Two weeks later The baby rabbits screamed all night long. It was close to impossible for us to sleep – and we were six hundred metres from the action. Fuck knows what it must have been like for the hundred-odd men, women and children on the receiving end of their relentless squeals, taped on a loop and amplified a thousand times through the AFVs' loudspeakers.

It was still dark. I unzipped my sleeping bag just enough to slide my arm out into the cold. I tilted my wrist close to my face and pressed the illumination button on Baby-G. It was 5.38 a.m.

'Day fifty-one of the siege of Mount Carmel.' I kicked the bag next to me. 'Welcome to another day in paradise.'

Anthony stirred. 'They still playing the same bloody record?' It was strange hearing him swear in perfect Oxford English.

'Why, mate? You got any requests?'

'Yes.' His head emerged. 'Bloody get me out of here.'

'I don't think I know that one.'

It didn't get a laugh.

'What time is it?'

'Half-five, mate. Brew?'

He groaned as he adjusted position. Tony wasn't used to sleeping hard. He belonged in a freshly starched white coat, back at his lab, twiddling test tubes over Bunsen burners, not roughing it alongside guys like me, teeth unbrushed so long they'd grown fur, and socks the consistency of cardboard.

'The papers were calling it the siege of Mount Apocalypse yesterday,' Anthony said. 'Lambs to the slaughter, more like.' It came from the heart. He wasn't at all happy about what was happening here.

Once we'd fixed the listening devices, nobody was interested in the Brits who'd been sent to Waco to 'observe and advise'. We were surplus to requirements. After a three-day consultation with Hereford, who'd had a consultation with the FCO, who'd spoken to the embassy in Washington, who'd spoken to whoever, Charlie and Half Arse had flown back to the UK. I was told to stay and keep an eye on Tony. The Americans might still want to use the box of tricks he'd brought along.