Soldier D: The Colombian Cocaine War

by David Monnery

  Chris was busy removing as many traces as he could of their night on the sandbank. It was probably a one in a hundred chance that anyone would notice, but it was that chance which the ingraining of good habits was supposed to remove. The SAS did not leave tracks when they could avoid doing so.

  Twenty metres away Wynwood was ‘talking’ to Belize on the PRC 319. Finishing, he collapsed the antennae and walked back across the sandbank to the boats. ‘Which would you like first,’ he asked them, ‘the good news or the bad news?’

  ‘Do we have to have both?’ Eddie asked.

  ‘What’s the bad news?’ Anderson demanded.

  ‘There’s a stretch of rapids eighty kilometres downstream, about five kilometres of them, which we’ll have to carry the boats past. Tomorrow I guess. There’s a portage trail, so the going shouldn’t be too difficult.’

  ‘No native bearers?’ Eddie wanted to know.

  ‘Only you and the Dame.’

  ‘Ha ha. So what’s the good news?’

  ‘It looks like the Peruvian authorities will turn a blind eye to our appearance in their fair country, provided we can get into it without being stopped.’

  ‘That’s good news?’ Eddie said. ‘I was expecting wine and women at the very least.’

  ‘Even a Little Chef with a plump waitress round the next bend would have been something,’ Anderson agreed.

  ‘Mmmm,’ Chris said, ‘I love their cherry pancakes.’

  ‘Have you clowns quite finished?’ Wynwood asked politely.

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  ‘Are there any Indians around here?’ the Dame asked.

  ‘A few. From the Witoto tribe. But they’ve been civilized, whatever that means.’

  ‘Bought or killed,’ Eddie said dryly.

  Wynwood looked at him. Every time he had made up his mind that there really was only cynicism in Eddie’s heart, something else would slip out through the protective camouflage. ‘Yeah,’ he agreed. ‘Come on, let’s get started.’

  They slid the boats off the sand and into the river, and for the next few hours, as the sun climbed into place above them, made steady progress. The river meandered this way and that, but slowly, in giant curves rather than sharp bends, and the wall of forest on either side seemed practically unchanging, as if, like a wallpaper border, it was drawn to a recurring pattern.

  If the flora showed little obvious variety, the same could not be said for the fauna. Monkeys chattered and howled in the trees, the occasional alligator snoozed in the shallows, and large fish broke the surface and disappeared again with a splash. Huge blue butterflies floated past like dreams.

  And then there were the birds. Chris could hardly believe the variety to be found in any direction he chose to look. There were several species of wading birds, but the ones which drew his attention were the jaburus – white storks almost as tall as men, with red throats and black legs, heads and beaks. They paced up and down the sandbanks with heads slightly bowed, looking for all the world as if they were pondering some deep philosophical problem.

  Woodpeckers could be heard and often seen, herons stood watchfully on the banks, hawks circled above the river, kingfishers glided across the water, and bright-coloured macaws flew by, seemingly always in groups of three. The only blots on this tableau of grace and beauty were the flocks of hoatzins, fowls that looked like distant relations of the pterodactyl, and delighted in hissing at the party from the safety of the bank.

  The richness of the bird-life contrasted with the almost total lack of any human imprint. The occasional ruin of a landing stage bore testimony to past activity, but no villages came into view, no other boats, no other people. Only a single plane, which flew high across the river behind them, offered visual proof that there were still other humans on the planet.

  Wynwood was still wondering about it an hour later. It could have been in this area for any number of reasons, though the most probable was undoubtedly drug-running. And if it had been looking for them it had done a good job of looking like it wasn’t. Wynwood mentally shrugged: there was nothing they could do about it if it was, other than keep themselves in a state of constant vigilance.

  ‘Reminds me of my school staff room,’ Eddie said in front of him.

  Wynwood followed his gaze to where a flock of hoatzins was watching them from the lower branches of a tree. He laughed, and looked back up at the sky. ‘Looks like rain,’ he said.

  He was right. The clouds above grew steadily darker, and finally disgorged themselves just as the five men were pulling the boats up onto the mid-river sandbank Wynwood had chosen for rest and food. Thoughts of seeking shelter lasted about twenty seconds – by which time they were soaked to the skin. They set out receptacles to collect water and sat in the downpour consuming cold the last tins from Florencia.

  ‘I found them,’ Vadim said.

  ‘Show me,’ Chirlo said, reaching for the map.

  ‘Here,’ Vadim said, pointing. ‘They were there at quarter past eleven, so … well, you can work it out.’ He drew on his cigarette. ‘Where do you intend to stop them?’

  It was Chirlo’s turn to point a finger. ‘Tomorrow morning, I should think.’

  ‘Couldn’t they be there tonight?’

  Chirlo shrugged. ‘I doubt it, but we will be there just in case.’

  ‘How many of you?’

  ‘Eight men.’ Chirlo smiled. ‘And an M60 machine-gun.’

  The shower had proved as short as it was heavy, and by mid-afternoon the sun had dried them and their clothes as they moved downstream. But towards dusk the sky again darkened and they decided to make a dry camp on the shore rather than risk a cold, wet night on the sandbank.

  With the boats secured all five men set to work constructing a waterproof ‘basha’, using jungle wood – mostly bamboo – to provide the frame, interwoven atap leaves to keep out the water, and various vines and creepers to hold the whole thing together. It was something they had all done before in Brunei, and in not much more than an hour a passable shelter some three metres long and just over two wide had been constructed.

  While the Dame prepared some warm food, the others took time to thoroughly clean and dry their Brownings and MP5s. In the jungle, humidity alone could render weapons inoperable, let alone the drenching of a tropical rainstorm.

  ‘Where are we, boss?’ Eddie asked.

  ‘About two hours from the rapids by my reckoning,’ Wynwood replied. ‘So we should get there by 0900 at the latest. Allow three hours for the portage, an hour’s rest … we should be close to La Tagua by dusk.’

  ‘And then it’s what? Sixty-odd kilometres by road to the border?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Piece of cake,’ Eddie said. He looked out through the open wall of the shelter, where the rain was beginning to come down in almost grotesquely large droplets. ‘The thought of curried snake for the next thousand kilometres was beginning to get me down.’

  ‘The one I had in Brunei wasn’t bad,’ Chris said.

  They all joined in the discussion, working their way through a long list of things they had never dreamed of eating in pre-SAS days, but which they had eventually found themselves consuming. There was unanimous agreement on the slug’s lack of culinary quality.

  ‘McDonald’s should try them,’ Eddie suggested. ‘McSluggets.’

  ‘Just for that you’re on first watch,’ Wynwood told him.

  * * *

  It rained most of the night, which surprised Wynwood, whose previous experience of rain in tropical areas suggested one heavy shower in the middle of each day. Maybe it had something to do with their proximity to the mountains.

  The rain eventually stopped an hour or so before dawn, and for the last hour of his watch Wynwood listened to the maddeningly irregular drip of water coming down through the foliage overhead. A mist rose from the river, which the first light of day turned into an opaque fog. Another ten minutes and the sun began clearing it away, breaking the mist into patches like some wonde
r detergent clearing pollution from the sea.

  As the jungle birds awoke to the sunlight Wynwood woke the others. Within half an hour they had dismantled the basha, done their ablutions, breakfasted and loaded the boats.

  They set off in the same order as before, Eddie and Wynwood in the lead boat, the Dame, Chris and Andy in the second. The jungle seemed subdued by the night’s rain, and the first hour was spent in an almost supernatural silence. When the men spoke to each other it seemed louder than it should, and the occasional cry of a nearby bird was almost enough to make them jump.

  It was out of the general silence that a low murmur became increasingly audible. ‘The rapids,’ Wynwood said thankfully.

  ‘We must be on the right river, then,’ Eddie said.

  Six kilometres downstream, just ahead of where a small, heavily forested island bisected the channel, a landing stage had been built to assist in the unloading of boats for portage past the rapids. Since at this time of the year the river was still running low, anyone landing would have to make use of the rusted iron steps which led down to the surface of the water two metres below.

  Behind the landing stage several decrepit houses – huts to anyone but an estate agent – were roughly lined up on either side of a dirt road which led off into the jungle south of the river. Inside these huts were now gathered all but two of the twenty or so Indians whose homes they were. Since there were no locks on the doors, only threats and the patrolling presence of five of Chirlo’s eight sicarios physically kept them there. What would happen when the time came, and the sicarios were needed elsewhere, might be problematic, but Chirlo hoped the presence of their headman and his woman on the landing stage, covered by several guns, would give the villagers reason to stay put. These two hostages also had another part to play in the drama Chirlo was hoping to direct, that of a smiling welcome committee for the Englishmen.

  The M60 was mounted immediately behind the landing stage, with a line of fire right across the river, just in case the Englishmen were foolish or ignorant enough to attempt the rapids in the boats they had bought. They would certainly die if they tried, but out of Chirlo’s sight, which was not the preferred solution.

  For the moment the machine-gun was not visible from the river. Four walls of rusty corrugated iron had been rescued from the top end of the village, and recycled into what looked like a simple storage hut. At the pull of a string all four walls would collapse outwards, leaving the gun with a full field of fire.

  Chirlo was proud of this idea, but hoped it would not need to be used. With any luck he would be able to get the drop on all five men as they came ashore. Killing them with a machine-gun was, after all, not a great improvement on having the river do it for him. And he wanted to know which of them had killed her.

  His men had all been given the positions which they were to occupy the moment the signal was given by the man across the river. He and Fernández were already ensconced inside the door of the first house on the right, which had been built close to the river. The hidden machine-gun, manned by Pérez and Cayano, was ten metres away across the road. Out on the landing stage, as the third point of an equilateral triangle, the two Indians sat in apparent silence.

  Had he made any mistakes, Chirlo wondered. The helicopter he had used for ferrying in his men had never been closer than three kilometres to the river, so there was no way they could have heard it. They had no real choice but to leave their boats at this point. They did not have any heavy weapons. He had the superior position.

  Looking across the river, he wondered whether he should have put more men on the far bank. At that moment his watchman waved the red T-shirt he was using as a signal. The Englishmen were in sight.

  ‘Get everyone in position,’ he told Fernández, ‘and remind them – if they fuck up they’ll wish they hadn’t.’

  Coming round the wide bend in the river the first thing Eddie saw, about half a kilometre ahead, was an island in midstream. Then the outer edge of the landing stage emerged from the curve of the right bank.

  ‘People,’ he announced succinctly.

  ‘They look friendly enough,’ Wynwood said, examining the two Indians through the telescopic sight. One man and one woman, neither of them young. He gave a hand signal to Chris to lengthen the gap between the two boats. He could see nothing suspicious but it was better to be safe than sorry.

  They were about two hundred metres from the landing stage when something began to nag at the edge of Wynwood’s mind. He took a look back at Anderson, to see if his old partner’s fabled sixth sense was picking up any of the wrong vibes, but received only a smile in reply.

  ‘The natives are waiting for their beads,’ Eddie said facetiously.

  The two Indians had stood up and seemed to be grinning inanely in their direction. Wynwood examined their faces through the scope. There really was something odd about them. They looked, well … stoned.

  He examined the area behind them, the houses, the corrugated hut. Where was everyone else, he wondered. Where were the dogs? This was the moment in the movie, he thought, when someone says: ‘It’s too quiet.’

  Well, it was. He didn’t know why but he didn’t like it.

  One of the Indians said something indecipherable and beckoned them forward.

  That was the last straw. Wynwood hand-signalled Chris to take the other boat away to the left, towards the far bank. ‘We’ll go in alone,’ he told Eddie in a soft voice. ‘I’ll do the paddling. You keep your eyes open.’

  Eddie placed his paddle down and took a firm grip on the MP5 which had been hanging across his stomach.

  Wynwood suddenly realized that on one of the visible walls of the corrugated hut the streaks of rust ran up rather than down. With sudden ferocity he propelled the boat forward towards the landing stage.

  His scream of ‘Take cover’ echoed across the river.

  Chirlo had watched the separation of the two boats with horror. Why hadn’t he foreseen such a simple manoeuvre? And what should he do now? If the two in the first boat landed they would have to be taken, leaving the other three dangerously at liberty … unless they could all be taken out by the M60 … but they were moving to the other side of the river and he was not that confident in his men’s accuracy at such range … so perhaps he should open fire immediately on the far boat … or else …

  These thoughts uselessly jostled each other in Chirlo’s brain. Accustomed to the split-second decision-making of the slum barrio streets, he lost himself in the luxury of whole seconds in which to make up his mind.

  Pérez, in charge of the machine-gun, waited for the order that did not come. In a few seconds the first boat would be shielded by the landing stage, but from where he was the chief could not know that. Logic and fear came together – he gave the word to drop the shields at almost the same moment Wynwood’s cry split the silence.

  They dropped with a clatter just as Wynwood shot the boat forward towards the cover of the steep bank and landing stage. Pérez sent one stitch of bullets straight through the space where Wynwood’s head had been a split second before, then pulled back on the gun and set his sight on the second boat across the river.

  In the second boat Chris and Andy responded to Wynwood’s cry, but their surge forward was cut off almost as soon as it began. A fusillade of machine-gun fire exploded around them, causing the Dame to curse and the boat to suddenly slow. Chris turned to find the Dame holding a bloody arm and Anderson slumped forward, half his head blown away.

  Wynwood’s sudden surge forward caught Eddie off balance, and he had only just managed to regain it when the front of the boat rammed into the pilings beneath the landing stage. He reached out an arm and grabbed, somehow keeping hold while the stretch tried to pull his arm out of its socket. The crash had spun the boat’s stern to the left, almost catapulting Wynwood into the bank. He managed to keep the MP5 out of the water and gain a hold on the bare red earth of the steep slope.

  He could see only sky above the rim of the bank, but a quick look
back across the river told its own story. The other boat was running for the cover of the island, but already the man in the back – Andy – had his head slumped forward over his chest, and there was another two hundred metres to go.

  The machine-gun fire had stopped, but it could open up again at any moment. There was no choice. Wynwood turned back to Eddie, who was lying forward on the slope on the other side of the landing stage, and gave him the hand signal to advance. Eddie gave him a reproachful glance, then grinned, and started wriggling upwards.

  Wynwood did the same. Somewhere up above, two men were conducting a half-whispered argument in Spanish. The gun must have jammed, Wynwood thought. He thanked his lucky stars for the previous night’s rain.

  He now had his head just short of the top of the bank, and searched with his foot for some point of leverage in the slope. Finding one, he shared glances with Eddie, and they launched themselves up across the lip of the bank just as the M60 opened fire once more. Both landed still rolling, their eyes searching for targets.

  Wynwood was only eight metres from the machine-gunners, who were still trying to jerk the gun round towards him when he cut both of them in half with the MP5. Hearing a noise behind and to his left, he twisted round. A feeling like fire running up his arm was followed by the crack of an automatic, and as he opened up with the MP5 a head disappeared round the corner of the building.

  Eddie’s roll had almost rammed him into the side of the building nearest to the water. In the second he took to decide which way to go, a sicario incautiously put more than one eye round the corner and acquired a third in the middle of his forehead. Eddie got to his feet, exchanging the Browning for the MP5, and worked his way round the back of the building. He emerged from the last corner in the same roll, ending up this time in a half-kneeling position with two Colombians not ten metres away.

  Having turned everything to disaster with his military inexperience, Chirlo now found himself, for the last time in his life, in his element. As the blond Englishman whirled into view, his revolver raised in both hands, Chirlo simply stepped behind Fernández. It had worked on the streets of Bogotá and it worked now. Fernández absorbed the bullets, his arms flying upwards with the impact, leaving Chirlo space through the armpit to send two bullets into the body of the Englishman. He turned, almost in triumph, to find another Englishman’s finger tightening on the trigger.