It was an opening. There was nothing now between me and the road - well, nothing but chains and a dozen armed soldiers. But supposing I could bound forward with enough force to break the chains? My hands were attached to the underside of the bench, meaning that if pressure were exerted at the right angle, I could use it as leverage. The bench was quite wide - I could press my feet back at least fifteen inches. It was perhaps even a little too much, but if I sat bolt upright, the distance shortened until it felt almost like a natural starting block.

And the soldiers? Most of them were not on their guard. This was just another journey back to headquarters. They would be looking forward to putting some food in their bellies, perhaps a beer or two, and sleep. They knew there were a couple of prisoners in their midst, of course, but they also knew that three of their colleagues had their weapons trained on us. We were not their responsibility. And unless they had been paying close attention, they wouldn’t have known that those weapons were now on safety. I would have the benefit of surprise.

But, of course, the danger would not be over once I had left the jeep. It would take the fastest of the men only a few seconds to recover, if that, and I would be picked out even through the rain and the mud and the darkness in only a few seconds more. And nobody would face a firing squad for shooting a prisoner who had tried to escape.

My other potential lever was sitting beside me: Isabelle. If I managed to bring her with me, the soldiers would have two targets, rather than one, and added to the rain and the mud and the darkness that might just be enough to save me . . .

I stopped the line of thought. It was an exercise, that was all, an exercise I had hoped might reveal a way of prising open the chink. But I knew even as I went through the options that none of them was viable. Even if I managed to pull Isabelle and myself into the road, the chances of survival were too small to take the risk. The fact that escape was possible was no comfort - it had to be likely. In short, it was the kind of plan that looked good on a blackboard in the Home Counties, but when it was your life on the line in the middle of the night in the African bush, it was only good for keeping your mind distracted.