Twenty metres from what used to be their entrance, the tumbled rocks had formed a freshly heaped stone wall. One enormous piece of the broken-off ledge had come to a rest upright like a monument, against which others had piled to make a tall barricade with a gap like a natural gateway through which they could escape to shelter behind the protection of the rocks.

It was their only chance. Ben pointed and yelled, ‘That way!’ Francine and Father Bugnolio had managed to scramble out of the half collapsed cave mouth. As Wolf kept up his steady fire down the hill, joined now by Holt and Baldacci as well as the prince and his men, Ben and Madison raced to help the children clamber out of the hole while Francine and Father B herded them urgently through the gap and behind the barricade, helped by Ramin and Aziz. Scraggs had had to be carried out of the cave and was unable to do anything but watch helplessly from the sidelines.

One by one, in what seemed like a never-ending stream, the children came wriggling out of the hole and into Ben’s or Madison’s arms. They were plastered with dust and some were crying. ‘How many is that?’ Ben yelled. A bullet splatted off the rocks close by. He didn’t as much as flinch.

‘I think that’s all of them,’ Madison yelled back, having kept a mental tally of each child as they got her out. ‘Is it?’

But it wasn’t quite all. Still to be brought out was little Gulnaz, clutching her beloved doll Vida as she hesitated just inside the gap, too afraid to come outside with all the terrible noise going on. ‘Come on, baby,’ Madison called to her through the hole. ‘Please, you have to hurry.’

As Madison spoke, there was an ominous grinding scrape of rock. Loose stones came slithering down from the cratered escarpment and something shifted, the cave mouth narrowing perceptibly. Any moment, the entire thing was going to collapse.

‘Gulnaz, come on!’ Ben urged the frightened child in her own language, but all he got was a wide-eyed stare of terror from inside. He put his arm through the gap to grab her, but she backed away. And the hole was now too small for him to scramble through to fetch her out bodily.

‘We can’t hold these bastards off for much longer,’ Wolf called across from the firing line. ‘Ammo’s running awful short.’ His M4 was empty. Holt tossed him another thirty-round magazine. Wolf slammed the fresh mag into his receiver and set about emptying it as fast as he could in the direction of the swarming enemy troops.