From what Ben could make out, the attackers numbered about twenty or thirty. Far less numerous than the convoy of enemy troops that had driven their own group away from the plateau the night before. It seemed to him that they must have split up into smaller groups since then as they pursued their elusive prey – and that it was while searching for them that this portion of their force had stumbled on this unexpected new enemy out here in the wilderness.

As for the much smaller British unit pinned down below, it was clear at a glance even at this range and in poor light that they weren’t faring too well in the exchange. Ben could see movement, but his sharp eyes had also made out the inert shapes of what were unmistakably two bodies slumped among the rocks. He counted two – no, three – men still in the game. But their return fire had become thinner and more sporadic. They were obviously running dangerously low on ammunition. In just a few more minutes, the Taliban fighters would have worn them down to their last rounds and would be moving in for the kill. Then it would be down to knives and bayonets, a desperate last-ditch resistance from which there were unlikely to be any survivors. Ben had seen the grisly aftermath of those bloody guerrilla encounters before. Before his time, the Mujahideen fighters had been infamous for the cruel way they’d hacked up and dismembered captured Russian soldiers.

But that wasn’t happening here, because now the badly outnumbered unit had got some unexpected help. As they were about to learn.

Ben and Wolf quickly set up the Maximi, its long coiling ammo belt ready for action. The perfect tool for laying down a barrage of heavy covering fire at medium-short range like this, with a spotter using binoculars to direct the high-velocity 7.62mm tracer rounds to their deadliest effect. Meanwhile Baldacci had the fifty-cal sniper rifle captured from their previous engagement up on its bipod and was snuggling in behind it, next to Scraggs and Holt with their trusty M4 carbines and grenade launchers and a whole crateload of 40mm grenades.

Things were about to get interesting.

‘Mark your targets and fire at will, gentlemen,’ said Holt.

‘Music to my bloody ears,’ Wolf muttered, but his words were barely out before Ben squeezed the trigger. Instant bedlam as the Maximi jumped into life, directing its deafening gunfire across the valley in a sustained stream, spewing empty brass and split links all over the rocks at Ben’s elbow. His old unit had often joked that if the major was ever killed in action, they’d find his body buried in a big pile of spent cartridge cases. The pile was a reality, but he wasn’t ready to meet his maker just yet.