There were three of them, black dots against the sky, flying in V-formation, the thump of their rotors building in volume as they rapidly approached.

Ben told Ira to head fast for the farmhouse basement and to make sure Riley stayed there with him until the fight was over. Ira hesitated for only a second or two before he ran for the house, and Ben made for the block-built storeroom where he had the BAR set up on its bipod at one of the upper floor windows. He bolted the door behind him, climbed the rickety stairs and settled in behind the weapon. Beside him on the floor was his bag, bulging with spare magazines for the rifle and a Beretta pistol.

The choppers closed in fast and hovered over the farm, their thudding beat deafening, flattening the grass with the wind blast and frightening the horses in the distant paddocks.

From his hidden vantage point in the storeroom, Ben peered through the sights of the rifle and watched as the helicopters descended, maintaining their formation, one in front and two behind. Men in black burst from the open sides of the lead chopper and slithered rapidly down abseil ropes, like spiders on silk threads, dropping towards the ground. Six of them, three on each side, clad in tactical body armour, goggles, helmets, armed with automatic rifles. A slick display of intimidating power that was guaranteed to strike fear into most hearts.

Now it was time for Ben to make use of his edge. It wasn’t so much the BAR, now loaded and cocked and ready to lay down a wide field of fire across the farmyard. It wasn’t so much his years of extensive battle training. It was an innate thing, something that had helped him become the soldier he’d once been.

He didn’t like killing. But he knew he had a gift for it. His instinct, right from the start of his military career, had been to go right at them. Hit them with everything. Speed. Aggression. Surprise. Maximum impact. If these people had come looking for war, he was going to give them a war like they’d never seen before. If he didn’t get out of this, he’d at least make a hell of a mark.

So before the six troopers had even touched the ground he was already flipping off the safety on the BAR and opening up on the chopper above them. He went for the fuel tanks. Where a flimsy pistol round had no chance of penetrating, nine hundred rounds a minute of high-velocity.308 full metal jackets sliced like a hot razor through a pat of butter. The tanks ruptured with a screech of ripping metal and fibre-glass and a deafening explosion as the chopper erupted into flame and crashed to the ground, a spreading fireball engulfing the troopers. They had no chance.

No quarter, no pity. You don’t give it, because you don’t get it from the enemy. Ben fired into the flames, the BAR bucking like a pneumatic road drill in his arms, spent cases rolling across the floor at his feet and the smell of cordite filling the air. He saw burning men struggling to get to their feet, arms waving, staggering back, collapsing into the inferno.

A second explosion ripped the chopper apart. A massive unfolding mushroom of flame blossomed upwards. Black smoke rose in a huge column. Flaming debris showered across the farmyard.

One down.

The two remaining aircraft pulled back, their pilots hauling them up into a steep escape climb. They roared over the farm and banked in a swooping parallel arc. Then they streaked back towards the buildings. Men in black tactical gear were hanging out of their sides, bringing their weapons to bear.

Ben tracked the leading one through the sky. Spent cartridges streamed from the hot breech of the BAR as he launched round after round into the fuselage. A ragged string of holes punched through its body. A fleeting glimpse of the spray of pink mist as someone inside was hit. Perspex shattering and crumpling under the heavy fire.

The chopper veered at a crazy angle, lost altitude and nosedived. The beat of its rotors became a lopsided whumph-whumph-whumph, throwing up billows of dust as it gyrated out of control. For an instant it looked as though it was going to plough straight into the ground right in front of the house – but then the blades caught the edge of the old cowshed roof and the aircraft tore through the old wooden structure, planks and splinters and pieces of corrugated iron spinning in all directions.

Two down, one to go.

The third chopper thudded overhead, climbing to avoid the flying, bouncing wreckage.

Seconds later, what remained of the black-clad troopers from the crashed second chopper were spilling out of the cowshed door, weapons poised. Ben caught them in his sights and hammered them down in a bloody swathe from left to right.

This was too easy.

Then suddenly it wasn’t.

Modern military longarms were fitted with muzzle flash suppressors to conceal the telltale blast of flame from enemy spotters. The BAR belonged to a generation before those kinds of refinements. So when the torrent of gunfire tore through the storeroom roof and sliced down through the building all around him, Ben knew the bright yellow-white flash that pulsed from the barrel of the heavy rifle had given away his position to the pilot of the third chopper.

Fragments of tiles and torn roof beams rained down on him. Windows exploded and chunks of masonry flew as the third chopper hovered over the building and poured down the combined fire of at least two or three assault rifles.

Ben rolled, grabbing the big Browning, dragging his bag with the spare magazines across the floor after him. He hefted the weapon up vertically and fired back up through the roof at the belly of the chopper. Dust showered down into his face.

The craft veered away, spinning towards the house. Ben leaped to his feet, looped the bag over his shoulder, scrambled down the creaking steps to the ground and burst outside into the blinding sunlight.

He was in the junk-strewn alleyway between the storeroom and the ruins of the cowshed. Thirty yards to his left was the gutted-out shell of a dead tractor. Fifteen yards closer, sitting up against the walls of the buildings either side, were two shapeless heaps covered with tarpaulins. Various farm debris was piled up around them.

To his right, beyond the gap between the buildings, the third chopper was hovering steady above the farmyard. As Ben watched, six men streamed down from its sides and hit the ground. He flattened himself against the wall. The men didn’t see him as they dispersed among the buildings, signalling to one another.

But the pilot had spotted him. The machine’s nose dipped and it came on, tracking up between the buildings, gaining speed, the front tips of its skids almost raking the ground.

Ben sprinted away from it, heading towards the cover of the wrecked tractor. Gunfire crackled behind him as he sprinted between the two tarp-covered heaps either side of the alley. He ran faster. Threw himself behind the tractor as bullets whipped up a snake of dirt and dust in his wake.

He raised the rifle. The helicopter was bearing down on him, just a few yards away, sending up a violent dust storm.

Now it was right between the tarp-covered heaps.

Right where he wanted it.

He fired. Not at the chopper but into the heap on the left. Then the one on the right. He emptied the magazine into them, in a scything arc of fire. Then he dropped the empty rifle and hurled himself flat on the ground behind the old tractor.

The blinding flash of light obliterated everything.

He’d found the tall propane gas cylinders in the barn earlier, spares for the old kitchen stove. Next to them he’d found the sacks of four-inch nails that he’d bound to them with rolls of duct tape, wrapping each one up tightly in turn as Ira held the cylinder steady. Hidden under the dirty tarps, they were a crude, giant version of a nail bomb.

Just one problem: he hadn’t intended to be this close when they went off.

In the closed space between the buildings the effect was devastating. The massive explosion took the chopper straight in the face.

It was as though it had hit a wall. It was flung down to the ground like a child’s toy, buckling and crumpling. The windows burst inwards. The rotor blades flew into shards. Then the fireball from the gas cylinders touched off the petrol bombs and jerrycans he’d set up along the sides of the walls, hidden behind farm junk. A sheet of flame closed in on the chopper, rolling in through its open sides like liquid, rinsing it out, incinerating everything that lived in there. Burning men tumbled out, screaming, flailing, falling, dying.

Ben kept his face to the dirt as the spreading fireball rolled over him. Its heat seared his back and for one terrifying instant he thought he was going to burn. But then the hot breath of the flames drew away from him and he staggered to his feet.

Everything around him was destroyed. The shattered buildings were on fire. Bodies lay strewn across the ground, and the stench of charred flesh filled the air. The chopper was a blazing skeleton.

Ben stepped out from behind the tractor. The rifle was lying in the dirt a few yards away. He went to snatch it up, then saw that a piece of flying shrapnel had crushed the receiver. He swore, grabbed the pistol from his bag and emptied out the useless BAR magazines.

Then suddenly, the troopers that had landed from the third chopper were back. All six of them, darting between the shell of the burning aircraft and the wrecked buildings. Weapons raised, fire reflected on their goggles.

And now Ben realised with an icy shock that he was in trouble. More men were coming down the other way. Their leader’s face split into a wide grin.

Jones. He must have landed a fourth chopper somewhere behind the trees, using the first three as a distraction. There were five troopers with him, all clad in tactical battle gear, all aiming the same M-16 assault rifles.

A dozen men in all. Maybe three hundred and fifty rounds of high-velocity rifle ammunition, all for him. And he was trapped right in the middle, with no time to get back behind cover.

‘Got you now,’ Jones yelled. ‘You’re all alone.’