Strike Back (26 page)

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 bastards 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.

Enough to kit out a small army, thought Porter with a grim smile.

Then he corrected himself.

This is a small army.

And the bastards back at Vauxhall expect you to deal with them single-handedly.

The boy led him to the largest room he had yet seen in the mine. It was at least twenty metres deep, and twenty wide, cut to a height of about two and a half metres. The floor was mostly covered with straw, but there were a couple of rugs at its centre. There were no chairs – the blokes were all squatting or kneeling on the rugs – but at the far end there were a couple of long wooden tables with plates of food on them. Along one side, there was a wall of electric lights: about six in total, filling the room with a busy glow. And next to that, there was a bank of computer kit. Porter counted five PCs, each one on its own work table, and two flat-screens TVs that were picking up satellite broadcast signals. Beside them, there was a mess of wires and routers that were feeding data into and out of the cave.
Hunched over them, there was one boy who didn’t look more than twenty. Thin, with a straggly beard, and a T-shirt that was at least one size too small for him, he was busily programming one of the computers. The IT department, Porter reflected. That’s how they are communicating with the rest of the world. And that’s why we can never track them. That kid is smart enough to route any message they send through so many hijacked PCs around the world, the source always remains untraceable.

All the men in the room turned to look at him as soon as he stepped inside. In total, Porter calculated there were around twenty guys in the room. They ranged in ages, from the boy who had led him here, up to a couple of guys who looked like they were past sixty. The bulk of them, however, were in their twenties or thirties. Old enough to know how to fight, thought Porter. But also young enough to be fast on their feet. Just the kind of men you’d want in any army.

Three were clean-shaven, but the rest of them all had black beards. There was no formal uniform. Most of the men were dressed in jeans, trainers and a shirt. All of them were armed. There were curved, brutally sharp knives tucked into the waists of their trousers, and pistols tucked neatly into their pockets. A few still had their assault rifles strapped to their chests, others had checked them in at the door. Christ, thought Porter, a man feels underdressed in this place if he doesn’t have at least a couple of hundred rounds on him.

‘You must be hungry,’ said Hassad.

His tone was formal, polite, yet distant as well, Porter noted. He must remember that he killed my mates, and he must know that I’m not likely to forgive that. I’d be distant as well if I thought a bloke had travelled a couple of thousand miles just to cut my throat.

‘Starving,’ said Porter.

It was true as well. Porter hadn’t had anything proper to eat since he’d picked up some grub at the bus stop. He hadn’t thought about it, but now he could feel the hunger chewing away at his stomach. The men were eating out of tin containers, very similar to the ones Porter had used out in the field when he was in the army. There were plates of food spread across the wooden table: piles of flat, warm pitta bread, some salads made of olives, cucumbers and chickpeas, and piles of cold lamb and chicken, all of them covered in spicy sauces. Porter chucked come chicken and lamb into the pitta, and put some of the salad on the side. Then he took a knife and fork, and followed Hassad towards the centre of the room. ‘Why not give Katie something to eat?’ he said.

Hassad shook his head. ‘I know you think we are cruel men, but really it isn’t true,’ he replied. ‘A woman dies better on an empty stomach.’

‘Bollocks,’ snapped Porter. ‘Even on death row they give a man a decent last meal.’

‘That is not our way,’ said Hassad, his voice barely more than a whisper. ‘Believe me, when a person is beheaded, then their bowels automatically empty. It is better if there is nothing there. We do not wish to humiliate her. Insofar as it is possible, we would like her to have a dignified death, one she can be proud of.’

‘There’s no pride in dying.’

‘That is where you are wrong, my friend,’ said Hassad. ‘Osama bin Laden himself has spoken eloquently on this subject. The difference between our two civilisations is that while you celebrate life, we celebrate death. For us, there is no shame in dying, no fear either.’

‘You didn’t see it that way when you were a kid,’ said Porter. ‘I was about to kill you then, and I decided not to. Maybe that’s because, as you say, we celebrate life.’

Hassad paused, and for a moment Porter thought he
might have got through to the man, but then he started to pick at the food he had piled onto his plate. They were sitting down now, on a rug to the left of the tables full of food. There were three men next to them, and they introduced themselves briefly: Nasri, Jabr and Asad. Nasri looked to be around sixty, but the other two seemed to be in their early thirties, the same age as Hassad. From the way they acted, Porter reckoned the four of them were in charge of the place: they looked more senior than any of the other guys, although what the hierarchy was between the four of them, Porter couldn’t figure out.

‘That’s different,’ said Hassad, when Porter had sat down. ‘I was just a boy then. I didn’t ask you to spare my life, although I am grateful that you did, and I recognise the debt that I owe you. But I was fighting as a warrior for my people and my God that day, and if I had died I would not have objected.’

Porter started to eat. He took a chunk of the pitta filled with chicken, and swallowed it quickly. There were jugs of water on the rug: he poured some into a cup, and gulped it down, drawing strength from the food and water. ‘We can negotiate,’ he said, looking back at Hassad. ‘That’s what I’m here for.’