The sudden realisation struck hard. In barely a heartbeat, Mansour’s confusion was replaced with absolute certainty.

The guard was not there to search Mansour or his cell.

The guard was there to kill him. With the help of whoever was rushing towards them.

The cell was six feet wide. Three of those were taken up by the bed. What little space was left was too narrow to accommodate more than one man. But the cell’s depth of ten feet? That was more forgiving. It could easily fit the guard, then Mansour, then one other behind. Maybe even one more after that.

The calculation was not difficult. Far easier than those he had had to make in the war zone he had left behind. He made it in an instant.

He moved without warning. Fast and low. A desperate, one-time, all-out assault. Mansour had a single goal: to get to the other side of the guard and put the cell’s wall behind his back. If successful, it would limit the potential attacks upon him to one at a time.

His only hope of survival, however slim.

The guard reacted to Mansour’s movement quickly, but not quickly enough. With the full ten feet of the cell to build up momentum, Mansour was moving at maximum speed as he aimed his upper body low and slammed his right shoulder hard into the guard’s lower gut.

He could feel the guard’s breath being violently expelled with the impact on his unprotected abdomen. The guard hadn’t expected Mansour to aim his attack there; he was used to inexperienced street fighters who invariably swung straight for the head, and so his massive arms had flailed pathetically towards his own face. Overconfidence and disrespect. A big disadvantage when facing someone who knows how to fight for their life.

In any other circumstances Mansour might have stopped there. To see if his opponent had suffered enough. Or, more likely, to take the opportunity to run.

Neither was an option here. He had just moments, and so he did the only thing he could.

Keeping his right shoulder low, he pulled it backwards, at the same time using every ounce of power he could summon to smash his left fist deep into the guard’s exposed, vulnerable groin. Once. Twice. Three times in little more than a second.

Changing from left fist to right fist and back again, each blow struck deeper and deeper into the guard’s testicles, until Mansour could feel the sensation of uncontrollable vomit hitting his own lower back.

It had been two, perhaps three seconds since Mansour had first moved, but already the guard was falling. Mansour could feel the weight bearing down. And so he did what he had set out to do. He pulled the man’s lumbering form forward into the cell and let him collapse heavily to the floor, before stepping over him and placing his own spine against the cell’s back wall.

He faced the door, unsure of who was about to come through it, or how many. Whoever it was, they no longer had the advantage. With just a three-foot width in which to fight and the obstacle of the decimated guard, Mansour had achieved his aim.