Strike Back (34 page)

Hassad tapped his foot on the accelerator. The Polo roared and started to rev, then spun along the track, kicking up a cloud of dust as it did so. ‘They think we’re still down in that mine, and that means they think we’re dead,’ said Hassad. ‘They won’t be looking for us.’

Porter glanced round. Katie was lying motionless on the seat. Her eyes were half closed and she was breathing slowly. They had to get her some food and water soon. She wasn’t going to last much longer.

How far is it to the border? Porter asked himself again.

The Polo was powering steadily. Around the perimeter of the open-cast mine was about half a mile, and for its age, the
VW had plenty of acceleration left in it. Hassad was just keeping the engine ticking over, not trying to push it too fast. The road was rough and pitted with stones, and even if you did try to push it above fifty miles an hour, you would probably just crack the suspension. ‘Put your head down while I drive past the soldiers,’ muttered Hassad. ‘And then we just need to get through the roadblock.’

Porter ducked. He buried his head in his knees: in that position, if they drove past anyone at speed, they probably wouldn’t notice him. He glanced back at Katie. No need to hide her. She was already lying flat on her back.

As he dipped his head below the windscreen, Porter could see they were approaching the main road on the far side of the mine. A makeshift roadblock had been set up across the track: it consisted of two mounds of old tyres, with a wooden bar slung between them. Normally, Porter reckoned, there would be two or three soldiers there monitoring who came into and out of the mine, but there was so much chaos down below where the missile had struck there was just one guy, sitting by the side of the road, an AK-47 cradled in his arms.

At his side, Porter could see Hassad tapping his foot hard on the accelerator.

‘There may be an impact when we go through the bar,’ said Hassad. ‘Steady yourself.’

‘Won’t they let you through?’

‘This is Hezbollah,’ said Hassad proudly. ‘Nobody comes in or out of this mine without their vehicle being checked.’

Porter put his hands around his head. The Polo was accelerating now, touching sixty. Suddenly, there was a crunching noise, as the nose of their car collided with the wooden pole. Porter was thrown forward, his head bashing against the cheap plastic of the glove compartment. In the back, Katie jerked upwards and groaned in pain. The Polo served to the right as the impact deflected it off its path.
Hassad was gripping the steering wheel, pulling it back onto the track. Behind them, Porter could hear shouting. And then a rapid burst of gunfire exploded behind them.

Porter heard the sickening crunch of a bullet colliding with the back the car. It pierced the steel skin of the vehicle, but lodged itself harmlessly in the boot. Porter glanced again at Katie. There was no chance of moving her now, Porter realised. Too dangerous. But lying on the back seat, she was the most vulnerable of any of them: any bullets that pierced the back window were heading straight for her.

‘Can’t you move any bloody faster?’ he shouted.

‘I’m trying,’ yelled Hassad.

His foot was jamming hard on the accelerator, but instead of gaining power, the Polo was losing it. The speedometer had touched sixty-five as they burst through the wooden barrier, and started heading down the slope that led towards the main road. But now it was slowly dropping down to sixty, then fifty-five.

Porter glanced in the wing-mirror.

The soldier had climbed on board a motorbike. His assault rifle was slung over his back, but there was a pistol clearly visible in the belt of his trousers. The bike was roaring fast, gaining on them with every metre they covered.

Hassad’s grip tightened on the steering wheel as he tried to move them back onto the centre of the road.

‘He’s on a bike,’ Porter growled.

‘The car won’t move, the tyre is punctured.’

‘Fuck it.’

The Polo was still slowing, dropping down to forty-five now. It must be the back wheel, Porter thought grimly. There was no way the car was going to build up any speed with a back tyre blown out. He could see exactly what was about to happen. The bike was going to overtake them within not much more than a minute. The soldier would
spin past them, stop the bike in the middle of the road, then turn his AK-47 on them.

Hassad might be one of the leaders of this gang, Porter told himself, but he’d seen these boys in action. Everything was sacrificed to the cause.

And everybody.

If they thought he was pissing off with their hostage, they wouldn’t hesitate to shoot him.

And the hostage.

‘I’m bailing out,’ snapped Porter. ‘Keep driving.’

Before Hassad had a chance to reply, Porter had flung open the door on the Polo. As it ripped through the air, Porter curled himself into a ball and kicked back with his legs. Hitting the ground with a heavy thump, a hundred bolts of pain started shooting up through his spine as his back absorbed the impact of the fall. It was only a couple of feet from the Polo’s passenger seat to the dirt track they were driving down, but it felt like at least a hundred. He rolled, keeping his body as curved as possible to smooth the landing, but he was still moving fast over the ground, his naked back taking a dozen different cuts and bruises from the pebbles littering the path.

He could hear a horrible crunching sound where his ankle hit a stone, and prayed to God it wasn’t broken.

No time to worry about it now, he told himself.

I could be dead before the next five seconds are up.

The AK-47 was still in his right hand. Porter rolled to his feet, steadied himself by the side of the road, then whipped the gun into his fists. The Polo was still moving away down the side of the hill, and in its wake, the motorbike was accelerating fast: a Honda, Porter noted, with at least a onelitre engine, the machine should be able to reach eighty or ninety on a track like this, and it was probably hitting those speeds now. He gripped the AK-47 tight in his hands, his fingers closing down on the trigger. The bike was close
now, but amid the dust kicked up in the Polo’s trail it was unlikely its driver would have noticed Porter bailing out. The bike sped past. In the same instant, Porter slammed his finger into the trigger of the AK-47, unleashing a hailstorm of bullets. The munitions ripped through the bike. The sound of metal colliding with metal cracked through the still morning air. Porter took a step forward. He kept his finger glued to the trigger, the bullets still rattling out of the barrel of his gun, tracking the target as it moved across the rough surface of the ground. The bike was wobbling. Some petrol had started to leak from its tank, and the driver had taken a couple of bullets to the back, and at least one to the leg. He was hanging on desperately to the machine beneath him: enough of his brain was still working to know that the bike was now his best chance of escaping the attack. But the machine was spinning violently out of control now. The bullets had severed the brake lines, and even though it was losing power fast, the driver had no way of slowing it down as he tried to straighten up and get down the hill. It twisted brutally, and the man no longer had the strength to hold onto its jerking handlebars. He was spun out across the dirt track, while the bike crashed into a rock close to the edge of the road. The front wheel broke off on impact, rolling down the hill, while the rest of the bike fell to the ground, the engine still coughing and spluttering.

Porter took another step forward.

The man was fifteen metres in front of him on the road.

He was reaching down for the pistol tucked into the belt of his trousers. There was blood pouring out of the wounds in his back, but he still had enough life left in him to hold a gun. Porter raised the sights of the AK-47 to his eyes, and squeezed the trigger. One bullet, then two, then three, smashed into his chest. Porter moved the AK-47 just a fraction of a millimetre, keeping his finger squeezed on the
trigger. The next three bullets smashed into his neck and chin, blowing his face wide open.

The gun dropped from his hand.

The man fell dead into the dust all around him.

Porter started to jog down the road, looking anxiously for the Polo: if Hassad wanted to escape this was his moment. The light was rising all around the mine now. He could see the car had pulled up about two hundred metres down the road. Glancing behind him, Porter didn’t think any more soldiers were giving chase. He ran faster, flinging back the door of the car and jumping inside.

‘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.’

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.