‘Get up here,’ shouted Steve down the staircase.

Keith and Mike ran up the passageway, their guns blazing, but Collinson had already fallen back, dropping down the stairs where he was out of the line of fire. The assault was starting in earnest now. Three, four, then five heavily armed men started to charge the doorway, their guns cocked, their expressions grim with the determination of soldiers who had already prepared themselves to die. Steve was holding their position, managing to shoot a couple of guys as they approached the entrance. Keith took out another one, then the fourth and fifth, slicing into them with deadly fire, but there was still no sign of the attack abating.

It’s us against … how many? Porter wondered. A whole bloody city.

Suddenly, Porter could see something rushing towards him. Twenty feet away, it was coming at him from the left: it must have slipped in through a hidden window, or crawled up through the sewers. A small dark figure, no more than three and half feet tall, and weighing seventy or eighty pounds. A child. The bastards were using kids to break through the lines. There was what looked like an explosive charge strapped to his chest, and he was heading straight for Porter. Desperately, he reached for the gun that had dropped to the floor. Then he realised, he couldn’t shoot the kid without detonating the explosives. That’s what the bastards wanted. To blow the whole place up. The kid was reaching for his belt, just feet away from him now, searching for the cord that would take them all to meet their God. Porter lunged forwards, grabbing hold of the kid by neck, pushing him to the ground. He fell on top of him, smothering the child with his body, determined that even if the explosives did blow he would absorb enough of the force himself to save the others.

The black robe that covered his face fell away. Porter looked down. He was a kid, no more than twelve, with a slight, delicate build. Porter could feel his anger rising at the way the terrorists were using children to fight their battles for them. Why can’t they send in men to take us on? he asked himself. The boy’s eyes were a soft brown, and the expression of terror on his face suggested that whoever had persuaded him to die for his cause hadn’t finished the job. His mouth was twisted out of shape, with the lower lip looking as if it had been severed in half, and at first Porter thought it was just the fear, but then he saw the poor kid must have been deformed at birth.

Porter took the knife from his belt, and raised it a couple of feet into the air. He was about to plunge it straight into the boy’s neck, when his eyes caught him. He was looking straight at Porter. ‘Please,’ he said, in broken English, his voice croaking with abject fear.