Authors: Chris Ryan
Katie’s eyes were darting from one man to the other. She was standing six inches to Collinson’s left: close enough to be a threat, Porter judged, but not close enough to stop the bastard from shooting me.
‘Go back to ragheads, man,’ Collinson sneered. ‘They can fix you up with a bottle of vodka and a nice archway to kip down in.’
Outside, Porter could hear Hassad moving towards the door, but it was still too dangerous for him to come inside. There was no sign the guards back on the Lebanese side of the border were going to intervene. Maybe they hadn’t heard the gunfire, or else they didn’t want to move into the demilitarised zone.
There were only two men who were going to sort out this fight, Porter told himself. And they are both in this hut.
‘I’ll give you one more warning,’ said Collinson.
Porter held the gun steady. He was pointing it straight at Collinson’s stomach and groin. When he fired, he didn’t much care any more if Collinson shot him back. He just wanted to rip out the man’s guts and his balls before he went down.
‘Take your shot,’ Porter snapped.
He could see beads of sweat starting to pour from the man’s brow. His hand was trembling, the same way he’d started trembling back in Beirut seventeen years ago.
‘We’ll see who the coward is now,’ said Porter. ‘Take the fucking shot.’
Collinson remained motionless.
‘You’re fucking afraid, aren’t you, just like you were all those years ago,’ Porter snarled. ‘Except this time, you’re not going to have me to blame.’
The hand was shaking perceptibly now.
Porter held steady, the sights of the AK-47 lined up straight.
A shot.
Porter could see the recoil on the Beretta as the gun kicked back.
He could feel a bullet winging his shoulder, taking out a chunk of flesh, and biting off a piece of bone.
His feet remained rooted to the ground. He swallowed hard, ignoring the pain raging through him.
He could see Katie jumping out of the way.
He squeezed the trigger on the AK-47.
The bullets flew out of the barrel of the assault rifle. One smashed into Collinson’s guts, spilling blood and intestines onto the ground. Another clipped his groin, taking at least one ball with it as it chewed its way through his body.
Collinson fell back onto the floor. He was clutching his stomach, trying to hold his intestines in place, but his hands were drenched with his own blood. He was screaming for his mother.
Porter kept the AK-47 tight in his hand, and walked the few paces of empty ground that separated him from the dying man.
He looked down. Collinson was writhing in agony. Porter put his boot down on his chest to hold him still. Then he looked into his eyes. They were pale and watery as the life slowly drained out of him, but the man was still conscious. Porter smiled. ‘I’ve got a quote from Winston
bloody Churchill you might enjoy,’ he said. ‘“When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.”’
He pressed the barrel of the rifle into the soft flesh at the side of Collinson’s neck. ‘So, goodnight, sir, and sweet fucking dreams.’
Porter squeezed the trigger once, then twice, then three times.
He tossed the gun aside. The mag was empty, and it was no more use to him now. The bullets had smashed through the man’s neck, effectively decapitating him. His head was lying to one side, the last of his blood draining away into the cracks in the wooden floorboards of the hut.
It’s over, he thought to himself.
At last.
Porter grasped hold of Katie. She was shaking with fear, but she was still standing. There was nasty flesh wound to his shoulder where Collinson’s bullet had hit him, but he strapped that up with a strip of his sweatshirt to staunch the bleeding, and he knew that a decent bandage was all he needed to sort himself out.
‘Let’s get the hell out of here,’ he said.
Hassad had already pushed his way through the door. He looked at the three corpses, then across at Porter. ‘You OK?’
Porter nodded, permitting himself a brief, tense smile. ‘How’d you know we were in trouble?’
‘I could see the van had been stopped,’ said Hassad. ‘That shouldn’t have happened. This is just an observation post, strictly neutral. The guards here shouldn’t stop anyone … so when I saw you’d been pulled up I knew something was wrong.’
They were outside now, helping a weak and frightened Katie to walk towards the van. Porter opened the door, and helped her into the passenger seat. Looking around, he clasped Hassad on the shoulder. ‘We’re quits,’ he said.
Hassad nodded. ‘Good luck …’ he said.
‘I’ll need it.’
‘And don’t come back to the Lebanon,’ he said crisply. ‘The amount of trouble you cause …’
Porter laughed. He’d climbed into the driver’s seat, and fired up the engine, not even looking back as Hassad turned and started walking back to the border.
He kicked on the accelerator, and pulled the Fiat back onto the road. It was less than a mile now to the Israeli border, and they could cover that in minutes. He increased his speed, anxious not to waste any time. The sooner we’re out of here the better.
‘We made it,’ he said, glancing towards Katie. ‘We’ll be eating hot buttered toast at the Tel Aviv Hilton tomorrow morning.’
‘And you know what,’ said Katie, wiping the tears out of her eyes. ‘It’s not even midnight local time. If we could just make to it a newsroom, we could definitely make the second edition of the Sunday papers.’
Vauxhall, London: Wednesday, 20 December 2006
As he walked back from the Gents, Porter glanced only briefly at the sparkling lights from the Christmas tree in the foyer of the Vauxhall Travel Inn. Some seasonal music was playing in the background, and outside he could see the beginnings of a hard frost starting to bite on the open ground. Doesn’t matter, Porter told himself with a smile of satisfaction. I’m not sleeping out there. Not tonight. Not any night.
He looked up at the bar. A friendly looking blonde was polishing some glasses, and a couple of business guys were settling into the second or third pint of the evening. In the fold of his pocket, Porter could feel a crisp roll of twenty-pound notes. Bar, he thought to himself. Plus money. For most of the last two decades there had been no doubt about what those two equalled.
A bender.
Nah, he told himself. Just leave it. You know where that road goes.
Sandy was waiting for him at the table. She looked like a million dollars, he thought proudly. It’s good to have the chance to get to know her properly.
He sat back down, poured some more non-alcoholic grape juice, and tucked into the pudding they’d ordered. Porter wasn’t quite sure why he’d chosen the Travel Inn for a pre-Christmas dinner. Christ, it’s hardly the best food in London, he thought. And he knew better than most people
that the guys in the kitchen all hated the bloke running the place. Still, there was something satisfying about spending an evening on this side of the rope rather than the other. It was another way of closing the books on his past life. And another way of reminding himself that he had started again.
‘How’s work?’ said Sandy.
Porter shrugged. ‘It’s good. I’m lucky to have it.’
For the last week, he’d been working as a driver for Sky TV, ferrying their studio guests to the west London headquarters. After coming out of the Lebanon with Katie he’d told her that he didn’t want any publicity. Just tell them an SAS guy came in and got you out, and that he didn’t want his name or face to be revealed since it might jeopardise future operations. She stuck to that end of the bargain, as he knew she would: it sounded more exciting when she told and retold the story on air anyway. The Firm had ferried them both back to London, and they’d spent a couple of days in debriefing. They said they hadn’t known about Collinson slipping the tracking device into his tooth. Porter wasn’t sure if he believed them, but there was no point in arguing about it now. The official line was that Collinson had been killed in a separate Hezbollah attack while looking for Katie. Sir Angus had been effusively grateful for bringing Katie back, and offered to find Porter a job in the organisation, but he’d turned him down. There was no way he wanted to go through that again, he told them. He just wanted to do something simple, earn a few quid, and stay sober. He mentioned it to Katie during one of their debriefs, and she fixed him up with the driving job at Sky. It suited him just fine. He’d found a small flat in Stockwell, he had the Sky Mercedes to get around in, and that was all he needed.
‘You get all sorts of people in the back of the car,’ he said.
‘Celebrities?’ asked Sandy.
Porter shrugged. ‘I probably wouldn’t recognise them even if they were.’
‘Let me buy you something, Dad,’ she said. ‘For Christmas.’
Porter laughed. He’d made sure the £250,000 was paid into their joint account, and then he’d taken his own name off it. He didn’t want the money, and he wasn’t sure he’d trust himself even if he had it. There was a lot of vodka you could buy with that kind of wedge. Sandy had her place at UCL, starting next September, and was planning a trip to Africa with one of her girlfriends during the summer holiday. She could use some of the money for that, use some to pay her tuition fees, then maybe use the rest to buy herself somewhere to live while she was at college. He’d started looking at some places for her. Maybe something that needed restoration. He could work on it when he wasn’t driving the car for Sky.
‘Just seeing you is enough,’ he said. ‘And knowing that you’re doing well.’
‘I’ll make it a surprise then,’ said Sandy.
Porter laughed. ‘I’ve had enough of those for a while, thanks.’
Porter glanced up at the waitress delivering the bill. Another Czech girl. He didn’t recognise her, but then they turned over very fast in this place. Most of them didn’t stick it for more than a couple of weeks, and this one would probably be gone after Christmas as well. ‘Who’s washing up tonight?’ Porter asked.
‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘I don’t … understand.’
Porter put down the money for the bill, then peeled off another couple of twenties from the roll in his pocket. ‘Tell the guy he’s doing a great job, and give him this.’
The girl nodded, looked at him as if he was mad, then walked away.
Porter collected his coat, helped Sandy with hers, and together they stepped outside into the cold night. They walked for a while along the Thames, towards where Porter
had parked the Mercedes. A wind was whipping across the river, blowing hard into their faces, and Porter pulled the collar up around his coat, protecting his skin. His shoulder had mostly healed now, and he’d had a couple of new teeth fitted where he’d lost them, but he knew he still had to take things easy. It would be several months before he was completely better.
Taking another twenty from his pocket, Porter paused to give it to a man lying on the ground close to Vauxhall Bridge. He had a rough, beaten-looking face, and he smelt of beer and blood. Give the money now, thought Porter. Because in a few months’ time you’ll probably have forgotten all about them. You’ll walk straight past them, as if they weren’t even there, just like everyone else.
‘Thanks, mate … Merry Christmas.’
‘And you too,’ said Porter.
He clicked the car keys, and the doors on the Mercedes lit up as the locks sprang open. He opened the door for Sandy to climb inside. He’d run her up to St Pancras and get her on the last train to Nottingham before going home to get some kip.
‘Next time we have dinner, maybe I can get Mum to come along,’ said Sandy. ‘Or perhaps you could come up on Boxing Day or something.’
Porter laughed, climbing into the driver’s seat and snapping the seat belt into its lock. ‘I don’t mind taking on the bloody Hezbollah,’ he said. ‘But I don’t know if I’m brave enough to face your mother again.’
Porter glanced across the station forecourt. Last time he’d stepped across it, someone had tried to run him down. Now he knew it must have been one of Collinson’s men: the bastard had known exactly where he was going, and wanted to stop him ever getting out to the Lebanon and finding out about what happened all those years ago. He checked the
cars. There were no drivers sitting anxiously at their wheels. Collinson is dead, Porter reminded himself. That’s all finished with now.
He opened the door on the Mercedes, fired up the engine and pulled the car gently out into the road. It was just after nine, and he was done in for the day. All he wanted to do was catch some sleep.
‘Did she buy that story about you just being a driver for Sky?’ said Layla.
Porter looked round. She was sitting in the back seat, dressed in a crisp black suit, and with a pair of dark glasses dropped over her eyes.
‘It’s not a story,’ Porter snapped.
She leant forward, and he could smell a trace of perfume on her neck. ‘You work for us, Mr Porter,’ she said. ‘The driving job is useful cover. It will make people think you’re living a normal life.’
‘I’m finished with soldiering, I told you that.’
‘We don’t pay two hundred and fifty thousand pounds for one week’s work,’ she said. ‘What do you think this is? Goldman Sachs –’