelligence gathered slowly, is worth more than bad intelligence gathered quickly.

 Intelligence reports declassified years later, buried in archives that historians like Dr. Chen would spend months excavating, describe female VC trackers who could remain motionless for 45 minutes, listening to the direction of insect noise to determine which way a patrol had moved. This wasn’t folklore. This wasn’t enemy propaganda inflating capabilities.

This was documented in afteraction reports from Australian and American units who’d encountered these trackers and barely survived the experience. They were trained, really trained with doctrine and exercises and progressive skill development to detect things that seemed impossible to Western soldiers who’d grown up in cities and suburbs.

The faint smell of Australian soap, which had a different chemical composition than American soap, the particular musk of gun oil used by Commonwealth forces, subtly different from the oil used by US forces, even the heat signature left by a resting body on damp soil. If you knelt and placed your palms flat on ground where a man had been sitting 10 minutes earlier, you could feel residual warmth if you knew what you were feeling for.

 One captured training manual translated in Saigon by intelligence officers who initially thought it must be exaggerated or metaphorical described a technique called listening to the forest’s memory. Trackers were taught to crouch low, minimize their own noise and scent, and simply observe how the jungle was recovering from disturbance.

 Birds would resume singing in a cascade pattern after humans passed. First the bold species, then the cautious ones, then finally the most skittish. By listening to which birds were singing and which weren’t, you could estimate how long ago the disturbance occurred and which direction it came from. Another technique involved studying spider webs.

 Spiders rebuild damaged webs in predictable patterns and time frames. If a web was damaged, torn by a passing soldier or equipment, you could estimate the time of passage by how much reconstruction had occurred. Fresh damage meant passage within the hour. Partially rebuilt meant several hours. Fully rebuilt meant a day or more.

 It was naturalist knowledge applied to warfare, and it was devastatingly effective. The women selected for this work weren’t random conscripts pulled from villages and given rifles. They were often from rural areas where hunting and foraging were survival skills taught from childhood. They knew jungle because they had grown up in it, lived in it, survived in it.

Their mothers had taught them which plants were edible and which were poison. Their grandmothers had taught them how to move silently so as not to spook game animals. Their aunts had taught them patience in gathering and preparing food. All of that accumulated cultural knowledge passed down through generations of rural Vietnamese women was weaponized by the Vietkong and turned into tactical doctrine.

 These trackers knew jungle the way the SAS knew Australian scrub instinctively, ancestrally, in ways that couldn’t be fully taught because they were embedded in childhood experience. And they were hunting the best soldiers Australia had ever produced. On that morning in 1969, a small team of female trackers, intelligence estimates suggested three, possibly four based on the variety of bootprints found, had picked up the SAS patrols trail near a stream crossing approximately 3 km southeast of the patrol’s current position. They had

studied the bootprints in the soft mud of the stream bank, noted the spacing between prints, calculated the weight distribution based on impression depth. They’d done what the SAS would have done in their position. They’d read the sign like a book. The spacing between bootprints told them this was a small patrol, probably five to eight men.

 The depth and pattern told them these were experienced soldiers, not conscripts. The weight was evenly distributed. The pace was consistent. The route selection showed tactical awareness. The boot tread pattern was consistent with Australian issue jungle boots distinct from American patterns. And the direction of travel suggested a long range reconnaissance patrol, not a short duration ambush team.

 All of that analysis conducted in minutes gave them everything they needed to know. These were SAS and SAS were dangerous. Not reckless dangerous, but competent dangerous. The kind of dangerous that required equal competence to counter. So, they’d begun the hunt. They’d moved in parallel rather than directly behind. Classic stalking pattern that minimized the risk of walking into a hasty ambush.

If the Australians realized they were being followed, they’d stayed downwind when possible. The wind was unreliable under the jungle canopy. They had moved slowly, trading speed for stealth, because the goal wasn’t to close the distance immediately. The goal was intelligence. Learn the patrol’s destination. Learn their timing, learn their routines, then report back.

 Then let the main force, the fighters, the combat troops set an ambush days later. Somewhere the SAS felt safe. somewhere they’d let their guard down. It was a long game, a patient game, the kind of warfare that doesn’t make headlines but accumulates strategic advantage over time. And it almost worked. It should have worked.

 By any reasonable tactical assessment, these trackers had done everything correctly. Their field craft was immaculate. Their patience was exemplary. Their decisionmaking was sound. But they made one critical error. One assumption that seems so reasonable, so obvious, so consistent with how most military patrols operate that it didn’t even register as an assumption.

 They assumed the Australians would continue forward when they realized they were being tracked. Either evade forward or dig in and ambush backward or call for extraction. They never considered that the Australians would do something so tactically audacious, so physically demanding, so mentally exhausting that it bordered on insanity.

 They never considered the Australians would loop behind them. Blue stopped the patrol at a small clearing barely 15 ft across. The kind of spot where light filtered through the canopy and broken shafts, creating dappled patterns on the jungle floor that shifted as branches moved overhead.

 It was beautiful in a way that made you forget temporarily that beauty and lethality often occupied the same space in Vietnam. He knelt, touched the ground with his fingertips, not looking at it yet, just feeling. The soil was damp, but not saturated. No rain for at least 12 hours. That was useful information for reading signage. He moved his hand slowly across the leaf litter, feeling for disturbances, for unnatural patterns.

 Then he found it, a broken stem of bamboo grass, still weeping sap from the cut end. The sap was clear and viscous, not yet oxidized, fresh, maybe 10 minutes old, possibly less. But the break wasn’t from a boot or careless movement. The cut was clean, angled at precisely 45°, the kind of cut you get from a blade, not from being stepped on.

 Someone had sliced it deliberately, probably to mark a direction for the tracker behind them. a navigation aid so subtle it would be invisible to anyone not specifically looking for it. Blue looked up at Steve without speaking. Steve moved to his left, weapon up, scanning the perimeter with the kind of focused intensity that comes from knowing your life might depend on seeing something before it sees you. His eyes swept methodically.

Low vegetation first, where ambushers hide, then middle distance, then the canopy where snipers might be positioned. Nothing. But nothing in the jungle doesn’t mean a safety. It just means you haven’t seen the danger yet. Then Tommo spotted the bird. A jungle fowl. One of those chicken-like birds that scuttle through undergrowth, feeding on insects and seeds.

 It was perched low on a branch about 20 m away, watching them. That by itself wasn’t unusual. Jungle fowl were common. But this one should have flown when the patrol approached. Should have spooked and burst away with that characteristic wing clatter that always made your heart jump. It hadn’t, which meant it had already been disturbed recently within the last 10 or 15 minutes.

 And its fear response was exhausted. Birds have a recovery period after being spooked. If you disturb them again during that period, they often just freeze rather than flee. This bird was in freeze mode. Someone else had passed through here recently. Close enough to spook the bird, moving in the same direction the patrol had been moving.

 Blue closed his eyes and listened. Not for sound. Sound was everywhere. The constant insect hum and leaf drip and distant bird calls. He was listening for absence of sound, for the gaps in the natural rhythm. In the jungle, silence moves in waves. When humans pass through, animals go quiet. That silence spreads outward in a ripple pattern, then gradually fills back in as the animals resume their normal behavior.

 The fillback pattern is directional. It starts from the area farthest from the disturbance and moves toward it. If you listen carefully, really carefully, you could hear which direction the silence had come from. Blue listened for 30 seconds, 40, a full minute. The silence pattern was behind them, and it was moving. Not fast, but definitely moving. Coming closer.

 He opened his eyes, made three quick hand signals that every man in the patrol understood instantly. We’re being funneled. Enemy closing from behind. Execute button hook maneuver. Go silent. The patrol didn’t hesitate. This wasn’t the first time they’d been in this situation, though it was the first time they’d encountered trackers this skilled.

 They’d trained for this, rehearsed it. But training in Kungra, Queensland, with instructors shouting at you and safety officers watching was different from executing in live combat conditions where mistakes meant body bags. Tommo’s hands were shaking slightly as he adjusted his pack straps. Not from fear. Well, not entirely from fear, but from adrenaline dump.

 His body knew what his mind was still processing. They were in serious danger. Not immediate danger, not bullets flying right now danger, but the kind of strategic danger where you’re being maneuvered into position for future slaughter. Steve caught Tommo’s eye, nodded once. The message was clear. You’re good. Stay focused.

 We’ve got this. Tommo nodded back, forced his breathing to slow, made his hands stop shaking through pure willpower. Blue checked his compass heading, calculated angles and distances in his head based on terrain features he’d been cataloging all morning. The button hook maneuver they were about to execute required precise navigation.

 Too tight a loop and you’d run into your pursuers headon. too wide and you’d take too long. Give them time to close the distance and potentially lose your opportunity. It had to be perfect. He pointed up slope toward terrain that made everyone’s heart sink. Steep gradient maybe 30° covered in weight vines that would grab and tear, studded with lawyer cane that would slice through clothing and skin, littered with loose rocks that could turn an ankle or create noise if dislodged.

 It was brutal terrain, the kind you avoided if you had any choice, which made it perfect because no one would expect them to go that way. The VC trackers would assume reasonably logically that the Australians would take the path of least resistance, would stay on relatively flat ground, would prioritize speed and ease of movement. But Blue was betting the patrols lives on violating that assumption.

 They moved. The thing about being tracked by an expert is you can’t just bolt. Every instinct in your body screams at you to run, to put distance between you and the threat, to move fast. And hope speed overcomes skill. But instinct gets you killed in the jungle. Panic gets you killed. Breaking pattern gets you killed.

 Because the moment you change your behavior, the moment you start moving faster, taking different routes, making noise, because you’re prioritizing speed over stealth, you signal awareness. You tell your tracker, “I know you’re there.” And a good tracker will adjust instantly, will anticipate your panic response, will position themselves to exploit your predictable reaction.

 So the SAS did something that required more discipline than most soldiers possess. They slowed down, not to a crawl, not to a freeze, but to the exact same methodical pace they had been maintaining all morning. Blue kept his rifle angled the same way. 45° down, barrel forward. His head continued scanning the same arc.

 30° left, center, 30° right, repeat. His stride length didn’t change. His foot placement didn’t change. From 50 m back, the patrol would look exactly as it had for the past hour. Calm, routine, professional, unaware of being hunted. But beneath that surface calm, every man was calculating, preparing, reading the tactical situation, and gaming out responses.

Steve shifted his pack weight subtly, redistributing it so the M60 would be easier to bring to bear if they made sudden contact. The weapon hung on a quick release sling across his chest, not shouldered for carrying, which would slow his response time, but positioned so he could bring it up and fire in under two seconds if necessary.

 He checked the belt feed with his left hand, making sure the ammunition belt wasn’t kinkedked or twisted, that rounds would feed smoothly if he needed to engage. 23 lb of machine gun becomes light as air when adrenaline hits, but only if you’ve positioned it correctly. Tommo loosened the straps on his water bottles to eliminate slosh noise.

 Water sloshing in cantens can be heard surprisingly far in jungle silence, 30, 40 m under the right conditions. He also double checked that his compass was secured in its pouch, but easily accessible. If they got separated during the maneuver, if contact broke the patrol into smaller elements, he’d need to navigate independently back to a rally point.

 MA carrying the radio on his back with its antenna collapsed to minimize snagging on vegetation checked his handset was secured with no loose clips or straps that might create noise. The radio was their lifeline to artillery support to helicopter extraction to the entire command structure that could bring overwhelming force to bear if things went completely sideways.

 But right now he couldn’t use it. Radio transmission creates electromagnetic signature that some VC units had learned to detect. Better to stay off the air entirely than risk giving away their position. Jonno, the medic, was running through mental checklists of his medical kit. Where was the morphine? Where were the pressure bandages? If someone took a round, he’d have maybe 30 seconds to apply immediate first aid before they had to move again.

In that 30 seconds, his hands would need to find exactly the right supplies without looking, without fumbling, without wasting a single motion. Blue, the younger, was checking sightelines, identifying potential cover, mapping in his head where he’d go if bullets started flying. That thick cluster of bamboo to the left, good concealment, but poor cover.

 Rounds would punch right through. That termite mound to the right, excellent cover, would stop rifle fire easily, but hard to get to quickly. Those exposed tree roots ahead, low profile, maybe 18 in high, enough to give you something to hide behind if you went prone. All of this calculation happening simultaneously, wordlessly while the patrol maintained its calm, steady, routine pace.

 Professional soldiers operating at the peak of their capability. After 200 m, which took nearly 15 minutes of careful measured movement, Blue raised one fist. The patrol stopped. Didn’t freeze dramatically like in the movies. Just stopped midstride, weight balanced, ready to move again instantly. They waited 30 seconds, a full minute, 2 minutes, letting the jungle settle, letting their own sound signature dissipate, listening for pursuit, for the telltale signs of movement behind them, the soft rustle of fabric, the faint creek of equipment, the subtle

change in bird call patterns that indicates human presence. Nothing definitive, but Blue’s instincts, honed by hundreds of hours in country, dozens of patrols, accumulated near-death experiences, told him the trackers were still there, still coming. Maybe 200 m back, maybe less. Time to move. He pointed up slope, directly ups slope toward that nightmare terrain of wait a while and lawyer cane and steep gradient that would make every step an exercise and controlled misery. Nobody groaned.

Nobody sighed. Nobody exchanged looks that said, “Are you [ __ ] kidding me?” Because they understood the tactical logic immediately. This was the route nobody would take unless they absolutely had to, which made it the perfect route for violating enemy assumptions. One by one, the patrol turned 90° perpendicular to their previous bearing and began the climb, slowly, patiently, testing each foothold before committing weight, using the natural sound of wind through the canopy to mask the tiny rustles they couldn’t avoid. They didn’t

cut vines. Cutting leaves evidence creates reflective surfaces where sap weeps makes noise. Instead, they move vines aside gently with the kind of care you’d use handling a sleeping baby. They didn’t break branches. They bent under them, contorting their bodies into positions that made muscles scream, but left no evidence of passage.

 The wait a while vines were the worst. They’re called wait a while because once they catch on your clothing or equipment, you have to stop and carefully extract yourself or you’ll tear your gear, make noise, leave obvious sign. The vines are covered in small backward pointing thorns like tiny fish hooks made of vegetable matter that grab everything they touch.

 Soldiers had been known to spend 5 minutes extracting themselves from a single vine cluster, but the patrol moved through them with practiced patience. When a vine caught, you stopped. Located exactly where it was hooked. Use both hands to carefully lift the fabric or webbing. Slide the thorn out without pulling. Then move forward again. Slow. So slow.

 three steps per minute sometimes, but silent, leaving minimal disturbance. The lawyer cane was different, but equally brutal. It’s a type of palm that grows in dense clusters, and every surface is covered in sharp spines. Brushing against it leaves cuts on exposed skin, thin slicing cuts that sting like hell and take weeks to heal properly in tropical conditions.

 Some BS got infected from lawyer cane cuts, ended up with jungle rot that required antibiotics and evacuation. So you learned to navigate around it, not through it. You identified the cane clusters from 5 m away, plotted routes that avoided them, accepted that this meant a more ciruitous path, but also meant you weren’t leaving blood trace that could be tracked.

 Tommo felt sweat pouring down his back, soaking through his uniform until the fabric clung to his skin like plastic wrap. The humidity was approaching 95%, the kind where air feels thick enough to chew. Every breath felt insufficient, like you weren’t getting enough oxygen even though you were breathing normally. His pack straps had worn through his shirt in places and were rubbing directly on raw skin.

 Each movement sent fresh spikes of pain through his shoulders. Ignored it. Everyone ignored it. Pain was temporary. Death was permanent. You could treat pain later. Right now, you focused on the mission. It took 20 minutes to cover 40 m of elevation. 20 brutal, grinding, exhausting minutes where every muscle was engaged.

 where concentration couldn’t lapse for even a moment without risking noise or evidence. But by the time they crested the ridge line, they’d done something extraordinary. They had exited the kill zone, the theoretical area where the VC trackers expected them to be without the trackers realizing they’d change direction.

 Blue allowed himself 10 seconds of rest at the rgeline. 10 seconds where the patrol could catch their breath, wipe sweat from their eyes, adjust equipment. Then he pointed along the ridge spine. The next phase of the maneuver, the actual loop. Steve caught Blue’s eye, gave him a thumbs up. The message was clear. Brutal climb, but we made it. Ready to continue.

Blue nodded once, checked his compass bearing, and moved out. The button hook was about to begin. In military terms, a button hook is exactly what it sounds like. You trace a wide arc backward, circling around to reposition behind a pursuing force. On paper, in a classroom with a whiteboard and a confident instructor, it looks simple, almost elegant.

 You draw a smooth curve, mark your start point and end point, and explain how this maneuver allows you to reverse the tactical geometry. In reality, in jungle that grabs you, in heat that exhausts you with an enemy potentially close enough to hear you if you make a single significant mistake, it’s one of the most difficult tactical maneuvers small units can execute.

 It’s dangerous as hell because you’re moving laterally across terrain instead of forward into fresh ground. Moving laterally means you risk crossing your own trail, which creates a confusing sign picture that a skilled tracker might interpret correctly. It means you’re moving through areas where the enemy might be operating, where you could stumble into their patrol elements or supply routes.

 But if you execute it correctly, if your field craft is immaculate, if your navigation is precise, if your discipline holds, you can ghost right past someone without them ever knowing you were there. You can transform from being hunted to being the hunter. The SAS were masters of the button hook. They had learned it from British SAS operations in Malaya and Borneo.

 They’d refined it through trial and error in Vietnam. They had practiced it in training until it became muscle memory, until every man knew his role without needing orders, until the maneuver could be executed in silence under combat conditions. Now they were putting all that training to the test. Blue led the patrol along the ridge spine where the ground was harder, compressed by its own weight over geological time, less likely to take a bootprint that would be visible hours later.

 The vegetation was thinner up here too, which meant faster movement, but also meant they were more visible from below if anyone happened to look up. Risk and reward. Everything in tactics is risk and reward. They move with the wind coming from the direction they had just left. The direction where the VC trackers were presumably still following the patrol’s original trail.

Wind direction mattered critically. Any sound they made would be pushed away from the trackers. Any scent they carried, soap, gun oil, the particular smell of western diet excreted through skin, would disperse downs slope rather than drifting back toward their hunters. Jonno, understanding wind dynamics from his childhood, growing up on a farm where wind determined everything from crop moisture to fire risk, kept checking wind direction every 5 minutes.

You couldn’t see wind in the jungle understory. No flags, no smoke, but you could feel it on your sweat damp skin. Could see which way the highest leaves moved. Could sometimes smell moisture direction if rain was coming. The wind held steady from the southwest. Perfect. Every 50 m, Blue stopped.

 The patrol froze. He listened with his entire body, not just ears, but skin, sensing vibrations through the ground, feeling air pressure changes that might indicate movement or activity. The jungle has a rhythm, a baseline hum of insect noise that varies through the day, but maintains consistent patterns. Bird calls that happen at predictable times and frequencies.

leaf drip that sounds different depending on whether it’s recent rain or condensation. Animal movements that follow territorial patterns. When humans move through the jungle, they break that rhythm. Birds go quiet. Certain insects stop their noise. The baseline hum shifts frequencies. If you know what the jungle is supposed to sound like, you can detect deviations.

You can hear the absence of sound as clearly as you hear sound itself. Blue was listening for breaks behind them, evidence that the VC trackers were still in the area, still operating, but he was also listening ahead, making absolutely sure they weren’t walking into a larger VC element, weren’t accidentally stumbling into a supply route or base camp or staging area.

 Nothing behind them that he could detect, nothing ahead, just the normal jungle rhythm. Good. They continued. After 30 minutes of moving along the ridge, they began to descend, angling back toward their original trail, but offset by about 200 m. They were moving in a wide C-shape, the classic button hook pattern, staying up slope to maintain elevation advantage.

 From high ground, sound travels better. You can hear people below you more easily than they can hear you above them. Vision extends farther. You can see movement and vegetation below while being harder to spot against sky background. And tactically, you control the engagement geometry. Enemies below, you have to expose themselves to fire up slope while you have cover and concealment. Height is might.

 The instructors at Kungra always said, “Take the high ground and hold it.” So they stayed high, descending gradually, moving with agonizing patience through terrain that fought them every step. Maka’s shoulders were screaming from the radio weight. 25 lb doesn’t sound like much until you’ve been carrying it for 5 days straight.

 Until the straps have worn grooves in your shoulders, until the constant weight has inflamed every muscle from neck to lower back. He wanted to adjust the pack, redistribute the weight, maybe take it off for 30 seconds just to get blood flow back to compressed areas, but he didn’t because adjusting a pack makes noise. Taking it off and putting it back on makes even more noise, and noise right now could mean death.

 So, he embraced the pain, made it part of him, acknowledged it existed, and then set it aside mentally. the pain would still be there in an hour, in 6 hours. When they finally stopped and he could do something about it, right now it was just information. His shoulders hurt, noted, filed away. Moving on. This was what selection at Kongra tested for.

 Not physical strength. Plenty of strong BS failed selection. Not courage. Plenty of brave BS failed, too. What selection tested for was the ability to function through discomfort, to maintain mental clarity when your body was screaming at you to stop, to embrace suffering as a constant companion rather than something to be avoided.

 The bloss selection were the ones who could sit in a creek bed for 6 hours in water up to their chest, not moving, letting leeches attached to their skin, just existing in misery without letting it break their focus. Maka had done exactly that during selection. Had sat in that creek with leeches on his neck, his chest, his legs, feeling them fill with his blood.

And the only thing he’d thought was, “This sucks, but it’s not going to kill me, so I can endure it.” That mindset, that fundamental acceptance that discomfort is temporary and endurance is a choice was what made SAS soldiers different, not better, not superior as human beings, just different in their relationship with suffering.

 And right now, that difference was keeping them alive. At 0943 hours, Blue checked his watch, noting the time, because timing mattered for navigation calculations. Steve spotted it. A footprint, small, delicate, fresh enough that morning dew hadn’t fully evaporated from the depression. Steve raised his fist. The patrol stopped.

Blue moved forward, knelt beside the print, studied it without touching. The print was facing northwest, the same direction the patrol had originally been traveling, but they were northeast of their original route now, offset by 200 m, which meant this print had been made by someone following their original trail.

 The VC trackers had passed through this exact spot, maybe 20 minutes ago, maybe less, which meant the SAS had successfully crossed behind them, had executed the button hook perfectly, were now in position to turn the tables completely. Blue looked up at Steve. Both men smiled, not from arrogance or bloodlust, but from the sheer professional appreciation of what had just happened.

 They had done something extraordinarily difficult under combat conditions. They had taken a tactical disadvantage and transformed it into advantage through superior field craft and balls out audacity. Blue gave a hand signal. We’re behind them now. Shadow at distance. Gather intelligence. The hunt had reversed.

 Now the SAS were tracking the trackers. For older Australian diggers, the word kungra carries weight. It’s not just a place, a jungle training center in the Gold Coast hinterland of Queensland. It’s a crucible, a filter, a place where boys become soldiers, and soldiers become something harder, something shaped by deliberate suffering into a tool designed for a very specific purpose.

The jungle training center at Kungra was where SAS candidates learned the skills that would keep them alive in Vietnam. Not the Hollywood stuff, repelling from helicopters or shooting while running or kicking down doors. The real stuff, the slow stuff, the unglamorous, grinding, patience testing stuff that separates professionals from corpses.

Blue remembered his stalking drills like they had happened yesterday, even though it had been 4 years since his selection course. You’d spend 8 hours, a full working day, crawling 300 m through scrub to touch an instructor’s boot without being seen. 300 m, the length of three football fields in 8 hours.

 That’s an average speed of slightly more than 1 meter every 2 minutes. Think about that. Think about moving so slowly that grass has time to spring back into position behind you. So slowly that insects land on your skin and you don’t flinch them away because flinching means movement and movement means detection.

 So slowly that you can feel individual muscles cramping, screaming at you to shift position. And you don’t because shifting means starting over. If the instructor spotted you, if you created enough disturbance that he could pinpoint your location, you started over, crawled all the way back to the start line, and began again.

 Some BS did it 20, 30 times before they got it right. Some never got it right, and were returned to their units with a polite assessment that said, “Did not meet required standards,” which everyone understood meant. This bloke couldn’t hack it. The ones who passed, the ones who eventually wore the sandy beret of the SAS were the ones who learned something fundamental about patience.

 They learned that speed doesn’t matter if you’re dead. That slow and invisible beats fast and obvious every single time. That the ability to endure boredom and discomfort without complaint is a tactical skill as important as marksmanship or navigation. Steve’s strongest memory from Kungra wasn’t the stalking drills, though he’d done those, too.

 It was the countertracking exercises where instructors would follow you through the bush for hours, marking every mistake you made with little flags, red for disturb vegetation, blue for boots, yellow for equipment, sign like fabric snags or crushed grass. At the end of the exercise, they’d walk you back along your route and show you your trail from the tracker’s perspective.

 Every flag was a potential death in actual combat. Every piece of evidence you’d left was ammunition for an enemy who wanted to kill you. Most bloss were horrified the first time they saw their own trail. Dozens of flags, hundreds sometimes. A breadcrumb trail of mistakes that screamed, “Here I am. Please shoot me.” The instructors weren’t gentle about it.

You think Charlie’s going to give you a participation ribbon for effort? You think the VC are going to say, “Oh, well, he tried his best.” No. They’re going to follow this trail, set up an ambush, and put rounds through your [ __ ] skull. And you’ll die wondering how they knew exactly where you were. Harsh, brutal, effective.

 You learn to move like water. You learn to think like the person hunting you, to anticipate what sign they’d be looking for, and to avoid creating it. You learned that every broken twig, every boot scrape, every disturbance and leaf litter was a piece of intelligence you were handing to your enemy.

 And slowly, painfully slowly, through repetition and failure and embarrassment and determination, you learn to move through jungle without leaving evidence that a skilled tracker could follow. Tommo’s Kanungra memories were dominated by survival training. They dropped him in the jungle for 5 days with nothing but a knife, a radio for emergencies, and the clothes on his back.

 No food, no water beyond what he could find or purify. No shelter beyond what he could build. The first day had been terrifying. The second day was worse because hunger had set in and his judgment was starting to get fuzzy. By the third day, something shifted. His body adapted. His mind adjusted. He stopped fighting the jungle and started listening to it.

 The jungle becomes a teacher if you’re willing to learn. It shows you which vines hold water. You cut them at an angle and clean water drips out. It shows you which insects indicate clean streams nearby. Certain species only breed in flowing water. It shows you which bird calls mean danger. Corvids and certain parrots will mob snakes and predators.

 Their alarm calls broadcasting threat locations. He’d eaten grubs from rotting logs. had caught a small python and roasted it over a tiny fire built from dry bamboo that produced almost no smoke. Had drunk water filtered through sand and charcoal he’d made himself. Had slept in a shelter woven from palm fronds that kept him mostly dry during a nighttime downpour.

 When they extracted him on day five, he’d lost 7 lb, but gained something more valuable. Confidence that the jungle wasn’t his enemy. It was neutral. It would kill you if you were stupid, but it would sustain you if you were smart. That confidence was with him now, following VC trackers through Puakt Thai Province. The jungle was just terrain, just a tactical environment.

 It didn’t care who won or lost. It just existed. And you either adapted to its rules or you died. But the most important lesson at Kungra, the one that every instructor hammered home in a dozen different ways, wasn’t tactical. It was psychological. You learn to be comfortable in discomfort. Warrant officer McCrae, a scarred veteran of Papua New Guinea campaigns against the Japanese, had explained it during Blue’s selection course.

 The jungle doesn’t care about your tactics. It doesn’t care about your fitness. It doesn’t care about your shooting scores or your navigation ability. All of that matters, but it’s secondary. What the jungle cares about, what determines who lives and who dies is your patience, your ability to endure.

 The side that stays calm longest wins every time without exception. He’d paused, looked at the exhausted candidates sitting in front of him, and added, “The Japanese in New Guinea were tough bastards. They could live on a handful of rice per day. They could march through terrain that would kill most men.

 They were brave and skilled and determined. But you know what beat them? Patience. Australian soldiers who could sit and ambush for three days without moving. Who could endure mud and rain and mosquitoes and boredom without breaking discipline? Who could outlast the enemy’s willingness to keep fighting? That lesson, that fundamental understanding that endurance trumps almost everything else in jungle warfare, had been drilled into every ZS soldier until it became instinct.

 right now in Puaktu facing female VC trackers who had grown up in jungle villages who had learned patients from childhood spent foraging and hunting. Every hour Blue and his patrol had spent at Kungra mattered because those trackers were patient, skilled, dangerous, but the SAS were patient too.

 And right now on this specific morning with these specific conditions, they were just slightly more patient than their opponents. That slight edge measured in minutes of additional stillness, in fractionally better decision-m in marginally superior field craft was the difference between hunter and hunted. Blue remembered McCrae’s final words before they had graduated selection.

 You’ll face skilled opponents. Respect them. learn from them. But never doubt that your training, your discipline, your ability to stay calm under pressure, that’s your advantage. Use it. He was using it now. They all were. Let’s consider what the VC tracker’s ears were thinking at this moment because understanding their mindset, their assumptions, their training, their tactical logic explains what happened next and why the outcome wasn’t predetermined, but rather the result of accumulated small decisions by both sides. The point tracker, the most

experienced of all the three women, the one whose handprint blue had found on the tree trunk, believed with reasonable confidence that she still had control of the situation. All the evidence supported this belief. It wasn’t arrogance. It was tactical assessment based on observable facts. The bootprints she’d been following showed a consistent northwest bearing.

 She’d been tracking for nearly 3 hours now, and not once had that bearing changed significantly. Small deviations, yes, around obstacles, following terrain features, but the overall direction was steady. That suggested a patrol moving toward a specific objective rather than wandering randomly or trying to evade.

 The spacing between bootprints hadn’t changed either. Still the same disciplined interval that indicated experienced soldiers maintaining tactical formation. If they had realized they were being tracked, that spacing would have changed. They’d either compress, drawing tighter for mutual support, or expand, spreading out to make themselves harder to target.

 But the spacing was identical to what it had been 2 hours ago. There was no indication of hasty movement. No scuff marks from running, no disturbed vegetation from pushing through obstacles quickly. The Australians were maintaining their careful, methodical pace. They looked, from all available evidence, completely unaware that they had company.

 Her training conducted over months in a jungle camp near the Cambodian border, taught by Cadre, who had been fighting since the French colonial days, had emphasized several key principles that she was following religiously. First, never close the distance too quickly. Maintain separation. The goal wasn’t to engage the enemy patrol in a firefight.

 Three women with small arms against six Australian special forces. Soldiers would be suicide. The goal was intelligence. Learn their patterns, map their roots, understand their timing, then report back and let the main force properly equipped infantry with automatic weapons and prepared positions.

 Set an ambush later, somewhere the Australians felt safe. Second, trust your senses completely, but also trust your training. If something felt wrong, if the jungle atmosphere changed in ways you couldn’t quite articulate, that feeling mattered. But right now, everything felt normal. The heat was oppressive. It was approaching midday, the worst time for physical exertion.

 The humidity was crushing, making every breath feel insufficient. Insects swarmed in the usual patterns, thick clouds of tiny flies that got in your eyes and nose and mouth. Nothing seemed to miss. Third, the enemy is skilled but predictable. VC tactical doctrine had noted through extensive observation that Australian patrols, while disciplined and professional, tended to follow certain terrain preferences that could be anticipated.

They liked ridge lines because they provided good observation and easier movement. They avoided low ground where water collected and mosquitoes bred. They move primarily in early morning and late afternoon, seeking to minimize exposure to midday heat. These patterns were understandable. They matched what any experienced jungle soldier would do.

But they were also exploitable. So the point tracker continued her pursuit, moving carefully, professionally, confident in her assessment. Her two companions, younger women maybe 19 and 21, both from villages in Bind Dwong province, followed her lead. They trusted her experience. She had been tracking Australian patrols for 8 months now.

 Had successfully mapped three different SAS patrol routes that had led to ambushes that killed or wounded seven Australian soldiers. She was good at this, not boastful about it. Boasting was for amateurs who didn’t understand that luck played as much role as skill, but quietly competent. She knew her craft.

 The younger tracker on the right flank, the one carrying extra ammunition in a bandelier made from canvas and parachute cord, was less certain. Something felt off, though she couldn’t articulate what. The jungle seemed too quiet, maybe, or the bird calls weren’t quite right. She couldn’t pinpoint it. She had mentioned this to the point tracker during their last brief halt.

Had whispered, “Something feels wrong. Should we report back? Wait for support.” The point tracker had considered this seriously. She didn’t dismiss concerns from her companions. That was how you got killed, by assuming you knew everything. But after listening to the jungle for several minutes, after checking the bootprints again, after studying the vegetation for any sign that the Australians had changed their behavior, she’d made her decision.

 We continue another hour. If we lose the trail or if there’s definite evidence they’ve detected us, we fall back and report. But right now, we have good trail. Let’s use it. The younger tracker had nodded, accepting the decision. That was military discipline. Someone had to make the call.

 And in this case, it was the point tracker’s call to make. They had resumed movement following that consistent northwest bearing, maintaining their three-point formation. Point tracker in front. The two younger women offset left and right by 20 m. All three moving in parallel rather than single file. What none of them knew. What they couldn’t know because the evidence wasn’t visible from their position was that the trail they were following was old.

 Not hours old, but 45 minutes old. The Australians had been here. Yes, but they’d left. They’d climbed up slope through terrain no rational patrol would choose. They’d executed a maneuver so tactically difficult that it didn’t appear in standard VC doctrine because standard doctrine assumed enemies would behave rationally.

 And now they were behind the trackers, watching them, studying them, gathering the same kind of intelligence the trackers thought they were gathering. The irony would have been amusing if the stakes weren’t life and death. The point tracker moved through a small clearing, the same one where Blue had found the broken bamboo grass earlier.

 She paused here, professional instinct telling her that clearings were potential ambush sites. She scanned the perimeter carefully, weapon ready, looking for anything unusual. Nothing. She called the other two over with a quiet hand signal, palm down, fingers beckoning. They approached, staying low, weapons oriented outward.

 She knelt at the clearing’s edge and examined the bootprints again. Still clear, still consistent, still northwest. She touched one print, testing the firmness of the soil, calculating how long ago it had been made. Maybe an hour, maybe slightly more. That was good. They weren’t closing the distance too quickly, which meant the Australians probably hadn’t detected them.

 But they weren’t losing the trail either. She stood, made a decision. They’d continue a bit further, another 30 minutes, maybe another kilometer, and then they’d report back. She had enough intelligence now to make the report valuable. Patrol size, direction of travel, speed of movement, apparent objective. That was enough for the main force to work with.

 The younger tracker with the medical pouches, a girl from a farming family who joined the revolution after her brother was killed by American artillery, said something quietly, asked if they should eat, take a brief rest. They had been moving since before dawn. It was past noon now. Everyone was tired.

 The point tracker considered this. Discipline said yes. Tired soldiers make mistakes, but instinct said no. Something she couldn’t quite articulate made her want to keep moving, to not linger in this place. She shook her head. We’ll rest when we fall back. Another hour, then we report. The younger trackers nodded, adjusted their equipment, prepared to move.

 That’s when one of them, the youngest, the one who’d expressed concern earlier, turned and looked up slope. Not because she saw something, not because she heard anything specific, but because some animal instinct, some primitive survival mechanism that humans possess but rarely listen to, made her look. She stared up slope for 10 seconds, 20, 30, saw nothing but vegetation, bamboo, vines, the dappled green chaos of jungle.

 But the feeling persisted, the sense that something was wrong, that they were being watched. The point tracker noticed her companions behavior. Notice the tension in her body language. What is it? I don’t know. Something I don’t know. The point tracker looked up slope 2, scanned carefully. Her eyes swept across the exact patch of vegetation where Steve was concealed 40 m away.

 his M60 resting on a route, his body frozen in perfect stillness. She saw nothing. The SAS fieldcraft was immaculate. But like her younger companion, she felt something. That same primitive warning system that had kept her alive for 8 months of tracking dangerous men through dangerous places. She made a decision. We move now.

 Fast march for 10 minutes. Then we reassess. They moved out heading downstream away from the SAS position. For the next 40 minutes, they would continue following the old trail, never realizing it was old, never understanding that the geometry had been reversed. And 200 m ups slope, Blue made a hand signal to his patrol. Follow a distance.

 Stay silent. Gather intelligence. The shadow game continued. There’s a particular kind of focus that comes over soldiers when the roles reverse. When you transition from being hunted to being the hunter. It’s not blood lust, nothing that primitive or emotional. It’s a crystalline clarity where every sense sharpens to maximum acuity, where every movement becomes deliberate and economical, where time itself seems to slow down and expand so that feel like minutes.

 And you can process information with a speed and accuracy that would be impossible under normal circumstances. Sports psychologists call it flow state. Combat soldiers have crudder terms. Switched on in the zone, fully operational. Whatever you call it, it’s a neurological state where fear recedes but doesn’t disappear. where awareness expands to encompass every detail of your environment, where your training becomes instinct and your instinct becomes action without conscious thought mediating the process.

 The SAS patrol was in that state now. They had confirmed visual contact with the trackers, three women, just as the sign had suggested, moving in a loose triangle formation about 20 to 30 m apart depending on terrain. Good tactics. If one element got hit, the others could maneuver to flank or could withdraw and report.

 They weren’t bunched up like amateurs. They weren’t strung out like exhausted soldiers who’ lost discipline. They were maintaining proper tactical spacing even after hours of movement. Professional. Blue studied them through a gap in the bamboo. His eyes cataloging details automatically. The point tracker wore black pajamas.

the standard VC uniform that was actually remarkably practical for jungle operations, lightweight and quick drying. She had chest webbing made from canvas that had been dyed green with vegetable matter, probably crushed leaves and mud. The webbing carried ammunition pouches, a canteen that looked American, probably captured or traded, and what appeared to be a canvas bag that likely held maps, compass, maybe a notebook for recording intelligence.

 She carried an SKS Carbine, the semi-automatic rifle that was standard VC issue before AK-47s became more widely available. The SKS was a good weapon. Reliable, accurate enough for jungle distances. Used the same 7.6239 mm ammunition as the AK, so supply chains were simplified. This one looked well-maintained.

 The Woodstock had been treated with oil to prevent rot. The metal showed minimal rust despite constant humidity. She knew how to care for equipment. The two younger trackers carried AK-47s, the newer weapon, more desirable, which probably meant they had earned them through service or had acquired them from more recent supply shipments.

 One wore a bandelier of extra magazines across her chest. The other had medical pouches visible on her webbing. Distinctive red crosses sewn onto canvas pouches. International symbol that wouldn’t stop a bullet but might encourage combatants to avoid targeting her first. They moved well. Damn well. Light on their feet despite hours of walking. Weapons in low ready position.

Angled down at 45°. Easy to bring to shoulder but not shouldered which would cause fatigue. Their heads were on swivels, constantly scanning, never fixating on one area for too long. These weren’t militia pressed into service last week. These weren’t farmers daughters handed rifles and told to fight.

 These were trained soldiers with months or years of experience. You could see it in their movement efficiency, in their tactical awareness, in the way they communicated through minimal gestures rather than voice. dangerous opponents, the kind you respect, because underestimating them would be the last mistake you ever made. Blue made the call through hand signals.

 They’d follow a distance, observe, gather intelligence, no contact unless forced. The SAS mission was reconnaissance, not engagement. Besides, opening fire would compromise their position, alert every VC unit in a 5 km radius, and turn this into a running gun battle that favored the side with local knowledge and potential reinforcements.

Better to ghost, to watch, to learn, to report back intelligence that might save Australian lives and future operations. So they became shadows again. Steve carrying the M60 moved like he was made of smoke despite the weapon’s weight. 23 lb of machine gun plus another 8 lb of ammunition belt plus his pack and personal equipment.

 Over 60 lb of gear total. Most men would sound like a hardware store falling downstairs trying to move through jungle with that much weight. Steve moved in complete silence. The trick was economy of motion. Every movement had to serve a purpose. No wasted energy, no unnecessary adjustments. You planned each step three steps ahead.

 Where your foot would land, what your hands would need to move, how your body would shift weight. Then you executed that plan in one smooth motion instead of making incremental adjustments that created noise. His breathing was controlled, shallow through the nose when possible because mouth breathing creates more sound, creates moisture vapor that can be seen in certain light conditions, dries your mouth, which affects your ability to function for extended periods.

 Every step was placed deliberately on root systems or bare patches where boot marks wouldn’t register clearly. He avoided soft soil, avoided leaf litter that would crunch, avoided anything that might create sound. His weapon handling was immaculate. The M60 was cradled with his right hand on the pistol grip, finger alongside the trigger guard.

 His left hand steadied the barrel, but loosely, firm enough to control it, loose enough that he wasn’t fighting the weapon’s weight. The ammunition belt was draped across his shoulder and chest in a configuration that allowed smooth feeding while preventing snags. If contact occurred, if the tracker somehow detected them and opened fire, Steve could bring the M60 to bear and return fire in under two seconds.

 That was the standard they trained to. 2 seconds from carry position to effective fire. Any longer and you were dead. But right now, contact was the last thing they wanted. Right now, silence was survival. Tommo on the left flank was using his eyes more than his feet. His primary job wasn’t navigation. That was Blue’s responsibility.

His job was observation. Watching the tracker’s body language, reading their behavior, looking for tells that might indicate their intentions or awareness level. He noted that the point tracker stopped every few minutes and just listened. Good discipline. She wasn’t rushing, wasn’t letting fatigue or time pressure compromise her tactical awareness.

 Each time she stopped, she’d close her eyes, shutting down one sense to enhance another, filtering out visual distraction to focus purely on sound. Tommo did the same thing sometimes. Closed his eyes and just listened. The jungle revealed different information through sound than it did through sight. You could hear water that you couldn’t see.

 Could hear movement that vegetation concealed. Could hear bird calls that indicated human presence even when you couldn’t see the humans causing the disturbance. The younger trackers were showing signs of fatigue that the point tracker wasn’t. One of them adjusted her pack twice in 5 minutes, probably a sore shoulder, the strap digging into tired muscles.

 The other was breathing more heavily, not gasping, but definitely working harder than she had been an hour ago. They had likely been moving since before dawn, probably covering more ground than the SAS because they were tracking, which meant moving faster to close distance, which meant expending more energy.

 The accumulated fatigue was showing. That fatigue mattered. Tired soldiers make mistakes. Their observation becomes less acute. Their decision-making degrades. Their physical coordination suffers. The SAS were tired, too. 5 days in the jungle would exhaust anyone. But they had two advantages. First, they had been moving at their own pace, not trying to close distance on anyone, which meant more efficient energy expenditure.

 Second, adrenaline was overriding their fatigue. Right now, the knowledge that they had successfully executed a complex tactical maneuver that they’d reverse the hunt was pumping enough adrenaline through their systems to suppress exhaustion temporarily. That adrenaline advantage wouldn’t last forever. Eventually, they’d crash, but right now they had an edge.

 The smell of the jungle was overwhelming in Tommo’s nostrils. rotting vegetation producing that rich lomy scent like compost. Wet earth that smelled mineral and alive. The particular funk of tropical humidity that coated your lungs and made every breath feel thick. Mixed into that base layer were sharper notes. The acrid smell of the seas patrol’s own sweat.

Western diet created a different body odor than Asian diet. Something the VC had learned to detect. The oily metallic smell of gun lubricant. The canvas and mildew smell of their equipment. Tommo wondered if the trackers could smell them at this distance. Probably not. 40 m and ups slope with wind direction favorable.

 But it was a reminder that the jungle gave you away in a hundred small ways if you weren’t constantly vigilant. sight, sound, smell, even taste. Sometimes you could taste smoke on the air from cooking fires miles away. Temperature, body heat lingered in enclosed spaces. Pressure. You could sometimes feel air displacement from movement if you were sensitive enough.

Every sense was a potential liability. Every sense had to be managed, controlled, exploited while preventing the enemy from exploiting yours. They moved for 20 minutes, shadowing the trackers, staying 40 m back and slightly ups slope. The vegetation provided good concealment, thick stands of bamboo that created visual barriers, wait a while vines that formed natural screens, occasional rubber trees left over from old French plantations that broke sight lines.

Light filtered through the canopy and broken shafts, creating that dapple pattern photographers loved, but soldiers hated because it made movement detection harder. You couldn’t see solid shapes, just fragments. Was that a person or a tree trunk? Was that movement or shadow? Your brain had to work overtime to process incomplete visual information, which was exhausting.

 Blue noticed the trackers were following the SAS patrol’s original route almost perfectly. Every few minutes they’d stop, crouch, examine something on the ground, a bootprint preserved in soft soil, a disturbed section of moss where someone had placed weight, a bent stem that hadn’t sprung fully back into position. Then they’d continue, confident they were still on track, still closing distance, still executing their mission successfully.

 It was surreal. The SAS were literally watching people hunt them, watching them follow a trail that was growing colder by the minute, watching them make decisions based on information that was accurate an hour ago, but was now tactically obsolete. The trackers believed they were the hunters. They believed the Australians were ahead of them, unaware, vulnerable.

 They had no idea the Australians were behind them, watching them, studying every move they made. The geometry had been perfectly reversed. Now, the SAS began to study their opponents in systematic detail, transforming this encounter from a tactical situation into an intelligence gathering opportunity. Everything they learned here would be documented in afteraction reports, would be briefed to other patrols, would be incorporated into training, would potentially save Australian lives and future operations.

 This was what professional soldiers did. They learned constantly from every encounter. Every success was analyzed to determine what worked and why. Every failure was dissected to prevent repetition. The institutional knowledge of military organizations was built exactly this way. Through accumulated tactical experience turned into doctrine, the point tracker, the woman with the SKS, was clearly the most experienced member of the team.

 You could see it in everything she did. Her movement had an economy that spoke to thousands of hours in jungle. She never took an unnecessary step, never repositioned unnecessarily, never made adjustments that didn’t serve a tactical purpose. Her head scans were systematic, not random. She’d scan low first, ground level, where ambushers might be positioned, then middle distance, the zone where most engagements occurred, then high, canopy level, where snipers might be positioned.

 full 180° arc, 3 to 5 seconds per scan. Then she’d move three or four steps and repeat the sequence. That scanning pattern, low, middle, high, repeat, was exactly what SAS taught their own soldiers. She’d either figured it out through experience or had been taught by someone with formal military training. Either way, it meant she was a professional.

 Before committing her weight to each step, she used what the SAS recognized as a three-point check. Visual scan of the ground to identify obstacles and potential noise sources. Toe test to verify the surface would support her weight without sound. Then gentle pressure application to ensure nothing would crack or give away.

 This technique added seconds to each step, but those seconds meant she left almost no audible signature. If you weren’t watching her, you wouldn’t hear her. That level of discipline was rare. Most soldiers maintained it for minutes or hours. She’d maintained it for the entire time the CASS had been observing her, close to an hour now. Impressive.

 Genuinely impressive. The two younger trackers were good, but less experienced. They deferred to the point tracker, watching her signals, matching her pace, following her lead. One of them, the taller one with medical pouches, carried extra magazines in a bandier configuration, not standard VC loadbearing equipment, probably something she had improvised or acquired through capture.

 That suggested initiative, adaptability. The other younger tracker, shorter, probably in her late teens, had a peculiar habit of touching her weapon every few minutes. Not gripping it, just touching it. Her hand would rise, fingertips would brush the rifle’s receiver, then her hand would drop back to her side.

 Tommo recognized that behavior. He did it himself. Sometimes it was a comfort gesture, a way of confirming the weapon was still there, still accessible, still ready. People develop these unconscious habits under stress. This girl was nervous, not panicking, not breaking discipline, but definitely feeling the pressure of the situation. That was useful intelligence.

The nervous one was the most likely to make a mistake. If contact occurred, she’d probably be the slowest to react, the most likely to freeze or respond inappropriately. But Blue was hoping, praying really, though he wasn’t religious, that contact wouldn’t occur. Every minute without contact was a successful minute.

 Every meter they shadowed without detection was accumulated intelligence that would justify the risk they were taking. He noted their weapons handling. The AK-47s were carried with magazines inserted, but based on how the younger trackers positioned their trigger hands, probably without rounds chambered.

 That was standard VC practice. It prevented accidental discharge, but meant they’d need an extra second to chamber around if contact occurred. The SKS carried by the point tracker appeared to be in a different condition. Possibly chambered, possibly not. Blue couldn’t tell from this distance. Their ammunition load looked standard for tracking operations.

maybe four to six magazines per person, enough for a brief engagement or defensive fire while withdrawing. Not enough for sustained combat, which made sense. These were reconnaissance elements, not assault troops. What impressed the SAS most, what every man in the patrol noted and would later mention in debriefings, was the tracker’s patience.

 They never rushed, never showed signs of frustration or time pressure, never made mistakes born from impatience, like skipping obvious signchecking or taking shortcuts through difficult terrain. At one point, the point tracker stopped for a full 3 minutes, just stood there, eyes closed, rifle cradled, completely motionless. She wasn’t resting.

 She was reading the jungle through sound, listening to bird calls, insect noise, wind patterns, processing acoustic information to build a mental map of her environment. Steve whispered to Blue, barely audible even from 2 m away. She’s bloody good. Blue nodded fractionally. No ego, no resentment, just professional recognition of professional skill.

 This was what separated SAS soldiers from average troops. Average soldiers felt threatened by enemy competence, saw it as dangerous and scary. SAS soldiers respected it, studied it, learned from it. They understood that you improved by facing skilled opponents, not by dominating weak ones. The patrol continued to shadow them, noting everything.

 The trackers avoided game trails. Interesting. probably because they knew Australians sometimes booby trapped heavily used trails with claymore mines or grenades rigged to trip wires. Smart tactical thinking showed they were incorporating lessons from previous Australian operations. They used hand signals sparingly. Most communication was through body positioning and weapon angles.

 The point tracker would shift her rifle barrel slightly to indicate a direction change. The others would adjust accordingly. This minimized visible signaling that could be detected from distance. Also smart, when they crossed the occasional open area, a natural clearing, or a section where a large tree had fallen and created a gap in the canopy, they did it one at a time with the other two providing overwatch from tree lines.

Textbook fire and maneuver principles. If one person was caught in the open during an ambush, only one would die. The others would have cover and could return fire or withdraw. And they never bunched up. Even when stopping to rest briefly, they maintain spacing. If a grenade landed among them, it would only affect one person.

 If automatic weapons fire rate their position, dispersal meant lower casualty rates. Every tactical decision they made was correct. by the book. If the VC had books, more likely learned through bitter experience, through watching their comrades die from mistakes, through trial and error conducted in an environment where errors were punished with death.

 The SAS were witnessing the enemy operating at their peak capability. This wasn’t representative of average VC forces, conscripts, and militia who made endless mistakes and died in huge numbers. This was elite professional. The kind of enemy that made you dangerous if you weren’t absolutely at the top of your game. Blue was taking mental notes that would fill pages in his written afteraction report.

 Enemy tracking teams capable of sustained operations over extended duration. Observe team maintain tactical discipline for 3 plus hours continuous movement. Movement techniques indicate formal training, not improvised doctrine. Weapon handling professional communications discipline excellent. Counter ambush procedures sound assessment.

 These are trained cadre, not militia. Recommend assuming all VC tracking teams in Fuokui possess similar capabilities until proven otherwise. This information would be briefed to every SAS patrol operating in the province, would be passed to conventional Australian units, would be distributed to American forces operating in adjacent areas.

 Intelligence has value that compounds over time. One observation shared broadly could influence dozens of tactical decisions that collectively saved lives. That was the mission. Not killing these three women, but learning from them, understanding their capabilities, documenting their techniques, then disseminating that information to friendly forces. The killing could wait.

Knowledge was forever.