There were a few nods and glances: there’d been a lot of speculation as to why they’d been placed in a state of readiness, and high up the list of possibilities had been that it was to rescue Charlotte Morgan and her friend.

‘The good news is she’s free,’ said SSM Arnold. ‘The bad news is she’s stuck in the middle of the Libyan desert.’

There was a slight murmur of surprise – after all, the only people who got involved in this sort of thing were the people sitting in the room.

And if they didn’t know anything about it…

‘How the fuck did she get free, Rich?’ asked the Troop Staff Sergeant, a short, stocky guy called Simon Pearce, who headed up the team.

‘It’s sensitive, Si,’ said Arnold. ‘But since most of you know him… John Carr got her out.’

The buzz in the room intensified at that. The bulk of the team had served under Carr and those who hadn’t certainly knew ‘Mad John’ by reputation.

But he’d left the Regiment a few years earlier for a cushy job in private security.

What was he doing cutting about the Sahara?

The question was voiced by the troop staffie.

‘John?’ he said, his face puzzled. ‘What the fuck’s that about?’

‘Mate, I don’t know,’ said SSM Arnold, ‘and we don’t need to. Explains why the fucker wasn’t up from London for Nick’s birthday do last week, though.’

There was a burst of laughter, and more chatter.

‘Okay, guys, settle down,’ said Arnold, raising his voice to silence the room. ‘This is the concept of operations. Move from here to Brize by CH47. We land next to an A400 which is already on the pan and waiting to go. Fly straight down to Sicily, courtesy of the Yanks and the Eyeties.’

He used a laser pointer to illuminate Naval Air Station Sigonella, on the eastern edge of the Italian island.

‘From Sig, it’s low-level, straight in, over here.’

The laser showed a point on the north Libyan coast, near to the Tunisian border crossing point at Ras Ajdir.

‘From there, straight on down to a TLZ somewhere around here, outside the town of Al Fuqaha, which John will mark and secure. We land, we secure the area around the plane, we get the ground team on board, and then we fuck off back to Sicily. Simple as.’

He looked around the room.

‘We’ll be launching around 01:00 tomorrow, so we’ll have time to refine the plan and have a full brief reference roles, responsibilities et cetera, once we get to Sigonella. In the meantime, any questions?’

‘Who’s the pilot?’ said Simon Pearce.

‘Stretch Armstrong.’

Pearce nodded his approval. Armstrong was a good pilot, and a man he knew from many a trip.

‘Enemy dispositions, Rich?’ said another older hand.