They peered cautiously out of the cave entrance and watched as the enemy, still numerous despite the many dead they’d left behind, fled down the hillside followed by whatever vehicles were still operational. The foot of the escarpment was a scene of devastation, littered with debris and bodies. Across to the north side, the Humvee was on fire. It was impossible to tell how much damage the truck might have sustained.

The firing had stopped for the moment. In the lull, Ben, Wolf and the others dragged sixteen corpses out of the cave mouth and dumped them unceremoniously in a heap outside. Ben went to retrieve his Maximi, abandoned in the rush to the cave and left untouched during the attack. Crouching low behind the rocks at the top of the rise he trained his binoculars down the hill, where the enemy, gathered in a large crowd several hundred yards away beyond the ruins of the orphanage, seemed to be organising themselves for something.

‘What are they doing down there?’ asked Wolf, and Ben passed him the binocs to take a look for himself. He replied, ‘I don’t know, but I have a strong feeling that this isn’t over yet.’

And Ben was right.

Chapter 49

It soon became apparent that Mohammad Omar Nabi, seeing his men in danger of being humiliatingly defeated by this far smaller opposition force, had decided on a new strategy. Ben had thought earlier on that the man was bluffing when he’d deployed his biggest gun. Now, as the sole remaining armoured car with its oversized turret and protruding 90mm cannon barrel came rumbling back up the hill on its huge wheels, Ben was no longer so sure that the Taliban commander wasn’t intent on pummelling the escarpment and the cave entrance to destruction after all.

The suspicion became a certainty when the vehicle halted two hundred yards away and the cannon sounded off with a blast like the crack of doom.

‘Uh-oh,’ Wolf muttered as the blurred black shape of the missile came hurtling up the hillside and they ducked for cover.

The projectile struck with far greater accuracy than before, exploding violently an uncomfortably short distance over their heads and smashing a vast crater in the rock face above the mouth of the cave. Hundreds of tons of sheet rock came crashing down in a spectacular avalanche and the two men, caught out in the open, had to scramble desperately out of its path to avoid being buried under several feet of rubble.

The dust billowed like smoke around them, powdering them chalky white from head to toe, filling their eyes and making them cough and splutter. As a gust of wind dispersed the great drifting cloud that veiled the whole escarpment, Ben saw with a shock that the cave entrance was now partially blocked. Another well-placed blast like that could see it completely sealed off, with the kids still inside.