Early morning, and the city was beginning to come to life around them, their first proper glimpse of Kabul since the fall of the US occupation. It had been a fairly westernised city while the allied powers were in control, with modern, liberal mores and fashionable clothing much on display. It was immediately apparent those were all gone now, as though erased overnight by the new normality of life. From a lively cosmopolitan melting pot of diplomats, military contractors, journalists, war tourists and thriving local businesses the city had been reduced to a chaotic smoggy morass of four million frightened people living under the boot heel of extremist dictatorship. Where once you would have seen trendy young men and women sitting outside cafés talking brightly over pots of saffron tea, now, in accordance with the new rulers’ hardcore interpretation of Sharia Law, women were hardly to be seen at all outdoors; while all the men now wore the traditional Afghan clothes the regime approved, not a clean-shaven face among them. Even the music was eradicated, the austere void of silence left in its absence filled by the regular several-times-a-day ululating megaphone voices calling the faithful to prayer.

And of course, everywhere you looked were the fierce enforcers of that new regime. Armoured cars and personnel carriers were a ubiquitous presence all through the capital, draped with the black-and-white banner of the Taliban and loaded with fighters sporting the masses of shiny new weaponry the Americans had so obligingly left for them. The Talib comported themselves with the triumphant air of conquering heroes, hostile eyes daring anyone to challenge them. This was their time now. Watching the citizens scurrying through the streets, bowed, downcast as they tried to go about their business as unobtrusively as possible under the steely gaze of their conquerors, Ben could sense the oppressive atmosphere of terror hanging over the city.

‘Here we are, lads,’ Dixon said with a chuckle. ‘How’s it feel being totally alone and surrounded by a hundred thousand fundamentalist crazies who want you nailed to a cross?’

‘Not too much worse than a weekend at my in-laws’ place,’ joked Cale, and Dixon laughed. Then Meadows craned his neck towards the window, peering up as he noticed the thud of a helicopter overhead. Ben could hear it too.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Meadows said, pointing. ‘Look at that.’

Above them, an American Blackhawk helicopter gunship was passing over the rooftops. But that wasn’t what Meadows was pointing at. Clearly visible against the pale morning sky was the silhouette of the limp hanged corpse of a man swaying pendulum-like from the underside of the aircraft on the end of a rope.

Any sense of levity inside the Humvee was suddenly gone as they watched with grim faces. ‘Looks like the bastards caught another one,’ Dixon said.