Cover

Epigraph

It is only one who is thoroughly acquainted with the evils of war that can thoroughly understand the profitable way of carrying it on.

The Art of War by Sun Tzu, fifth century BC

Prologue

Kabul, Afghanistan. Thirty-five degrees centigrade in the shade. The buzzing of flies and an acrid smell in the air. Something burning. Something bad.

That’ll be the truck, she thinks, the burning. The bloody remains of the people in it, the bad. Men and women and children and goats and chickens. Passengers and goods on the way to the market. Talking and laughing and bleating and clucking until the truck rolled past a roadside bomb. An IED. An improvised explosive device. But there was nothing improvised about it. The attack was carefully planned, the bomb meticulously prepared. And the word improvised does a disservice to those who died. As if killing can be a spur-of-the-moment decision, as if it has no consequence and leaves no mark. She knows from personal experience that’s not true. Killing is a calculated business. In her profession there’s nothing improvised about it.

In truth she shouldn’t be here in Afghanistan. None of them should. The campaign ended years ago. A homecoming with no fanfare and no celebration because these days wars don’t end with parades and tickertape and shiny medals pinned on proud heroes. They don’t actually end at all. And that’s why she’s back on a second tour of duty. Supposedly she’s a military adviser, a trainer, somebody providing support services, but that’s crap, a sham fashioned for political expediency. The reality is that without foreign troops the thin veneer of normality would peel aside and the entire country collapse into anarchy once more.

Right now she’s lying prone on a rooftop five storeys up. Behind her a rusty air conditioning unit stands idle. The unit casts a shadow which shields her from the afternoon sun. The sun is the enemy out here. The heat saps energy and drains water bottles, but it’s the light which bothers her. One glint off a buckle or a flash from an eyelet on a boot and you’re made. And once you’re made then you’d better move fast if you want to live because the insurgents have the ability to rise from the ruins of the city like a miasma. As quickly as they come they can dissipate in the same way, slinking back into doorways, morphing into innocent civilians, returning to their hidey-holes until the night comes. But she won’t be outside the base after dark. That would be nothing short of idiotic.

Beside her is her spotter, Richard Smith. Known variously as Ricky or Smithy or Itchy. Itchy because he can’t stop moving. He’s always fidgeting and fussing and at this particular moment she wishes he’d keep still because she can’t concentrate while he’s constantly in motion.