I squirmed down next to the rapidly cooling corpse of the sniper I’d shot in the face and considered my options. It was a further six hundred metres along forest track to where it joined the highway. From there it was another seven hundred metres along the road to the north-western Estonian border post. I couldn’t risk cutting back the three hundred metres to the southerly crossing: there was even less of a guarantee that Jack would have his men in place there – and if they weren’t, the odds were that the Russians would take a gamble and keep up their pursuit. The corner of Estonia that lay to the south-east was effectively cut off, and my chances of getting more than a gunshot ahead of the enemy were bleak.

The wind started to bite again. Snow fell from the branches overhead. Through the scope I could see that the cover up ahead was patchy. If they had men on the other side of the road I’d be a sitting duck at the crossing point. The pain from whatever I’d done to my knee falling off the bridge in Moscow made it impossible to maintain a steady kneeling position. I sat instead, locking my ankles, bracing my elbows against the inside of my thighs.

I studied the white traces of the men closing in on me, slipping like ghosts through the undergrowth. The nearest had got to within a hundred metres. Putting them down would telegraph my identity to anyone else with a thermal scope within half a kilometre or more. I looked at the luminous hands of my watch. Ten minutes to RV. I adjusted the scope and took the soldier to the right of me with a single shot to the chest. But as I swung round looking for the next target, the air filled with the zip-crack of incoming high-velocity rounds. I rolled sideways and flattened myself into the snow, squirming down behind the body of the dead sniper and a tangle of fallen branches. Everyone within range opened up simultaneously. Chips of ice, bark and bone blew into my face. Whatever cover I had left was being shredded around me, the dead-body barricade included.

I rolled right and got myself back on the gun. I could see the left side of the nearest shooter, who’d taken cover behind a skinny birch. He stepped sideways to fire. My steel-core 7.62 cut his legs out from under him. I worked the bolt, sending spent brass spinning into the night. A bullet clipped my left boot heel. I moved the rifle up and to the right. His wingman was seventy metres further out – crouching, firing. My fingers were freezing, my breath erratic, and all the while my body was leaching heat into the frozen ground. If I didn’t run soon, I wouldn’t be able to run at all. The wingman stood up. I fired. He toppled sideways into a bank of snow.