The defenders’ casualties were beginning to mount up. To the other side of where Schulz had been killed, Ben could see the inert, bloody bodies of two of the Pathfinders, tattered to pieces by the gunfire from the armoured car. He looked urgently around for the prince, then spotted him firing away from behind the cover of another large rock, though it wasn’t clear what he was shooting at, or to what kind of effect.

Despite their losses they were taking their toll on the enemy, who in addition to the many foot soldiers lying dead across the killing ground had now lost seven of their technicals and were down to just the tank-mounted armoured car. But Muhammad Omar Nabi wasn’t about to let his men slacken the pace of their assault. They probably had just as much to fear from their commander’s wrath if they failed to take their objective. Now they redoubled their attack and came swarming up the hillside, jumping over their fallen comrades and howling at the top of their lungs. The combined gunfire of dozens of automatic weapons swept the crest of the slope, cutting down Nielsen and another of the prince’s men. Ben snatched up Nielsen’s fallen weapon and rattled it empty, tossed it away and drew his pistol, squeezing off shot after shot until it was empty too.

There was no choice but to retreat. Ben yelled, ‘Fall back!’ and the remaining defenders – Holt, Baldacci, Madison and Francine, the prince and his last few Pathfinders – abandoned their cover and ran for the cave. Ben and Wolf each grabbed one of the injured Scraggs’s arms and dragged him bodily inside the entrance.

Not a moment too soon, because seconds later the attacking foot soldiers had reached the top of the hill, peppering the cave mouth with their relentless gunfire. Their battle cry ‘Allahu Akbar!’ echoed through the tunnels as they swarmed inside the narrow entrance one or two at a time.

But that was their undoing, because tactically the very worst mistake an assaulting force could make was to let themselves be funnelled into a narrow field of fire with no way out. Now they suddenly faced a deadly counter-attack directed from the shadowy nooks and crannies of the cave that Ben and the others had had plenty of time to reconnoitre. Before they knew what was happening, the fighters were being cut to pieces and their bodies were piling up in the narrow tunnel. Yet they kept on coming, screaming like madmen, and Ben, Wolf and Holt, the vanguard of the resistance, were pressed back towards the grotto.