For the next few minutes, Hector spoke in a quiet, calm voice over the comms system. Max wasn’t fooled, however. He could tell that beneath his gruffness there was a quiver of emotion. Maybe it was fear. Maybe it was something else.

– I’m not going to pretend that this is going the way we hoped. This situation is even graver than we thought and our options are limited. They depend on you and your ability to trust each other and yourselves. I’ve met a lot of military personnel. The best operatives have this in common: absolute trust in their own ability and absolute trust in their team. You haven’t had time to build that trust, so I’m going to tell you now why I know you’re up to this task.

When you all arrived at Valley House, we told you the rules. You weren’t to talk about your backgrounds or family history to anyone. There were good reasons for that. Now there are good reasons for you to learn about each other.

Let’s start with Lukas. Maybe some of you noticed his tattoos. Certainly you can all tell he has an American accent. You might even have heard of the place he comes from. Compton, Los Angeles.

Max looked across the room at Lukas. His face was hard and emotionless. Max had the impression that, whatever Hector was about to say, Lukas didn’t want it to be heard.

– Compton is gang territory. Walk round the corner into a street governed by a different gang, you’re dead. End of story. There’s more gun crime in those streets than almost anywhere else in the world. If any of you were wondering why Lukas was so good with a weapon, now you know. In his world, handguns are as common as toothbrushes: everybody has one. Those tattoos on his arms are gang tattoos. He’s had them since he was nine. His mum and dad had them too. That’s why they were killed.

Lukas’s eyes tightened. His jaw clenched.

– Their killer was a rival gang member. A scumbag with more than ten killings to his name. Everybody knew it was him, including the Los Angeles Police Department. But the killer was well hidden in the heart of his gang community, and the police weren’t going to risk their own skins for yet another gangland shooting. If the killer was going to be brought to justice, someone else would have to do it.

That’s what Lukas did. In the dead of night, he entered the rival gang’s territory. He broke into the apartment where his parents’ killer lived. Then he forced him, at gunpoint, to leave. A lesser guy would have taken the killer back to his own gang’s territory and let his people deal with them. Lukas took him downtown to the LAPD. The killer is now serving life.