The driver of the heavy black lorry displayed no sign of being aware of the danger, making no effort to pull in against the rock face to make way for the jeep. His steady, laborious progress did not alter. Perhaps he hadn’t seen them. Perhaps he didn’t have enough power to get up this road if he didn’t make it in one go.

Wilde felt the sweat drip into his eyes.

What a stupid bloody way to die. Survive a war and plummet off a mountain precipice.

There was no time to talk, no time to consult with Lieutenant Mozes Heck, let alone say goodbye. No time even to pray.

A hundred yards ahead they somehow had to make an impossible turn at speed on the sharpest of the hairpins. Would the jeep even be able to corner at this speed? And then what? They would hit the oncoming black truck head on. Wilde glanced at the dials and saw his speed was thirty. He estimated the green timber lorry behind to be doing fifty or more. It would rear-end them in seconds, crushing them into the front end of the black truck, crumpling them like a cigarette packet. Or it would bulldoze them over the lip of the road down hundreds of feet to certain destruction.

Wilde eased the throttle and feathered the brakes. Not hard enough to stop but to slow down a fraction, just as he entered the bend, hugging the inside track against the rock face. The black truck was entering from the parallel side of the hairpin. Wilde had one chance, and it had to be timed to perfection. His eyes met the wide, frowning eyes of the driver of the black truck, then he bluffed and slid left, to the wrong side of the road, just as the oncoming truck made a swerve the other way, as if to hit the jeep and crush it into the rock face.

The offside panels of the jeep scraped and sparked against the side of the black truck. The nearside wheels of the jeep were almost completely over the cliff edge. A mere one or two centimetres of rubber gripped the road, throwing up dust and stones in a billowing fog.

Wilde held the line.

The black truck’s tail moved off centre, a reaction to the driver’s sudden swerve inwards, pushing the jeep to the edge. Wilde’s rear nearside tyre lost contact with the road, hung out out over nothingness. Only momentum kept the vehicle on track. Time slowed down, almost stopped, but then, incredibly, the wheel was back in a rush, tyre burning from the sudden friction as it scorched across loose scree.