Jamshid, who seemed to have assumed leadership of the group, shook his head and said, ‘Let’s do this properly. Keep looking.’

The second outbuilding was a large wooden shed that turned out to be a chicken house. No trucks, no tractors, no trailers. Scouting further, the terrorists spotted another property half a field away, which they suddenly realised looked much more like an actual farm than the black-and-white cottage. The blocky stone house was rather run-down and rough around the edges, surrounded by a dirty yard and a collection of much larger, purposeful-looking barns. Two chunky hardtop pickup trucks with jacked suspension and bull bars stood parked outside the farmhouse, hinting at the presence of more useful vehicles inside the barns.

‘We should check that place out instead,’ Jamshid declared.

But the moment he said it, they heard an angry yell from behind them. All four whirled around to see a middle-aged, overweight white man in a dressing gown and slippers, storming towards them from the cottage clutching a double-barrelled shotgun in his fists. Apparently, it wasn’t every day the locals woke up to find three Middle-Easterners and a Nigerian armed with assault rifles lurking in the garden. The guy seemed quite worked up about it, red in the face and shouting at them in French. ‘What in God’s name are you people doing on my property?’

At the sight of their weapons, the householder started yelling even more angrily, and levelled his shotgun at them. A loud blast split the morning air. Whether the guy had let the shot off accidentally due to nerves, or intentionally missed in the hope of scaring the intruders off, nobody would ever know. A fencepost four feet to Dariush’s left splintered in a hail of birdshot. The terrorists looked at one another. Nazim had said to keep it quiet, but it was too late for that now. All four of them raised their AK-47s, aimed at the old fat white guy and opened fire before he could get a second shot off. The simultaneous bursts of full-automatic gunfire were much, much louder than the shotgun boom. And much more accurate. A dozen or more high-velocity rifle bullets tore into the man’s chest, killing him instantly and hurling him flat to the ground.

‘I told you these peasants could cause us trouble,’ Shaykh said to his companions.

‘What do you expect from a Christian?’ Dariush sneered.

Before anyone else could reply, a woman burst out of the cottage. She was about the same age as the fat guy, wearing a nightdress. And screaming at the top of her voice as she ran a few steps and faltered at the sight of her dead husband lying in the dirt covered in blood.