Strike Back Read online

  Porter clenched his fists. It would take a man of iron self-discipline not to land a punch on Hassad’s face right now. And he had never been a man who had counted self-control among whatever qualities he might possess.

  It was clear Katie Dartmouth was finding it hard to focus. Her mouth was immobile, and her face was too caked in blood and sweat for any sort of expression to be read into it. But you could see from her eyes she was confused and terrified. The last few days had taught her to greet every new moment with dread and loathing, and this one was no different. She was looking at Porter, struggling to focus, and yet as she did so, she seemed to flinch. ‘Are you …?’

  She was struggling to speak, but it sounded more like the strangled cry of a dying animal than any noise a human might make. Again, Porter could feel a wave of anger welling up inside him. Her lips were so dry, and her throat so weak that it was clearly painful for her even to finish the sentence. ‘Are you … ?’ she started again, this time trying to move her head upwards slightly so that she could see him properly.

  ‘I’m English, yes,’ said Porter, looking straight at her.

  For the first time it was possible to see something other than despair in her eyes. Not hope exactly, Porter realised. That would be putting it too strongly. But there was some strength there that he hadn’t seen when he’d first walked in: a sign that she might be able to struggle through the next few hours at least.

  ‘Who … ?’

  Suddenly she started to cough violently. Her whole body had become badly dehydrated over the last few days and as she started to speak, her throat seized up. Porter could see the shame and humiliation in her eyes as the saliva started to dribble down the front of her mouth. Without being able to lift either of her hands, there was nothing she could do to stop it.

  ‘Who are you?’ she said finally when she managed to bring the coughing under control.

  ‘I’m the best news you’ve had since you got here,’ said Porter.

  It looked as if she was attempting a smile, but her face was too weak for the muscles to respond. ‘I … I …’

  The coughing started up again: a vicious hacking sound that appeared to throttle her, and caused teardrops to start forming around her strained and tired eyes.

  ‘Give her some bloody water,’ snapped Porter.

  Hassad remained immobile, neither saying nor doing anything.

  ‘Fuck it, man, she’ll be bloody dead by tomorrow morning,’ growled Porter.

  He walked over to the jug of water, picked it up and poured some into the tin cup next to it. Then he stood next to Katie, holding the back of her head in his hand. The stench was vile, worse than anything he had ever experienced even while he was sleeping rough. Anyone who has ever been homeless has developed a strong stomach, but Porter was struggling to keep himself from vomiting. He pushed the cup up to her lips, holding her head in position to give her any chance of drinking it. Her throat was so dry that at first the water just washed over her lips, the way a heavy rainfall will wash over the land, but eventually she was able to swallow some of the water, gulping it down greedily. When the cup was empty, Porter turned round to refill it from the jug. But Hassad was now holding it. ‘Here, let me,’ he said contemptuously.

  He filled the tin cup, and held it up to Katie’s mouth. The first hit of water had started to strengthen her, and she was better able to drink this time: as soon as the cup was at her mouth, she drank down its entire contents in two swift gulps, with hardly a single drop spilling out over her face. ‘We need to get you looking alive for the camera,’ said Hassad. ‘That way it will be all the more shocking when your head is severed from these shoulders for all the viewers watching back at home.’

  ‘You can’t execute her,’ snapped Porter.

  ‘I can and I will,’ said Hassad.

  ‘Who sent you?’ said Katie, her eyes darting nervously from Porter to Hassad.

  ‘Nobody sent me,’ said Porter. ‘I came of my own accord.’

  ‘For …’ She started to cough again, and it took her nearly a minute to bring it under control. ‘For what?’

  ‘I might be able to get you out of here.’

  Her head moved slightly from side to side. It was no more than a flick of the neck, and maybe she was just trying to stretch the few muscles she had been left in control of. But Porter could see something else in her expression. She didn’t believe him. Even worse, she didn’t want to believe him. He’d seen the same looks sometimes in the faces of guys dossing down in the street. They’d given up all hope. They no longer reckoned they could do anything for themselves, nor would anyone else be able to rescue them. They were just waiting to die. And the sooner their lives ended, the better.

  ‘Just wait and see,’ muttered Porter, as Hassad took hold of his shoulder, and guided him back towards the door.

  But she had already closed her eyes.

  Hassad looked back at her. ‘One more night of suffering, and then your ordeal will be over,’ he said softly.

  I’ll get you away from these bastards, Porter said to himself. Or I’ll sure as hell die trying.

  NINETEEN

  Porter walked alongside Hassad through the narrow, dank corridor. He knew the memory of what he had just seen would remain with him for the rest of his life – all twenty hours of it. The woman tied to that stake was nothing like the young, tough, resourceful woman who was being talked about every night on the television back at home. She had been boiled down to nothing more than a skeleton with some skin and veins wrapped around it.

  The bastards had only had her for five days. And they’d already drained every ounce of spirit and resistance out of her.

  Porter knew he had to stay calm. Inside he was raging, but he knew he had to conceal that from Hassad. To show even the slightest trace of emotion would be a mistake. He had to make Hassad believe that he was here as a negotiator. He had to convince the man there was something he could do for him, some deal he could offer, that would persuade him to at least postpone the execution for a few days. If nothing else, maybe he could get them to cut her down from that stake, and let her get a few hours’ rest.

  But what? They had discussed it back at the Firm, and apart from releasing the prisoner in Guantànamo Bay nothing they had suggested sounded very convincing. Sometime in the next few hours, he realised, he would have to make the toughest call of his life so far. Shall I try and negotiate? Or should I just concentrate on breaking Katie out with my bare hands?

  But what the hell can I do? Just one man against maybe dozens of them?

  It was just a short walk back to the main junction where the staircase down from the lift shaft ended. Hezbollah had obviously chosen this part of the mine as their main base. How far the mine extended, there was no way of telling for sure: from the surface it looked like it had once been a pretty big operation, so it could go on for miles and miles. Even if only a tiny fraction of it was occupied, Hassad and his men would know the entire layout, and would almost certainly have booby-trapped the rest of the place to deal with any potential intruders. Even if by some miracle I knew exactly where we were, and I managed to transmit the location back to London, the Regiment would find this place tough to break into.

  Porter was surveying the territory as he walked, making sure he knew every inch of the ground, and committed every face to his memory. The same two guards had still been standing mute outside Katie’s door, but he reckoned there must be a shift change, probably three times a day: in any well-organised army, eight hours was the maximum sentry duty you could expect a man to perform before he started getting tired and careless, and Hassad’s mob looked pretty professional to Porter. He made a mental note to see if he could figure out the time of the shift change: there might be a few seconds in which there was a chance to sneak into Katie’s room unnoticed. As they walked into the main meeting point of the tunnels, Porter took note of another pair of heavily armed men standing guard at the bottom of the staircase. In total, Porter reckoned he had seen between f
ifteen and twenty different guys since they had arrived here, including the blokes they’d driven with in the Mercedes. As a rough rule of thumb, he calculated there could well be double that: some men would be sleeping, some would just be in different parts of the mine, some would up on guard duty above ground. That meant there could be anything up to forty Hezbollah fighters down here.

  Forty to one, thought Porter grimly. That’s just suicide.

  Hassad steered him towards the third tunnel leading away from the main meeting place. Like the corridor in which Katie was incarcerated, it stretched back about thirty yards, except at the end this one dropped into what looked like a deep crevice the mining company must have cut into the rock. This must be where some of the men kip down, Porter reckoned. There were a few small rooms leading off the corridor, each one with three or four straw beds on the damp ground. Electric lamps illuminated part of the way, but some of them had been turned off, probably to save power. He saw a few men sitting around in each room. Some of them were cleaning their guns, or repacking the ammunition in their belts. One or two were reading or writing letters. The rest were just staring into space. Same as soldiers anywhere, thought Porter. They were trying to get as much rest as they could before the next firestorm kicked off.

  ‘This will be your room,’ said Hassad. ‘So long as you are our guest, then you can stay here.’

  How long are they expecting me to stay here? Porter wondered. Their plan is to kill Katie tomorrow evening. Maybe I’m the next hostage after they’ve finished with her.

  He pushed open the door. It was no more than a cave: a space where the miners had blasted into the rock years ago. It was four metres deep and about three metres wide. Hassad knelt down to switch on an electric lamp, which filled the space with a pale, golden light. There was a straw bed and a bucket in the corner with some water in it. From the smell of the place, some men had been kipping down here pretty recently, but they seemed to have cleared out. ‘Wash,’ said Hassad. ‘We will eat in twenty minutes, and then we will get some rest.’ He smiled to himself. ‘Tomorrow, after all, is a pretty big day for us.’

  Porter turned to face him. The last time they had been this close was seventeen years ago when he had been about to plunge a knife into the man’s neck. ‘Let me take her place,’ he said.

  Hassad shook his head.

  ‘You need blood, then take mine,’ growled Porter. ‘If you let her go, then I’ll happily replace her.’

  Again, Hassad shook his head. There was no trace of emotion in his eyes. Not even a trace of interest.

  ‘We need headlines,’ he said flatly. ‘It’s the only weapon your leaders understand. Certainly the only weapon with which we can match them blow for blow. And I’m afraid your face isn’t pretty enough to make the same kind of impact on the television screens.’

  ‘Then think of the headlines if you release her,’ snapped Porter. ‘You’ll get massive sympathy right throughout the country. And you still have a hostage you can behead if the government doesn’t give in to your demands.’

  Hassad paused. In his eyes, Porter reckoned he could see a flicker of interest. His twisted mouth was set in a look of concentration, and Porter knew he had to press home whatever advantage he might briefly have. ‘Just think about it,’ he said. ‘You’d have released Katie, and that would get you a lot of support. I’d be a hero for getting her out of this hellhole. And now it would be my life on the line. The pressure to save me from execution would be intense. You’d be closer to your goal than you can ever imagine.’

  Porter was watching Hassad’s eyes, and he could see the proposal dying even as he spoke. The man was losing interest, turning away. ‘Interesting,’ he said finally. ‘But not possible.’

  ‘Why the hell not?’ said Porter.

  He grabbed hold of the fabric of Hassad’s T-shirt, but immediately regretted doing so. Don’t show too much emotion, he told himself. Don’t let the bastards get to you. Just get closer and closer to them until you can start to win them over. Hassad touched the side of hand that was holding on to his T-shirt disdainfully, and Porter instantly withdrew it. ‘Because it would show weakness,’ he said. ‘You’ve been a soldier yourself, so you surely know that to show the slightest flexibility, to admit even the possibility of doubt, would be mistake. We are the underdog, remember, and we have to be harder and if necessary crueller than our enemy if we are to get anywhere.’

  Porter was about to reply, but Hassad was already leaving. ‘One of our men will collect you shortly,’ he said.

  The door shut behind him, and Porter was confined and alone. He noticed at once that the door wasn’t locked. It was just a relatively flimsy piece of wood, wedged into a frame that had been built into the rock. It didn’t have a lock, not even a bolt. Even if it did, one strong heave from the shoulders would probably take the whole thing down. Porter tapped against it twice. Chipboard, he decided. Cheap, and weak. If I wanted to, I could walk straight down this corridor, and find my way out of this place.

  Except I’m not going to.

  They haven’t locked me up because they know I’m not going anywhere. Not without Katie Dartmouth anyway.

  He walked across to the metal bucket in the corner. The smell of the room wasn’t too bad: you could tell blokes had been kipping down on the straw, and certainly nobody had been in to change it, but when you’d been sleeping rough for a few years, you got used to far worse. The air was bad, however: there wasn’t any proper ventilation down here, and what oxygen managed to filter its way into the mine was already stale and old. You could taste the bodies it had already passed through with every breath you took, and it made Porter feel more unclean than he had at any point in his life. Dipping his hands into the water, he scooped up the cold water, and splashed it across his face and his hair. It was the same way he’d washed when he was living on the street. At least I’m used to it, he reflected bitterly.

  There was no mirror in the room, and no shaving kit either. Porter hadn’t shaved since he’d left his room in the Firm, and that was getting on for forty-eight hours ago now. A beard was growing on his face: he’d always been a man who could put on a beard in a few days if he stopped shaving, and, living rough, he’d often had one when he hadn’t been able to get to a proper bathroom. Out here it might even be an advantage, he decided. If by some miracle I escape, then it will help me blend in among the local Arabs.

  Porter paced around the room once then twice. Even though he didn’t know exactly what time it was, he thought it was late on Friday night. The execution was scheduled for eight tomorrow night: that meant if he didn’t make any progress with Hassad and the rest of the raghead bastards tonight, he wasn’t likely to get a second chance. Tomorrow, they’d all be sharpening their swords, ready for their big moment on TV.

  He reckoned that for all their talk – and for all Peregrine Collinson’s talk in particular – the Firm hadn’t made any more progress in the last forty-eight hours. Katie was right here, and it was as clear as hell that the boys back in London didn’t have the faintest clue where ‘here’ was. If they had, they’d be raiding the place. Tonight. They wouldn’t leave it until the last minute. Too risky.

  Porter paused for a second. He splashed some more water on his face, trying to clean the dirt that had clung to him from the cell and the firefight. There were a couple of small scabs from the cuts he’d picked up, but they flaked away easily enough. It was nothing too serious. If they do know where she is, then they might come tonight. If the Regiment have discovered this mine, they’ll send in a unit, probably around three or four in the morning. Even with regular shift changes, the guards were always a lot sleepier around then, and that pushed the odds up in your favour. They’d probably sneak in a few men first, and try and cut a few throats quietly before they set off the big fireworks. I need to be watching out for that in the next few hours. I might be in the middle of making my own move when suddenly a couple of dozen Regiment guys start rampaging through the place. Dressed the way I am, the ba
stards will probably shoot me on sight. I’ll be just one more incident of ‘friendly fire’.

  There was a knock on the door. Porter spun round. There was a boy standing in the corridor. He couldn’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen, Porter reckoned. His short hair was jet black, and his brown eyes shallow and dark, but there was nothing nervous or immature about the way he held himself. He stood up straight and tall, and carried himself with confidence. You remind me of someone, thought Porter. Someone from years ago. Of course, he told himself. The kid looked just like Hassad did the night I should have killed him all those years ago. A nephew, maybe. Or even a son. Christ, it looks like kidnapping, terrorism and torture is a sodding family business down here.

  ‘Come,’ he said. ‘We eat now.’

  Porter followed him down the corridor. The men had emptied out of the rooms, but he noticed there were still three guys with guns strapped to their chests standing where the corridor hit the main meeting point. They don’t trust me that much, thought Porter. If I’d tried to walk out of here, those men would have stopped me.

  The boy pointed left. In his head, Porter was starting to get a rough layout of the mine. The staircase brought you down to the meeting point. In one direction, they had the cells, where Katie and maybe a few other unfortunate souls were locked up. In another, there were the few rooms he’d seen earlier where the men kipped down. Next to that, there were a couple of cells with open bars. Inside one, he could see a pair of young Israeli soldiers chained to the wall: from the looks of them, they were slowly starving to death. And now there was this corridor, the one the boy was leading him along. This must be where they do the cooking, and keep all the kit.

  As he glanced inside a couple of the small rooms cut into the rock, Porter could see a vast array of munitions. There were stacks of assault rifles: AK-47s mostly, but also a few of the American-made M16s he used to fight with when he was in the Regiment, and some IMI Galils they must have captured from the Israeli Army. There were at least a dozen machine guns, with thirty or forty neatly stacked boxes of ammo. A dozen RPGs. At least ten boxes of hand grenades. And a wall full of handguns: Berettas, Brownings, Colts. A whole bloody alphabet of the things.