Snipers learn a lot of tricks. Most of them don’t require a rifle. Keeping still keeps you off your target’s score sheet. At Raven Hill, Colonel Ellard kept us on the gun for an hour at first. Then two. After a month we could lie prone for a day. By the time he’d finished with us, we’d all pushed ourselves beyond what the human body is supposed to endure: seventy-two hours without moving more than a whisker. Snipers eat, shit, piss and curse where they lie – very, very quietly. Being immobilized wasn’t out of the ordinary; it was commonplace.

But no matter how still you are outside, inside there’s always over half a pound of muscle thumping in your chest – beating up to a hundred and thirty times a minute in combat. Slowing your heart down secures the shot. Shooting between the beats is unbeatable. We could slow it quickly, too, like pulling the handbrake on a joyride.

My blood pressure was already low. No matter who they were, or what they were planning, if the doctor was going to cut me down before he knocked me out, he’d have to be sure I was in immediate danger of death. There were only three things he could measure easily: my heart rate, my breathing and my blood pressure.

I could control them all with my lungs. They were the only weapons I had left.

6

I kept my right eye open just enough to see shape, judge distance. The area beyond the container door was too dimly lit to pick out detail. My only light source was the halogen which, in turn, blinded me with brightness and then plunged me into darkness as I swung on the rope. But I was guided by smell more than by sight. Above the reek of diesel fuel rose the scent of aftershave and clean laundry. The sweet-smelling doctor – if that’s what he was – came close. I rotated slowly on the rope and saw him squat down on his haunches next to me.

‘Be careful,’ his chaperones implored him in Russian. ‘He’s fucking dangerous.’ But the doctor seemed unflustered. He was wrapped up in a long black coat and was only now removing his gloves. It was January, and cold outside – wherever outside was.

‘Byl opasnim.’ He muttered to himself. Was dangerous. And then so they could hear, also in Russian: ‘You should have kept him in the room, like we agreed. He’s not fucking Houdini.’

No response.