He saw a huge, bearded man, not far from where the RPG firer lay.

The big, ugly fucker was coming towards him, silhouetted in the flames, firing a weapon in short, controlled bursts from the hip, like the Angel of Death, walking from the pits of hell.

Twenty-five metres away, now.

Throwing away his empty magazine.

Striding closer, a fresh mag in his hand.

Twenty metres.

Reloading the weapon, he was close enough that Carr could hear the weapon being cocked and the bolt carrier slamming forward, putting a round into the chamber.

Carr looked at his Diemaco.

No fucking chance.

He grabbed for his Sig Sauer, rolling onto his front as he did so, but the big man with the beard was only fifteen metres away, and raising the weapon, and firing.

At this distance, on a clear day, chilled and relaxed on a range, Khasmohmad Kadyrov would have grouped the contents of his magazine into a target the size of John Carr’s head with ease.

But his veins were full of fire, not ice, and this was not a clear day on a range, so the next burst of four shots he fired landed just short of Carr.

They buried themselves harmlessly in the soft ground, but they threw dirt and detritus into the Scot’s eyes, blinding him temporarily.

He drew his pistol and fired a desperate, wild shot of his own, which passed harmlessly wide of the target.

Kadyrov didn’t even flinch: he could see that his target was struggling to clear his eyes.

Smiling savagely, his teeth bared like those of a wolf, he took aim at the prone figure and took up pressure on his trigger.

But then someone – a man, way off to his left, in the haze of smoke and darkness – shouted something, and opened up with a pistol.

The shooter was inexperienced, and too far away to make the rounds count, but one of them at least cracked off near enough to the big Chechen’s head to make him flinch, and the burst of 7.62mm which should have turned John Carr inside out instead screamed off into the night.

With a howl of fury, Kadyrov swung around towards the new threat and fired at the man, who was standing a dozen metres way in a weak combat shooting stance.

The first round went low as the Krinkov came up in the turn, and the second took some of the flesh of his thigh away. But it was the third which did the damage, hitting the shooter in the hip, smashing through bone and rupturing the femoral artery, and spinning him off his feet and out of the fight.

The big, bearded terrorist turned back to deal with John Carr, but that half-second interruption had given Carr all the time he needed.

From fifteen metres, even under these conditions, there was no way in the world that he could miss.