‘No, we don’t,’ Ben said. The lights of the convoy were visible over the edge of the plateau, and the rumble of their engines and crunch of their tyres and the grinding of stone on metal could be heard over the wind as they struggled up the slope. They’d be here sooner than he’d anticipated and there wasn’t a moment to lose.

The three of them carried their prize back to the waiting vehicles, soaked to the skin, stumbling over rocks, straining every muscle and sinew in their wrists and arms to get the massive weight to safety. The others were all aboard by now – Holt at the wheel of the big truck with Scraggs, Father Bugnolio, Ramin and Aziz, while Baldacci and the others had jumped into the Humvee. Holt glowered at them with impatience bordering on hatred as they reached the truck. Nobby Scraggs jumped out and helped them load the casket in the back. ‘Jesus wept, what is this?’

‘Just a little memento of this place,’ Madison replied, hopping nimbly up onto the cargo bed after it and slamming the tailgate shut behind her.

‘That’s sorted. Now let’s get the flock out of here,’ Wolf said.

They’d lost a lot of time, and what little they had left was running out fast. In less than two minutes the convoy would have reached the top of the plateau and this whole place would be alive with enemy fighters – because Ben no longer had any doubt who their unexpected visitors were.

And with that escape route blocked, there was only one other way off the plateau, one they had no choice but to take now, immediately, and without drawing the least attention to themselves. That was a dizzying slope strewn thick with boulders and deeply scarred by millennia of landslides, steeper than the steepest black run. Only a certifiable lunatic would have attempted to take a heavy vehicle laden with passengers and equipment over the edge of that suicidal drop, in the dark, with no lights.

Ben knew just the man for the job. More precisely, he knew two men. He motioned to Wolf, who grinned in understanding and hurried back to the Humvee to take the wheel. Ben clambered into the front of the truck, shoving Holt out of the way.

‘I’ll drive.’

Chapter 33

Seconds counted, the timing was everything, and it was going to be a hell of a close-run thing. Ben buckled himself into the driver’s seat. The key was in the ignition but he didn’t touch it. No engines, no lights. The enemy might not be crazy enough to follow them where they were going, but they could still pour enough firepower down the mountainside after the escaping vehicles to shred them to pieces before they reached the bottom – if indeed they had any chance of reaching the bottom in one piece anyway.