‘Come on!’ he yelled, and together with Wolf, Madison, the prince and the last few Pathfinders, they ran to join in the close-packed fighting that milled all over the foot of the escarpment. Now the combat reached its peak of violence. Ben’s carbine was soon empty and he drew the pistol, engaging his targets with all the speed and precision he’d been trained for. Madison had rattled her AK dry and snatched an SA80 bullpup rifle from the clawed bloody hand of the Pathfinder soldier who’d been shot dead right next to her. She was firing left and right, standing her ground with her feet planted apart, her hair blowing wild in the wind and a look of warrior ferocity on her face that could make any man fall in love with her, if there’d been time to spare her a glance in the midst of the mayhem. Meanwhile Wolf was doing what Wolf did best, carving a path of dead men in what was left of the enemy ranks.

Right in the middle of the melee, Ben found himself suddenly face to face with the tribal commander, now dismounted from his white stallion and fighting on foot with the rest of his people. He was a ruggedly handsome man in his mid-fifties, with a greying black beard and a hooked nose. He smiled at Ben, a smile that quickly dropped as Ben raised his pistol and pointed it right at him. Then Ben swivelled the weapon four inches to the right and fired past the commander, taking down the man in the long black robe and black turban who’d been about to kill him.

Only when the body hit the ground did Ben realise that the man he’d shot was Muhammad Omar Nabi. Recognising him right away, the tribal commander spat on the corpse, drew a long curved scimitar from the folds of his colourful tunic and sliced off Nabi’s head in a single blow.

When the rest of the Taliban fighters saw their leader’s decapitated body lying sprawled on the ground, their fighting spirit was suddenly and totally deflated. Some of them threw down their weapons, dropped to their knees and surrendered to the tribesmen, only to be summarily executed with a bullet or have their heads cut off. The rest fled for their lives, to the sound of jeers and yells of triumph from the victors. Some shots sounded and several of the escaping fighters were cut down as they ran, until their leader, still clutching his bloodied scimitar, ordered them in a huge roaring voice to cease firing.

‘Let the cowards run back to their leaders and tell them what happened here today, so that they may never dare to return to these hills again!’ There was more shouting and cheering, chants of ‘Khan Zada! Khan Zada!’ Some pointed their weapons into the air and rattled off bursts of gunfire in tribute to their leader and his triumph.