The battle was brief, intense and frenetic. In the midst of it Ben saw another of his SAS guys go down, hit in the thigh. Two of the Delta troopers were less lucky, one blown to pieces by another RPG round and the other fatally wounded in the throat by a rifle bullet fired from the house.

Then out of the corner of his eye Ben spotted Nazim al-Kassar and four of his men breaking from the entrance and running for the dusty black SUV in which they’d arrived. He fired on them, punching holes in the side of the vehicle. The SUV took off, wheels spinning in the dirt. Ben kept firing until his rifle was empty, shattering the windows and perforating the bodywork like Swiss cheese.

The SUV went into a wild skid and crashed into a low wall. Its driver burst through the windscreen in a spray of broken glass and blood, his face mangled to a pulp, his body sprawling lifelessly across the bonnet.

Ben drew his pistol and sprinted for the wrecked car, ignoring the bullets flying past him, intent only on stopping al-Kassar before he got away. He wrenched open the car door. Al-Kassar was in the back seat with blood on his face, clawing a pistol from his belt. Ben lunged inside the car, smacked the gun out of his hand and knocked him unconscious with three vicious strikes from his pistol butt. The elusive Nazim al-Kassar was now a prisoner.

Less than three minutes later, the fight was ended. The unseen attackers retreated from the edge of the plateau and into the surrounding hills, never to be seen again. The smoke cleared from the butcher’s yard of the village to reveal eleven dead insurgents on the ground, three more dead inside the building, and two critically injured. The rest had thrown down their guns and surrendered, evidently not quite so willing as all that to lay down their lives for Allah.

The task force had lost three men, Taylor and two of the Delta guys, as well as sustaining two further non-fatal casualties. Ben radioed in a CASEVAC chopper and the injured were airlifted from the scene along with the wounded prisoners. A grim death toll, to be sure. Ben was deeply upset about Taylor, and furious with the misleading US intel that had dropped them in the soup like that. But the task force had succeeded in its mission to snatch al-Kassar and several of his top aides. JTJ had just suffered a major defeat.

Or so Ben thought, as he returned to base that day with a truckload of prisoners in tow.