He dived towards the wall, flinging himself and Katie to the ground. Behind him, he could hear the grenade blowing inside the building, throwing a cloud of dust and smoke into the air. In the same moment, Hassad emerged coughing and spluttering from the house. He must have taken a lungful of fumes when the grenade blew, Porter guessed. Let’s just hope it’s not enough to put him out of action.

There could be a dozen of the bastards out there.

Are they Hezbollah? Porter asked himself. Maybe Hassad only brought me here so he could finish us both off.

Katie was muttering something, but there was no time to listen to her now. He unhooked the AK-47 from his back, and checked there was still some ammo left in the clip.

Hassad was running towards them, covering the ten metres from the house to the wall. He hurled himself down next to the others, and promptly threw up on the dusty ground. ‘Puke it up, man,’ Porter snapped. ‘It’s the only way to get the bloody smoke out of your lungs.’

Another explosion rocked through the house. Porter turned round. They must have put at least two, maybe three grenades into the place, igniting the munitions dump. A huge fireball rocked up into the sky, followed by a heavy cloud of thick black smoke. Porter tried to ignore it. A diversion, he told himself. The bastards are trying to move us out of here. Then they can gun us down.

Porter found a gap in the wall. Carefully, he slipped the AK-47 through it, so that only his hand was exposed, and even that was mostly protected by the muzzle of the assault rifle. He squeezed hard on the trigger, unleashing a barrage of fire into the space directly in front of them.

He heard a man scream, then another one.

The bastards were charging me, he noted with grim satisfaction.

But who the hell are they? And how did they know we were here?

‘Lay down some fucking fire,’ he shouted at Hassad.

He pulled the AK-47 back from the wall, discarding the empty clip. Glass and plaster had blown out of the house, covering the area with debris. He could feel the dirt clinging to his face. A hole had been blown in the roof, and waves of intense heat were billowing out of the burning building.

‘Fucking fire,’ he screamed.

Hassad spat the last of the vomit heaving out of his chest onto the ground. He lifted his head to the edge of the wall, his finger poised on the trigger of his gun.

‘Keep your fucking head down,’ shouted Porter, jamming a fresh clip into his own rifle. ‘They’re coming straight at us.’