‘Let’s get the hell out of here,’ he muttered. ‘Before any more of the bastards come after us.’
‘Those bastards are my people,’ said Hassad.
Porter paused.
The AK-47 was still gripped in his hand. It would take just a fraction of a second to kill Hassad, and if he had to, he would. From the look on his face, he guessed that Hassad understood that.
‘We made a deal,’ he snapped. ‘Just get us to the border, and this is all over.’
TWENTY-FOUR
They had been gone for around an hour, Porter calculated, and twenty minutes of that was spent by the roadside, with the two men changing the burst tyre on the Polo as quickly as they could. Porter kept his eyes on the road around them, trying to get a fix on where they were: according to Hassad they were still in northern Lebanon, but up close to the Syrian border. The road was decent enough, Porter noted. Half a mile from the mine they’d hit some fresh tarmac, and even though the Polo had taken a couple of bullets to its rear, it seemed to be driving OK.
They’d get there. Just so long as nobody else started shooting at them on the way.
It was a day’s drive to the Israeli border, Hassad had said: a total of a hundred and ten miles, but the territory was rough as you got closer to Israel, and progress would be slow. Porter wanted to drive straight there, but Hassad insisted they stop first. He’d take them to a safe house he knew first. They would get themselves cleaned up, then complete the journey. No, just get us there, said Porter. Hassad was adamant. Katie needed some fluids in her: without them, she was probably going to die. And the Lebanese — Israeli border was the heaviest, most heavily militarised on the planet: without any proper weapons they didn’t stand a chance of getting through.
Porter glanced a few times at Katie, but she seemed to have fallen asleep. Porter reached back to check her pulse. It was weak, fading all the time. ‘Hang in there,’ Porter muttered under his breath. I didn’t go to all this trouble just to bring a corpse across the border.
His own condition wasn’t too bad. The shirt had long since been ripped off his back, and he’d taken a battering to his back when he jumped out of the car. His jeans had been torn in a couple of places, and the soles of his trainers had been burnt when they were escaping from the burning mine. There was a hole in the left shoe and the right one wasn’t in much better shape. His chest was a mess of cuts and bruises, and there wasn’t even any water in the car to start washing them.
Hassad’s right, I need to get myself cleaned up, he told himself. There’s still a long way to go before we get out of this hellhole.
‘Here,’ said Hassad.
He pulled the Polo up outside a modest one-storey house, set five hundred metres back from the main road. There was a petrol station about a mile up the road, and eight or nine hundred metres back there was a warehouse. Otherwise the place was completely isolated. A set of hills rose up behind the house, and there was flat plain in front of it, but the ground was too dusty, dry and hard for anything other than a few rough-looking bushes to grow. Safe enough, Porter decided. They could rest for a couple of hours, get themselves back in shape, and get the hell out of here.
Hassad had fished out some keys from a compartment hidden inside the spare wheel. There were at least a dozen on the ring. Hezbollah kept a string of safe houses within a short drive of the mine, he explained. They permanently expected Israeli tanks to come rolling across the border towards them, and were always prepared to evacuate in a hurry. All the keys to safe houses were kept in the cars hidden around the perimeter of the mine. Anyone could grab one at any time and make a clean getaway if the mine came under attack.
Preparation, thought Porter. They plan every move meticulously. That’s what makes them such a dangerous enemy.
He picked Katie up from the back seat of the car, cradling her in his arms. She was half asleep, but also half unconscious. Hassad had already pushed the door open. It was just after eight in the morning, and there was a slightly chill breeze in the air, but the house was warm enough. He followed Hassad through from the hallway into the main room. There wasn’t much furniture: the walls were painted plain white, and there was a sofa, and a couple of cheap wicker chairs, but at least it was clean, and it was the most luxurious place Porter had seen since he left Beirut airport. He laid Katie down on the sofa. She moaned softly as his arm caught one of her many bruises. Porter looked over to Hassad. ‘We need food and medicine,’ he said. ‘She’s in a bad way.’
They walked through to the kitchen area. Even without the full tour, it didn’t take Porter long to get the layout of the place. It had everything you’d expect of a safe house: a few places to kip down, a kitchen well stocked with dried and tinned foods, and plenty of water; a cabinet bursting with every kind of medicine you could think of; and a stash of weapons. There was a TV and a radio, and the house even had a small oil-fired generator to keep the power supply secure. But there was no sign of a phone. If there had been, Porter might have checked in with the Firm, and organised a chopper to come and lift them out. But it would be quicker to try and get to the border themselves, and he still didn’t trust Hassad enough to rely on him to organise a safe line back to London.
Porter grabbed a bottle of water, some cereals and dried crackers, and some medicine. He knelt down beside Katie. Putting his hand to her forehead, he could tell that she was running a slight temperature. There was a film of sweat over her body, and her eyes were still very swollen. Porter had had some basic medical training back in the Regiment, but it was years since he’d tried to use it. He stripped her down to just her knickers. He grabbed some cotton wool and some disinfectant, and started to fix the cuts across her skin: she winced as he treated the worst tears with raw alcohol, washing them carefully, then spreading thick strips of plaster across them. Within moments, she looked more like an Egyptian mummy than a woman. He rifled through the medicines he’d collected from the chest. Among them was some penicillin. He quickly unwrapped a syringe and jabbed it into her arm. She winced, but she was still too weak to register much of what was happening. Next, he took some blood plasma, and pumped that into the vein as well. Along with the fluids, that should help her pull through the next twelve hours or so they needed to get to the border, then they could get her to a hospital.
Right now, some sleep will probably do her more good than anything else.
He patched up some of his own wounds, then grabbed a fresh pair of jeans, a T-shirt and a pair of trainers. The shoes were a size ten, a size bigger than his own feet, but at least they didn’t have a hole in them. He mixed up a bowl of cereal with some dried milk and wolfed it down. It tasted like stale cardboard, but it was the first thing he’d had to eat in ages and at least there was some strength in it. All I need now is a vodka, he thought.
Porter glanced around. Hassad was standing behind him with an AK-47 he’d just taken from the stockroom clutched to his hand.
‘Shit,’ Porter muttered.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Hassad. ‘I’ve had enough chances to kill you already, and maybe I should have taken them. I’ve said I’ll get you to the border, and I will. I’m just equipping myself with some kit in case we get attacked again.’
‘I thought you said this was a safe house?’
‘This is the Lebanon,’ said Hassad with a shrug. ‘Nowhere is safe.’
Porter had already checked out the munitions room. It was a big store cupboard just off the small kitchen. From a distance, it looked like a larder. Inside, there was enough weaponry to have a crack at taking Tel Aviv single-handed. Porter counted twelve assault rifles, each with a couple of hundred rounds of ammunition. There were six boxes of hand grenades neatly stacked in boxes. Two RPG launchers. One machine gun, plus a couple of belts of rounds. And a selection of handguns, hunting knives, ropes, handcuffs and chains.