A vehicle pulled up, manoeuvred close to the open tail and a door was slid open. Hands lifted him up. His eyes were open now but he did not look around him. In a stumbling slide he went down the tail and the freshness of the air caught him. It was the first time he could remember scenting fresh air since he had been with the Chechen, his friend, and the others beside the long, straight road where the pickup had lost its tyres. There had been no clean air in the taxi van, and when he had been thrown clear at the ambush the stink of cordite had covered him, then the stench of the enemy in the personnel carrier, and the smell of a holding prison that was exchanged for the shit bucket of the aircraft out. There had been no clean, pure air in the camp, not even in the exercise compound.

He sucked in the air. He was to be taken to Kabul and dumped at the Pol-i-Charki. He knew the gaol: he had taken prisoners there for interrogation, men of the Northern Alliance who had fought against AI Qaeda and the Taliban – but that was long ago. Deep in the recesses of his memory, shared with the Pol-i-Charki, was a vague vision of the road from the Bagram base into the city. If he reached the Pol-i-Charki, he would be dead… and he had not come home to die. He was lifted up into a van with smoked windows. The driver was yawning, using his forearm to wipe sleep from his eyes. A marine was in the back with a rifle, grumpily making room for the prisoners. As the officer took the front passenger seat, the driver grinned and handed back bars of nougat chocolate. They drove away, and an open jeep followed with a machine-gun mounted on a brace behind the driver.

He remembered the base as a place of ghosts and ruins. He remembered it abandoned and looted. Without turning his head he saw new, prefabricated blocks and tent camps, then a gate topped with coiled razor wire, flanked with sandbags, guarded by men in combat fatigues.