Beatrix pulled down on the handle and kicked the door open. There was pandemonium outside. One of the guards brought up his rifle and aimed it at her. The rifle cracked, but the shot went wide, missing by a fraction and thudding into one of the watchtower’s wooden struts.

Faulkner’s rifle boomed out again, and the shooter’s head splattered in a pink mist.

Another rifle fired, the shot caroming into the car’s windscreen. It shattered in a bright cascade of glass.

Two guards appeared in the doorway of the main building. Beatrix hit the ground and rolled, bringing up the F2000 and squeezing off two 3-round bursts. The guards tottered as they were drilled, both stumbling back into the building.

She assessed. The yard was full of yellow dust that had been thrown up by her entrance, and there was a clamour of alarms, confused shouts from the prisoners and the panic of the guards. She focussed on the three men in orange prison jumpsuits who were restrained with shackles around their wrists and ankles.

She had anticipated that.

The walkie-talkie crackled. “Two police cars incoming,” Faulkner said. “Half a mile away, coming in fast. You need to be quick.”

“I’ve got it,” she said as she hurried around to the trunk of the Audi.

She took a pair of long-handled bolt cutters from the trunk and ran to the prisoners.

“I’m here to help you,” she called out in Arabic.

She had memorised Faik’s face, and she found him quickly. He was dazed and fearful, and he shied away as she reached out and took him by the elbow.

“What do you want?”

“I’m getting you out.”

She could see that she was confusing him: her perfect Arabic, her blonde hair, the fact that she was so obviously a Westerner. His hands were shaking as she slid the teeth of the cutters around the chain that connected the shackles at the ankles and, grunting with effort, closed the handles and sheared through it.

“Help us too!” said one of the others.

“They are killing us!”

Beatrix knew that she didn’t have time, but she couldn’t leave them. The Iraqis would shoot them as soon as they had reinforcements in place. She took the cutters and cleaved through their ankle shackles. It took fifteen seconds that she didn’t have, and when she was done, she was sweating from the effort, and the sirens from the police cars were almost upon them.

One of the guards had crawled behind a collection of oil drums. Beatrix hadn’t seen him. He crouched and took aim with his rifle.

She caught him in the corner of her eye.

Damn it.

The M40 boomed again and the guard was drilled in the chest. He crumpled out of sight.

“Thank you,” Beatrix said.

Faulkner’s voice crackled back to her. “You need to get out of there.”