‘They must have some kit somewhere,’ said Porter, looking around.

Hassad grabbed him by the arm. He gestured to the hillside. Now that they were on the other side of the wall, Porter could see the scrubland sloping away to a dusty track. ‘We’ve got to move,’ he hissed.

‘I need to find out who these bastards were,’ snapped Porter.

‘We haven’t any time,’ said Hassad. ‘There may be more of them here any minute. There are only a few of us left alive –’

‘I need to find out why they bloody took me,’ said Porter. ‘It might be important.’

Another of Hassad’s men was already walking towards them. He was carrying a wounded man who was hobbling, resting on his mate’s shoulder.

Hassad flashed him a smile. As he did so, the deformity of his mouth was cruelly apparent: the smile twisted his mouth into a hideous mangled shape that gave no hint of pleasure or humour. ‘Welcome back to the Middle East, Mr Porter,’ he said. ‘Nothing out here is ever what it seems.’

‘But –’

‘I told you nothing out here is what it seems …’

Porter had already noticed the AK-47 slung around Hassad’s shoulders was suddenly cocked. His finger was on the trigger, and there was no mistaking the casual way its black metal barrel was pointing straight at Porter’s chest. A mistake? Not likely, thought Porter.

‘Take your clothes off,’ Hassad snapped.

‘What –’

‘I said, take your clothes off. We need to make sure you are clean.’

As he finished the sentence, he barked something in Arabic to one of his men. The guy came back from the Unimog with a pair of black jeans, a sweatshirt and some trainers, and a can of petrol. Porter realised what they were doing: he’d have done the same in their position.

They wanted to make sure he didn’t have any bugs on him before they took him back to their base.

He ripped the clothes off himself, tossing them on the dusty ground. While he was pulling on the fresh jeans, the soldier had already soaked Porter’s clothes with petrol, and set fire to them.

‘OK,’ said Hassad. ‘Now we can get out of here.’

EIGHTEEN

The drive took two hours, but it seemed like much longer. The Unimog was at least five or six years old, Porter reckoned, and its suspension had taken a hammering from the rough dirt tracks it had spent its life driving along. There were six of them in total: Hassad, the four men who had survived the firefight, plus Porter. Hassad sat in the front, along with the driver, while Porter was squeezed into the back with the other blokes. The wounded man was brave enough, but every jolt and bump in the road was tearing up the wound in his chest, and he was moaning with pain through most of the trip.

Where they were going, Porter had no idea, and he judged it better not to ask. He reckoned they were travelling somewhere through the Lebanese and Syrian borderlands, but the driver was keeping to the dirt tracks, steering away from anything that looked like a main road, so Porter never got a chance to look at a road sign that might help him establish his bearings. From time to time, he could see the lights of a small village, but even if the track they were on went through it, the driver veered off, and pushed the vehicle cross-country until they could connect with the track on the other side of the village. Whether he was doing it because they didn’t want to be seen, or because they didn’t want Porter to see where he was going, he couldn’t tell. A bit of both maybe, he decided. After driving for an hour, they put a blindfold on him, so after that, Porter had even less idea where they were going.