While they were waiting for Schulz to return, Holt showed Liebowitz Francine Blanchet’s Iridium sat phone. Liebowitz stared at it as though it was a lump of kryptonite. ‘Where the fuck did you get this?’

‘It doesn’t work. But can we use it to fix ours?’

Liebowitz grabbed their own non-functioning phone from his kit and laid the two side by side. They were exactly identical apart from the extra scuff marks on the casing on Francine’s handset where it had been dropped, and the bullet hole that had drilled through theirs and killed it dead. Ben and Wolf watched as Liebowitz whipped out a tiny screwdriver and set to work removing both casings to expose the electronic innards, which he scrutinised carefully, peering from one phone to the other.

‘Well?’ Holt asked impatiently.

Liebowitz looked up at him with a grin. ‘Yup. Looks like the motherboard on their phone is totally intact. No promises, but if I can’t cannibalise all the parts we need and get this sucker working, I’m Tweetie Bird. Might take me a while, though. Without a proper soldering iron I’m gonna have to improvise something.’

‘Take this,’ Wolf said, handing Liebowitz the slim stiletto dagger he carried in his boot. ‘You can heat the blade over a flame. It’s crude, but I fixed a Clansman radio that way once.’

‘I’ll give it a go,’ Liebowitz said.

Holt slapped him on the shoulder. ‘Get it done, buddy.’

It was a few minutes later, when Liebowitz was getting deep into the guts of the dismantled phones, that they heard the rumble of the Humvee rolling up outside. ‘Right,’ Holt said. ‘That sonofabitch is gonna get it in the neck now.’

They marched outside to be greeted by the sight of Schulz, bloodied from his hunt, dragging the carcass of a goat from the back of the vehicle. Another one lay on the load bed, one hoof hanging limp and dripping red over the edge. A blood pool was already forming on the ground and it was clear he’d gone way over the top, shooting the poor creatures almost to bits. His rifle was propped up on the Humvee’s passenger seat. ‘You guys gonna give me a hand, or do I have to do all the work around here?’ he called to them, scowling angrily.

Holt stalked over to Schulz with clenched fists and murder in his eyes. Schulz realised too late what was coming, and the hard punch to his jaw knocked him backwards off his feet.

‘You stupid prick! What’s the matter with you?’ Holt raged at him.

But Schulz was every bit as capable a fighter as Holt and half a decade younger, and he came up again like a steel spring with blood trickling from the corner of his mouth and a black Ka-bar combat knife in his hand. ‘I’ll stick you for that, you motherfucker.’