He filled the tin cup, and held it up to Katie’s mouth. The first hit of water had started to strengthen her, and she was better able to drink this time: as soon as the cup was at her mouth, she drank down its entire contents in two swift gulps, with hardly a single drop spilling out over her face. ‘We need to get you looking alive for the camera,’ said Hassad. ‘That way it will be all the more shocking when your head is severed from these shoulders for all the viewers watching back at home.’
‘You can’t execute her,’ snapped Porter.
‘I can and I will,’ said Hassad.
‘Who sent you?’ said Katie, her eyes darting nervously from Porter to Hassad.
‘Nobody sent me,’ said Porter. ‘I came of my own accord.’
‘For …’ She started to cough again, and it took her nearly a minute to bring it under control. ‘For what?’
‘I might be able to get you out of here.’
Her head moved slightly from side to side. It was no more than a flick of the neck, and maybe she was just trying to stretch the few muscles she had been left in control of. But Porter could see something else in her expression. She didn’t believe him. Even worse, she didn’t want to believe him. He’d seen the same looks sometimes in the faces of guys dossing down in the street. They’d given up all hope. They no longer reckoned they could do anything for themselves, nor would anyone else be able to rescue them. They were just waiting to die. And the sooner their lives ended, the better.
‘Just wait and see,’ muttered Porter, as Hassad took hold of his shoulder, and guided him back towards the door.
But she had already closed her eyes.
Hassad looked back at her. ‘One more night of suffering, and then your ordeal will be over,’ he said softly.
I’ll get you away from these bastards, Porter said to himself. Or I’ll sure as hell die trying.
NINETEEN
Porter walked alongside Hassad through the narrow, dank corridor. He knew the memory of what he had just seen would remain with him for the rest of his life — all twenty hours of it. The woman tied to that stake was nothing like the young, tough, resourceful woman who was being talked about every night on the television back at home. She had been boiled down to nothing more than a skeleton with some skin and veins wrapped around it.
The bastards had only had her for five days. And they’d already drained every ounce of spirit and resistance out of her.
Porter knew he had to stay calm. Inside he was raging, but he knew he had to conceal that from Hassad. To show even the slightest trace of emotion would be a mistake. He had to make Hassad believe that he was here as a negotiator. He had to convince the man there was something he could do for him, some deal he could offer, that would persuade him to at least postpone the execution for a few days. If nothing else, maybe he could get them to cut her down from that stake, and let her get a few hours’ rest.
But what? They had discussed it back at the Firm, and apart from releasing the prisoner in Guantànamo Bay nothing they had suggested sounded very convincing. Sometime in the next few hours, he realised, he would have to make the toughest call of his life so far. Shall I try and negotiate? Or should I just concentrate on breaking Katie out with my bare hands?
But what the hell can I do? Just one man against maybe dozens of them?
It was just a short walk back to the main junction where the staircase down from the lift shaft ended. Hezbollah had obviously chosen this part of the mine as their main base. How far the mine extended, there was no way of telling for sure: from the surface it looked like it had once been a pretty big operation, so it could go on for miles and miles. Even if only a tiny fraction of it was occupied, Hassad and his men would know the entire layout, and would almost certainly have booby-trapped the rest of the place to deal with any potential intruders. Even if by some miracle I knew exactly where we were, and I managed to transmit the location back to London, the Regiment would find this place tough to break into.
Porter was surveying the territory as he walked, making sure he knew every inch of the ground, and committed every face to his memory. The same two guards had still been standing mute outside Katie’s door, but he reckoned there must be a shift change, probably three times a day: in any well-organised army, eight hours was the maximum sentry duty you could expect a man to perform before he started getting tired and careless, and Hassad’s mob looked pretty professional to Porter. He made a mental note to see if he could figure out the time of the shift change: there might be a few seconds in which there was a chance to sneak into Katie’s room unnoticed. As they walked into the main meeting point of the tunnels, Porter took note of another pair of heavily armed men standing guard at the bottom of the staircase. In total, Porter reckoned he had seen between fifteen and twenty different guys since they had arrived here, including the blokes they’d driven with in the Mercedes. As a rough rule of thumb, he calculated there could well be double that: some men would be sleeping, some would just be in different parts of the mine, some would up on guard duty above ground. That meant there could be anything up to forty Hezbollah fighters down here.
Forty to one, thought Porter grimly. That’s just suicide.
Hassad steered him towards the third tunnel leading away from the main meeting place. Like the corridor in which Katie was incarcerated, it stretched back about thirty yards, except at the end this one dropped into what looked like a deep crevice the mining company must have cut into the rock. This must be where some of the men kip down, Porter reckoned. There were a few small rooms leading off the corridor, each one with three or four straw beds on the damp ground. Electric lamps illuminated part of the way, but some of them had been turned off, probably to save power. He saw a few men sitting around in each room. Some of them were cleaning their guns, or repacking the ammunition in their belts. One or two were reading or writing letters. The rest were just staring into space. Same as soldiers anywhere, thought Porter. They were trying to get as much rest as they could before the next firestorm kicked off.
‘This will be your room,’ said Hassad. ‘So long as you are our guest, then you can stay here.’
How long are they expecting me to stay here? Porter wondered. Their plan is to kill Katie tomorrow evening. Maybe I’m the next hostage after they’ve finished with her.
He pushed open the door. It was no more than a cave: a space where the miners had blasted into the rock years ago. It was four metres deep and about three metres wide. Hassad knelt down to switch on an electric lamp, which filled the space with a pale, golden light. There was a straw bed and a bucket in the corner with some water in it. From the smell of the place, some men had been kipping down here pretty recently, but they seemed to have cleared out. ‘Wash,’ said Hassad. ‘We will eat in twenty minutes, and then we will get some rest.’ He smiled to himself. ‘Tomorrow, after all, is a pretty big day for us.’
Porter turned to face him. The last time they had been this close was seventeen years ago when he had been about to plunge a knife into the man’s neck. ‘Let me take her place,’ he said.
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.