There was a knock on the door. Porter spun round. There was a boy standing in the corridor. He couldn’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen, Porter reckoned. His short hair was jet black, and his brown eyes shallow and dark, but there was nothing nervous or immature about the way he held himself. He stood up straight and tall, and carried himself with confidence. You remind me of someone, thought Porter. Someone from years ago. Of course, he told himself. The kid looked just like Hassad did the night I should have killed him all those years ago. A nephew, maybe. Or even a son. Christ, it looks like kidnapping, terrorism and torture is a sodding family business down here.

‘Come,’ he said. ‘We eat now.’

Porter followed him down the corridor. The men had emptied out of the rooms, but he noticed there were still three guys with guns strapped to their chests standing where the corridor hit the main meeting point. They don’t trust me that much, thought Porter. If I’d tried to walk out of here, those men would have stopped me.

The boy pointed left. In his head, Porter was starting to get a rough layout of the mine. The staircase brought you down to the meeting point. In one direction, they had the cells, where Katie and maybe a few other unfortunate souls were locked up. In another, there were the few rooms he’d seen earlier where the men kipped down. Next to that, there were a couple of cells with open bars. Inside one, he could see a pair of young Israeli soldiers chained to the wall: from the looks of them, they were slowly starving to death. And now there was this corridor, the one the boy was leading him along. This must be where they do the cooking, and keep all the kit.

As he glanced inside a couple of the small rooms cut into the rock, Porter could see a vast array of munitions. There were stacks of assault rifles: AK-47s mostly, but also a few of the American-made M16s he used to fight with when he was in the Regiment, and some IMI Galils they must have captured from the Israeli Army. There were at least a dozen machine guns, with thirty or forty neatly stacked boxes of ammo. A dozen RPGs. At least ten boxes of hand grenades. And a wall full of handguns: Berettas, Brownings, Colts. A whole bloody alphabet of the things.

Enough to kit out a small army, thought Porter with a grim smile.

Then he corrected himself.

This is a small army.

And the bastards back at Vauxhall expect you to deal with them single-handedly.