I emerged back into the lane as the clouds pulled apart enough to wash the landscape with moonlight. Dead ahead, eighty metres away through the trees, was the light I’d seen when I’d pulled up – a porch lamp, perhaps, or a security light for a barn or an outhouse. I was in a crook on the lane, the point where it looped back on itself, and I could only see a few metres in either direction. Behind me: shouts. I turned and faced the Lada and took a step towards it. And then the moonlight was overpowered by a bright white flash.

For a fraction of a second it looked as if the four-by-four had been lit from the inside by a bolt of lightning. And then the windows buckled and exploded outwards. The chassis jumped clear of the ground, lurching sideways. The kaboom of the blast ripped down the lane. Metal twisted around metal. Razor-sharp cubes of glass cut my face, neck. I dived flat as the gas tank went up, sending a pall of oily orange flame up into the treetops.

After the explosion, shots. Electric green tracer lit up the night sky like lasers.

I crossed the track and ran towards the farm buildings ahead. My legs buckled. I grabbed a branch and levered myself forward. More shots. The soldiers reached the road, distracted by the burning Lada. I limped free of the trees and into a frozen meadow.

I was well met by the moonlight reflected from the snow in the air and on the ground. Out of the silver-white night a row of wooden buildings emerged. The lamp I’d seen was suspended on a pole over a smaller, enclosed field. The individual houses also had lights over the doors, but they shone too weakly to have been seen from the road. From one of the doorways a man stepped out, torch in hand. He fixed me with the beam.

‘Stoi!’

But I wasn’t going to stop. I drew the Makarov and levelled it at him.

‘Drop it,’ I shouted in Russian, ‘or I shoot.’

‘Don’t,’ he blurted out. ‘You’ll hurt them.’

The torch tumbled to the ground and then I was on him, left hand at his throat. He wasn’t a man, but a boy: fifteen at most. Moments before, he’d been defending the family home. Now he was shaking with fear. In the woods behind me firing started again. Tracer arced over us. I looked at the boy, at the buildings. Above the chaos of shots and shouts, I could hear another sound, too – wild and free, an echo from my deepest childhood memories. They weren’t houses, and he wasn’t protecting his family. He was a stable boy, protecting his horses. I spun him around and shoved him forward.

‘Davai!’