They tried to open the other cells first, but Donkey’s key didn’t work in all of them. They opened three, and so there were a hundred or so prisoners who made it out. That was still more than enough to overpower the drunken guards. They swarmed into the room where they were drinking their arak and piled onto them, burying them under a weight of numbers and raining a brutal shower of kicks and punches down onto them until all were either dead or unconscious. They took their revolvers and another shotgun and pressed buttons until they had unlocked the gate to the canteen. They surged inside, roaring with pent-up fury, turning over tables and throwing chairs. A fire extinguisher was torn from the wall and crashed down again and again on the toughened glass in the door that opened out onto the exercise yard.

Faik was jostled into the middle of the mêlée as the door was battered open and the prisoners spilled out into the cool night air. They had exited into the exercise yard. The dusty surface looked lunar in the illumination of the prison’s lighting, and the first few men started to sprint across the fifty feet of open space to the nearest wall.

Faik cowered in the lee of the building.

This all felt horribly dangerous.

“Come on,” the engineer urged him. “There is a weakness in the fence. Over there, it is possible to open it. I have seen. Come on!”

He ran, and Faik followed, slowly at first and then faster.

Maybe he could get out.

Maybe he could get back to Mysha.

Maybe they could leave town.

Maybe . . .

There came a crack that echoed out across the wide space.

There were several prisoners ahead of them, heading for the same weakness that the engineer had identified.

Faik watched in horror as the head of the man farthest from them jerked back at him, a pink mist spraying out. His momentum carried him forward for another step, but then he toppled backwards, landing with a heavy thud on his shoulder blades.

There came another, echoing report.

The second man of the pair was drilled through the neck. He stumbled onwards for a handful of paces, turning back to them with his hands clasped around his throat, before he slumped to his knees and then keeled over onto his side.

Faik stopped. He looked up at the guard tower that overlooked the main gate. One of the sentries was turned in their direction. He had braced his left forearm on the timber balustrade, the stock of his sniper rifle nestled tight between his sternum and his chin. He was gently obscured by a pall of grey smoke that had issued from the muzzle of the long gun, quickly dissipating into the night.

The engineer stopped, too.

There was a third sharp pop, and the engineer jerked from the middle. The shot turned him around, and he stumbled towards Faik, a look of incomprehension on his face. A dot of red appeared on his orange jumpsuit and then burgeoned, the edges pushing outwards until it bloomed wider than the span of the hands he pressed against it. He moaned, his eyes rolled back into his head and he toppled down onto his face like a felled tree.