Porter ducked. He buried his head in his knees: in that position, if they drove past anyone at speed, they probably wouldn’t notice him. He glanced back at Katie. No need to hide her. She was already lying flat on her back.
As he dipped his head below the windscreen, Porter could see they were approaching the main road on the far side of the mine. A makeshift roadblock had been set up across the track: it consisted of two mounds of old tyres, with a wooden bar slung between them. Normally, Porter reckoned, there would be two or three soldiers there monitoring who came into and out of the mine, but there was so much chaos down below where the missile had struck there was just one guy, sitting by the side of the road, an AK-47 cradled in his arms.
At his side, Porter could see Hassad tapping his foot hard on the accelerator.
‘There may be an impact when we go through the bar,’ said Hassad. ‘Steady yourself.’
‘Won’t they let you through?’
‘This is Hezbollah,’ said Hassad proudly. ‘Nobody comes in or out of this mine without their vehicle being checked.’
Porter put his hands around his head. The Polo was accelerating now, touching sixty. Suddenly, there was a crunching noise, as the nose of their car collided with the wooden pole. Porter was thrown forward, his head bashing against the cheap plastic of the glove compartment. In the back, Katie jerked upwards and groaned in pain. The Polo served to the right as the impact deflected it off its path. Hassad was gripping the steering wheel, pulling it back onto the track. Behind them, Porter could hear shouting. And then a rapid burst of gunfire exploded behind them.
Porter heard the sickening crunch of a bullet colliding with the back the car. It pierced the steel skin of the vehicle, but lodged itself harmlessly in the boot. Porter glanced again at Katie. There was no chance of moving her now, Porter realised. Too dangerous. But lying on the back seat, she was the most vulnerable of any of them: any bullets that pierced the back window were heading straight for her.
‘Can’t you move any bloody faster?’ he shouted.
‘I’m trying,’ yelled Hassad.
His foot was jamming hard on the accelerator, but instead of gaining power, the Polo was losing it. The speedometer had touched sixty-five as they burst through the wooden barrier, and started heading down the slope that led towards the main road. But now it was slowly dropping down to sixty, then fifty-five.
Porter glanced in the wing-mirror.
The soldier had climbed on board a motorbike. His assault rifle was slung over his back, but there was a pistol clearly visible in the belt of his trousers. The bike was roaring fast, gaining on them with every metre they covered.
Hassad’s grip tightened on the steering wheel as he tried to move them back onto the centre of the road.
‘He’s on a bike,’ Porter growled.
‘The car won’t move, the tyre is punctured.’
‘Fuck it.’
The Polo was still slowing, dropping down to forty-five now. It must be the back wheel, Porter thought grimly. There was no way the car was going to build up any speed with a back tyre blown out. He could see exactly what was about to happen. The bike was going to overtake them within not much more than a minute. The soldier would spin past them, stop the bike in the middle of the road, then turn his AK-47 on them.
Hassad might be one of the leaders of this gang, Porter told himself, but he’d seen these boys in action. Everything was sacrificed to the cause.
And everybody.
If they thought he was pissing off with their hostage, they wouldn’t hesitate to shoot him.
And the hostage.
‘I’m bailing out,’ snapped Porter. ‘Keep driving.’
Before Hassad had a chance to reply, Porter had flung open the door on the Polo. As it ripped through the air, Porter curled himself into a ball and kicked back with his legs. Hitting the ground with a heavy thump, a hundred bolts of pain started shooting up through his spine as his back absorbed the impact of the fall. It was only a couple of feet from the Polo’s passenger seat to the dirt track they were driving down, but it felt like at least a hundred. He rolled, keeping his body as curved as possible to smooth the landing, but he was still moving fast over the ground, his naked back taking a dozen different cuts and bruises from the pebbles littering the path.
He could hear a horrible crunching sound where his ankle hit a stone, and prayed to God it wasn’t broken.
No time to worry about it now, he told himself.
I could be dead before the next five seconds are up.
The AK-47 was still in his right hand. Porter rolled to his feet, steadied himself by the side of the road, then whipped the gun into his fists. The Polo was still moving away down the side of the hill, and in its wake, the motorbike was accelerating fast: a Honda, Porter noted, with at least a onelitre engine, the machine should be able to reach eighty or ninety on a track like this, and it was probably hitting those speeds now. He gripped the AK-47 tight in his hands, his fingers closing down on the trigger. The bike was close now, but amid the dust kicked up in the Polo’s trail it was unlikely its driver would have noticed Porter bailing out. The bike sped past. In the same instant, Porter slammed his finger into the trigger of the AK-47, unleashing a hailstorm of bullets. The munitions ripped through the bike. The sound of metal colliding with metal cracked through the still morning air. Porter took a step forward. He kept his finger glued to the trigger, the bullets still rattling out of the barrel of his gun, tracking the target as it moved across the rough surface of the ground. The bike was wobbling. Some petrol had started to leak from its tank, and the driver had taken a couple of bullets to the back, and at least one to the leg. He was hanging on desperately to the machine beneath him: enough of his brain was still working to know that the bike was now his best chance of escaping the attack. But the machine was spinning violently out of control now. The bullets had severed the brake lines, and even though it was losing power fast, the driver had no way of slowing it down as he tried to straighten up and get down the hill. It twisted brutally, and the man no longer had the strength to hold onto its jerking handlebars. He was spun out across the dirt track, while the bike crashed into a rock close to the edge of the road. The front wheel broke off on impact, rolling down the hill, while the rest of the bike fell to the ground, the engine still coughing and spluttering.
Porter took another step forward.
The man was fifteen metres in front of him on the road.
He was reaching down for the pistol tucked into the belt of his trousers. There was blood pouring out of the wounds in his back, but he still had enough life left in him to hold a gun. Porter raised the sights of the AK-47 to his eyes, and squeezed the trigger. One bullet, then two, then three, smashed into his chest. Porter moved the AK-47 just a fraction of a millimetre, keeping his finger squeezed on the trigger. The next three bullets smashed into his neck and chin, blowing his face wide open.
The gun dropped from his hand.
The man fell dead into the dust all around him.
Porter started to jog down the road, looking anxiously for the Polo: if Hassad wanted to escape this was his moment. The light was rising all around the mine now. He could see the car had pulled up about two hundred metres down the road. Glancing behind him, Porter didn’t think any more soldiers were giving chase. He ran faster, flinging back the door of the car and jumping inside.