‘I mean, the boss is screaming blue murder in his office.

Everyone’s in there. Some kind of anniversary.’

What anniversary? thought Abbott. McGregor never mentioned an anniversary.

In his ear, Brace sounded a little urgent. ‘He’s finishing up, Abbott. He’s shaking. I need to take the shot.’

Abbott reached into his boot and fingered out the Gerber knife. He took a deep breath, completely in the zone now, thinking only of the operation in terms of its main objectives, its mini-objectives, the targets that formed those objectives.

He gave the signal.

There was no sound. Nothing apart from a soft thump as the bullet made contact, followed by the sound of target number one dropping dead to the dirt with Brace’s bullet in his head. A flawless killshot.

At the same time, Abbott stood and brought his left arm into the window of the van, across the front of target two, grabbing him and plunging the Gerber knife through the same window and into his ear.

Target two’s eyes went wide, viscous blood and brain fluid leaked from his ear onto Abbott’s gloves. He slumped forward.

Abbott withdrew his gloved hands. Objective achieved. Both targets down. What’s more, Abbott now had one of their radios. From a compartment in his own headset he extracted a cable that he snapped into the walkie-talkie, able now to hear any enemy comms traffic.

Not that there was any. It was silent. He listened for a while. Number two’s mate had obviously gone to enjoy more of the anniversary.

But what anniversary?

‘Clear,’ said Abbott into the mic. ‘Reorg on me.’

In moments, Ward and Miller had joined him at the vans. Abbott pushed the Gerber back into his boot and they pulled the bodies out of sight. He picked the FN-Scar up on its strap and began running along the approach road. To his right, the dark shapes of Ward and Miller, Ward with his bag of magic tricks on his back, both with their rifles in their arms.