To complete my anti-clockwise circuit I had to cross the mountainside above the villa, and it was up there, a couple of hundred feet higher than the house, that I came across the helicopter pad – a circle of concrete in the middle of a shallow natural bowl, from which the trees had been cleared. I could see at once that it was big enough to accommodate a Chinook, but not until I was moving away from the centre did I realise what was positioned on one side. From a distance the object looked like a crumpled garden hut. Creeping up to it, I saw that a tarpaulin was lashed down to rings set in the ground. Close inspection revealed a .50 machine gun, set up on a heavy tripod so it could engage targets in the air as well as on the ground. I felt under the cover and ran a hand down the barrel, thinking that the bastards probably had hand-held SAM systems as well.

Sasha had no action to report, so together we pulled off to a safe distance from the villa and settled in a hollow surrounded by rocks from which I could transmit without fear of anyone hearing.

By now the moon was down, and the night had become much darker. As I assembled the Satcom aerial I said, ‘Sasha – I’m working on the plan for tomorrow. I’m going to call for the HALO troop to drop in as soon as it’s dark. But during the day I reckon we’ll want to watch both the house and another building I’ve seen on the far side, over there. That means we need to man two separate OPs. You all right on that one?’

‘No problem. Many times I do such observation.’

‘Good. We’ll have radio comms with each other, anyway. Now – let’s get this thing working.’

I had the Satcom set up on a flat rock, and now turned it a couple of times until I got a strong satellite signal. Then I draped my sleeping bag over my head to muffle the sound of my voice, and seconds later I was through to the squadron base in Kars.

‘Blue,’ said a voice I didn’t recognise.

‘Red here,’ I went. ‘Can I speak to Bill Chandler?’

‘Roger. Wait one.’

I waited, imagining the hangar, guys in sleeping bags around the perimeter, and the squadron CO with his head down in some reasonably secluded corner.

‘Geordie?’ He sounded lively enough. ‘How goes it?’

‘Fine. No problems.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Inside the compound. We’ve got eyes on the villa. We’re maybe a hundred and fifty metres above it.’

‘Any sign of our guys?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Or of the three heavy cases?’

‘No, but I think I know where they are.’

‘Can you identify the site?’

‘Not now.’

‘In the summerhouse?’