He had heard it, and he was sitting bolt upright reaching for the pistol again. It wasn’t the rumble of distant thunder. It was the unmistakable crackle of automatic gunfire, some way off, but not that far off. He tensed. There it was again.

Instants later, everyone was wide awake and the group had gathered together with their guns at hand.

‘Reckon it’s them again?’ Baldacci said.

‘But if it’s not for us, who’s it for?’ Nielsen asked.

‘It’s an attack on another village,’ said Liebowitz. ‘Like before.’

Ben didn’t agree. As another faraway takatakatakataka string of shots sounded in reply to the last one, he said, ‘No, listen. That’s answering fire.’

Wolf nodded. ‘Ben’s right. It’s two groups. A gun battle going on.’

‘Between who and who?’ Aziz asked anxiously.

Holt said, ‘Could be rival militia groups at each other’s throats, or some tribal attack against a Taliban patrol. Maybe our guys, maybe another. Who gives a damn? If the assholes want to wipe one another out, fine by me.’

While they huddled around debating the issue, Nobby Scraggs had been scrolling through multiple radio channels on the off-chance of finding something. Their conversation hushed as the fizzing, distorted sound of voices suddenly crackled from his handset. ‘Bingo.’

They listened. Wolf said, ‘Holy shit.’

Because the snatches of urgent radio dialogue they could clearly make out weren’t being spoken in Dari, Pashto or any other Afghan language any of the astonished group had ever heard. The voices were speaking English, and with British accents. Their crackly exchanges were half drowned out with the staccato rattle of small arms, tinny-sounding over the speaker. After a delay of a second or so, the real-life sound was reaching their ears, faraway but very distinct.

There could be no doubt what was happening. Two separate units of unknown but obviously British combatants were communicating on the radio channel, one of them cut off from the other and taking heavy fire.

‘It’s our lads,’ Scraggs said, incredulous and blinking.

‘What the fuck’s going on?’ said Holt, equally bewildered. ‘It can’t be. We’re alone out here. Hell, we’re alone in this whole goddamn country.’

‘Or we thought we were,’ Ben said.

Chapter 34

It was quickly agreed that Ben, Wolf, Holt, Scraggs and Baldacci would take the Humvee to locate and investigate the scene of the gun battle while the rest of the men stayed behind to guard the camp. The hardest part was persuading Madison to remain there too. She wasn’t happy about it.