The platoon fell silent. Skeletor turned slowly, lowered his rifle to body level and emitted a death ray of a look.

Thomas swallowed, all the moisture gone from his mouth. ‘Ja, like I said, guys, I was there. Skeletor was a real legend today. Really brave.’ He made himself smile.

The buzz around Skeletor resumed. The crowd’s orbit grew tighter. Back slaps, high-fives and handshakes were exchanged as Skeletor recounted how he had blown the heavily-armed terrorist’s brains clean out of his head.

Thomas turned away. He walked down the road, saluting as he went, and crossed over to the prefab building that housed the post office. It wasn’t as if he ever got mail but he didn’t want to be around Skeletor at the moment, at least not until his drug-induced sensitivity wore off, and this was as good a time waster as any.

‘Number?’ asked the potato-faced Lieutenant behind the counter.

‘8800421567. I was on patrol, so I missed the call.’

The Lieutenant rose slowly from his plastic chair and dug through the hessian sacks dumped on the floor. ‘Thomas Green?’

‘That’s me, sir.’

‘What’s it worth to you?’

‘Five?’ His immediate thought was that it was a letter from his parents. He had received nothing from them, not even a postcard, since he had come here, and it was beginning to feel as if they had forgotten about him.

The Lieutenant tossed an envelope to the counter and said, ‘Worth at least ten that letter.’

The envelope was bright pink, the first pink thing Thomas had seen in all these months of brown, grey and green. And everyone knew what a pink letter meant. ‘Fine,’ he said, too quickly, ‘I’ll give you ten.’

‘I said, at least ten.’ The fat Lieutenant licked his thin lips. ‘I was thinking more like one hundred.’

Thomas aimed for nonchalance, but his voice came out high-pitched and desperate: ‘It’s just a letter from my mom. I swear.’