I brought the scope to my eye and scanned the treeline. The silver-dark of the birch forest morphed into a black and white thermogram. It was like looking at a video shot in photographic negative. Heat gave off a bright, white signature; cold showed up as inky-black. As I swept the optics across the black snow around me, white outlines darted between the trees at two and three hundred metres on either side of my position. And if I could see their heat trace, they could see mine.

But unlike them, I could positively identify my enemy.

Either they’d been waiting for me, or I’d stumbled into a border exercise. I wasn’t planning on asking them which. The man I’d just killed had been lying down, facing away from me. No sniper would do that in those conditions unless he was covering a choke point and expecting his target – imminently. It was a sure bet that the path I’d been looking for unwound in front of him. Getting lost had almost certainly saved my life.

If I ran now, they’d know to shoot me. If I stayed put, I risked not being able to outpace them when they caught up with me. The safety on the rifle was off. I eased the bolt back and checked the breech. Bullet brass glinted in the moonlight. I set the scope magnification to times six and dialled in one hundred metres. Weapons free.

I stood up.

Deep breath. Long exhale. Stop. Settle. Squeeze.

The first outline dropped into the black snow-sea at his feet. I pivoted. Cheek on the stock. Eye to the scope. Right hand working the bolt.

Acquire.

Fire.

Two more dead men in the snow – and more soldiers to come than I had shots left in the rifle’s magazine. I racked the bolt and checked the trees again. On either side and forward of my position men were scuttling through the undergrowth. From the way they were spread out, it looked as if I’d walked into the back of a cordon stretching north and south along the road. Whomever they’d been expecting, they’d assumed their target would come up Highway 178 itself – which was less than two hundred metres distant through the trees as the crow flies. It looked like they’d fanned out along it.