Porter took another step forward.

The man was fifteen metres in front of him on the road.

He was reaching down for the pistol tucked into the belt of his trousers. There was blood pouring out of the wounds in his back, but he still had enough life left in him to hold a gun. Porter raised the sights of the AK-47 to his eyes, and squeezed the trigger. One bullet, then two, then three, smashed into his chest. Porter moved the AK-47 just a fraction of a millimetre, keeping his finger squeezed on the trigger. The next three bullets smashed into his neck and chin, blowing his face wide open.

The gun dropped from his hand.

The man fell dead into the dust all around him.

Porter started to jog down the road, looking anxiously for the Polo: if Hassad wanted to escape this was his moment. The light was rising all around the mine now. He could see the car had pulled up about two hundred metres down the road. Glancing behind him, Porter didn’t think any more soldiers were giving chase. He ran faster, flinging back the door of the car and jumping inside.

‘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.