November 1998. Dan “Spider” Shepherd was sipping his first coffee of the day as the sweat from his morning run slowly dried on his skin. He’d take a shower in a moment, but for now he was content just to relax and take in the scene around him. To the far north, the listening station’s gleaming white radomes looked like giant mushrooms growing out of the pine forest cloaking the flanks of the mountains. The summit of Mount Olympus had been dusted with the first snow of the winter during the night, but at Akrotiri, 6,000 feet below, it was already hot enough for heat waves to be rising from the shimmering white salt flats towards the north of the Sovereign Base Area. He looked over at Jock McIntyre. ‘What is it they say about Cyprus?’ he said. ‘Ski before lunch, and you can be sunbathing and swimming in the sea couple of hours later.’ ‘Know what else they say about Cyprus?’ growled Jock in his grating Glaswegian accent. ‘It’s even less exciting than kissing your grandma.’ Craggy-faced and beginning to grey at the temples, Jock was several years older than his patrol mates.
