Even at this hour, the air was brutally hot and humid, and it stank of open sewers, old garbage fires, and diesel fumes from the idling vehicles.

Foul in his nostrils as it was, he inhaled deeply: to Carr, it smelled like nothing on earth. He was going to miss it.

Tonight would see yet another operation against yet another high value target – this one a man codenamed ‘Joker’.

Joker: Sufyan bin Ahmed, a former colonel in Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard and now the leader of The Obedient Servants, a vicious Al Qaeda-in-Iraq cell responsible for multiple atrocities and deaths.

Another night, another nasty bastard.

The men of 22 SAS and Task Force Dagger had been at this for a long time now, year after year spent hunting and killing the murderous jihadists who had turned Iraq into a charnel house, slick with blood. Most of the action took place close enough to smell the other man’s breath, and sweat, and fear, in dark, dank rooms in backstreet houses and compounds, where the enemy holed up to make his stand.

With this tour drawing to its end, Carr’s Squadron had been lucky, with only a couple of soldiers wounded and none killed. They were facing a foe who prayed for his own, glorious death, and that presented a very particular challenge. But it was one which the men from Hereford were more than equipped to meet: their phenomenal skill at close-quarter battle, and their proficiency in the art of room combat, had changed the course of the campaign, and the flow of volunteers was drying up. The streets of the Iraqi capital might be teeming with those who loudly proclaimed their desire for martyrdom; few actually stepped up.

Squadron Quarter Master Sergeant Geordie Skelton wandered over, one giant fist wrapped around a hot brew, despite the thirty-five degree heat.

He and John Carr had passed Selection together, and had gone on to serve in every theatre to which the SAS had been committed during the nineteen years they had spent at the tip of the spear. Carr would have stepped through the gates of hell with Geordie by his side, and the feeling was mutual.

‘What’s on your mind, buddy?’ said Skelton, slurping tea.

‘Getting out,’ said Carr, quietly. Absent-mindedly, he rubbed his chin, rough with stubble, and felt the livid, crescent moon scar under his lower lip. A few yards away, a couple of young troopers cracked up at something a third had said. He envied them: they had years of service ahead of them. ‘Knowing I’ll never do this again,’ he said. ‘Knowing it’s all over.’

‘Fuck me,’ said Skelton, with a laugh. ‘That’s another day. Let’s get this one done first, eh?’

‘Yeah, you’re right,’ said Carr. ‘Feeling sorry for myself. Give us a swig of that brew.’

Skelton handed over the mug, and Carr took a big mouthful of the strong, sweet tea before handing it back.