On and on through the empty, mountainous wilderness, step after step, kilometre after foot-blistering kilometre, the straps of his heavy pack biting into his shoulders and his injured arm throbbing painfully. Then on some more, stopping only for the occasional drink of water. With all his senses so concentrated to the maximum for so long, sometimes his mind would begin to swim and he became worried about losing touch with reality. At a certain point he experienced the strangest sensation of being an astronaut stranded completely alone on the surface of a desolate planet, the only thing living for a million light years.

The distant rumble of trucks quickly cured him of that notion. Pinpointing the sound as coming from the north-west, he scrambled to the top of a rise and flattened himself on the ground to observe them through his binoculars. The long line of Taliban troop transporters and armoured cars was some six hundred metres away and travelling on a perpendicular course to his, from left to right along an old river valley at the base of a towering great escarpment, leaving a dust cloud that trailed like smoke behind them. Once they’d passed, he stayed low for a long time before moving on again, in case of stragglers.

For the rest of that day he saw no other living creatures, human or otherwise, apart from a pair of vultures that were pecking and tearing at the carcass of some unidentifiable animal and flapped away on huge dark wings at his approach. By the time night fell and he wearily made camp, his GPS told him that he’d covered twenty-two miles. Which wasn’t bad progress, but he knew that he was going to have to try and procure some proper transportation. That would typically involve stealing a vehicle from a farm or village, which he didn’t like doing for a variety of reasons – any more than he relished the much higher profile of driving around open roads. But conspicuous and risky as it might be, it was the only way he was going to have any chance of reaching his destination quickly.

And it just so happened that he’d passed a small village some kilometres back, which he’d detoured around, giving it a wide berth for fear of being spotted. He decided he’d rest for a few hours and then return to the village in the dead of night to try his luck.

Chapter 19