Afghanistan wasn’t where Tom would’ve chosen to go on holiday. Not that it didn’t have its upsides, for sure. The sunsets were pretty amazing, like the one he was watching right now. The sun had just dropped below the horizon, but the sky was a brilliant orange gradient fading through purple into a deep blue over his head, the first sparkles of stars just visible. And through the colour, sharp streaks of dark cloud sliced jagged pathways that gleamed with outlines like liquid gold. Almost a hundred of miles from the nearest concentration of artificial light, the night skies, too, were hard to beat. But at ground level it was a bleak, brutal place and it bred a tough kind of people.

Good people. His kind of people, if he were honest. If it weren’t for the fact that so many of them wanted to kill him, he thought he would make friends here. There was a way of life here that managed to be simultaneously laid back and deadly serious, that had been built upon generations of conflict and the resolute extraction of a living from the uncompromising landscape.

The nutters were nutters, of course, same as everywhere except these nutters had a cultural tradition of violent resistance and access to alarming quantities of Soviet-era small arms. But the ones who just wanted foreign invaders to leave them the fuck alone, well… Tom reckoned he would probably think the same thing if someone decided to invade Wales and bomb Aberyswyth. But sympathy for their cause only lasted as far as the point at which they started shooting or, as might be the case, drove a vehicle full of improvised explosives and scrap metal into the front gate of the local base.

Movement on the skyline caught his eye and he shifted his focus away from the startling colours of the sunset towards the dark side of the mountain valley he was watching.

‘Target,’ he muttered, and his spotter grunted an assent.

Tom liked Jock. The man knew how to appreciate silence. They could go days, sometimes, exchanging barely half a dozen words. And right now they were sixteen hours into a twenty-four-hour patrol, occupying their second hide and that was the first time either of them had spoken for four hours.

‘We have intelligence about a planned VBIED attack,’ his briefing officer had told him, late the previous night, after pulling him out of a planned forty-eight hour rest period, six hours early. ‘Local chiefs have taken a bribe from the Taliban to move a vehicle into the area packed with explosives. Our source doesn’t know the target, but given the size of the vehicle, we’re betting they won’t waste the opportunity on a sangar.’

‘Coming here, sir?’ he asked, pulling the blurry photo of a beige SUV towards him across the trestle table.

‘Either here or passing through on its way to Bastion,’ the captain agreed. ‘Either way, better to stop it now than later.’

They could’ve just swarmed the area with patrols, of course. It would’ve caught the SUV, for sure. But it would also have made it obvious that they had an intelligence source in the local chiefs. The ideal solution would be to stop the fuckers with just a modicum of subtly - the sort of thing that could make it look like a chance encounter. Such as having their engine block punched through by a .50 calibre round.

The first step had been a roadblock surge. The occupying forces ran them frequently enough that the attacking team would have planned around one. It just meant launching patrols out along all the major routes for six to eight hours to run ID checks and inspect vehicles passing through an improvised checkpoint. It was dangerous work for the patrols, because putting themselves in one place for a few hours would draw out anyone who fancied taking a random shot at them. But a short burst would force whoever was at the wheel to go off-road. And going off-road in this country wasn’t a simple prospect. The landscape was littered with everything from steep-sided streams and unexpected rocks to forgotten landmines. As a result, the locals knew what the safe off-road routes were and, thanks to satellite surveillance, so did the British G2 teams. Probably.

Which brought us to the second step: an hour ahead of the surge, half a dozen two-man sniper teams were deployed on covert patrol. Deployed by night on quad bikes, each pair stashed their bike before setting out on a carefully coordinated journey from one hide to the next for twenty-four hours or until they saw the target. For Tom and Jock, it was a fourteen-mile oval route in total. Not too bad. The hides had all been built either by them or by other teams over the last two years. They were little more than depressions in the mountainside, shallow enough to be ignored, but deep enough that, with a camouflage net over the top of them, two men could lie side by side with good concealment.

All the same, you had to approach each new hide very carefully. You could never know when one had been compromised and someone had left a nasty little concealed surprise to catch you out the next time you visited. Habits got soldiers killed in country like this.

But now they had a target.

It had just crested a low ridge, which was how it had caught Tom’s eye. There was still too much light to switch to the night-vision scope, but the sunset backdrop and dark landscape made it hard to make out clearly. Tom peered through his scope, muttering to Jock.

‘Tree. Seven o’clock. One hundred metres,’ he said, referencing a landmark - the only scraggly-looking tree visible from where they were.

‘Aye,’ said Jock, and Tom heard the click of the radio. ‘Zero, Delta One One Charlie, target, over.’

There was a brief pause and he imagined the radio operator at the base jerking up to attention. For the last sixteen hours it had been nothing but routine status reports - “Delta One Two Charlie, Lucan”, and “Delta One Four Charlie Anteater'' and suchlike, just calling out location code names as each team got into place on schedule. They had the first target call of the day.

‘Roger. Factors, over.’ The reply was asking them to confirm how many factors of the target they could confirm. They were looking for a tan or white SUV with a long wheelbase and at least two men, with blacked-out windows in the rear compartment.

Tom watched the vehicle slowly creeping its way down the rugged slope. No rush. It was definitely an SUV. Factor one. It had a long wheelbase. Factor two. It was definitely pale, but could be grey or even light blue in this light. No factor. He could see hands on the steering wheel from this angle and what looked like another in the passenger seat, but no faces. No factor. And making out the windows and whether or not they were blacked out? Not going to happen.

‘Two factor. Strong,’ said Tom. Strong, because it was a pale, long-wheelbase SUV. If it had been a black sportscar trying to negotiate an Afghan mountainside, even with two men and blacked out windows, it would’ve been “Two, weak”. It would also have been fucking hilarious.

‘Two factor. Strong,’ agreed Jock. Then he opened the radio line again and repeated himself.

‘Tango, over.’ came the reply immediately: take the shot.

‘Tango, roger,’ replied Jock, then, to Tom. ‘Five Seventy. Declination thirty. Five klicks north west.’

The spotter had a more sophisticated set of range-finding equipment than Tom could fit into a scope, so he got to call the range, scribbling simple calculations on a sheet of white plastic on his wrist. Tom adjusted the sights to fit the range and declination. Light wind. Easy shot.

Orders were to stop not kill, which was why Tom was lugging the Cyclone HSR on this patrol: a .50 calibre anti-materiel rifle designed to punch holes in light armour or, as in this case, a vehicle’s engine block. The slow-moving target rolled over a rock and stopped. Tom breathed out and depressed the trigger.

Despite all of the technology in the rifle - from the shock-absorbing custom shoulder rest to the recoil-reducing muzzle break - the release of the massive round still rocked Tom back as the massive boom of the release echoed away down the valley.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

‘Good hit,’ said Jock, only the slightest hint of satisfaction in his calm report, before Tom could settle himself enough to inspect the impact.

There was a visible impact hole in the car’s bonnet, and the occupants - two men - had already spilled out from either side, with respectable presence of mind, taking cover. Both were carrying AKMS rifles, the collapsible stocks folded under the barrels, but from the way they were waving them neither had the faintest idea that the shot had come from over half a kilometre away. And even if they had, they would’ve had to run a lot closer before they stood half a chance of hitting either of the British soldiers.

‘Zero, Delta One One Charlie,’ said Jock on the radio again. ‘Tango Golf, over. Factor three. Strong.’

Tango Golf confirm a good hit - one that conformed to the mission parameters and rules of engagement. And now they’d seen only two men exit, he had confirmed a third factor. The fact that the men had weapons wasn’t, in itself, suspicious. A lot of locals with nothing to do with opposing the occupation carried rifles in their cars. But the fact that they had the slightly more sought-after AKMS, rather than the ubiquitous AKM was certainly suggestive.

‘Zero Roger,’ came the reply. ‘State Oscar. Echo One Three en route.’

State Oscar asked them to stay in place and watch the targets to guide the closest vehicle patrol to the right location. That was Echo One Three.

‘Delta One One Charlie,’ said Jock, ‘Please advise Echo One Three that Tango is figures Two. Foxtrot. Alpha.’

Two men. Foxtrot indicated that the target was armed. The Alpha qualifier meant small arms only seen. Bravo would have meant an RPG launcher. Charlie would indicate heavier weapons like a vehicle-mounted machine gun or similar.

‘Roger, out.’

Tom drew the bolt back, ejecting the heavy casing over his shoulder. They’d police the brass later. Then, with a firm hand, he slid it forward again, stripping a fresh round from the top of the five-round magazine. Normally, they would change position after a shot, abandoning the site in case their target had spotted them and could bring down mortar fire. But it didn’t look like the two men had worked out where the shot had come from. Then, suddenly, they started moving.

It was a sign of their lack of training that both ran at the same time. They were supposed, after all, to be suicide bombers and you didn’t waste tactical training on your most expendable bodies. But if one had moved, the other might stand a chance of seeing the muzzle flash from the Cyclone. Not that that would’ve helped them if Tom chose to take a shot. Even if he missed, they were still far too far away for the men to return fire. They might have been able to call in a mortar strike but… yeah. Again, you didn’t waste training on how to accurately walk mortar fire onto a target on people intending to blow themselves up. A lot of the fanatics weren’t even locals: Pakistani Taliban were feeding martyrs across the border and a surprising number of young Saudis were following the example of their cult leader, Bin Ladin, and crossing the border to give their lives in the battle against the Western Crusade against Islam.

Tom had never served in Northern Ireland. He was too young. But memories of that conflict were still fresh in the Army. A lot of guilt and regret as well as the usual gung-ho shit. But there was a degree of respect for the tactics the Provos had used. Not much for the protection rackets, abuse and drugs dealing, of course, but they’d never strapped bombs to teenagers and told them to go and find heaven.

‘Zero,’ said Jock again, ‘Please advise Echo One Three that Tango is mobile on foot and moving east from our location, over.’

‘Roger, out,’ came the reply.

Whether Zero had time to convey that to E13 was moot as, barely a minute later, the two men crested the ridge, silhouetting themselves to whoever was on the other side, and Tom saw them both react a full second before the cracks of incoming fire reached the sniper team. Through his scope, Tom saw one of them drop immediately, but the second hunkered down behind a large boulder, pulling a bandolier of what Tom assumed was grenades from under his waistcoat.

‘Call it,’ said Tom.

‘Six twenty,’ said Jock immediately. Not the longest shot Tom had ever taken, but it was a small target. ‘Declination twenty-two. Four klicks, west.’

Tom adjusted his sights again and settled back to watch the surviving fighter. In… Out… In… Out…

The round went straight through the target and into the rock in a shower of fragments and dust and the man slid to the ground.

‘Tango Golf,’ said Jock.

In silence, they watched E13 reach the top of the ridge and cautiously approach both bodies, stripping away their weapons and grenades. After a brief pause, the squad’s medic rushed up into view to crouch beside the first of the men to go down in the exchange. Still alive, he might make it long enough to find himself in front of an interrogator, but his partner would definitely not. Tom had seen the effects of one of the HSR’s rounds on an unarmoured human body before. The holes in and out weren’t all that impressive. In theory, a human could take something that size and shape going through them in all kinds of places and survive if they made it to a good surgeon quickly. What made the difference with the HSR was the sheer velocity of the impact. The shockwave at the front of the round effectively liquidised tissue in front of it, compressed it inside the body cavity and then, as it exited on the other side, pulled that liquidised tissue - and a good amount of un-liquidised organs and other tissues - out with it. It sounded - and looked - pretty horrific but as far as Tom could tell it was a better way to go than many others. The impact alone would usually stop a heart instantly and, if it didn’t, the subsequent shock of the near-instantaneous blood loss would render the target unconscious for the very short amount of time it took to actually die. Probably the only survivable impact would be one to a lower limb that might just remove the limb entirely and put the target into shock. Apply a tourniquet quickly enough and they could still see another day.

‘Delta One One, Zero,’ came the radio operator’s voice on the line again. ‘Reorg with Echo One Three, over.’

‘Roger, out,’ agreed Jock.

Technically, they still needed to check the vehicle had been the right one and not just a random encounter. The other teams would likely stay out a while longer. But it was routine to bring a team in after taking a shot, especially a lethal one. Odds were that E13 had notified Zero that the second man had been engaged by Tom. You could never predict how anyone would react to taking a life, even a sniper. It was Standard Operating Procedure to get any soldier back into base for at least twenty four hours as soon as possible after a lethal contact. It wasn’t always practical, of course. A single firefight could last for days at the isolated sangers. But Tom was used to meeting with the psychologist at Camp Bastion by now. It didn’t help to be macho about that kind of shit. Taking a life was a big deal, even when it was the right thing to do.

Without another word, Jock pushed the camouflage sheet back and cautiously stood up. You didn’t rush to expose yourself even when you thought the danger had passed, and the spotter did a full three-sixty from a kneeling position, his L85A3 rifle at his shoulder as he scanned for threats. Then, with a tap on Tom’s thigh, he shouldered his bergen and rolled the camouflage sheet back into a pouch on his webbing. Tom knelt up, doing his own scan around the area while Jock tidied then, with the Scotsman kneeling nearby, Tom checked his own bergen, policed the brass and, with a tap on Jock’s shoulder, began working their way across the landscape towards where E13 was controlling the scene.

‘Nice shot, fellas,’ said the squad leader, a sergeant in the regiment called Dormouse and universally known as “Sleepy”.

Tom just nodded.

‘Y’alright, Tam?’ said Jock. But Tom ignored him. There was something odd about the vehicle, lodged amidst the rocks, further down the slope from where the squad had spread out. The medic was still working on the wounded enemy, which was a good sign. If he was worth stabilising, they could probably get him out and back to a hospital in an hour or less.

‘We’ve got a Chinook on its way from Bastion with EOD to pick us up and shift us back to base,’ said Sleepy to Jock. ‘If you lads want to grab your quad, we have time to load it up.’

‘Aye, sounds good,’ Tom heard Jock reply, but he was drawn downslope towards the vehicle.

There was a distortion in the air next to it. Not the usual twisting of hot air at the horizon that was a sniper’s bane in flat, hot terrain, but something stranger. He turned his head left and right to try to focus on where it actually was, but it just seemed to be floating in the air a foot or so above the vehicle’s rear axle. As he got closer, he could see that, at its very centre, it was sparkling.

‘Oi, Elgar, get the fuck back here!’ yelled Sleepy. But his voice seemed far away and dim. Tom could hear what he was saying, but it was like hearing voices on TV. They were talking, but not to him. ‘Corporal! Stop walking! The car hasn’t been cleared yet!’

‘Tam! What’re ye doin’?’

Tom descended the last few metres to the car. The distortion was larger than he had expected and he was close enough to see that it was a sphere at its centre, like a crystal ball as light and fragile as a soap bubble that was pulling and stretching the air - no, the space - around it and, wherever it snagged at the space, it sent out little tendrils of light that reminded him of those amazing plasma globes, but more delicate and, somehow, more purposeful.

He reached out to it, entirely deaf to the shouts of those far above him on the slope by now, and one of the tendrils seemed to reach back, snapping gently back and forth before it locked onto his fingertip and, suddenly, there was a sensation of both pushing and pulling, of terrible heat and unspeakable cold, of both noise and of a silence so profound that it felt like a physical thing and then -