He pressed the barrel of the rifle into the soft flesh at the side of Collinson’s neck. ‘So, goodnight, sir, and sweet fucking dreams.’

Porter squeezed the trigger once, then twice, then three times.

He tossed the gun aside. The mag was empty, and it was no more use to him now. The bullets had smashed through the man’s neck, effectively decapitating him. His head was lying to one side, the last of his blood draining away into the cracks in the wooden floorboards of the hut.

It’s over, he thought to himself. At last.

Porter grasped hold of Katie. She was shaking with fear, but she was still standing. There was nasty flesh wound to his shoulder where Collinson’s bullet had hit him, but he strapped that up with a strip of his sweatshirt to staunch the bleeding, and he knew that a decent bandage was all he needed to sort himself out.

‘Let’s get the hell out of here,’ he said.

Hassad had already pushed his way through the door. He looked at the three corpses, then across at Porter. ‘You OK?’

Porter nodded, permitting himself a brief, tense smile. ‘How’d you know we were in trouble?’

‘I could see the van had been stopped,’ said Hassad. ‘That shouldn’t have happened. This is just an observation post, strictly neutral. The guards here shouldn’t stop anyone … so when I saw you’d been pulled up I knew something was wrong.’

They were outside now, helping a weak and frightened Katie to walk towards the van. Porter opened the door, and helped her into the passenger seat. Looking around, he clasped Hassad on the shoulder. ‘We’re quits,’ he said.

Hassad nodded. ‘Good luck …’ he said.

‘I’ll need it.’

‘And don’t come back to the Lebanon,’ he said crisply. ‘The amount of trouble you cause …’

Porter laughed. He’d climbed into the driver’s seat, and fired up the engine, not even looking back as Hassad turned and started walking back to the border.

He kicked on the accelerator, and pulled the Fiat back onto the road. It was less than a mile now to the Israeli border, and they could cover that in minutes. He increased his speed, anxious not to waste any time. The sooner we’re out of here the better.

‘We made it,’ he said, glancing towards Katie. ‘We’ll be eating hot buttered toast at the Tel Aviv Hilton tomorrow morning.’

‘And you know what,’ said Katie, wiping the tears out of her eyes. ‘It’s not even midnight local time. If we could just make to it a newsroom, we could definitely make the second edition of the Sunday papers.’

EPILOGUE

Vauxhall, London: Wednesday, 20 December 2006

As he walked back from the Gents, Porter glanced only briefly at the sparkling lights from the Christmas tree in the foyer of the Vauxhall Travel Inn. Some seasonal music was playing in the background, and outside he could see the beginnings of a hard frost starting to bite on the open ground. Doesn’t matter, Porter told himself with a smile of satisfaction. I’m not sleeping out there. Not tonight. Not any night.