In a perfect world, they’d get two or three helos down and the Russians running around in panic, focusing on protecting the VIPs, while they slipped away to the ERV—the emergency rendezvous point.

He looked left and right at his team’s ambush position. They’d rehearsed their drills until everyone knew their tasks and positions instinctively. Krauja lay five meters away, equally watchful behind her borrowed Latvian Army-issue G36 assault rifle, face smeared with black-and-green stripes of cam cream, blonde hair tied back. The remainder of the team was in position on either side of him, ready to hit any Russians coming up the narrow forest path to their front. Archer was cut off. Watson was on Morland’s right with, beyond him, Bradley behind the GPMG, covering the ambush killing area right in front of them. Wild lay further along, ready to initiate the claymore anti-personnel mines and turn the track into a mass of high-velocity ball-bearings. They were all linked by their personal radios, but in the event of the inevitable confusion and any loss of comms, the signal to bug out to the ERV was the firing of a red Schermuly flare by Watson. Morland noted that it now lay beside him, prepped and ready to fire.

All too slowly, the hands on his watch moved toward H Hour. And then, at 0920, he heard the sound of multiple helicopters from the west, the direction of Riga. That’ll be the first troop-carrying choppers with the TV crews and their Hind escorts, he thought to himself. They’ll need to set up before the VIPs arrive. Then he felt the pit of his stomach tighten with nerves. This is unreal . . . it can’t be happening to me, and he knew at that moment what fear was.

“Get a grip, Mr. Morland,” he heard Color Sergeant Carty of the Welsh Guards, his old instructor at Sandhurst, say. “Just think what the others are thinking.”

Meanwhile, above him, the first Mi-24 Hind gunship flew overhead as it started to fly circuits as top cover. They can’t possibly see us down here, he told himself, so keep focused and be ready for a clearance patrol on the ground. If the Russians are any good, they’ll have them everywhere.

Then his watch showed ten o’clock and he heard the deeper, slower noise of a pair of Mi-8s. That’ll be him, thought Morland, it won’t be long before he lands now.

The next five minutes seemed to last an hour and still the Mi-24s circled. Then they pulled in tighter to Ligatne, leaving them undisturbed. That had to mean the VVIP was on the ground and the gunships were now providing close-in top cover.