‘Base,’ Colvin replied, too shattered to say more. He raised a feeble arm and pointed along the winding dry river gorge, in the opposite direction to the one the Taliban fighters had fled in.

‘Why didn’t they come out to support you when you came under fire?’ Wolf demanded.

‘No ammo,’ Colvin gasped, steadying himself against a rock. ‘W-we had the last of it.’ He seemed to have run out of energy to speak another word. His companion, who hadn’t spoken at all, seemed even less capable of offering any more information.

‘Can you walk?’ Ben asked.

Colvin’s eyes fluttered open and shut. He nodded weakly. ‘We’ll try.’

‘Then take us to your base,’ Ben said.

Chapter 35

The remainder of the British unit were camped out less than quarter of a mile away from the scene of the gunfight, but it took Ben’s group a long time to get there. First they had to help, virtually carry, Colvin and his two exhausted comrades up the steep bank of the gorge to the Humvee, as they were in no fit state to lead the way to the camp on foot. Then came the task of moving the bodies of Lieutenant Draper and Sergeant Flynn. You didn’t leave the dead behind unless there were no other choice.

Once aboard the Humvee, the survivors were so weak with hunger that they could barely tell the way. Wolf tried to radio the main unit to warn them of their arrival, but without success. ‘Their batteries must’ve died or something,’ he muttered.

‘Let’s hope the guy was right about them having run out of ammo,’ Scraggs said. ‘Last thing we need now is to get plugged by our own boys.’

Dawn was still a couple of hours away by the time they reached the camp. Dark clouds had gathered over the face of the moon and it felt as though more bad weather was rolling in. The British unit had been sheltering in the semi-ruin of an ancient temple dug into the side of a hill near another dried-out river.

What had once been a tall, impressive entrance was crumbling, but the remainder of its walls and part of its roof were still mostly intact after all these centuries. Noticing the pitted, time-worn carvings in the stonework, Ben guessed the ruin must date back to Afghanistan’s long lost Buddhist era, having somehow managed to escape the attention of the cultural vandals who would happily tear it down or blow it to pieces. Sometime in its more recent history it must have come close to suffering a similar fate, judging by the old missile craters in the rocks nearby and the rusty Russian tank shell casings that still littered the ground. An archaeologist’s dream. Madison would tear his head off if she found out he’d made her miss out on seeing it.