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daughter out of his sight had quietly become an obsession.
    ‘I’m thinking of home-schooling her.’
    Gray actually had looked into the possibility, and there seemed no real barriers. He was certainly intelligent enough, and taking his daughter on educational trips wouldn’t be limited to strict term timetables.
    ‘Great, that’s good. And during playtime, who will she be socialising with? Daddy?’
    ‘What’s wrong with that?’
    ‘She needs to be around kids her own age, man. While she’s supposed to be skipping and playing hopscotch, you’ll have her stripping down an AK-47.’
    ‘Don’t be daft,’ Gray said, but as the words left his mouth, he knew Sonny was right. Melissa needed to run and play and scream with other children, not sit with her boring old father.
    ‘I guess one day I’ll have to cut the apron strings,’ Gray admitted .
    ‘No time like the present,’ Sonny smiled. ‘Take her out to the car and strap her in. She’ll be fine for a few minutes.’
    Gray reluctantly took Sonny’s advice and carried his daughter back out to the BMW. He strapped her into the child seat and gave her the sheep to keep her occupied.
    ‘Here’s some music,’ he sing-songed, putting one of her CDs into the player. ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ filled the saloon, and Gray closed and locked the doors after turning on the air-conditioning . It wasn’t that hot a day, but he wanted her to be comfortable .
    He found it hard to tear himself away from the vehicle, but Sonny took his arm and led him back inside the house.
    ‘Relax. The gate’s locked and the car’s secure. She’ll be fine.’
    Gray couldn’t resist looking back a couple of times, but as the car was still there and wasn’t being attacked by hordes of bad guys, he decided Sonny had a point. He was being over-protective, and it was time to snap out of it.
    ‘Okay, show me what these guys can do.’
    Sonny led him to the indoor range. In its previous incarnation it had been a milking shed, but the economic downturn and supermarket price wars had squeezed the farmer dry. The cows were long gone, and the walls of the twenty-metre building were now soundproofed. At one end stood a row of empty tables, while at the far end a bank of soil covered with sandbags sat behind a set of man-sized targets.
    ‘If you don’t mind setting up the targets, I’ll go and get the lads.’
    Gray walked downrange and replaced the bullet-ridden paper with new cut-outs. He was just setting them side-on when Sonny returned with six men in tow, two of them carrying a large, metal box between them.
    Gray introduced himself and stood back while Sonny explained the purpose of the test.
    ‘Ten rounds each using a Glock 17 at twenty metres. The targets will appear for three seconds, and you’ll be drawing from a shoulder holster. Let’s see what you can do.’
    Sonny unlocked the box and handed out the holsters. The men put them on while Sonny checked the weapons and placed one in front of each candidate. He then put a box of ammunition next to each man and told them to load up.
    While the men filled the magazines, Gray called Sonny over and pointed out a recruit named Mackenzie. At well above six feet, Mackenzie towered over most of the others, though his size didn’t seem to slow him down any. Together, Gray and Sonny watched the tall recruit loading rounds into the clip, his ebony fingers deftly making short work of the exercise.
    ‘According to his application, he spent some time in central Africa with his last employer,’ Gray said quietly to Sonny. ‘He’d be useful for the Benin mission. The current squad will be rotating home in a few weeks, and we need replacements who won’t take too long to acclimatise.’
    ‘He’s one of the better ones,’ Sonny said. ‘He aced the five-mile run this morning, and his intelligence test was one of the highest scores we’ve seen. He’s also proficient in six languages, including Hausa. His father was from Niger,