The answer was crisply put, as if the captain, Mal, accepted the unconcealed hostility shown to an intruder.

There was a rattle of information on pipeline sabotage, clusters of incidents where the crude-oil supply from the wells was disrupted on routes through the battalion's area of responsibility, profiles of suspected 'bad guys', and the man never looked up from his screen as he spoke.

'What does that add up to?'

'That we don't have the resources to guard the pipes, that they can be blown up virtually at will, that the oil supply is persistently vulnerable, that we're charging around and getting nowhere. I have to have more time because I haven't yet sorted a pattern of attacks – who's doing it? Identities, safe-houses. Whether they're Iraqis or from over the Iran border, I don't know… That's what's on my plate. My opinion, at the moment, we're wasting our time.'

Two nights before, in Sunray's office, the same statement had been made, and not appreciated. After the captain, Mai, had gone, Sunray had told his adjutant, 'I won't have that defeatist crap. Christ, I'm under enough pressure from Brigade on these damn pipes… I want answers from him, not just excuses for ignorance. Aren't answers what we have the right to expect from the Intelligence Corps? If he can't do better then perhaps we should get him doing something useful, away from that wretched little screen. Work on it, Fergal.' He had: something useful was at Bravo Company, eighty miles up the road, and Sunray had concurred. What the battalion could do without, when Brigade was breathing hard on them, was to be told they were wasting their time. It was probably true, but it shouldn't have been said by an interloper.

'Up at Bravo, an elder was murdered, drive-by shooting.'

'I know.'

'He was a good friend of ours and-'

'Shot because he was a good friend. We like to peddle this hearts-and-minds stuff, delude ourselves the majority love us and are grateful for liberation, that the opposition is only a minority and mostly from over the border. He was killed because of his association with us – that's a death sentence.'