While they’d been talking, Holt and Scraggs had switched over from Baldacci and Liebowitz to take the next watch. As before, there’d been no word from either of them since, their radio silence signalling that all was clear and the group could rest easy in the knowledge they were the only people for a great many miles in any direction. It was deep in the night now. The stars were bright, not twinkling, as hard and cold as planets. A feeling of absolute emptiness hung over the mountains, no sound of a living creature anywhere, nothing apart from the plaintive moan of the wind that had been slowly rising for the last hour and the rustle of the scrubby bushes that grew sparsely among the rocks.

But then the silence was suddenly broken by the fizz and crackle of the radio, cutting off Ben just as he was about to make a reply to Madison. Wolf made a grab for the radio handset, but Ben got to it first. At the same time, Nielsen, Baldacci and the others were snatching up theirs, suddenly all galvanised and wide awake.

Holt’s voice came over the handset in an urgent whisper.

‘Hey, boys and girls, I hate to interrupt your night’s rest. But it looks like we’re about to have company. Got a fast moving convoy of vehicles approaching from the south-east, about eight miles off, and they’re heading right for us.’

Chapter 32

They quickly doused what was left of the camp fire. Those who had weapons gathered them up, while Ben and Wolf hurried away from the camp and scrambled to the brow of the flat-topped ridge where Holt had been on watch. From up here he’d been able to observe a great wide stretch of the horizon, under the vastness of the inky black sky.

Madison was close behind as Ben and Wolf reached Holt. They lay low among the rocks and bushes, watching in silence through their binoculars as the distant tail of lights gradually approached through the mountain valley below. Still a long, long way off. Holt’s range estimate of about eight miles seemed accurate enough. But that distance was closing every second. Through a pause in the rising wind Ben momentarily caught the faraway grumble of diesel engines.

‘Taliban patrol?’ Wolf said, watching them as though he wanted to eat them. ‘Why am I not surprised. This is getting to be a habit.’

Ben counted eleven vehicles, almost certainly military trucks judging by their shape. Assuming each one could be carrying upwards of ten or a dozen men – and further assuming they were armed fighters and unlikely to be friendly – that amounted to a considerable force. Far more than their little group could handle, if it came to a confrontation.