Ryan had told everyone inside the supermarket that his arm was OK and they’d been too busy to do anything but take his word. Now, Lauren studied a gory mess around his upper arm and realised that the screwdriver he’d been stabbed with had snapped at the handle, leaving the metal shaft sticking out of his bicep. It hadn’t caught a vein or artery, but Ryan’s pallor suggested that he’d lost a lot of blood.

Lauren yelled at Bruce to find a medical kit, as she pulled a hunting knife holstered to her belt and slit Ryan’s shirt open, just above the wound.

‘Where’s your stab proofing?’ Lauren asked.

‘I took it off in the night,’ Ryan said. ‘It’s tight, I hate it.’

Bruce had found a first-aid kit and overheard as he closed in. ‘Lucky you quit CHERUB,’ he noted. ‘You’d get at least two hundred punishment laps for skimping on protective gear.’

Ryan winced as Lauren pulled the slashed shirt over Ryan’s hand, exposing a well-muscled but bloody arm.

‘I’m not pulling out the screwdriver in case it spurts,’ Lauren said. ‘He needs a proper doctor.’

James and Kyle were ten metres from touchdown as Bruce and Lauren carried Ryan towards a waiting minibus.

The refugee camp was separated from the abandoned highway by fifty metres and a wire fence. But the fence had breaks and curious kids who’d spotted the gliders landing were edging closer.

‘We have to ship out,’ Tovah shouted, as James and Kyle hopped up. ‘The last thing we need is a brat with a camera phone. Get your wings deflated and your planes in the back of my truck.’

‘You heard the lady,’ James shouted, as Kyle opened the valve to start deflating their wing.

Sachs and Yuen helped out, collapsing the carbon fibre strut work of Lauren’s plane, then lifting it into the back of an unmarked truck. Kyle and James lifted their plane in last, giving some of the others a noisy shove to make room.

‘That’s the lot,’ James told Tovah, as he glanced back along the road to be certain. ‘Not a bad result.’

‘I guess it’s goodbye,’ Tovah said, as Kyle grabbed a swinging handle and pulled down the metal shutter on the back of the truck.

James hugged Tovah and cheekily whispered, ‘Free Palestine,’ in the Israeli agent’s ear.

‘Screw you,’ Tovah said, smirking. ‘Keep safe and give Kerry my love.’

Bruce was attending to Ryan in the back of a waiting minibus. Sachs and Yuen were climbing in through the little bus’s side door, but Zahra stood awkwardly in the middle of the tarmac.

‘Are you taking her?’ James asked Tovah, as she climbed into the driver’s side of the unmarked truck.

‘What am I gonna do with her?’ Tovah asked, as she pointed towards the increasing gathering of kids. ‘There’s a refugee camp right there.’