by Chris Ryan
‘Let’s get the hell out of here,’ he muttered. ‘Before any more of the bastards come after us.’
‘Those bastards are my people,’ said Hassad.
Porter paused.
The AK-47 was still gripped in his hand. It would take just a fraction of a second to kill Hassad, and if he had to, he would. From the look on his face, he guessed that Hassad understood that.
‘We made a deal,’ he snapped. ‘Just get us to the border, and this is all over.’
TWENTY-FOUR
They had been gone for around an hour, Porter calculated, and twenty minutes of that was spent by the roadside, with the two men changing the burst tyre on the Polo as quickly as they could. Porter kept his eyes on the road around them, trying to get a fix on where they were: according to Hassad they were still in northern Lebanon, but up close to the Syrian border. The road was decent enough, Porter noted. Half a mile from the mine they’d hit some fresh tarmac, and even though the Polo had taken a couple of bullets to its rear, it seemed to be driving OK.
They’d get there. Just so long as nobody else started shooting at them on the way.
It was a day’s drive to the Israeli border, Hassad had said: a total of a hundred and ten miles, but the territory was rough as you got closer to Israel, and progress would be slow. Porter wanted to drive straight there, but Hassad insisted they stop first. He’d take them to a safe house he knew first. They would get themselves cleaned up, then complete the journey. No, just get us there, said Porter. Hassad was adamant. Katie needed some fluids in her: without them, she was probably going to die. And the Lebanese–Israeli border was the heaviest, most heavily militarised on the planet: without any proper weapons they didn’t stand a chance of getting through.
Porter glanced a few times at Katie, but she seemed to have fallen asleep. Porter reached back to check her pulse. It was weak, fading all the time. ‘Hang in there,’ Porter muttered under his breath. I didn’t go to all this trouble just to bring a corpse across the border.
His own condition wasn’t too bad. The shirt had long since been ripped off his back, and he’d taken a battering to his back when he jumped out of the car. His jeans had been torn in a couple of places, and the soles of his trainers had been burnt when they were escaping from the burning mine. There was a hole in the left shoe and the right one wasn’t in much better shape. His chest was a mess of cuts and bruises, and there wasn’t even any water in the car to start washing them.
Hassad’s right, I need to get myself cleaned up, he told himself. There’s still a long way to go before we get out of this hellhole.
‘Here,’ said Hassad.
He pulled the Polo up outside a modest one-storey house, set five hundred metres back from the main road. There was a petrol station about a mile up the road, and eight or nine hundred metres back there was a warehouse. Otherwise the place was completely isolated. A set of hills rose up behind the house, and there was flat plain in front of it, but the ground was too dusty, dry and hard for anything other than a few rough-looking bushes to grow. Safe enough, Porter decided. They could rest for a couple of hours, get themselves back in shape, and get the hell out of here.
Hassad had fished out some keys from a compartment hidden inside the spare wheel. There were at least a dozen on the ring. Hezbollah kept a string of safe houses within a short drive of the mine, he explained. They permanently expected Israeli tanks to come rolling across the border towards them, and were always prepared to evacuate in a hurry. All the keys to safe houses were kept in the cars hidden around the perimeter of the mine. Anyone could grab one at any time and make a clean getaway if the mine came under attack.
Preparation, thought Porter. They plan every move meticulously. That’s what makes them such a dangerous enemy.
He picked Katie up from the back seat of the car, cradling her in his arms. She was half asleep, but also half unconscious. Hassad had already pushed the door open. It was just after eight in the morning, and there was a slightly chill breeze in the air, but the house was warm enough. He followed Hassad through from the hallway into the main room. There wasn’t much furniture: the walls were painted plain white, and there was a sofa, and a couple of cheap wicker chairs, but at least it was clean, and it was the most luxurious place Porter had seen since he left Beirut airport. He laid Katie down on the sofa. She moaned softly as his arm caught one of her many bruises. Porter looked over to Hassad. ‘We need food and medicine,’ he said. ‘She’s in a bad way.’
They walked through to the kitchen area. Even without the full tour, it didn’t take Porter long to get the layout of the place. It had everything you’d expect of a safe house: a few places to kip down, a kitchen well stocked with dried and tinned foods, and plenty of water; a cabinet bursting with every kind of medicine you could think of; and a stash of weapons. There was a TV and a radio, and the house even had a small oil-fired generator to keep the power supply secure. But there was no sign of a phone. If there had been, Porter might have checked in with the Firm, and organised a chopper to come and lift them out. But it would be quicker to try and get to the border themselves, and he still didn’t trust Hassad enough to rely on him to organise a safe line back to London.
Porter grabbed a bottle of water, some cereals and dried crackers, and some medicine. He knelt down beside Katie. Putting his hand to her forehead, he could tell that she was running a slight temperature. There was a film of sweat over her body, and her eyes were still very swollen. Porter had had some basic medical training back in the Regiment, but it was years since he’d tried to use it. He stripped her down to just her knickers. He grabbed some cotton wool and some disinfectant, and started to fix the cuts across her skin: she winced as he treated the worst tears with raw alcohol, washing them carefully, then spreading thick strips of plaster across them. Within moments, she looked more like an Egyptian mummy than a woman. He rifled through the medicines he’d collected from the chest. Among them was some penicillin. He quickly unwrapped a syringe and jabbed it into her arm. She winced, but she was still too weak to register much of what was happening. Next, he took some blood plasma, and pumped that into the vein as well. Along with the fluids, that should help her pull through the next twelve hours or so they needed to get to the border, then they could get her to a hospital.
Right now, some sleep will probably do her more good than anything else.
He patched up some of his own wounds, then grabbed a fresh pair of jeans, a T-shirt and a pair of trainers. The shoes were a size ten, a size bigger than his own feet, but at least they didn’t have a hole in them. He mixed up a bowl of cereal with some dried milk and wolfed it down. It tasted like stale cardboard, but it was the first thing he’d had to eat in ages and at least there was some strength in it. All I need now is a vodka, he thought.
Porter glanced around. Hassad was standing behind him with an AK-47 he’d just taken from the stockroom clutched to his hand.
‘Shit,’ Porter muttered.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Hassad. ‘I’ve had enough chances to kill you already, and maybe I should have taken them. I’ve said I’ll get you to the border, and I will. I’m just equipping myself with some kit in case we get attacked again.’
‘I thought you said this was a safe house?’
‘This is the Lebanon,’ said Hassad with a shrug. ‘Nowhere is safe.’
Porter had already checked out the munitions room. It was a big store cupboard just off the small kitchen. From a distance, it looked like a larder. Inside, there was enough weaponry to have a crack at taking Tel Aviv single-handed. Porter counted twelve assault rifles, each with a couple of hundred rounds of ammunition. There were six boxes of hand grenades neatly stacked in boxes. Two RPG launchers. One machine gun, plus a couple of belts of rounds. And a selection of handguns, hunting knives, ropes, handcuffs and chains.
Porter finished eating his cereal, then suddenly stopped. He could hear something.
Out in the scrubland.
He was sure of it.
He moved swiftly towards the window.
Scanning the land outside, he couldn’t see anything. A couple of trucks rolled by in the distance, but none of them seemed to be stopping. There were no cars parked anywhere in view apart from the Polo outside. But still he felt certain he’d heard something.
A voice.
An English voice.
‘Got any binoculars?’ he said to Hassad.
After rooting around in the munitions store, Hassad returned with a cheap pair of field glasses.
‘You think there’s someone out there?’
‘I’m sure of it.’
He scanned the landscape once more. At first glance, all he could see was scrubland. Acres and acres of dust stretched into the distance. No, he told himself. There is something there. I am sure of it.
A man.
He flicked the field glasses a fraction of a millimetre to the left, twisting the lens to increase the magnification.
A man was lying flat on his belly. He was covered head to toe in dusty-coloured uniform, effectively camouflaging him. To the naked eye, he was just a ridge of dirt in the ground. Porter locked the binoculars tight onto him. The man was fifty metres away, between the road and the house. Although he was flat on the ground, he was advancing steadily towards them. He passed the glasses across to Hassad. ‘We’re under attack,’ he said.
‘How many?’
‘I can only see one guy,’ said Porter. ‘But there will be more of them. We can be sure of it.’
Somewhere behind him he heard a crash. He ran to the back of the house. A fragmentation grenade had been lobbed through the window. Glass was shattered across the floor. The grenade was lying in the hallway: there was no time to get rid of it before it blew. Porter clamped his mouth shut, and ran towards Katie. He hauled her over his back, ran towards the front door and flung it open. Looking around desperately, his eyes were searching for some cover. Without it, they were about to get cut down like dogs. There was a small wall close to where they had parked the Polo, only four feet high but just tall enough to provide some shelter. ‘Get the fuck out of there,’ he shouted at Hassad.
He dived towards the wall, flinging himself and Katie to the ground. Behind him, he could hear the grenade blowing inside the building, throwing a cloud of dust and smoke into the air. In the same moment, Hassad emerged coughing and spluttering from the house. He must have taken a lungful of fumes when the grenade blew, Porter guessed. Let’s just hope it’s not enough to put him out of action.
There could be a dozen of the bastards out there.
Are they Hezbollah? Porter asked himself. Maybe Hassad only brought me here so he could finish us both off.
Katie was muttering something, but there was no time to listen to her now. He unhooked the AK-47 from his back, and checked there was still some ammo left in the clip.
Hassad was running towards them, covering the ten metres from the house to the wall. He hurled himself down next to the others, and promptly threw up on the dusty ground. ‘Puke it up, man,’ Porter snapped. ‘It’s the only way to get the bloody smoke out of your lungs.’
Another explosion rocked through the house. Porter turned round. They must have put at least two, maybe three grenades into the place, igniting the munitions dump. A huge fireball rocked up into the sky, followed by a heavy cloud of thick black smoke. Porter tried to ignore it. A diversion, he told himself. The bastards are trying to move us out of here. Then they can gun us down.
Porter found a gap in the wall. Carefully, he slipped the AK-47 through it, so that only his hand was exposed, and even that was mostly protected by the muzzle of the assault rifle. He squeezed hard on the trigger, unleashing a barrage of fire into the space directly in front of them.
He heard a man scream, then another one.
The bastards were charging me, he noted with grim satisfaction.
But who the hell are they? And how did they know we were here?
‘Lay down some fucking fire,’ he shouted at Hassad.
He pulled the AK-47 back from the wall, discarding the empty clip. Glass and plaster had blown out of the house, covering the area with debris. He could feel the dirt clinging to his face. A hole had been blown in the roof, and waves of intense heat were billowing out of the burning building.
‘Fucking fire,’ he screamed.
Hassad spat the last of the vomit heaving out of his chest onto the ground. He lifted his head to the edge of the wall, his finger poised on the trigger of his gun.
‘Keep your fucking head down,’ shouted Porter, jamming a fresh clip into his own rifle. ‘They’re coming straight at us.’
Both guns were lodged over the wall, and Porter and Hassad fired in unison, unleashing a lethal barrage of bullets. Porter heard another scream, and the sound of a man roaring with pain. Suddenly there was a thump as something collided with the wall. He felt his heart skip a beat. In the next instant, a man had landed on the ground, just five feet from where Porter was positioned. He was about six foot tall, with a stocky build, and jet-black hair. His skin was tanned and lined, but he didn’t look more than thirty. He didn’t look like an Arab either, Porter noted. He crashed straight into Hassad, knocking him to the ground. Blood was pouring from his shoulder where he must have taken a bullet while charging the wall. His gun had fallen to the ground, but a hunting knife was gripped in the palm of his right hand, and was pointing straight at Hassad’s throat. Porter aimed the AK-47 at him, and tried to line up a shot. It was too difficult. As the two men struggled, they turned into a blur. Shoot and the chances were he’d kill Hassad as well. Glancing at the wall, he could see that there were no more men jumping over. He threw the gun aside, and jumped across to where the two men were wrestling. Hassad was lying on the ground. His right hand was sticking up, gripping his assailant’s arm, trying to stop him plunging the knife straight into him. Porter rammed a fist straight into the man’s ribcage. It was as hard as rock. The man barely flinched. He spat down into Hassad’s face. ‘Die, you bastard,’ he said.
Porter punched again. This time the blow connected, and he could feel a rib cracking under the force of the blow. The man groaned. He spat a mouthful of his blood down onto Hassad’s chest. Porter clenched his fist, drew his arm back, and smashed it into exactly the same spot. He could feel the man’s ribcage splintering: one, maybe even two bones cracked open as the blow hit home. He screamed in pain, rolling off Hassad onto the dusty ground. In the same moment, the knife in his hand lashed out. Porter leapt backwards, narrowly avoiding the blade slicing open his stomach. He stamped hard, bringing his new trainer down on the man’s hand. The knife fell away. Porter ground his foot down, making sure the fingers were driven down into the dirt. With the other foot, he kicked hard into the man’s stomach. The wind emptied out of him, and more blood dribbled out of his lips.
Hassad had already picked himself up from the ground. He had grabbed hold of the knife and was holding it tight into the man’s throat. ‘Who the fuck are you?’ Porter growled.
The man remained mutely silent.
Porter paused. Glancing again over the short wall, he could see three bodies. All of them looked dead, killed as they tried to run into the wall. At his side, the safe house was still burning, throwing off an intense heat. It looked like there had been a total of four men making the assault, and they had now dealt with all of them. He looked back at the man. ‘I said, who the fuck are you?’
The man looked back at him. His eyes were bloodshot and swollen, but although there was fear in his expression, there was defiance as well.
‘Piss off,’ he spat.
Even through a couple of broken teeth, and a mouthful of blood, Porter recognised the accent. A Scouser.
‘What the fuck are you doing out here?’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to nick. Now tell me who sent you –’
‘Fuck off.’
Porter glanced towards Hassad. ‘Cut him,’ he snapped. ‘Work on the gunshot wound.’
Hassad leant into the man
’s chest. He ripped open his shirt, and sliced open a wide, deep cut in his shoulder. Blood bubbled up out of the open wound, spilling down into the ground.
Porter knelt down, leaning into the man’s ear. He picked up a handful of dust and dirt and chucked it into the open wound. ‘The Arabs are fucking savages, and so am I,’ he said. ‘Now just tell us, and then you can go out and sleep in the scrub with your mates.’
There were tears of pain streaming down the man’s cheeks.
Porter punched him hard in the stomach. He coughed violently, and a fresh river of blood tipped out of the gaping wound in his stomach.
‘Just tell me,’ Porter growled, ‘and I’ll let you fuck off to the great Scouser-nicking shop in the sky.’
‘We work for Connaught Security,’ he shouted. ‘Perry Collinson is ultimately in charge of it. He sent us out here to kill you.’
Porter slammed another foot into the man’s stomach. ‘Fucking mercenaries,’ he spat. ‘There’s a lot of competition for who’s the lowest scum in this hellhole. But I reckon you blokes are right at the bottom.’
I’m bloody through with bastards trying to kill me, he told himself. I’m going to take it out on someone.
‘Why?’
Another half-pint of blood spilt onto the dusty ground.
‘Why?’ shouted Porter, louder this time.
But the man’s eyes had already closed.
I already know why, Porter thought. And the only man I have left to speak to is Collinson himself.
TWENTY-FIVE
Katie felt heavy in Porter’s arms. He lifted her clean from the ground, and ran quickly towards the car. The safe house might be isolated, and there wasn’t much in the way of law and order in this part of Lebanon, but the explosions in the house would attract attention. We don’t want to be around when the police or the Hezbollah militia show up, Porter thought.
