After another minute he stood and returned to the back door, flicking the circuit breaker switch to switch all the lights back on.

He returned to the kitchen which was now bathed in soft light from the side lamps.

‘You guys okay?’

Cameron nodded from his prone position on top of the destroyed table, looking at him with relief in his eyes.

Taking his knife from his boot top, he released their hands from the zip-tie bindings. Shona’s hand was tightly wrapped in a bandage, a red stain evident where the blood from her severed finger had seeped through.

As he got closer, he saw the relief in Cameron’s eyes turn once more to fear, the man bucking and attempting to shout, his voice muffled by the tape as he looked behind Tom. Tom began to straighten up, a sinking feeling of dread in his stomach, while reaching for his MP7. He turned and was stunned to see Aleks and Luka Branko walking into the room.

Aleks was already pointing a Glock at Tom; it was too late for him to raise the MP7. The Glock roared in Aleks’s hand and Tom felt a fantastic impact in his chest, like being hit with a sledgehammer. All the breath left his body with a whoosh and he was flung back, violently landing on top of Cameron. His vision went black.

29

A lot of nonsense is often spouted about the effectiveness of body armour. Kevlar is great at preventing certain bullets from entering the body, but they don’t stop the trauma caused by a projectile hitting you at three-hundred-and-seventy-five metres-per-second.

All that force has to go somewhere, and it all went straight into Tom.

The bullet had struck him dead-centre of his chest: on the sternum which, fortunately, had absorbed most of the impact. Some of that force had also fortunately been absorbed in his being knocked backwards.

Tom was gasping for breath, aware through the fog in his brain of shouting and rough hands dragging him across the floor, his hands being secured behind his back. He managed to breathe a couple of rasping breaths, replacing the wind that had been knocked out of his lungs by the impact of the 9mm round.

Words filtered through the fog. ‘Jesus, he’s killed Danilo. Where are the others?’ He couldn’t identify who had spoken.

He looked up, wincing at the pain in his chest, and looked up at the three men. Aleks still had the Glock pointed at him, Luka was stood to his side, while the third man he didn’t recognise. He was much older than the Brankos—in his fifties, Tom estimated—and was dressed in jeans and a leather jacket. He had short, cropped grey hair and his face was lined and weather beaten; he looked uncompromising and tough, with the latent aggression he’d seen in far too many others on many occasions.