The black robe that covered his face fell away. Porter looked down. He was a kid, no more than twelve, with a slight, delicate build. Porter could feel his anger rising at the way the terrorists were using children to fight their battles for them. Why can’t they send in men to take us on? he asked himself. The boy’s eyes were a soft brown, and the expression of terror on his face suggested that whoever had persuaded him to die for his cause hadn’t finished the job. His mouth was twisted out of shape, with the lower lip looking as if it had been severed in half, and at first Porter thought it was just the fear, but then he saw the poor kid must have been deformed at birth.
Porter took the knife from his belt, and raised it a couple of feet into the air. He was about to plunge it straight into the boy’s neck, when his eyes caught him. He was looking straight at Porter. ‘Please,’ he said, in broken English, his voice croaking with abject fear.
Blood was dripping from Porter’s wounded hand, and the bolts of pain from the wound were jabbing up from his left arm and thumping straight into his chest. It was like having a hundred hammer drills boring into your body at the same time.
‘My, my …’
The boy was struggling for the words in English but they wouldn’t come. A burst of Arabic, frantic and desperate, erupted from his lips, then he subsided into the stunned silence that sometimes overwhelms even children when they are certain they are about to die.
Ten yards behind him, Steve and Keith were holding the line, using assault rifles to fight back another wave of Hezbollah attacks. Amid the din and roar of the gunfire, the hostage had bottled it, screaming his lungs out with raw fear.
Porter held the knife in his hand, his eyes flicking across the smooth skin of the boy’s neck as he searched for the windpipe he would need to sever to make the death as quick and painless as possible.
He lowered the knife into position, nicking the skin, and drawing a speck of red blood. He thought briefly of Sandy. How old was she now? Into her second day, allowing for the time the telegram had taken to reach the ship.
‘Fuck it,’ muttered Porter, the words wheezing through his exhausted lips.
He’s just a kid.
With his left hand, he ripped the explosives off the boy’s chest, flinging them to one side. He folded the knife into the palm of his hand, using it as a weight rather than a weapon. Tensing his shoulder muscles, he smashed his right fist into the side of the boy’s face. His deformed lips quivered, then he spat some blood and a broken tooth up into Porter’s chest. ‘Amiat al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun,’ he whispered. His eyes closed, and Porter could tell there was no fight left in him, but he punched again, and then again, draining the last few ounces of consciousness from him. Slowly, he lifted himself from the boy’s body. You’ll take at least three hours to wake up from that, mate, he thought. But you’ll live, at least. Maybe even find something better to do with your life.
In front of him, Steve and Keith had dealt with the latest wave of attacks. The firing had subsided long enough for them to rush up towards the roof and the Puma. ‘Get out to the chopper,’ shouted Steve. ‘We’ll lay down the covering fire.’
‘I’ll stay and fight my way out of here with the rest of you,’ said Porter gruffly.
Steve took two paces forward, standing so close Porter could smell the sweat and grime dripping off his face. ‘You’re fucking wounded, you tosser.’
Porter was clenching his left hand. The pain was aching, and the blood was still dripping from the two stumps where his fingers had once been. He could feel the strength bleeding out of him. ‘I can hold on until we get the hostage back to the chopper.’
With a flicked shake of his head, the anger was evident in Steve’s eyes. ‘You’re wounded, and we have to get the hostage out. We’ll put down some covering fire, and keep the Hezbollah bastards back. No one gives a fuck whether we get shot, but if we lose Bratton then we’re all in the shit. Now run like fuck, get on that chopper and get back to the ship, and there’s a chance the medics can still save that hand. Tell the pilot to call in the backup, and we’ll get out of here as soon as it’s safe.’
‘My hand —’
‘Bloody move, man,’ snapped Steve. ‘This is the Regiment. We get paid to fight and win. Not to lose a hand, and spend the rest of our careers behind a desk because we’re too sodding stupid to know when to clear out.’
Porter paused. He was about to speak, but he could see that Steve was already telling Keith how they could make certain the building was safe enough for the chopper to drop down onto the roof.
He held tight to his gun, then glanced up at the staircase. Bratton was standing right next to him: the man was shaking with fear, and his nerves were so shot he could no longer speak. Porter’s feet were pounding against the concrete as he started running. Behind him, he could hear one shot ring out, then another. He dragged Bratton with him, up one flight, then up the second, before bursting onto the open roof. Down below he could see the rest of the unit laying down more fire to keep their attackers at bay. Up ahead, he could see the chopper hovering a few feet above the roof. Within seconds, he had covered the last few remaining yards, and grabbed hold of the Puma’s doorway. He pushed the screaming Bratton through the open door, and flinging himself onto the floor, he shouted to the pilot to take him back, then unhooked a first-aid kit from the floor of machine. As the Puma lifted up into the sky, and started to soar over the city and out towards the sea, Porter found the disinfectant. He winced in pain as he splashed it over the raw, stubby mess where his fingers had once been. If he didn’t clean the wound soon, he knew there was a chance the thing might have to be chopped off at the wrist.
And the Regiment has no use for a bloke with only one hand.
Porter walked slowly from the operating theatre. The antibiotics they had pumped into him had made him woozy, and the local anaesthetic injected into his arm and chest left him numb and dopey. It had been a terrible hour, but at least the worst was over now, he told himself. After being dropped down onto the Dorset’s deck, Bratton had been led away, still shaking and sobbing with fear, and he’d been rushed down to the medics, who quickly concluded they could save the hand, but only if they cut through the remaining flesh and bone and reduced both missing fingers to nothing more than stumps. There was an operating theatre on board, but he’d probably be sent on to Cyprus at daybreak to get some more treatment. ‘If you’d kept the fingers we could have had a go at sticking them back on,’ said the doctor with disturbing cheerfulness as he sawed through what remained.
‘Yeah, well, some Arab buggers were lobbing grenades at us,’ growled Porter. ‘So there wasn’t really much time for looking around for any bits of your body that might have been shot off.’
In total, the operation had taken no more then twenty minutes, and the doctors assured him he should be fine so long as he kept it clean, and took some heavy duty antibiotics for a couple of weeks. He’d been lucky, they told him. The wound had staunched quickly enough for him not to lose too much blood: any more and he’d have passed out.