It wasn’t his first preference. The A400M, like the C130 it had replaced, could land pretty much anywhere, as long as the ground was hard enough, and anything that might fuck up the aircraft was cleared – last thing you needed was a stray rock bursting a tyre or two. Ideally, he’d have found a stretch of desert well away from any habitation, and marked out a proper TLZ. But it took time and manpower to mark and clear a TLZ, and time and manpower wasn’t something he had. So the road it was: it would still need clearing, and any debris removing, but at least it was relatively new and likely to be in good nick. He smiled at the irony: the roads were in better order out here than the patched-up, pothole-ridden crap around Hereford. All he needed was a thousand metres – enough for the A400 to land, turn, and take off again. The turn might be awkward, but better that than trying to clear, mark and secure a strip twice as long.

He felt a bead of sweat drip off the end of his nose, and took a quick drink of warm water from his bottle.

Through his scope, the desert was empty all the way to the horizon, which was lost in the haze.

Squinting in the white glare of the sun, he ran through his plan.

Leave at 19:00hrs, arrive at 22:00 at the latest.

Check that the area was clear.

Then – and this was where they’d have to chance their arm – drive up the centre of the road, lights on, and move any shit out the way. Not ideal, but it had to be done to avoid fucking up the plane, and walking it in the dark would be too slow.

That should take them close to midnight.

They’d use subdued lighting to mark the runway, elevating it about three feet off the ground to give the pilot the best acquisition. In an ideal world, he’d talk to the guy on approach, but this world was far from ideal and he had no ground-to-air comms.

They’d be exposed while they worked, but the road was historically quiet and once they’d finished they could sit off and wait until it was time to light up the strip, at minus-ten minutes to landing, which was set for 03:00.

Nicholls had said that the pilot was the best the RAF had, and thus probably the best there was, and Carr believed him – from personal experience, all the guys from the Special Forces flight were phenomenal.

Still, it was going to be ballsy as fuck, bringing a bird in, in the pitch black, on a hasty landing strip marked out by a guy with an O level in geography, and secured by a mere three blokes.