They were down, but most – maybe even all – of them would still be alive. I’ve seen a man lose his leg at the knee and keep engaging the enemy until a medic prised the weapon from his hands. It was too dangerous to retrieve the rifle by the door. I still had the Glock and one grenade left – but an explosion in the tunnel risked another cave-in. I dropped the spent carbine, drew the pistol, and flicked on my own torch with my left thumb, covering the lens with my thigh. I got to my feet and stayed low, sending the lit LED arcing out through the entrance, above and beyond the bodies of the men I’d cut down: shots followed the swooping, spinning beam as it sailed past like an erratic lighthouse. Rifle reports thundered along the passage – their muzzle flashes giving their positions away as surely as the tracer had done mine. The torch landed on the floor, pointing down the tunnel. Its flight had distracted them for a second.

And a second was all I needed.

I came through the archway firing. The fallen torch cut the gloom enough to see to kill. I aimed shots into the outlines of the three men from whom points of light had flared a moment before. I worked smoothly, accurately, enjoying the feeling of the Glock, the precision of it. All the time Colonel Ellard’s words in my mind.

If you want to win a gunfight, take your time.

Some of the rounds connected with a dull, wet thud. Others crunched as copper clipped bone. Up close, bursts of light from the Glock illuminated faces on the floor, hands clutching wounds, mouths open, screaming, in split-second freeze-frame. Movement to the left. I dropped on my haunches as a bullet licked the air above me, scoring the stone wall behind. I fired two shots in return. The rifle fell silent.

The four men I’d shot lay face down, unmoving – lower limbs wrecked, chests opened up with copper-coated lead. Among them, three wounded shuffled on the ground. Dying among the dying, they snaked around their wounds, darkening the chalk-slime of the passage floor with thick clots of blood. The taste of iron mingled with the bitter tang of cordite.

I leaned over and shot the nearest survivor in the head. I stepped over him and moved to the next, shooting him in the same way. The third man was further off. He lay on his back, hands up and out towards me. There was enough light from the discarded torch to see that his face was bloodied, neck lacerated. His leg lay at right angles to his body – torn out of place by the M4. I aimed into his one, dying eye. His hands came together as if in prayer.