‘What’s up?’ comes the answer, the radio net working once more. But the response is too late. It’s now or never.

Her finger touches the trigger. There’s a crack from her rifle and time freezes. The bullet will take nearly a second to reach the target and will drop as it arcs in flight. There’s a left to right breeze. She’s had to compensate for the height of the building she’s on, the drop and the windage, but all that comes easy to her. She’s one of the best snipers in the British army and on this tour has already notched up more than half a dozen kills. Missing the target is unlikely.

In the fragment of his life remaining, the boy half turns. He knows nothing of the bullet approaching him at over nine hundred metres per second, which explains why he’s still smiling. He knows nothing until the bullet strikes him just below his right ear, passing through the lower half of his skull and destroying the brainstem. He collapses to the ground.

The sound arrives at the intersection a full two seconds after the bullet, and the patrol leap up in response.

‘Hostile eliminated,’ she says as the men take cover. ‘Your three o’clock. Five metres.’

There’s a chaotic buzz. Point is on the wrong side of the street but he realises what’s happened. He runs from the doorway and widens the angle so he can see down the intersection. He ducks behind a wall and makes a hand signal. One member of the patrol skirts back the way they’ve come and watches the rear, while another covers the forward position. The rest stand motionless while the patrol leader approaches the boy.

‘Shot,’ says Itchy. He pats her on the back. It’s what he always does when she hits the target, whether it’s on the practice range or in the field. Whether the bullet has hit a bullseye or a human being.

‘There’s an ammunition box,’ she hears the patrol leader say over the radio. ‘I can see a wire near the top.’

Careful, she thinks. There could be a delay on the device or perhaps there might be a hidden operator ready to punch a remote button when someone gets close enough.

The patrol leader is within a couple of metres now. He lowers himself to the ground to minimise the possible blast effect and crawls forward.

‘Oh God,’ he says. ‘Oh shit, shit, shit.’

She wants to scream at him to get out of there, but she lets someone else do the talking.

‘What is it?’ Point says.

‘Sweets,’ comes the reply. ‘The box is full of sweets. The wire was a tie holding the lid shut.’