Sam smiled. ‘I’d have fuckin’ RPG’d them if it was,’ he replied.

‘What’s the gossip, then?’ Tyler asked out of the blue. He was a broad-shouldered Cockney with a rugby-player’s nose and a werewolf’s eyebrows. ‘How come we’re being sent straight back out?’

Sam shrugged. ‘No gossip,’ he said quietly. ‘Least, if there is, I haven’t heard it.’

‘Fuckin’ out of order if you ask me,’ Craven announced, ignoring the fact that nobody had. Sam couldn’t help feeling, though, that despite his words he didn’t sound all that offended. ‘“B” Squadron on standby,’ he continued. ‘Bunch of fuckin’ lard-arses that lot. Probably want to send some real shooters out, make sure the job gets done proper.’ He started singing his own words, rather tunelessly, to a song Sam half recognised. ‘You say HALO, I say goodbye…’

The three of them smiled at Craven’s remarks. No one really thought that badly about the other squadrons, but slagging them off was a common enough way to pass the time. Back at the armoury they signed their weapons back in. ‘Everything as it should be, gentlemen?’ the armourer asked.

‘We’ll sign them out again in the morning,’ said Sam. He nodded at Craven and Tyler, then left the armoury without another word. In the morning he would return well before the RV time to assemble his weapons and pack his kit, but until then he wanted to be out of there.

Back home he paced the flat throughout the afternoon. He ate dinner in a café, then returned to pacing into the small hours, playing over the events of the last couple of days, trying to make sense of them, without success. His head was a jumble of images: Jacob’s picture; the faceless figure at his door; Clare’s terrified face and the tempting curve of her body in the moonlit room; her story. Even now he didn’t know which bits of it to believe. He tried to sleep, his handgun resting by his side. But sleep wasn’t going to come. Not tonight. And as the grey light of morning appeared once more, Sam felt almost as if he were in a dream. There was something unreal about what he was about to do. For years he had followed orders without question. It was hard-wired into him. Second nature. Even after Jacob had been expelled from the Regiment; even after Sam and Mac had been told, in no uncertain terms, that if they ever leaked what had happened that day to anyone they would be facing court martial; even then, with all the anger that came with it, he had stayed loyal. He hated the authorities that had belittled and humiliated his brother; but he had never been fighting for them. He had been fighting for the men who stood alongside him, the men he risked his lives with. That was what it was all about.

Only now everything had changed.

Now, he wasn’t fighting with the men in his troop. He was fighting against them. And they didn’t even know it. As Sam prepared to return to HQ, he knew that his objective was different to everyone else’s. If his brother was at the camp, there was no way Sam would let him come to harm.

It made Sam sick to the stomach to acknowledge it, but if that meant putting the operation at risk, then that was the way it had to be.

Credenhill. 07.00. Sam walked into his single-bunk room. The kit he had dumped in here only a couple of days before was still lying on the floor. Vaguely aware of the bustle and noise of the other guys in his corridor doing the same thing, he upturned the bergen so that everything fell out, then carefully went about the business of repacking. It was reassuring to be performing this familiar, repetitive process. It made him feel calmer. More focussed. His sleeping bag was filled with thick Afghan dust. He shook it out before rolling it back up and stashing it with his Goretex bivvy bag. It was an in-and-out job, and if everything went as it should he wouldn’t require either item, but he needed to be prepared. He checked his bright halogen torch and then his small med pack. Sleeping tablets, aspirin, swabs. The patrol medic would have the big stuff – drips, morphine and all the rest of it – so that the rest of the guys could travel a bit lighter. At the squadron stores there was already a buzz of activity. Sam kept himself to himself, speaking only when he was spoken to, as he took a handful of unappetising ration packs to stash away with his kit. Boil-in-the-bag chicken curry with powered soup starter, a packet of crisps and a chocolate bar. All made by some mysterious, unheard-of manufacturer based up in Scotland. There was also something that he understood to be a biscuit, but looked more like a large, circular piece of mould. The boiled sweets were the only item that wouldn’t taste of shit. The Americans got to have gourmet packs made by designer chefs, and the Regiment got meals that some Jock had probably shat directly into. Fucking nice to be appreciated. At the signal store he signed out his sat phones and comms kit, returning to his bunk to stow them carefully away before going back to the armoury to get himself tooled up.

The Diemaco was waiting for him, of course, along with a matt black device that looked like a camera but was in fact a thermal imaging sight for the carbine. Sam signed out his Sig along with the ammo he needed, as well as a stash of flashbangs, white phosphorous and fragmentation grenades. They would be hitting the camp at night, so the 4th generation NV sights were essential. Back at his bunk, Sam removed the jeans, shirt and jacket that he’d been wearing for a couple of days. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror on the wall. His face was unshaven; there were dark rings under his eyes. For a fraction of a second he saw his brother staring back. Sam took a sharp intake of breath and looked away.

His camouflage gear was packed up in his metal locker. The digital camouflage was made up of tiny squares, like a pixelated image in the familiar browns, greens and khakis. Sam was relieved to pull it on.

08.50. The kit was packed and double checked. RV in the briefing room in ten minutes. As he walked across the courtyard he saw two unmarked white minibuses parked up. Craven and a couple of other guys loaded heavy flight cases into the back of one of them. Away from Credenhill you wouldn’t give these vehicles a second look. If you did, you’d probably think they were transporting a school football team. But the flight cases didn’t contain sports gear. Far from it. These were the support weapons – a light machine gun, most probably; perhaps a mortar.

Unlike last time he had been here, the corridors of the Kremlin were now buzzing with activity. There were perhaps twenty-five guys in the briefing room and there was a low murmur of voices. Not rowdy, but not subdued either. The first thing Sam did was seek out Mac. The troop sergeant was up front with Jack Whitely, a sheet of plans in front of them. When he saw Sam enter, Mac raised a hand in greeting; Sam returned the gesture, but made a point of sitting at the back. Was it just Sam, or had Mac given him a penetrating kind of look? Ordinarily he would have told himself to stop being so paranoid; but just at the moment, paranoia seemed to be the sensible option. Someone knew more about his operation than they were letting on. Someone had tipped him off by posting that letter. Was it someone currently within the confines of RAF Credenhill?

09.00 precisely. Whitely did a head count. ‘All right,’ he said with brisk, military authority. The buzz of conversation immediately died down. ‘Looks like you all made it out of bed. Transport leaves in twenty minutes. No further briefing till you reach your forward mount position. Let’s get moving.’

The sound of scraping chairs as everyone in the room stood up. Sam led the way, walking decisively to his bunk to pick up the gear, then heading to where the buses were parked up. On the tarmac several hessian sleeves were laid out. Sam was the first to place his Diemaco on the sleeve – the others behind him did the same. When there were enough weapons on the hessian, it would be tied up into a bundle ready for transportation. Sam left it for someone else to do that, though. Next to the weapons bundles were the parachute rigs, straight from the para store – chutes, oxygen, goggles, helmets, straps. Sam had done enough high-altitude jumps in his time, but you never got blasé about making them and he felt a little surge – somewhere between apprehension and excitement – at the sight of the gear. He placed his tightly packed bergen in a pile ready to be loaded, and was first into one of the buses, taking a seat up front.