Ben and his seven companions waited a few moments for the last echoes of gunfire to die away, then emerged from their hidden positions and moved in on the camp, stepping over the bodies of the dead. As anticipated, the vehicles were filled with precious supplies: not only enough weaponry and crated ammunition to equip a force three times their size, but also the stores of food and water that they’d been getting worryingly low on, not to mention twelve full jerrycans of precious diesel fuel.

‘To the victor belong the spoils,’ Wolf said, discarding the worn-out Kalashnikov he’d been using in favour of a shiny new American M4 carbine whose previous owner had no further use for it. ‘Easy come, easy go.’ Along with the personal weapons taken from the dead men and a quantity of surplus ones still in their original US army crates, the rest of their haul of small arms included a heavy long-range sniper rifle, rocket launchers and even a couple of mortars.

‘Good job, guys,’ Holt said. ‘Now let’s get the hell out of here. Load as much of this stuff as you can fit into one vehicle. We’ll burn the rest.’

Ben wasn’t sure about the wisdom of creating a smoke plume that could be seen for miles, but he said nothing. Soon afterwards, all but one of the vehicles were blazing. The eight of them piled into their new acquisition, a six-wheel-drive US Army troop truck with a canvas top and a cargo bed crammed with supplies, and they sped away towards the south side of the ridge where they’d concealed their Humvee.

They resumed their course for Zakara with Ben at the wheel of the Humvee and Holt riding up front beside him. Holt said nothing, but Ben sensed the American was unhappy about the detour they were making from their own mission objective. Maybe he was right to be, Ben reflected. It was a depressing thought on top of the bad feelings already weighing on him after the events of the day. For the first time since setting out from Kabul, now that he was getting so much closer to his destination, he began to experience real doubts about ever finding Madison. He shut them out and focused on driving.

They covered another fifty kilometres before darkness fell and they stopped again to make camp. After a meal of spicy tinned halal meat and vegetables courtesy of the dead Talib, Ben and Wolf broke away from the rest of the group to climb a nearby hill and keep watch. Wolf was still very pensive as they sat there, bathed in the colours of the spectacular sunset. The valley they were gazing out across stretched for days’ and days’ drive to the hazy mountains in the far distance, not a village or a living soul anywhere between here and the horizon. At last Wolf broke his silence, saying quietly, ‘This could be a beautiful place.’