The power sabre slashed the alarm cord. Yedrin was already hammering spikes into the bombard’s firing mechanism.

Minka had memorised the plans, but she pulled them out for quick confirmation, mentally checking off her list of targets.

‘This way,’ she said, and led them down to the right, towards an autocannon Chimera turret mounted on an angled rockcrete base, fifty feet below.

A flight of sandbagged stairs plunged down towards it. She took the stairs three at a time, skidding down the cliff face. She didn’t need to break in. Some fool had left a ventilation grate open. She dropped a pair of grenades inside and stood back to wait for them to go off. The whole pillbox shook with the sudden blast, and then white smoke poured out from its openings.

Minka led her squad along a trench. Halfway along was an observation platform and another pillbox. She ran towards it with Yedrin at her shoulder.

There was a young man in the pillbox doorway. He was maybe twenty, a skinny lad, dressed in heavy padded coat and soft wool cap. He shouted out. His voice was panicked.

It seemed that in the darkness he had heard running feet and had assumed that it was his own comrades running to his aid. As Minka approached he said, ‘There are intruders!’

His face fell as he saw who ran into the light. ‘Yes, there are,’ she said.

Her bolt pistol bucked twice. Both shots hit.

His chest exploded. The force pulled his ribs apart like wrenching open the fingers of a pair of cupped hands. The ruins of his body fell sideways and left a bloody smear down the wall.

She tossed a frag grenade through the doorway. Someone staggered out, blind and bleeding. Blanchez dropped him with a headshot.

Minka slid down another flight of stone steps. There was a ­latrine to the right. The stale stink of urine was strong, despite the sea air.

There was another gun emplacement further down the terraces circuit. She had barely a moment’s warning before someone threw themselves at her. She saw the flash of a knife and caught his hand in hers.

It was a Swabian Fusilier. He must have been out to relieve himself and now he was on her back, trying to drive eight inches of cold blue steel into her kidneys. She flung him off and he scrambled up.

‘Let me,’ Orugi said, but Minka held him back. She wanted to do this for Dido.