Strike Back (38 page)

It was close to mid-afternoon. After an hour’s drive, Hassad had suggested they stop for some food, and wait for darkness. They were fifty miles from the Israeli border by now, and Hassad was convinced they needed to plan their breakout. The strip of land between Lebanon and Israel was used by Hezbollah to launch its rocket attacks on its neighbour. The territory was swarming with fighters, making it one of the most heavily militarised places on earth.

‘Where’s the best place to get through?’ asked Porter.

While they were still in the van, Hassad pointed to the
map the driver kept on the front seat. ‘Here,’ he said.

Porter glanced down. Beit Yahoun. It meant nothing to him.

‘Never heard of the place,’ he said.

‘It’s a border village, and one of the main crossing points between Lebanon and Israel,’ said Hassad. ‘There used to be about ten thousand people living there, but the place has been shelled to bits over the years. There are about a thousand people there now, and most of them are soldiers.’

‘Can’t we sneak through somewhere a bit quieter?’

Hassad laughed, but his expression quickly turned serious again. ‘Quiet? On the Israel–Lebanon border?’ He shook head. ‘There is no such place. Every inch is heavily fortified, and if the soldiers see you, they shoot you on sight. That goes for the Israelis as well. They see us coming through the wire, they’ll open up their machine guns, and worry about who the hell we are later on.’

‘And you think this Beit Yahoun place is safer?’

‘There’s a demilitarised zone of about a mile, a bit like the no-man’s-land that used to exist between the Berlin Wall and the West. There isn’t much trade or traffic that goes between Israel and Lebanon, but what there is, mostly goes through there. Get into the no-man’s-land, and we should be able to walk through to Israel without being shot.’

Porter glanced around. ‘Then let’s go,’ he said.

‘Not yet,’ said Hassad.

Porter checked the time. It was just after four in the afternoon. The execution was scheduled for eight, and he’d have wanted to get Katie out of this hellhole long before then. ‘When?’ he snapped.

‘We have another fifty miles to travel, and the roads aren’t great,’ said Hassad. ‘Plus there are roadblocks to get through. It will take us about six hours. We stay here about two more hours, and travel when it’s starting to get dark. It’s safer that way.’

The time passed slowly. They stayed in the van. Porter managed to buy some more painkillers, and swallowed most of the packet. They would make him feel drowsy, and slow his reaction times if they came under attack, but it was better than the terrible pains that were still throbbing through his jaw and up into his head. Porter tried to nap. Sleep was impossible, however. He was too wired up. Another few hours, he told himself. Then I can get Katie out of here, deal with that fucker Collinson, and start getting on with the rest of my life.

As soon as we get back to Britain, I’ll reveal that man’s treachery to everyone.

And maybe even see Sandy again.

By six, it was getting dark outside. Hassad judged it was safe for them to start moving again. After buying some bottles of water and some food from the café, they loaded themselves back into the Fiat van. Hassad took the wheel, while Katie sat between then, her face completely covered by the burka. Porter had tucked the AK-47 underneath his feet, but he made sure the mag was full again, and that he could reach it within a couple of seconds. They could have used the ammo that had been destroyed back at the safe house, Porter thought bitterly, and another couple of guns. If it hadn’t all been blown up by Collinson’s men.

The first hour passed without incident. The road was long and straight, and there wasn’t much traffic around. The weather was clear enough. It was turning cold, and there was some cloud spitting across the night sky but the half-moon would occasionally break through. It is always the same, thought Porter. The closer you get to the end of a mission, the more you long for home.

It was close on seven in the evening by the time they turned due south. The road they were on snaked along the border, and would eventually take them all the way down to the coast. The road was terrible. The surface of the tarmac
was regularly broken up into rubble. For the past couple of years, the Israelis and Hezbollah had been shelling each other across this narrow strip of land, and the Israeli tanks had rolled through it, decimating everything they encountered. There were a couple of villages along the way, but they had long since been abandoned: just collections of empty, crushed buildings, without even any wild dogs still living in them. After ten miles, there was a single petrol station, but it only had two pumps, the price was double what it was in the rest of the country, and the owner had put up a steel bunker to hide the payment kiosk. Territory doesn’t get much more hostile than this, thought Porter. And we’re driving straight into it.

‘If anyone stops us, just leave the talking to me,’ said Hassad.

They managed another ten miles without any trouble. The roads were practically empty. The Fiat slowed down to a crawl. There were so many potholes in the road it was impossible to take the van much above ten or fifteen miles an hour. A couple of times, Porter had to climb out and push when a back wheel dropped into a shell hole. The chickens squawked furiously as he pushed, and Porter suggested ditching them, but Hassad said it would look better if they had some kind of cargo. As they progressed steadily on, Porter could sense that Katie was becoming more and more afraid. She’d been living with death for a week now, but she still hadn’t learnt how to handle the fear. On the rare occasions a truck or a car passed them in the other direction, he could feel her shaking. She’s right on the edge, Porter realised. Much more, and she’s going to fall completely to pieces.

‘Roadblock,’ said Hassad. His voice was tense and strained.

Porter peered into the darkness up ahead of them. He could see a couple of cars pulled across the road. Next to it
there was a brazier with some hot coals in it, where some men were keeping themselves warm. In total, there looked to be about three men, all with AK-47s hung over their shoulders. But there could be many more lurking in the background.

Hassad slowed the Fiat to a crawl. Between the two cars, a long wooden plank had been placed, and beneath that there was a net studded with nails. You could try to ram your way through, but the nails would blow out your tyres. You’d be easy meat for the gunmen standing right behind you.

‘Leave this to me,’ whispered Hassad.

A man was leaning into the side of the car. Hassad wound down the window, and they exchanged a few terse words in Arabic. Katie was sitting still, her face covered by the burka, while Porter had wrapped a scarf he found on the floor of the van up high around his neck. In the dark, with the weather-beaten appearance his skin had had ever since he started sleeping rough, it wasn’t hard for him to pass for an Arab. Even so, his hand was under the seat, holding the AK-47.

The door opened. The soldier’s gun was raised, and he was snapping something at Hassad, but Porter couldn’t follow the conversation. Another soldier walked over. An older man, Porter judged. Thirty maybe, with a close-cropped black beard, and eyes as hard as steel. He tapped the younger man on the shoulder, and leant forwards. Porter glanced across. It was clear that he recognised Hassad. They exchanged greetings but there was no warmth there, Porter noted. More words. Then suddenly the door slammed shut, and Hassad had fired up the engine. The plank and the net that were slung across the road were removed, and the Fiat was moving on again.

Porter remained silent, but inwardly he was breathing a sigh of relief. He took a quick look back, making sure they
were a safe distance from the roadblock and that no one was following them.

‘Do they know Katie’s escaped?’ he asked.

Hassad shook his head. ‘Not yet, but they might soon. Apparently a lot of communications are down because of the missile strike, and it’s going to take a few days to get them back up again. Until then, they won’t know that she’s out.’

‘That should make things easier for us.’

‘Maybe,’ said Hassad with a shrug. ‘Or maybe nobody has spoken to the guys at this roadblock. We don’t know about the next one.’

‘Just so long as we get out here,’ said Katie, speaking through her burka.

‘We will,’ Hassad snapped. ‘Trust me.’

They picked up some speed. The road flattened out as they put the roadblock behind them. There were fewer potholes in the tarmac, and the landscape looked less damaged. On the left-hand side of the road, they were snaking close to Israel: at some points it was perhaps only twenty miles to the west of them. Another hour or so to the border point, Hassad told them. It was nearly nine now. They should hit it at around ten.

The Fiat pushed on into the darkness. Nobody was speaking. Porter was scanning the road ahead, keeping a watch out for more Hezbollah patrols. There were miles of empty countryside, broken only by the occasional small village. He saw some vans go by, and a couple of private cars. At one point he saw a truck full of Hezbollah fighters, their arms bristling with weapons, but they paid no attention to the van. As the countryside rolled by, Porter was thinking, planning. The pain in his mouth was terrible, the jawbone aching in a dozen different places, but he knew he had to concentrate on what happened next. With any luck, in the next couple of hours they would get across the border into Israel. But could they get in touch with the British
Embassy in Tel Aviv, or would that just alert Collinson?

‘Does Sky have a correspondent in Tel Aviv?’ he said to Katie.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Jamie Breakton. You’ll get him at the Tel Aviv bureau. If he’s not answering, I can call the Fox News bureau, or
The Times
’s guy.’

‘Then we’ll ring him just as soon as we get over the border.’

Katie pushed her burka aside, and Porter saw her face for the first time in hours. There was still a starved, vacant appearance to her eyes, but her strength and confidence were steadily recovering.

‘The sooner we get this story on the air the better. The reason is, we can’t trust the British government, not with that fucker Collinson on the loose,’ said Porter, shaking his head. ‘Get Sky News to pick us up rather than the embassy, and we’ll be OK. If Collinson wants to shoot us, then he’ll have to do it live on TV.’

‘He wouldn’t –’

‘He bloody would,’ Porter snapped. ‘He’s already tried to kill us twice. Me, three times.’

The town of Beit Yahoun loomed up in the distance. A few lights, and some smoke rising in the air were all there was to mark it out from the rest of the desolate landscape. Porter saw the road sign, and then the outskirts of the place itself. The road worsened as they pulled into the first street leading down towards the demilitarised zone. The tarmac was cracked in so many places it might have been better to get out and complete the trip on foot, Porter thought. Along the way, there were the remains of houses, but they had been shelled virtually to oblivion. All that was left were the foundations, and the heaps of rubble that had collapsed into them. There were no street lights working, but about a mile away there were some streaks of neon shooting up into the night sky.

‘The demilitarised zone runs for about a mile to the west of here,’ said Hassad. ‘Get into there, and we’ll be OK.’

‘Any checkpoints?’ asked Porter.

Hassad nodded. The strain was evident in the man’s eyes, Porter noted. He was delivering them to the border, just the way he promised. But now he was up against his own people, and you could tell that troubled him. ‘One, and it’s heavily guarded,’ he replied. ‘But we got through the last one, so we have to hope for the same again.’

The suspension on the Fiat was creaking as it ploughed through the potholes in the road. Porter reckoned the machine wouldn’t hold out much longer. You needed an off-roader and preferably a jeep for this kind of territory. As they drew closer to the checkpoint, he could see a few men on the streets, but they were all soldiers or militia. Either the civilians had fled or they were cowering in their houses.

‘Just keep your faces covered, and don’t say anything,’ said Hassad. ‘I’ll take you to the border, then drop you there and make my own way home.’

Porter nodded.

Even if I wanted to say something, my mouth hurts too much, he thought.

At his side, he could feel Katie shaking. He gripped the side of her arm to provide some reassurance: the fear was getting to her, the same way he had seen it get to Collinson seventeen years ago. ‘Just try and hold yourself together,’ he whispered. ‘We’ll be out of here soon.’

The checkpoint was brightly lit. There were two big wooden watchtowers, reaching thirty feet into the sky, each one with a searchlight flashing onto the ground. Porter glanced up. A machine gun was placed in the centre of each tower, on a pivot so that it could fire in any direction. The road led to a gate. There were two sentry posts on either side of it, and beyond that the empty desolate scrubland of the
demilitarised zone. Cross that, Porter told himself, and we’re safe.

‘What’s your story?’ said Porter, glancing across at Hassad.

‘My story?’

‘You’ve got to give them some reason why you’re driving a van into Israel. What is it?’

Hassad paused. ‘Medical supplies,’ he answered. ‘I’ll tell them we’re delivering some blood.’