It was the start of Operation Anaconda, the US-led military offensive to flush out al Qaeda and Taliban from their last stronghold in the Shahi Kot Valley in Afghanistan. If intelligence reports were correct, there were between 100 and 250 enemy fighters holed up in the extensive cave systems. But reports can be wrong. This book is about the 18 hours of hell that followed, and how Jock Wallace – determined not to die on foreign soil – survived it.