Meadows nodded, still gazing up at the helicopter. ‘Yep, anyone who spoke out against them, anyone who helped the Americans or any of their allies. They won’t send the poor sods to the gulag. They’ll just hunt them down and exterminate them one by one.’

It was obvious to anyone on the ground, especially to professionals who’d seen a million military choppers in action and flown in them countless times themselves, that the aircraft’s flight was highly erratic. As they watched, the Blackhawk narrowly avoided fouling its rotors on a mobile phone mast, destroying itself and raining destruction onto the streets below.

‘Half these guys can barely count the fingers on their own hand,’ Dixon grumbled, shaking his head in disgust. ‘Let alone fly a sodding helicopter. It’s a wonder they even got it up in the air, the stupid numpties. How the fuck they’ll get it down again is anyone’s guess.’

‘Whoo-hoo,’ said Cale. ‘Wouldn’t you just love to see them crash and burn?’

Ben kept his eye on the helicopter and its grisly trophy until they disappeared from view behind some foreground buildings. Inept pilots or not, it was a stark warning to all who dared defy their new rulers. In olden days they’d have impaled the severed heads of the vanquished on the city gates as an example to all. Now they just paraded their mutilated victims across the skyline like an aerial billboard. Different times, different wars, same barbaric message. Nothing had changed in all these centuries. Nothing ever would.

He checked his weapon once more. Reminding himself what in God’s name could have possessed him to want to return to this damned place.

Meadows muttered, ‘Welcome to hell, boys and girls.’

Chapter 11

Ben’s companions were some of the most experienced combat veterans in the business, and there wasn’t one who wasn’t pretty much inured to the horrors of man’s inhumanity against man. Yet the spectacle of the hanging corpse was a haunting enough image to stay in the mind for a long time afterwards, and it effectively killed most of their conversation as the Humvee cut across the city.

After a convoluted journey they arrived at the safehouse, a semi-derelict apartment building in a narrow, winding and empty backstreet near an industrial zone at the far western edge of Kabul. The building opposite was some kind of warehouse, disused with a lot of broken windows and little chance of anyone inside observing their arrival. Still, for safety’s sake, they donned their false beards and headgear before stepping out into the street. Ben had to take care to ensure that his blond hair was kept well out of sight. A bottle of black dye had often been among the contents of his kit bag, back in the day.