He looked towards the drinks trolley. The stewardess — a pert little blonde who introduced herself as Chloë while serving Porter his microwaved breakfast — had already been through the cabin offering people a drink but it was still only mid-morning and there weren’t many takers. Layla had told her sharply that they didn’t need anything, and Porter had had to settle for finishing her breakfast instead. There was a row of tiny, airline bottles: whisky, vodka, gin, rum, several different types of beer, quarter-bottles of red and white wine. Porter could hardly remember the last time he’d seen so much booze in one place. And all of it free as well. He grabbed two vodkas, one gin, and a double-sized serving of Johnnie Walker, and slipped them inside his jacket.
There’s only one place they manufacture the kind of courage a man needs to face what I am about to put myself through, he told himself.
A brewery.
He grabbed another vodka bottle, and twisted its cap. It came loose in his hand, and he put it to his lips. He could feel the warm glass against his skin, and then the steady, strong liquid started to trickle down into his throat. Porter had never found a drink he didn’t like the taste of. He’d drink paint-stripper if that was all he could find. But vodka was his favourite. A real drinker’s drink: maybe that was why the Russians loved it so much. Vodka didn’t mess around with flavours or aromas. There was no nonsense about grains or vintages. It was the closest you could get to pure alcohol without visiting a hospital. And it got you fired up with the minimum fuss and the maximum efficiency.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ snapped Layla.
Porter spun round. She was standing right next to him, her dark eyes alive with anger. Already her right hand had grabbed for the vodka bottle. She was trying to take it from him but had only succeeded in spilling half its contents down his shirt.
‘What the fuck do you think I’m doing?’ growled Porter. ‘Admiring the pretty cloud formations out of the window? I’m having a bloody drink.’
‘Put it down,’ said Layla, her tone rising sharply.
Porter held on to the bottle. There were only a few drops left in it, but he wasn’t about to let them go.
‘Put it down,’ said Layla again, even more loudly this time.
Porter could hear the roaring of the plane’s engines in his ears. It had just hit a patch of turbulence, and the A320 bounced sharply, then plunged downwards. Porter steadied himself against the plane wall with his left hand. Ahead of him he could see that the pilot had switched on the seat-belts sign.
‘I know you’re practically an alcoholic,’ said Layla, trying to keep her grip as the plane rolled and swerved through the sky, ‘but you’ve had a couple of days without a drink, and you’re starting to clean up.’
‘I needed a drink,’ snapped Porter.
‘What the hell for?’ shouted Layla. ‘We’re pinning everything on you. We’re paying you two hundred and fifty grand. The last thing we need is a fucking wino crawling off the plane too drunk to even remember his own name.’
‘One drink, that’s all I bloody needed.’
‘It’s always one drink, then one more,’ said Layla. ‘You were a sodding tramp. We’ve taken you in, given you a chance, but we damn well expect to be repaid. That means you deliver what we expect. That’s the deal, and if you break it, we’ll fucking break you. You hear me, John Porter. We’ll break you like a fucking matchstick.’
Porter paused for a moment. He could already feel the vodka he had drunk a few moments ago hitting his bloodstream. The plane was starting to balance out again, but the weather was still rough, and the undercarriage was thumping against pockets of air. The alcohol was already working its lethal magic, calming his nerves and soothing his anxieties. People said the juice stopped you from thinking straight, but they were wrong. He could always see things much more clearly when he had some alcohol inside him, and right now he could see there was some truth to what she was saying. He’d had nothing, not any kind of life to speak of, but now he had a daughter again, and he’d had done something for her, and that was something he could take to his grave and feel proud of. He had the Firm to thank for that. It didn’t mean he couldn’t handle a drink, though. She was wrong about that.
‘What the hell do you know about soldiering?’ he said, levelling a stare right into her eyes. ‘There are only two rations every commander in history has made sure his men have plenty of before they go into battle. Booze and smokes. In the trenches of the Somme, that was all the blokes lived on. Rum and tobacco. And you know why? Because it is fucking frightening. Most blokes wouldn’t be able to fight unless they were too drunk to know any better.’ He paused again, waiting for the plane to pass through another patch of rough weather. ‘Well, this is a battle, and I reckon it’s going to be a bloody nasty one,’ he continued, his voice dropping down to no more than a whisper. ‘And I’m going to need all the courage I can get. Some men get it from a church, and some from their country. I get mine from a bottle, and that’s all there is to it.’
‘I don’t care about that,’ Layla snapped, her face red with anger. ‘One more, and we’ll turn straight round and go home.’
The stewardess was standing next to them, her eyes switching nervously from Porter to Layla and back again. Trouble, thought Porter. It was what every stewardess feared the most. ‘I’ll have to ask you to take your seats,’ she said. ‘The captain —’
‘Don’t worry, we’re sitting down,’ said Porter.
He patted the spare bottles tucked into his jacket pocket as he walked back to his seat. Doesn’t matter what she says, he told himself bitterly. The woman knows nothing.
‘Just stay where you are,’ said Layla sourly, making sure his seat belt was fastened. The stewardess was walking quickly away from them, relieved that the trouble had passed. Porter grabbed for some peanuts, pulled open the pack, and threw them into his mouth in a couple of handfuls, chewing on them angrily.
The turbulence had passed, and the clouds had split open, and suddenly Porter was looking out of the window at the clear blue sea leading up to the Lebanese coastline. The last time I was here I was flying in on a Puma to rescue a hostage and my life was about to fall apart. This time, I’m coming in on a commercial flight to rescue a hostage, and my life is almost certainly going to end.
The years roll by, and sod all changes.
FOURTEEN
Layla glanced at Porter’s face. She was scowling, and he could tell she was still furious with him for the drink he’d taken on the journey. They had walked off the plane in silence, accompanied by the silent flunkies from the Firm, then followed the signs through to the arrivals hall. Most of their fellow passengers were waiting to collect their bags from the carousel. But Porter didn’t have anything to collect. Just the holdall the Firm had given him, and he had that tucked under his arm.
When you’ve got a life expectancy of about two days, thought Porter, you really don’t have to worry about packing. You can even skip baggage reclaim — which just goes to show, there is some upside to every situation.
‘You know the drill?’ said Layla.
Porter nodded. ‘Yes, sir …’
‘Remember, no heroics,’ said Layla. ‘Your job is to get Katie Dartmouth out of there, or at least delay her execution, so that we have a chance to organise a rescue mission. We don’t need you trying to do this single-handed.’
‘We’ve been through this,’ Porter growled, walking towards passport control.
‘John,’ said Layla.
He turned round.
‘Good luck …’