She seemed about to argue, but then pulled a sour face at him and hurried back inside, leaving them to crouch among the rocks and keep a close eye on the enemy’s movements. It was a race now as to who could get ready to open fire first. Their opponents looked intent on launching their initial attack with the heaviest artillery they had, the 90mm cannon. As it roared back into life, came rumbling forward of the formation and the big gun started to rotate upwards to aim up the hillside, the team were moving fast to set up the Maximi, the fifty-calanti-materiel rifle and the mortars. Ben and Scraggs started prepping the fat, stubby little artillery pieces for action while Liebowitz hunkered down behind the sniper rifle. Wolf clipped a fresh ammo belt into the Maximi’s breech. By now a breathless Schulz and the Pathfinders on watch had come hurrying back from their observation posts to join the rest of them, as everyone else spread out among the rocks with their carbines, faces tense, fingers on triggers.

Muhammad Omar Nabi’s command to fire echoed faintly in the valley before it was utterly obliterated by the massive report of the cannon. The big gun recoiled violently as the missile spat from its muzzle, making the whole thirteen tons rock back on its suspension. The 90mm shell was actually visible as its dark shape streaked up into the air and arced towards them in a curved trajectory. It reached its target in about half a second and slammed into the face of the escarpment with a massive impact. Ben, Wolf and the others ducked their heads down low and shielded their faces from the choking cloud of dust and the shower of stone fragments that rained down on them.

‘That was a little high,’ Holt said, managing a grin of bravado.

‘Sighting shot,’ Wolf replied. ‘Next one will be bang on target.’

‘Let’s give them something to think about in the meantime,’ Ben said.

He hadn’t fired a mortar in years. Now seemed like a good time to get his hand back in. He dropped a rocket into the upward-pointing tube, moved clear and felt the blast as off it went, sailing up in a high arc before it reached the apex of its sharply curved trajectory and came dropping down like a stone towards the enemy positions. To Ben’s satisfaction and drawing a whoop of fierce pleasure out of Nobby Scraggs, it landed in a direct hit on one of the technicals somewhere to the right of the Taliban commander’s pickup. The vehicle instantly erupted in a fireball as it was hurled up off its wheels and turned over in mid-air. A burning figure was thrown clear of the explosion, managed to scramble to his feet and made it a few lurching steps before Wolf nailed him in the sights of the Maximi and cut him down with a burst of 7.62.