Ben had no idea where they were now, except that they were deep in the wilderness. The arid terrain was rising steadily upwards into the foothills of the mountains that loomed all around them, as jagged as broken glass, snow on the highest peaks. Ben knew he had to find some sheltered place to stop and attend to Saleem. But even as he was thinking it, the van engine gave a last asthmatic splutter and then died completely. While it still had some momentum Ben coasted the vehicle towards a rubbly slope to the side of the track and let it go rolling and bumping down to the bottom. A rocky outcrop that looked like an ancient stone circle hid them from view of the track.

‘What’s happening? Why are we stopping?’ asked Saleem, trying to raise himself up. His face was as pale as a corpse’s and his eyes were ringed with dark circles, his body shaking with pain. The blood was everywhere, some of it Buchanan’s but just as much of it his own.

‘End of the road,’ Ben said. ‘We’ll continue on foot from here.’

‘I don’t think I can make it,’ groaned Saleem.

‘You let me be the judge of that.’ Ben booted open the buckled, bullet-shredded driver’s door, jumped down and looked around him. The sun was slowly setting behind the mountains, gold turning to a haze of tawny orange behind the jagged peaks. The landscape was utterly empty and deathly still, not a bird, not an insect, the only sound or movement the whispering rustle of the mountain wind among the desiccated shrubs growing around the foot of the stone circle. If their pursuers were still after them, they were a long way off.

Ben opened up the side of the van, half carried the injured Saleem out and laid him gently on the ground in the shelter of the rocks with someone’s Bergen propping up his head. Much of the task force’s kit had been in the van that had been blown up, but by a stroke of luck the medical supplies had been in this one.

‘Thank you, my friend,’ Saleem murmured.

‘Don’t mention it. Now let’s take a look at you.’ Ben wasn’t as confident as he sounded, trying to reassure the gravely injured man. Any little remnant of optimism he might have felt sank to the pit of his stomach when he peeled back Saleem’s blood-soaked clothing, saw the deep gunshot wound that had gone through his liver, and knew there was nothing he could do for the guy except pump him full of morphine for as long as he kept breathing. Which likely wouldn’t be for very long.

‘Go,’ Saleem said softly. His lips were turning blue. ‘Leave me here. I can’t be any use to you. If they come, I will try to hold them off. Give me a gun.’