Jalal opened his mouth to reply, but before he could speak Kadyrov felt an enormous pressure wave, and sensed rather than saw a giant fireball erupt a few metres away inside the compound.

The heat singed most of the hair and beard off that side of him, and instantly blistered his face; the pressure blew him and Jalal off their feet, and left them winded on the ground, and showered in rubble from the collapsed wall.

A sizeable chunk of the generator had landed a few metres from them, but the blockwork had taken most the force of Fred West’s bar mine, and apart from his burns Kadyrov was unharmed. Thanks to the strange physics of explosions, Jalal was not hurt at all.

Gritting his teeth against the pain, Kadyrov clambered back to his feet.

And in the glow from the dying fireball, he saw two men kneeling in the palms.

Now his rage was all-consuming, and all thoughts about the women, and any careful, tactical pursuit, had vanished from his mind.

Now he just wanted to kill anyone.

He was raising the Krinkov to his shoulder when he heard the RPG-7 firing behind him – Jalal, reacting with impressive speed.

The rocket-propelled grenade exited its launcher at 117 metres-per-second, and armed itself five metres into its flight.

At eleven metres, the piezoelectric fuze activated the grenade’s rocket motor and it began to accelerate.

It would eventually have reached almost 300m/s, but it was halted by the trunk of a date palm, which it struck two metres to John Carr’s right, and three metres above his head.

The HEAT round was loaded with 730g of OKFOL high-explosive, enough to send its molten copper warhead knifing through armoured steel, and the blast took off the top of the tree and punched it ten metres on.

The design of the weapon meant that much of the force and the molten metal splashed harmlessly onwards and outwards, too, but some of it did not.

The blast knocked John Carr off his feet, and blew the Diemaco out of his hand.

As he lay in the dirt, gasping for air, temporarily confused, his ears ringing, he saw Fred West climb groggily onto one knee, and take aim and fire a long burst at the RPG shooter.

As the shooter went down, West turned to Carr.

‘Fuck it, John,’ he said. ‘I’m hit.’

And, with that, he pitched, face down, into the earth.

Carr looked around himself for his weapon.

It was lying some five or six metres away.

‘Wait one, Fred,’ he said, as though West had any choice. He started trying to stand up. ‘I’m just…’

But as he spoke, an AK started firing, the shots ripping into the trees around him at just above head height.

Carr hit the deck, and rolled away, scrabbling frantically for some sort of cover, trying to get eyes-on whoever was shooting.