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‘Somehow, I don’t think they’ll just hand over our passports and give us tickets home. Even if we ask nicely.’
    They thought about their predicament, until Roberts broke th e silence.
    ‘I say we go with the flow.’
    Houtman shrugged. ‘As I said, what choice do we have?’
    Shouts from outside broke up the discussion, and when Roberts opened the door he saw everyone running towards Sergeant Dan, lining up in groups of three or four.
    Roberts called his friends out and they followed suit, taking up a position towards the rear.
    ‘Welcome to Camp Sunshine,’ Dan said, once he’d done a head count. ‘Now that you’re all here, the first thing we’re going to do is go over the rules one last time.’
    He reiterated the no-talking rule, but explained that when they got back to England, the small groups were going to act as individual cells, each having no idea what the objectives of the others would be. That way, if anyone was caught, they couldn’t compromise the larger operation.
    ‘Ideally, we would have brought three or four of you here at any one time for training, but we have neither the time nor the resources to do that. Instead, you will all learn the same skills, but your final objectives will be known only to your own team.’
    Roberts suddenly understood the reason for the rule, and why everyone was given a number as identification. Still, the colonel could have explained that in the initial meeting, rather than putting a bullet in Eversham’s head. Well, Tony had been an argumentative sod, even on a good day, and he guessed it would only have been a matter of time before steel met skull.
    Roberts guessed there were roughly forty groups on parade, close to two hundred men. If they were all to work in different geographical locations, it meant just about every major city would see some action towards the end of the year. The scale of the mission suddenly dawned on him. It wasn’t the localised mayhem he’d envisaged in the last few days, but a nationwide campaign.
    That brought a smile to his face.
    ‘To pull this off,’ Dan continued, ‘you’ll need to be physically fit and mentally alert. That means daily exercise and lessons in everything from explosives to counter-surveillance.’
    More instructors appeared, all dressed the same way: khaki shorts, boots and green T-shirt. The small groups of men were split up, with some being told to gather around tables, whi le others were given warm-up exercises to do in preparation for the morning run.
    Roberts and his cell, along with four other teams, were directed to a table on which lay a cream-coloured lump that resembled putty. Next to it were a few cheap mobile phones and a box marked Detonators.
    Their instructor launched into the lesson without introducing himself, which Roberts took to mean No questions: just observe and learn.
    As the African sun began its daily climb, Paul Roberts began the first of a hundred and fifty days of intense training, starting with Explosives 101.

SUMMER

Chapter 6
    9 July 2014
    ‘That’s right, darling. It’s a sheep.’
    Tom Gray looked over at his daughter, who was riding in the front passenger seat of his BMW. He didn’t know if Melissa was actually associating the sound with the cuddly toy she was playing with, or if ‘baaaa’ was just an easy sound for her to make. Either way, she was certainly expressing herself a lot more than she had even a month ago. All of the books and articles he’d read suggested the average child would start forming their first words right about now. But, then again, his one-year-old hadn’t had an average fi rst year.
    Melissa had such a bubbly nature, it was hard to believe that nine months earlier she’d been lying in a medically induced coma, the result of smoke inhalation from the fire that had killed his wife. It had been a tense few days, but she didn’t seem to have been affected that badly, though Gray knew it would be another couple of years before any damage would