Worse, a huge section of rock further up the looming cliff face had been badly loosened and was teetering on the brink of coming down on top of the rest. Ben and Wolf both knew in that moment that they would have to evacuate the cave – and fast, before those inside were buried in there forever.

‘Here they come again,’ Wolf growled. And so it was, too, because Mohammed Omar Nabi had ordered a second full-on assault. Within moments the hillside was alive once again with the chatter of gunfire. Bullets whizzed overhead and pinged off the rocks all around them.

‘Cover me while I get the others out of there!’ Ben yelled, and Wolf threw himself behind the Maximi with a look of loathing while Ben ran back to the cave entrance and started feverishly clearing away the lighter boulders to widen the blocked exit. Madison was the first to come clambering through, her black hair sprinkled white with dust making her look much older. ‘The kids!’ she screamed over the noise of Wolf’s gunfire. ‘We have to get those kids out!’

Wolf was pounding away savagely with the Maximi, scoring fresh hits on the remaining technicals and sending enemy fighters running about like ants. All too soon, though, his ammo belt was running short, with no more in the crate; and within a few more moments the final yard was reduced to a scattering of broken linkages and fired cases. Wolf grabbed up a fallen M4 with barely a moment’s pause and continued popping off more rounds to deadly effect. But there were so many fighters down there that it seemed the more you took down, the more kept coming back at you like an irrepressible tidal wave gaining constantly on the hillside.

Blinking dust and sweat out of his eyes, Ben looked down and saw the tank climbing the slope towards them. After its deadly opening salvo the cannon had fallen silent. Why weren’t they firing? The answer quickly became clear as the turret hatch opened and one of the crew poked his head out, wildly waving his arms and yelling at two more of his comrades who came running up. It looked as though they were having some kind of problem with the big gun. Unlike these guys, the US army troops to whom such pieces of equipment had been issued originally would have been expertly trained in clearing shell casing jams, fixing stuck ejectors or any of the other technical difficulties of operating a thirteen-ton killing machine.

The lucky delay would buy Ben and his companions a little bit of time to help get the children out of the dangerously unstable cave before these lunatics could seal their fate forever. But where could they evacuate the children to? Ben looked urgently around for an answer, then saw it.