‘What the fuck now?’ Mac asked under his breath.

Sam sensed that his hostage’s sight was returning. He was looking at Mac with an animal snarl and had started to struggle. Sam dug his weapon into the fleshy part of the man’s neck and felt his muscles freeze.

A figure suddenly appeared at the top of the stairs. He was stepping sideways, facing Mac and Sam, his gun already pointing in their direction. Mac didn’t hesitate. His first bullet hit the guard in the chest, knocking him backwards.

‘Take that, you cunt.’

The Iraqi’s AK-47 discharged a round harmlessly into the air above them before Mac’s second shot hit him in the head. He slumped heavily to the ground. Sam’s hostage looked in horror at the sight of the shattered bone and brain matter that had burst from the dead man’s head. His limbs started to tremble.

Another silence.

And then it was broken. Not by the guards this time, but by something quite different. A voice, down below. Urgent and bellowing.

Jacob.

Sam pictured him on the ground floor below, just by the back entrance with his weapon pointed across the hallway up towards the stairs.

‘Sam!’ he shouted. ‘Mac! Flashbang!’

Sam braced himself – and just in time.

The bang from Jacob’s grenade was close by and deafening. Even with his eyes shut Sam could see the flash illuminating the red of his clamped-shut eyelids. In the confusion, he heard three shots and then his brother shouted out again.

‘Clear!’

Sam opened his eyes. Mac was crawling forwards. He carefully peered round the corner at the top of the stairs, then slowly got to his feet, his weapon still at the ready. Having taken stock of the situation, he turned round and nodded to Sam.

The terrified hostage was like a dead weight as Sam pulled him to his feet. When he saw the sight that greeted them, he started trembling even more than before. It was a bloodbath. The three remaining guards had slumped to the bottom of the pale stone stairs, leaving trails of blood along the steps. Their bodies were in a crumpled pile, their limbs distorted. The only sign of life was the blood still pumping from their wounds. Sam forced his hostage down the stairs and over the pile of bodies. And while Mac covered the entrances to the hallway where they stood, Jacob directed his gaze towards the Iraqi. He then pulled something out of his ops waistcoat.

It was a playing card, one of the ones issued by the Americans. Printed on the front was a man in military uniform. He wore a black beret, sported a bushy moustache and had an aloof smile of self-satisfaction. He didn’t look a whole lot different to Saddam Hussein himself.

Their hostage looked a good deal less smug in real life than he did in the picture. His beard had several days’ growth, his hair was dishevelled and there were dark rings under his eyes.

There was no doubting, however, that it was the same man.

Jacob held the playing card up to the hostage’s face.

‘Snap,’ he said.

The processing centre was not far away. Before the invasion it had been an interrogation centre for Al-Mukhabarat, the Iraqi Intelligence Service – not a place you wanted to end up. Sam wasn’t so green not to realise, however, that little had changed in that respect since the Americans had taken over the facility. Al-Mukhabarat were not known for the gentleness of their interrogation techniques; but then, neither were the CIA.

They drove in a three-vehicle convoy, one truck containing the SAS unit, their hostage, and a driver, the other two flanking them on either side. Their driver, a beefy American in shades and a combat helmet, had a bad case of the verbal runs and wasn’t put off by the fact that Sam, Jacob and Mac were sitting in stony silence. ‘Processing centre’s overrun,’ he observed loudly. ‘They’re pulling every last fuckin’ Iraqi in they can lay their hands on, Ba’ath Party or not. Course, a lot of them get sent home again, but not before they get interrogated.’ The driver barked, a brutish, ugly sound. ‘Interrogated? Jeez, they’re getting medieval on them in there. Good thing too if you want my opinion.’

He glanced in the mirror, perhaps waiting for some kind of agreement. When it wasn’t forthcoming he carried on. ‘Reckon they’ll find a cell for this one, though. High up on the list. How d’you boys find him?’

It was only the fact that they were arriving at their destination that stopped the driver asking again.

From outside it would be impossible to guess what went on behind the concrete façade of this bland building. Only the military presence – unusually heavy even for Baghdad – gave any outward sign that this place was anything more than a standard administrative building. There were ten men, perhaps more, wearing US combats, Interceptor body armour and brandishing standard service rifles. As the military convoy pulled up it aroused a good deal of interest in the soldiers standing guard outside the facility. And when Jacob, Sam and Mac emerged into the sweltering heat with their bedraggled, terrified hostage, there was a palpable sense of excitement. Since the invasion, people had been dragged into this place from all over Baghdad, but they didn’t usually have this kind of escort.

‘Welcome to the Baghdad Hilton, shit-for-brains,’ an American voice called out. A few others laughed as their hostage stared at the US troops in bewilderment. Word of his arrival had evidently preceded him.

‘Looks like you got Delta Force showing you to your room,’ someone else shouted. ‘Don’t forget to tip them!’

Sam, Jacob and Mac remained stony faced. Typical of the Yanks to assume it was their boys who brought this guy in, Sam thought, but none of the unit were about to correct them. That wasn’t the Regiment style. Sam pulled their hostage by his upper arm towards the main entrance. The fat Iraqi was sweating like a pig and he’d gone limp. In fact Sam almost had the impression that he wanted to stay close to the unit and away from these scornful American soldiers. Better the devil you know, he supposed, even if they have just eliminated your thirteen guards in under two minutes.

They crossed the threshold into the processing centre. There was a dark reception room, mercifully cool thanks to the stark concrete walls. On the far side were a series of three arches looking on to a courtyard about the size of a large swimming pool. There the resemblance ended, however: the courtyard was parched and dry, a layer of dust covering it. The high building cast sharp black shadows over it from the blazing afternoon sun. Soldiers milled around the shaded areas, but those parts of the courtyard that were in full sun were deserted. No one wanted to be in this kind of heat unless they had to.

Two men awaited them. They too wore American combats, but no body armour. Sam could tell instantly that there would be no banter from these two.

‘Hand him over,’ the taller of the two men said, addressing the unit like they were little more than servants. ‘You’ll have to wait here for a debrief.’

‘How long?’ Jacob demanded.

The tall man raised an eyebrow as though he were speaking to a kid who had just answered back. ‘As long as it takes, soldier. Why? You got something better to do?’

Jacob gave him a dark look, but said nothing. Beyond him, from the corner of his eye, Sam noticed a couple of soldiers escorting a young Iraqi lad – no more than a teenager – across the courtyard. The kid looked frightened.

‘You,’ the tall one continued, nodding at their hostage. ‘Come with us.’ There was no attempt to speak to him in his native language, but the Iraqi understood what was being said to him well enough. He followed the two soldiers across the courtyard, disappearing with them through another archway on the opposite side.

‘Have a nice day,’ Mac muttered in a sarcastic American accent.