‘Pack it in, Itchy,’ she says. Her words are friendly, half in jest. Itchy’s been like an older brother since they’ve been paired together. Always there for her, nothing too much trouble. ‘Tell me what’s out there.’

Itchy has a pair of binoculars and a spotting scope. Good eyes. An innate sense for picking out the tiniest of anomalies in a scene that would look normal to most people. Itchy is thirty-three, more experienced than she is, battle-scarred, world wise. This is his third tour and it shows in the handful of grey wisps sprouting among his dark hair. An old man’s brain in a young man’s body. He’s seen too many things that can’t be forgotten, although he never brags. You can always tell the true veterans by the number of stories they tell: the fewer stories, the more they’ve seen. Eventually they stop saying anything at all.

Itchy moves his eyes from his scope to the binoculars and pans from left to right. Like her, he’s lying beneath a camouflage net of tan and grey. He’s the lookout, there so she can keep her head down and her eye fixed to the telescopic sight on her rifle. In a sniper team the spotter is the most important component. Anyone can pull a trigger and fire off a shot, although not many with the accuracy she can achieve.

‘Nothing,’ Itchy says after he’s completed his sweep. ‘We’re good.’

‘Keep looking.’ She adjusts her position slightly and blinks, refocusing the image in her right eye. Eight hundred metres away a patrol is heading up to an intersection. Some unlucky bugger on point, the others following. The patrol’s radio chatter crackles in her earpiece. Cautious. Nervous. She can’t blame them for being nervous though. Not with the high buildings looming over the rubble-filled streets. This place is a maze with a dozen wrong turnings. A dozen ways to die.

If she and Itchy were the enemy, half the patrol would already be dead. Luckily they’re on the same side. The closest thing the grunts have to a pair of guardian angels. From this decrepit building they can see a good portion of the locality. They can take out a target at a thousand metres and the first thing the hostile will know about it will be when the bullet hits them.

‘Smith?’ a voice in her ear says as the patrol checks in. ‘Sit rep.’

‘Nothing moving,’ Itchy says in response. ‘All clear ahead.’

‘Taking five,’ the voice says. ‘A breather.’