After a couple of silent kilometres they clambered to the top of a nearly bare sandstone escarpment and Wolf pointed down the steep incline at the dusky valley below them, which wound between rocky crags like a canyon gorge carved out eons ago by a powerful river, now dry as dust.

‘There they are,’ Wolf said. Ben looked down, and in the murky shadows he saw the outline of a US military Humvee similar to the two the task force had been about to transfer into when the attack happened. He could see the shapes of four men standing near the vehicle, dressed in Afghan garb, easily mistakable for Taliban fighters from a distance in this light. They’d raised their weapons at the sight of two silhouetted figures appearing on the ridge above. Wolf signalled to them, one signalled back and they lowered their guns. Four men; Wolf had said the group totalled seven, which meant two of them must be keeping watch up on higher ground in case a patrol came by. The way they operated told Ben these were professionals. The array of automatic weapons dangling from their shoulders and stacked up by the Humvee confirmed it. He’d have expected nothing less of Wolf. But who were these men he’d teamed up with, and why?

‘Look what I found,’ Wolf said to them when he and Ben had reached the foot of the slope. The four robed figures walked over, peering at Ben in the semi-darkness and initially suspicious until one of them pulled off his face covering and burst out in a broad Lancashire accent, ‘Christ on a bike, it’s Major Hope!’

‘Hello, Nobby. Just Ben these days,’ Ben said. He’d always liked Scraggs, a big amiable man, about as tall and burly as the SAS would ever admit to their ranks. You could have taken him for a soft-hearted gentle giant if he hadn’t been a highly trained professional warrior.

Scraggs was staring at him in disbelief as they warmly shook hands. ‘A small world it is, and that’s a fact. What the hell are you—?’

‘Doing here?’ Ben was still waiting to hear the answer to that question himself. But as he was the stranger to their camp, the onus was on him. He was about to retell the story, but instead Wolf did it for him. Scraggs and his companions listened attentively, frowning at the demise of the ill-fated SAS mission.