Strike Back Page 18

  ‘What the hell is a white man doing out here, taking British guys hostage?’ growled Porter.

  He started rifling through his pockets. In one, he found thirty Lebanese pounds, along with some loose change. In another, he found a picture of a woman: dark-haired, with freckled pale skin, pretty but slightly overweight, probably in her late twenties. Other than that, there was nothing that might identify who he was or who he was fighting for. No passport, no credit card, no dog tag. The unknown soldier, thought Porter. And you’re welcome to an unmarked grave, mate. You sodding deserve it.

  ‘They must have some kit somewhere,’ said Porter, looking around.

  Hassad grabbed him by the arm. He gestured to the hillside. Now that they were on the other side of the wall, Porter could see the scrubland sloping away to a dusty track. ‘We’ve got to move,’ he hissed.

  ‘I need to find out who these bastards were,’ snapped Porter.

  ‘We haven’t any time,’ said Hassad. ‘There may be more of them here any minute. There are only a few of us left alive –’

  ‘I need to find out why they bloody took me,’ said Porter. ‘It might be important.’

  Another of Hassad’s men was already walking towards them. He was carrying a wounded man who was hobbling, resting on his mate’s shoulder.

  Hassad flashed him a smile. As he did so, the deformity of his mouth was cruelly apparent: the smile twisted his mouth into a hideous mangled shape that gave no hint of pleasure or humour. ‘Welcome back to the Middle East, Mr Porter,’ he said. ‘Nothing out here is ever what it seems.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘I told you nothing out here is what it seems …’

  Porter had already noticed the AK-47 slung around Hassad’s shoulders was suddenly cocked. His finger was on the trigger, and there was no mistaking the casual way its black metal barrel was pointing straight at Porter’s chest. A mistake? Not likely, thought Porter.

  ‘Take your clothes off,’ Hassad snapped.

  ‘What –’

  ‘I said, take your clothes off. We need to make sure you are clean.’

  As he finished the sentence, he barked something in Arabic to one of his men. The guy came back from the Unimog with a pair of black jeans, a sweatshirt and some trainers, and a can of petrol. Porter realised what they were doing: he’d have done the same in their position.

  They wanted to make sure he didn’t have any bugs on him before they took him back to their base.

  He ripped the clothes off himself, tossing them on the dusty ground. While he was pulling on the fresh jeans, the soldier had already soaked Porter’s clothes with petrol, and set fire to them.

  ‘OK,’ said Hassad. ‘Now we can get out of here.’

  EIGHTEEN

  The drive took two hours, but it seemed like much longer. The Unimog was at least five or six years old, Porter reckoned, and its suspension had taken a hammering from the rough dirt tracks it had spent its life driving along. There were six of them in total: Hassad, the four men who had survived the firefight, plus Porter. Hassad sat in the front, along with the driver, while Porter was squeezed into the back with the other blokes. The wounded man was brave enough, but every jolt and bump in the road was tearing up the wound in his chest, and he was moaning with pain through most of the trip.

  Where they were going, Porter had no idea, and he judged it better not to ask. He reckoned they were travelling somewhere through the Lebanese and Syrian borderlands, but the driver was keeping to the dirt tracks, steering away from anything that looked like a main road, so Porter never got a chance to look at a road sign that might help him establish his bearings. From time to time, he could see the lights of a small village, but even if the track they were on went through it, the driver veered off, and pushed the vehicle cross-country until they could connect with the track on the other side of the village. Whether he was doing it because they didn’t want to be seen, or because they didn’t want Porter to see where he was going, he couldn’t tell. A bit of both maybe, he decided. After driving for an hour, they put a blindfold on him, so after that, Porter had even less idea where they were going.

  Porter had tried to talk to Hassad when the Unimog had pulled away from its hiding place, but he told him to be quiet. His men had to rest. He handed around some pitta breads, spread with some kind of chickpea mixture, and they all swigged on the same bottle of water. He was grateful for the food even though it didn’t taste of much. Then the other blokes in the back went to sleep. As the vehicle powered forward, Porter couldn’t get any rest. He was trying to think, to straighten out in his own mind what had just happened, and what he needed to do next. He had no idea who had captured him, or why they wanted him dead. If it wasn’t Hassad, then someone must have leaked where he was, and what mission he was on. And that could only be someone back at the Firm.

  By the time the Unimog came to a halt, even Porter was fighting off sleep, struggling to keep himself alert. He judged that it must be nine or ten at night. Only twenty-three hours or so until the deadline set for Katie Dartmouth’s execution. And probably my own as well, he reflected.

  To Porter, their destination looked like a disused mine. The Mercedes had turned off the track, and down a steep, rough slope that led inside a massive crater. There was a roadblock across the track leading into it, manned by three armed men, and even though they knew Hassad they still checked the vehicle before letting it pass. Taking their security seriously, Porter noted. This place is hard enough to get into. It will be even harder to get out again.

  Around him, he could see some tall cranes, and a long conveyor belt led along the length of the crater towards an old, abandoned processing plant. A metal mine, thought Porter. Maybe copper or zinc. The crater must have measured two hundred yards, by a hundred: perhaps they started with an open-cast mine and then went underground, because there were doorways dotted around the crater that looked as if they led down into mineshafts. A perfect place to keep a hostage. Discreet, easy to defend, and virtually impossible to escape from. Even if I did manage to get Katie loose, how would I ever get her out of here?

  ‘Wait here,’ said Hassad, as they all climbed out of the Unimog.

  Porter stood for a moment next to the vehicle. The wounded man was already being taken towards one of the mineshafts, but the other men stayed behind next to Porter, all of them cradling their AK-47s in their chests. Porter was sure he could smell some wild flowers in the night air, and there was a musty, metallic aroma that came from the piles of broken ore scattered around the crater. Copper, Porter reckoned. He’d had a mate who’d been a plumber once, and whenever you met the bloke for drink, he always had the same smell of burnt copper clinging to his skin after a day’s work.

  Hassad had returned to the vehicle and was looking straight at Porter. ‘Are you here to kill us?’

  Porter didn’t so much as blink. ‘We just want a discussion.’

  ‘Then come,’ he said. ‘We’ll talk inside.’

  Porter followed him across the crater. It was a walk of about thirty metres to the mineshaft, and they completed it in silence. As he walked, Porter was trying to make a mental recce of the layout of the place. Alongside the Mercedes, there were two other vehicles: a small Skoda Felicia, and a big Honda CR-V that had a couple of dents in its side. Close by, he saw a small, diesel-powered electricity generator that was obviously powering the place. He’d already seen a few men go in and out of the mineshaft, so he calculated there must be a whole platoon of Hezbollah fighters here. How many? I’m probably about to find out.

  Hassad pushed open the doorway. The entrance to the mine opened up into a small, low room, with a single electric lamp at one side. The walls were composed of a sandy, stained rock, cut into deep grooves where the mineshaft had been sunk. Directly in front of them was a metal cage lift. Hassad slung the wire door open, and instructed Porter to step inside before he followed and pulled the lever. The lift started to drop: Porter judged they’d descended at least twenty-five or thirty met
res into the ground before the lift came to a juddering halt.

  As Porter stepped out, he could see a corridor leading into the interior of the abandoned quarry. Single-bulb electric lights were slung up on the low ceiling every twenty metres, but they did no more than cast a pale, murky light through the space. Hassad unhooked a gas lamp from the wall, turning up its light, and then starting to descend a rickety flight of wooden steps. Porter counted thirty steps down, twisting through a narrow channel carved into the rock. Glimpses of the copper could just about be seen in the walls. At the bottom, the space widened out into a cave, with six different tunnels leading off in different directions. In the centre, there was some broken and rusty machinery that must once have been used to cut out the ore and lift it up to the surface, but from the state of it Porter guessed it must have been years since the mine was worked. Some water was dripping through the roof. Hassad took the first tunnel, a sharp left from the bottom of the staircase.

  The passageway was narrow, no more than four feet across, and only six feet high: it had been carved out of the rock to ferry the miners deep into the ground, and there was no room for more than one man to pass at the same time. One bloke with an assault rifle could hold this place against an army of men, Porter reflected grimly. They had chosen it with care. Even if the British did find out where Katie Dartmouth was being held, they could send in a whole battalion and still not have much chance of getting her out.

  Not alive anyway.

  Hassad led him into a small room. It measured ten feet by six, there was a straw bed in one corner, and some coffee was brewing on a stove made from hot bricks. There was a sweet, sticky smell to the air that Porter found nauseating. In one corner, there was a lamp, but there was a cloth thrown across it, as if Hassad didn’t like the light too much. He poured some coffee into two small white cups, and handed one to Porter. ‘So now we can talk,’ he said flatly.

  Porter took a hit of the coffee. It was thick and black, with a sludge of grounds at the bottom. He could feel it hitting his veins, washing aside some the exhaustion that had afflicted him since he’d touched down in this country. He had thought about this moment for the last few days, but now it was here, he realised you couldn’t plan a deal like this one. Sometimes a man had to be guided by his wits and his instincts alone. If they weren’t good enough to get him through, then it was no use imagining anything else would.

  ‘You know who they were, don’t you?’

  ‘Who?’ said Hassad.

  ‘The bastards who took me.’

  Hassad drained the last of his coffee and grabbed a handful of cashew nuts from a bowl next to the coffee pot. In the semi-darkness of the room, you could hardly see the deformity around his mouth. You could see the tiredness, however. This was a man who spent his life living underground, and only emerged blinking into the daylight for the occasional fierce firefight.

  ‘I went to the café to find you,’ said Hassad. ‘It was as I had arranged it. When I arrived, you weren’t there, but I spoke to the barman, and he said that you had been led away by two men.’

  ‘They had the password.’

  ‘Then you were betrayed,’ said Hassad. ‘The British can’t be trusted. That won’t come as news to anyone down here.’

  ‘Who says it wasn’t one of your people who betrayed me?’ said Porter. ‘There could be plenty of people who didn’t want me to come here.’

  ‘Everyone here is loyal to me, and loyal to the cause,’ said Hassad. ‘There are no traitors within Hezbollah.’ A thin smile twisted up his deformed mouth. ‘Betrayal is a British speciality.’

  ‘The bastards who took me looked like Arabs to me.’

  ‘They are, but they work for a company called Connaught Security Services,’ said Hassad. There was no emotion in his voice. Porter realised he was in the company of a soldier: a man who killed people when he had to, but who always respected his enemy.

  ‘It’s a British private security firm, with offices throughout the Middle East. They are in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and out here as well. They work for whoever pays them. Mining companies, oil companies, airlines. And the British government as well when it suits them.’

  But why the hell did they take me? Porter asked himself. Who were they working for?

  ‘We have contacts inside their organisation, which was how we found out that they had taken you, and where,’ said Hassad. ‘Once we knew that, we had no choice but to come and get you. Three of my men died, however.’ He looked sternly at Porter. ‘Your life doesn’t come cheap, Mr Porter. Now it is time to tell me why you are here.’

  ‘To bring Katie Dartmouth home,’ said Porter.

  Hassad listened to the statement without a flicker of reaction.

  ‘You have details, I suppose, of your government’s willingness to bring its troops home from Iraq,’ he said flatly. ‘We have already said the woman will be released so long as this one simple condition is met.’

  Porter took a step forward. ‘Is she here?’

  Hassad nodded.

  ‘I want to see her.’

  There was a flicker of doubt across Hassad’s face, but then the twisted mouth turned up into a smile.

  ‘Of course,’ he replied.

  He started to walk from the room. Porter followed him, out into the corridor, and back along to the main meeting point at the bottom of the staircase. Hassad took another tunnel. It stretched for thirty metres, although Porter quickly realised the lamp wasn’t powerful enough to illuminate it to the end. They had walked for ten metres along its length when Hassad suddenly stopped. Right in front of him there was a solid steel door built into the side of the rock. Two men were standing outside, both of them dressed in black, and with AK-47s strapped to their chests. Hassad nodded to them, and they nodded back, but neither of them spoke. Hassad pushed the door open, then stepped inside. ‘This way,’ he said, glancing back.

  Porter started to follow. The pictures of Katie Dartmouth broadcast over the Internet and TV in the days after her captivity had been burned into his memory. But this was different. This was real life.

  Hassad extinguished the gas lamp: an electric line had been fed down here from the generator above, and there were two lamps illuminating the room, making it far brighter than anywhere else in the mine. The room was a decent size, significantly larger than Hassad’s own room, or any of the other spaces Porter had seen cut into the rock. It was at least fifteen feet deep and twenty wide. The walls were squarer than they were elsewhere, and the room felt dry: there was none of the metallic dampness that filled the rest of the mine. There was a smell of sweat and excrement, like walking past an open sewer. In one corner, there was a webcam fixed to a wooden tripod: Hassad switched it off as soon as they stepped inside. But although the room was probably better than he expected, Katie Dartmouth herself looked far worse. As Porter looked at her, he could feel his heart sinking within his chest. What kind of barbarians could do this to an innocent woman? What kind of political point could possibly be worth this kind of suffering? How low into the pits of cruelty can a man sink that he would make another human being endure this amount of humiliation and pain?

  He could feel the anger flowing through his veins. If you didn’t deserve to die for what you did to me sixteen years ago, then you’ve certainly put the ink on your own death warrant with what you are doing right here and right now. No man capable of inflicting that kind of misery can complain about the grisly death that justly awaits him.

  Katie was tied to a stake, exactly as she had been depicted on television – though at least the gag had been removed. It was a thick wooden pole, stripped of its bark, and dug deep into the ground. Her hands were strapped behind her back, held in place with thick leather bindings, and her feet and her chest were lashed to the stake as well. It was impossible for her to move a muscle from her neck downwards. She was wearing the clothes she had been captured in, but by now they were stained and filthy. Her blouse was ripped, and there was a gash running down the side of her blue jean
s. No one had unstrapped her to allow her to go to the toilet, so it was obvious she had no choice but to soil herself where she was. A vile stench was rising up from her stake, and around her feet it was possible to see small piles of human waste. It was her face that looked the worst, though. Her eyes were bloodshot and wasted, with a dark, hollow look to them, and the skin across her face was already dry, stretched and caked with sweat, dirt and blood. There was a cut across one cheekbone, which had dried into an ugly scar, but with some blood still seeping from the wound. And her hair was matted, thick with sweat, and was starting to form itself into ugly clumps that would soon fall clean away from her head.

  The pretty young television star who was filling a thousand newspaper front pages back in Britain was long gone. Instead, her place was taken by a haggard, beaten person, who was already closer to a corpse than a woman.

  How long exactly she had been tied to this stake, it was impossible for Porter to tell. Probably since they took the poor girl late on Sunday night. That made five continuous nights now. It would be virtually impossible for her to get any sleep, nor did it look as if they had been feeding her. There was a jug of water on a table next to her, but there was no way she could reach it with her arms bound behind her back. The closer you looked at her, Porter realised, the more of a miracle it was that she had survived this long. Another day, and the bastards probably wouldn’t need to chop her head off. She’d be dead already.

  They might not have tortured her – not yet anyway – Porter told himself, but that made no difference. They were treating her worse than any animal.

  Her eyes rolled towards his, the eyeballs moving slowly in their sockets. Porter had seen eyes like that before. There were plenty of junkies out on the streets, and they all had dilated pupils and eyeballs they were incapable of moving properly. It was one of the ways of spotting them, and Porter was always quick to steer clear of the crackheads sleeping rough on the streets: they were violent and dangerous, and usually so out of their heads they would attack you for no reason. Her eyes were exactly the same: slow, empty, full of pain, and devoid of any hope. But it wasn’t any kind of drug that had made her like that. It was the bastard standing right next to him.