Bowman said, ‘What’s going on with the coup?’

‘SFSG landed about an hour ago. Along with the detachment from the SBS. They’ve recaptured the international airport from the rebels. Moving on to the capital as we speak.’

‘It’ll be over soon, then.’

‘Looks that way. As soon as they’ve taken the broadcasting station, they’ll put out a pre-recorded statement by the president, telling his people that the rebellion has been quelled. Once that message goes out, the game’s up.’

‘The hard core elements won’t give up that easily.’

‘Maybe not,’ Mallet said. ‘But they won’t stand a chance against our guys, now that the Russians have abandoned them.’

The morning wore on. Bowman sat with the others near the steps of the stronghold, sipping boiling-hot coffee, each of them feeling physically and mentally exhausted. They looked at one another, but no one said a word. The mood was sober and quiet. There was no sense of jubilation. Just an overwhelming feeling of relief, tempered by the grief they all felt at the loss of their friend. Bowman saw a couple of men from D Squadron placing Loader in a body bag and thought about the promise he’d made in the basement.

As soon as this op is over, I’ll go clean.

I’ll keep it, he vowed. This time, I won’t slip. No matter how hard it gets.

The team waited. After a while, Gregory wandered off to speak with Colonel Lubowa. Mallet was fielding a constant stream of phone calls from the Foreign Office and Six. He was answering questions about the assault and getting information about the situation elsewhere in the country. The attack on the capital was going well, Mallet said. By late morning the combined SFSG–SBS force had captured the broadcasting station, and the rebellion began to fizzle out. General Kakuba had gone silent. His loyal officers were rumoured to have fled across the border.

The sun reached its zenith, beating down on the men on burial duty. Tractors were brought in from one of the nearby farms, and then D Squadron began the grisly task of clearing away the dead. Bowman looked on as they scooped up the corpses into the loading buckets and dumped them in an agricultural trailer. Another group of soldiers from the Karatandan platoon picked their way across the battlefield, gathering up body parts and severed torsos. The dead would be buried in a mass grave by the local forces, removing the evidence of the struggle before the arrival of the foreign press corps. The Foreign Office would be keen to downplay the fighting; they didn’t want some freelance photographer taking snaps of a field littered with hundreds of bodies. That would undermine the narrative they were building. The truth would remain buried for years, decades perhaps. Maybe even forever.

Ten minutes later, Gregory emerged from the mansion. He made his way over to the team, grinning broadly.