And then he saw it. A single print of a combat boot perpendicular to the angle of his approach, heading towards the left slope. The Scorpion crouched even lower to the ground, almost certain he hadn’t been spotted. In his black bisht he was no more than a shadow in the dusk, a time of shadows. Stealthily, inch by inch he probed the warm sands, sweat causing grains of sand to cling to his fingers. He froze, the sweat stinging his eyes. The antenna had hit something.

Carefully he dug a tiny depression until his fingers barely grazed what he had been seeking: a slender tripwire which connected a line of mines, designed to set them all off once it was tripped or any one of them blown. Now he worked quickly.

He drew a coil of wire, fine as spider thread, from his pocket and carefully looped it around the tripwire. He chewed a piece of gum and balled it around the juncture of the two wires, before reburying the wire in the sand. Then he retreated towards the left slope, silent as a desert zar and as unseen. As he moved he paid out the wire from the coil, maintaining the slack and at intervals burying it under clumps of sand. When he reached the left slope, he began the slow cautious ascent.

He heard them before he saw them. They were off to the right and above him somewhere. He saw the red glow of a cigarette tip and then someone hissed and the red glow was extinguished, but it had given him the chance to pinpoint them. They were along the ledge below the crest, as he had suspected. He would have to get above them, he thought, already moving up and to the left.

Climbing, he had to make sure of each handhold and step, so that there was no sound. There were several problems to be considered. How many of them were there? Was there an L and where was its blocking leg? Or were they on both slopes to set up a cross fire? His thoughts were interrupted by a dislodged pebble clattering down on to the rocks below. He froze, his pulse pounding in his ear like the sea.

“What’s that?” a nearby voice said.

The Scorpion gave a hyena cough once, then again.

Silence.

“It’s an animal,” another voice said.

“Be still,” snapped a third.

The Scorpion waited twenty minutes without moving a muscle, then carefully continued his painstaking ascent.