There was nothing to announce the village. It simply emerged from the darkness, a handful of unlit streets laid out in a rough grid and set in the middle of a barren, dusty landscape. They passed rickety shacks and wattle-and-daub huts, run-down farms. The minaret of a mosque towered like a lighthouse above the dwellings. Bowman looked round but saw no signs of activity. The dead hours. Everyone would be asleep. Maybe the locals didn’t even know about the rebellion yet.

They reached a T-junction south of the town and slewed left on to a modern metalled road running east towards the mountains. They were only a mile from the country residence now, Bowman realised. The road had been built at the request of the mansion’s owner, probably. The building had been intended for the use of Mr Seguma. Therefore, it would need excellent transportation links, fit for the president. Unacceptable to expect the head of state to travel in the same discomfort as his impoverished people.

They drove past a densely wooded area on their right. A scattering of farms and tin huts and unfinished buildings on their left. The Hilux made a sharp right and bombed down a single-lane approach road leading south between the two dense sprawls of woodland. The convoy continued on the approach road until they broke clear of the forest, and then Bowman caught his first glimpse of Seguma’s country residence.

At four o’clock in the morning, in the gloom before first light, he couldn’t see much. There was a whitewashed three-storey mansion set in the middle of a large parcel of land, at the end of a long front driveway. Lights glowed in several of the ground-floor rooms. Bowman spied a smaller one-storey building to the left of the mansion. Some sort of guest house, perhaps. A stone archway towered like a triumphal arch above the entrance to the driveway, two hundred metres beyond the treeline.

‘Seems quiet enough,’ Loader observed. ‘Looks like we got here in time.’

‘Only one way to find out,’ Mallet said.

The Hilux slowed as it neared the sentry box to the left of the archway. Two Presidential Guards stepped forward, raising their AK-47 rifles at the pickup truck and shouting for the driver to stop. The Hilux slammed on the brakes just short of the driveway, the rest of the convoy ground to a halt, and then the older guard approached the pickup while the second guy kept his rifle trained on the Land Cruiser. He looked young and bug-eyed with fear. The rifle visibly trembled in his grip.

‘Bit nervy, ain’t they?’ said Loader. ‘Like they’re one step away from doing a runner.’

‘These lads have just seen most of their muckers get carved up and shot,’ Mallet replied. ‘They’re bound to be jumpy.’