He saw the shape of a man, shadow thrown grotesquely forward, rifle at the hip, an arm raised high above the symmetric shape of a helmet.

Maybe the driver panicked. Maybe terror locked his foot down on the accelerator. Maybe he had never been confronted by the half-lit silhouette of an American soldier.

The combi-van surged past the soldier. For a moment it was clear of him and free.

Locked in Caleb's hand, the wallet was unseen, unfelt. There were cries, shouts of awakened confusion behind him and a claw dug into his arm as the Chechen tried to steady himself. As the van swung in the road, the sidelights caught the prone figures of men in camouflage uniforms beside the tarmacadam. Caleb heard the shouts, then the first shots hit the van.

He glimpsed the wide-eyed terror on the driver's face then – seconds later – felt the warmth as the man's blood spattered on his cheeks and in his beard.

The van, out of control, slewed off the road, rolled once from side to roof to side, then came to rest. A door careered open and Caleb was hurled across the driver's torso and head, his breath squeezed from his lungs. The gunfire went on. Bullets hammered the carcass of the van. Shouts burst in his ears. 'Watch the motherfuckers – don't go fucking close – careful, guys, careful – hit the fuckers.' Another endless rattle of firing, on automatic, raked the van. Caleb hugged the ground between the rocks that had broken his fall from the door. It was more than two years since he had heard words in that language.

It was from his past, from a rejected culture. A moment of silence, then a low moan from inside the van. A final rattle of gunfire killed the moan.

He lay on the ground, his teeth chattering, his mouth filled with dry earth. The spotlight played over the van. He had seen men when they were about to die, the haunted faces of men in the trenches as the helicopters went over, men being led across the football pitch to the crossbar of the goal where a noose hung, men who followed the Northern Alliance and had used all their ammunition, all their grenades, and now faced captors who were without mercy.