Cartel Fire

by Tom Riggs

  Hudson, thought Munro. He had almost forgotten about the incompetent moron.

  “Yes it does ring some bells. I asked Charles to make some inquiries.” He gave Youngman a brief summary of his run-in with Adrian Hudson, leaving out any mention of what had since happened in Mexico.

  “Ok,” said Youngman, “what I am about to tell you is strictly off the record. I’m only telling you because you’re basically still one of us, and I think our ops director is slightly in love with you.”

  “Jessica?” said Munro, “send her my love.”

  “I will. She sends it back in spades, believe me Jack. But back to Hudson. This is an informal heads up from Jess. Hudson is no longer with us. He hasn’t been operational since that rat fuck in Yemen, which you know only too well about.”

  “How could I forget,” replied Munro, his face darkening at the memory. Hudson had gone out one night and got drunk in a hotel bar in Yemen’s capital Sana’a and woken up ten hours later with his wallet and laptop missing. The ensuing loss of intelligence had cost the lives of several informants in the country and set SIS’ operations back years.

  “We should have locked him up after that, but the Americans were keen we keep it as quiet as possible. So we kicked him out, dishonourable discharge with no pension. Thought that would be the last of it. But now…” he paused.

  “Now what?”

  “And now…this is so off the record that I’ll deny even knowing you if you repeat it Jack…”

  “Luke, you know you can trust me. Come on.”

  “I know, sorry. Look, the thing is that we have now come to believe that Hudson is selling his services and some stolen intelligence files to the highest bidder.”

  “That’s embarrassing for you guys…I could have taken him out in Venezuela if I’d known.”

  “And you would have done Her Majesty’s government a great service if you had. But do me a favour will you? If you come across him again, call me before you do anything too rash. We’ve got something special lined up for him. After we’re finished with him, he’ll be wishing he’d taken a quick bullet in Venezuela.”

  “I’ll let you know,” said Munro. And with that Youngman hung up. Munro looked out to sea. The sun was getting low, it would be dark soon. Anna came out onto the terrace.

  “I’m making some pasta if you want some,” she said. “After that I’m going straight back to bed if that’s ok with you captain. This adrenalin crash thing has hit me hard.”

  “Pasta sounds great, thanks,” said Munro. But his mind was elsewhere, the names from his past bringing up memories that he was trying so hard to forget. Hudson, Youngman, Jessica. All names from another time. The adrenalin was draining away from him. He felt his strength go as his mind went back to Pakistan, to a remote village in Chitral, close to the Afghan border but a long way from anywhere else.

  They ate a simple meal of pasta and salad in the small kitchen. Neither said much. Anna seemed to have gone into some kind of shock, he guessed. Munro did not mind, he had a lot to think about. The adrenalin had left him and in its place was a returning sense of dread. He needed to keep moving. But as he looked at Anna he found himself feeling something that he did not want to recognise. He realised that whatever the outcome of the investigation, he had to make Anna safe.

  Later, after they had eaten and Anna had gone to bed, Munro took a bottle of whiskey, a glass and a bucket of ice back out onto the terrace. He scooped the ice straight out of the bucket with the heavy crystal tumbler. He picked up the bottle of whiskey. Lagavulin Single Malt. His favourite. The drug lord did have some taste after all. He poured himself a large glass, the peaty whiskey making the large ice cubes hiss and spit. Walking out to the edge of the terrace, he looked out to sea. It was a dark night, the high clouds covered any stars. Only the low moon provided any light. But it was on the wane and there was little to see. He sipped his whiskey and thought. Youngman’s call had brought the nightmares to the fore. His demons, as Anna would call them. Strengthened by the whiskey he forced his mind to the village. Women mutilated, animals slaughtered. And the face. The perfectly formed face of a young girl. The face of a young girl staring at him from the bloody dust. He forced his mind back to the day. Forced it back to the moment, seconds after he saw the face, when he realised that the perfect face had no head. No head and no body.

  He shouted, screamed, and threw the whiskey bottle onto the beach. Screamed because every time he thought of the village, he was reminded of one, inescapable, horrific fact. It had been his fault. It had all been his fault.

  36

  Munro woke with the sun streaming onto his face. He immediately realised that it was later than usual. The sun was already up.

  “You’re ridiculous,” said a voice behind him. He turned to see Anna in the doorway. The sun shone straight onto her and he realised again how beautiful she actually was. She also carried a large steaming mug of coffee.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “This house has six bedrooms, all with beds bigger than I’ve ever seen. But you choose to sleep on the floor in this poky little study, with the door open.”

  “It was the only room that has a good vantage point of the living room below,” he said waking up fast, “safety first Anna.” He stood up and stretched in front of her, not caring that he was only wearing a pair of tracksuit shorts.

  “Whatever, action man, I brought you some coffee. You can make your own breakfast. I’m going for a swim, the water looks incredible.” And with that she turned and walked off before he could thank her.

  Munro put the coffee to one side. He looked at his watch. Eight am. They had seven hours before Jaime came and took them to the airport. Seven hours to kill in a luxury villa on Mexico’s Caribbean coast. It could be worse thought Munro, it could be a lot worse.

  An hour later, Munro walked onto the beach fed, watered and exercised. The kitchen had been well stocked, Eduardo and the generals obviously liked to eat well. He had made himself a three-egg omelette with a side of corn flour tortillas and refried beans, a large glass of orange juice, a mug of tea with a coffee chaser. He had showered outdoors, in a marble lined room that would not have looked out of place in Pompeii circa 10 BC. More like a Roman car wash than a shower, he had counted five showerheads. But it did the job. For exercise, he had gone to the gym that was housed in an annex to the villa. It was a small building holding only a running machine, rowing machine and lots of free weights. Normally Munro hated gyms, hated sweating inside surrounded by a bunch of muscle Marys building vanity physiques. But he remembered Jaime’s instructions not to leave the villa’s grounds, and it was hot outside. So he put the running machine on max, at the steepest gradient, and spent thirty minutes running up a digital mountain.

  The sun was getting higher and hotter, but it had not yet bleached out the shore line as so often happens on wide sandy beaches in the tropics. As a beach, it really was perfect. Long and wide and white, fringed by palm trees and then jungle. Straight out of the tourist brochure and completely empty. Munro hoped the Mexican government would get a good price for it. He saw Anna, far out to sea. She was obviously a good swimmer. At least he hoped she was. But he did not worry, the sea looked more like a swimming pool it was so calm. Spotting a lounger with two towels on it, in the shade of several palm trees at the edge of the beach, Munro went over to it and lay down. He took off his t-shirt and lay back, letting the dappled sun warm his skin. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes and smiled. It could be worse, he thought. A lot worse.

  Munro opened his eyes as a shadow passed across his face, blocking the dappled sunlight. He looked up to see Anna, standing there in a white bikini. A slight breeze blew in from the sea, cooling him but hardening every inch of her. He looked at her and looked away quickly, fixing his eyes on the distant horizon.

  “You took my seat captain,” she said smiling.

  Munro apologised and stood up, twisting his leg back deftly so as to avoid coming too close to her.

&n
bsp; “It’s all yours,” he said smiling and taking another step back. “I’ll go and grab another one from inside.” He turned to go but she took a step towards him and then another, until she was inches away from him. He didn’t move. He could smell the sea on her. She was a foot smaller than him but when she looked up at him, he did not feel in control.

  “I want to thank you,” she said raising her face. If he bent down just a few inches, his face would touch hers, his lips would touch her lips. He knew he should take a step backwards, but he didn’t.

  Instead he said “What for?”

  She did not move her face. He could smell the salt on her breath when she answered him.

  “You’ve saved my life twice in the last three days, you’ve risked yours and you’ve done things that I can’t imagine.”

  Munro said nothing. He knew he should take a step back. Stay professional. But he didn’t.

  “But what I really wanted to thank you for,” said Anna, moving her face millimetres closer to his, “was not taking advantage of me in that surf village.” She paused and smiled, looking straight at him. He looked deep into her eyes. Light brown like her skin.

  “You were right,” she whispered, “I wasn’t thinking straight. I had been through a traumatic situation, my emotions were skewed. But here’s the thing,” she moved even closer, two inches now, “I slept for twelve hours straight last night. I’ve just swum about a mile. My emotional responses are right back on track. I’ve seen you looking at me Jack, and right now,” she moved closer, one inch now, “the only thing I am feeling…is very, very horny.”

  Munro bent his head down an inch and kissed her, tasting the salty sweetness of her lips. She kissed him back and they went down onto the lounger as one, kissing each other deeper, their hands tugging at what little they were wearing.

  “This..isn’t…professional,” said Munro between kisses.

  “Shut up soldier,” said Anna, as she brought him into her.

  Later, they lay on towels on the beach. She lay with her head rested on his shoulder. Neither of them said much. If Munro had been asked to analyse his feelings at that point, he would have said that, for the first time in years, he felt content.

  They said nothing for a long time, both seemed happy to stare up at the palm leaves high above them. A half bottle of whiskey lay by one of the loungers from where Munro had thrown it the night before.

  “Do you drink to help you sleep?” she asked him suddenly.

  He looked at her sharply. “I don’t need drink to help me sleep, I sleep fine.”

  “Really Jack? Is that why you cry out in your sleep? Why you lie awake at night?”

  Munro moved away from her in alarm.

  “What are you talking about?” he said defensively, “I slept well last night.”

  Anna looked at him and smiled sadly.

  “Last night maybe. But I’ve heard you everywhere else, you wake up shouting in the night. Then you lie awake for hours. I know Jack, I’ve been sleeping pretty close to you every night. You always go back to sleep in the end and maybe that’s why you forget about it.”

  Munro turned away from her, but he said nothing. He looked out onto the warm Caribbean beach, so far away from that dusty valley in the Chitral. But it was still there, she was right. He suddenly felt weary. All the strength that had been in him was gone. But he also knew he had to talk.

  Eventually he turned back to her, the words coming slowly at first.

  “We were operating in the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Out there countries mean nothing, it’s all about your tribe. If your tribe happens to live on a border, then so be it. They just ignore rules and laws, and kill anyone who tells them otherwise. The governments learnt a long time ago that it was easier for everyone concerned to just stay away. Let the tribes live as tribes. By their rules not the government’s.

  “Al Qaeda arrived there in the 90s and exploited that. Gave the tribes money and set up camps there. The locals were happy to accept it at first and they felt they had a duty to look after fellow Muslims. The tribal code. But after 9/11 everything changed. We went into the region hard and the border tribes found themselves caught up in a global war that they had never asked to join.”

  He paused. Anna looked at him expectantly, not quite sure where he was going.

  “I was in the region with my unit, hunting a senior AQ commander. I knew he was being sheltered by one small group, in the Chitral valley. But I also knew that this tribe had helped the Americans in the 1980s against the Russians. They were good Muslims, but they weren’t anti-western. They just wanted to live as they wanted to live.”

  Munro stopped and looked out to sea.

  “And so you worked with these guys, this tribe?” Anna prompted.

  He took a deep breath and continued.

  “That’s right,” he said smiling at her in thanks for helping him out. “I recruited four men from their village to join my unit. They were the best soldiers you could have out there, knew every single rock of the mountains. And they hated the Arabs, hated their money and the war they had brought to their valley. They were perfect. With their help we took out the AQ commander and three of his deputies … it was a major victory for us.”

  “So what was wrong with that Jack? Sounds like you were doing your job?”

  Munro looked at her sadly.

  “Have you ever seen what a suicide bomb vest does to someone?”

  Anna froze.

  “It blows their entire body and head to small pieces. Makes someone unrecognisable … apart from the face. For some reason, the way the blast goes upwards I think, a bomb vest will blow the bombers face clean off, leaving a perfect mask lying several hundred yards away. An absolutely perfect face, but no head and no body.”

  Anna looked at him with tears in her eyes. But she said nothing and instead willed him to go on.

  “I got a medal for what I did in Afghanistan. ‘The brave captain Munro, found and killed a senior Al Qaeda commander, turned the local population against the terrorists’. They gave me a medal and offered me a promotion: ‘major Munro’.” He laughed hard and reached for the whiskey bottle, but Anna stopped him with her hand.

  “So what happened Jack? You can talk to me … it’s ok.”

  Munro looked at her closely and saw something in her eyes that made him go on. He pushed the whiskey bottle away and took another deep breath.

  “I knew what would happen as soon as I first walked into the village. It was a beautiful place, remote and desolate maybe. But beautiful all the same. It was full of children, the animals were well-fed. It was a happy place. But I went in anyway. I went in anyway and spoke to the elders. I talked to them about the war in the 80s, against the Soviet Union. I talked to them about Islam, about how Al-Qaeda were not true Muslims. I promised them that we would protect them if they helped us. The power of America and NATO would protect them from the Arabs. I told them everything I had been told to tell them, and it worked. It worked perfectly. They agreed to help us and sent three of their best men with us.

  “We couldn’t have achieved the mission without those men and I knew it. I also knew that NATO and the US weren’t going to help that village. My mission was totally classified. NATO didn’t even know the village existed. I knew that and I went ahead anyway. The mission came first and captain Jack Munro had to achieve his mission.”

  “So what happened to the village Jack?” said Anna softly.

  “The village?” repeated Munro, “what happened to the village?” He paused briefly before continuing, talking faster now, wanting to get it all out.

  “We hiked back with the tribesmen. I was feeling so proud. Disgustingly proud of myself. I had got the target. A high value kill. My CO had called me to talk about medals and promotions. My choice of commands. I was a hero.

  “We knew something was wrong as soon as we came over the ridge. There was a rank smell in the air. Thick black smoke was coming out of some of the buildings and the whole place w
as totally silent. As I said, it was normally a noisy place, a happy place ... We didn’t see any bodies for a while. They had been corralled into the middle of the village, by the only well. Then they had been shot. Every man and woman in the village had been machine gunned and set alight. That was what the smell was, it was the smell of sixty bodies slowly burning. Slowly charring.”

  “Oh Jack,” said Anna moving towards him. But Munro pushed her away. He hadn’t finished.

  “But there were no children in the pile. We thought at first that they had taken them, but then we started to look down. All around the village were explosion marks. Blackened pits that we all immediately recognised as the ones a suicide bomber makes. And two hundred yards from every pit…” he paused and took a breath, “two hundred yards from every black stinking pit, was the perfect face of a small child. A perfect face with no head and no body….they had tied vests to every child in the village, and blown them all to tiny pieces. Blown all their faces clean off. All because captain Jack Munro, the war hero…all because captain Jack Munro had to get his man.”

  Anna didn’t say anything. Instead she leaned over and hugged him close and hard.

  “I’m so sorry Jack, I’m so sorry.”

  Hector was first out of the jet. He had not been to the airstrip before, but he knew its type well. Crudely cut out of the jungle and then covered with so much pesticide that nothing would grow there for years. There were little strips of land like this all over Mexico and Central America. Long enough to accommodate a small jet or twin prop, but small enough that few would notice it. He stepped off the plane and was surprised to see they were not the first to arrive. Another jet, similar model, similar size, was parked at one end. He was even more surprised to see Silvano waiting at the bottom of the ladder for him, with six men in black standing a few metres back.