The officers, those with good prospects of advancement, came from the landed estates of the west Highlands. They were a family, a brotherhood. The feeling of being part of a clan, with a regimental history of skirmishes, bloody defences, heroic advances and battles, stretched back for three centuries. Their museum was packed with trophies from the campaigns of Marlborough, the epic of Waterloo, colonial garrisoning, the foothills between Jalalabad and Peshawar on the North West Frontier, the kops of South Africa, the fields of Passchendaele and the hedgerows of Normandy, then Palestine, Malaya, Kenya, the Aden Protectorate, and endless dreary little towns in Northern Ireland. Soon, when the booty had been crated up, museum space would have to be found for souvenirs of the Iraqi desert. The battalion had heritage and tradition, and its family strength recognized the danger of allowing strangers to infiltrate its ranks.

Outsiders were not wanted.

'If you're not too busy, Mal…' the sneer was rich in Fergal's voice '… Sunray would like you up at Bravo tomorrow.'

Alongside the battalion's headquarters building, separated by its sandbag blast walls and its coils of razor wire, was the Portakabin occupied by the Intelligence Corps personnel assigned to them – the sergeant, Cherie, and the captain, Mai, as he was called in the mess. Put bluntly, and it was Fergal's right as adjutant to be direct, the Intelligence Corps captain was a cuckoo. He didn't fit, was not part of the family or a member of the brotherhood. The battalion had its own intelligence officer, Rory, a good man. They did not need the stranger, who knew nothing of the history, tradition, heritage that would see them through – if God was kind – the six-month posting to Iraq. The man didn't mix well, didn't share their culture.

'We've a resupply convoy going up at oh-six hundred hours local tomorrow. You can go with them. What have you got on your plate at the moment?'