Abbott, Ward and Miller used the cover of darkness to cross a field, keeping to the perimeter until they came to a wire fence. Across an expanse of barren land was the approach road leading to the Doyle factory. They hunkered down. Abbott looked back and could see nothing of the building where Tom Brace sat ready and waiting.

‘Confirm visuals,’ he whispered.

‘No visual on you. Visuals on targets one and two,’ came the reply from Brace.

‘Ward. Miller. Standby,’ said Abbott.

Ward confirmed, pushing himself further into the dirt as Abbott and Miller got to their feet and began to move across the scrubland. Ahead of them was the sentry van, some 200 yards away, the faces of the two sentries illuminated by their phones.

Off to their right, the cluster of factory buildings was a grey against the black night. Even with the darkness as their ally, they still felt exposed, pleased to reach the relative safety of an abandoned sofa that lay about halfway between his original position and the van.

‘Visuals,’ Abbott whispered into the mic.

‘No change,’ replied Brace.

Abbott checked his Omega. He wore it always, but somehow it seemed more right here than elsewhere. ‘We wait,’ he instructed. ‘We wait for nature to take its course.’

‘Roger that.’

As they lay behind the sofa, the evening growing noticeably colder around them, Abbott reflected on the fact that this was not the first time he had waited for a guard to take a piss. It was not the first time that a guard’s need to urinate would spell his end.

Twenty minutes or so he waited, and then Brace whispered in his ear, ‘Target is on the move.’

‘Which one?’

‘Target number one as far as I can tell,’ said Brace, which was good. According to surveillance, number one was the more shy of the two sentries and tended to move slightly further away to enjoy a piss.

‘OK, standby. I’m going silent. Keep talking to me. I’ll signal for the killshot.’

‘Roger that.’

Keeping low and moving silently, Abbott and Miller crossed the remaining wasteland with an eye on the cab of the van, where target number two continued to look at his phone. A short distance away, target number one was still having his piss.

Abbott could smell cigarette smoke coming from the open passenger window of the van. Miller held fast in support and carefully, he let the FN-Scar drop to its strap and then crabbed his way around the cab of the van so that he was almost directly below the passenger window.

‘Waiting for the signal,’ said Brace in his ear. ‘He’s not going to be all night, Abbott, it’s only a piss.’

Inside the van, target number two had responded to the squawk of a walkie-talkie. ‘Yeah,’ he said.

‘Fucking going nuts over here,’ came a voice.

Crouched below, Abbott’s ears pricked up.

‘What do you mean?’ said number two.