A couple of lengths of nylon twine hung near the doorway, part of the rigging used to hold the sun awning in place. Taher pulled them off and told the men to face away from the house. In turn he wrenched their hands behind their backs and bound their wrists tightly together. That done, he stood and stared at the men. Wondered what the hell he was supposed to do now.

‘Remember what I said inside?’ Hope’s voice was not much more than a whisper, meant just for Taher’s ears. ‘About not letting anything stand in my way?’

‘Yes.’ Taher said. ‘What of it?’

‘Well, they’ve seen me, haven’t they?’ Hope was holding the weapon in both hands. There was a sheen of sweat on her face. ‘We can’t let them go.’

Hope’s tone was insistent and menacing, and he realised he was right not to have crossed this woman. She’d stop at nothing to get what she wanted. Even if that meant executing an old man and a boy in cold blood.

‘No,’ he said softly. ‘We can’t.’

Chapter Thirty-Five

Silva and Itchy had watched the men clamber up the side of the ravine and edge up a gully towards the house. At one point she’d thought the older man would fall; he appeared frozen against the sheer rock face and through the binoculars she could see he’d closed his eyes and was clinging on for dear life. Eventually he began moving upwards and the pair crested the cliff top and crawled into the olive grove where they crouched behind a low wall.

Now, though, everything had gone pear-shaped.

‘Fuck,’ Itchy said. While Silva was looking through the scope at the veranda, Itchy was concentrating on the two men. ‘They’ve been made.’

Silva pulled her eye from the scope and picked up the binoculars again. The two men were getting to their feet at the behest of a man with a smooth face and a wispy beard. The man from the photograph Lona had given her. Taher. He cradled a machine gun and jabbed it at the men as he marched them up to the veranda. Then he hit the older man in the face.

‘We could take him,’ Itchy said. ‘Give them a chance to escape.’

Before Silva could think on that, Karen Hope walked out from the farmhouse. The billowing white sun awning flapped back and forth, obscuring the view every few seconds.

‘It’s Hope!’ Silva slipped back down into a firing position and eased her right eye up to the scope. ‘Tell me what’s happening!’

‘Taher’s got some twine and he’s tying the men’s hands behind their backs. Whatever their stupid plan was it hasn’t worked.’

‘Perhaps they’ve got backup.’ Silva’s other eye glanced at the sky, hoping to see a smudge of distorted air and hear the chop chop chop of a helicopter. There was nothing.