by Geoff Wolak
He nodded, and Big Sasha locked the page away.
Tomsk focused on No.2. ‘You ... hurt when you move?’
No.2 took off his green shirt and displayed the scars, Tomsk wincing. ‘I don’t want any more operations, really, seen enough fucking doctors to last a life time.’
‘You remember that day?’ Tomsk asked him.
‘The images of being pushed out the helicopter are vivid, but after that it’s a blur. I woke up a few times, tied up, shitting my pants, water from a straw, then a truck journey that made me sick, then a shit apartment, a police raid, but then prison was OK, I was in the medical wing, then they moved me to a private hospital, and a man said “Compliments of Petrov’s friends”. When I was well enough they flew me to England, sedated, and then lots of operations to fix things.
‘When I was better they asked if I would work with Petrov, and he came to see me at the hospital. I figured they might kill me, so I said yes, but ... working with Petrov is good, and I have a house and money and a car. Coming back was not about you, but the heat and the jungle.’
‘I like my air conditioning,’ Tomsk agreed. ‘And when you leave, I have a little something for you. Compensation.’
‘Thanks, Boss.’
‘Sounds odd, you calling me that again.’
My phone trilled. ‘Hello?’ I said in English, recognising the number.
‘Duty Officer, London, update for you. American Embassy in Bogota was hit an hour ago, RPG through a window, secretary killed, a few wounded, fire started. Professional job, clean get away, so the Americans think it the Cali Cartel.’
‘Why blame Cali Cartel, they’re not that stupid?’
‘The men arrested in Panama are set to be extradited to the States.’
‘Ah ... OK. Anything else?’
‘Just to say that your Uncle Sam is keen for some action.’
‘OK, thank you.’ Phone down, they were waiting. I told Tomsk, ‘Cali Cartel fired an RPG at the American Embassy in Bogota, killed a girl, wounded some others.’
‘Why, for fuck’s sake?’
‘The men arrested here are set to be extradited.’
‘That Minister said he would try and block that, delay it!’
‘Bad idea.’ I looked up a number and called the Minister. ‘It’s Petrov, now in La Palma.’
‘Ah, you’re back. Good.’
‘Listen, you’re delaying the extradition of the Cali Cartel men.’
‘Yes..?’
‘Bad idea, they will set off bombs in Panama. Get rid of those men double quick, or some children get a bomb not a lesson.’
‘That has been worrying us, yes. OK, I talk to my colleagues tomorrow. And when will you ... do something?’
‘Soon, we have men and equipment coming in, but we must be sure no mistakes, we get no second chance.’
‘Yes, they are no fools. Good luck.’
Phone down, Tomsk said, ‘You advise him to extradite those men?’
I nodded. ‘If not, Cali set off more bombs here. Let Cali go target the fucking Americans.’
Big Sasha asked, ‘The Americans will strike at them?’
I shook my head at him. ‘They’ve lost many people killed to the Cartels, never done anything. When the Cartel is mixed in with the people you need police, not aircraft carriers.’
‘They would never go to Colombia?’ Big Sasha pressed.
‘No, but they have sent advisors for years, and the CIA Centre Spike project was there for years, trying to get radio fixes on the cartel phones, but they never did. Every time they got some information the fucking Colombian Army sold it to the cartels. In the cities they report strangers. No one could get close to them in the city, police all on the payroll.’
‘And when you hit them..?’ Tomsk posed.
‘We need to keep the police busy,’ I told him. I pointed at his pad. ‘Spend some money, get a team of clever people together, start collecting evidence on Cali, going back decades, every police record you can find. Bribe people, get them, put them all together, then bribe witnesses and police that used to be near the Cartel.’
He started making notes. ‘I know a man who would be good for this. He writes a book about the victims.’
‘When we grab the leadership we need to make sure they get sentenced, so we need solid evidence, eye witnesses. If there are any, pay for them to fly to the States.’
‘There are many hiding here in Panama.’
‘Offer money, round them up, ask them to give evidence in America, offer good money for resettlement. And do that very quickly.’
‘Barman in my club was tortured by them, he knows where some bodies are buried.’
‘Good. Then after we get the leadership, and if everything goes well, send him to go dig up those bodies. We need them convicted, but I think the Americans have plenty of evidence anyhow.’
I grabbed a coffee and went next door, maps laid out, intel reports, and I started to try and make some sense of it all – it was a lot of information. No.2 helped, Tomsk said goodnight, and No.2 finally turned in an hour later.
I annotated the map with known Cali strongholds and businesses, but they were all within the city.
There were “rumours” of drug factories in certain places, and after an hour the only thing that was certain - was that certain roads were used for moving drugs, strangers stopped by the police, so I had a good idea of where the drug labs were, but it was a mountain forest area with tight winding roads and tracks, and every citizen was an informant.
One such informant, the guy with a hand chopped off by the cartel, had worked in an underground lab, not sure where because they always commuted by covered truck. He had drawn a map, and it matched the other intel, but it could have been a mile out, a mile of tight jungle and tall trees.
There was a note about a cement factory “maybe” being owned by the cartel, but I figured they owned half the businesses in the city anyhow, so what use was that information.
Several informants had pointed at the hillside estates above the city, west of the city, and that no one was allowed to go there. The estates were quite big, and there seemed to be several of them, more being built all the time. I could hit the wrong estate and the wrong houses, and we only had a few days to decide on targets.
I was sure that with a bit of luck we could find the drug labs, and destroy them, and that would bring out the gunmen, and that maybe someone would talk as the Russian lads tortured him. But then what? They’d know we were around.
From the drug labs supposed position to the estates was twenty miles of hard jungle and hills, so I could cover that in a night and a day. That would be my timescale, but I figured the alarm would be raised inside that time envelope.
My phone trilled, a UK number. ‘Hello?’
‘Papa Victor? This is GCHQ. Can you talk?’
‘Go ahead.’
‘We were tasked with assisting. Actually, they mentioned that we might be tasked with assisting, so we got involved anyhow. You see ... many years ago we ran a joint project with the NSA to try and triangulate mobile phones and satellite phones, but back then the computers were not up to it. They are now.
‘So what we have is a clever bit of software that scans the delayed satellite positional packets, and we can get the data without asking for it and alerting anyone, so it’s months old of course. And we got the Colombian data, and ran the software, software we tested in the UK on our staff first.
‘We also got the mobile tower data from Colombia, which the Americans stole after promising they’d never steal it. Once analysed, we get patterns, and we have what we think will be of great use to you. Got a paper and pen?’
‘Yes.’
‘Map of Cali?’
‘Just been annotating one with local intel.’
‘Right, west of the city are five estates in a crescent shape.’
‘Got them.’
‘Bottom one, active with low ranking gunmen, top one the same.’
I marked the ma
p.
‘Middle one, biggest estate, low ranking workers, not involved in nocturnal activities – if you get my drift. Second from the bottom, middle ranking staff, high up the hills west is a cul-de-sac, and that’s where the senior staff live.’
‘And you know all this ... how?’
‘Nocturnal activities. We figured the senior staff would sleep at night with their wives.’
I laughed. ‘Yes, they’d not want to be disturbed.’
‘We found patterns where an incident would occur, in the local police records, such as “John Smith shot dead on Acacia Lane”. Calls would be made on mobiles after the shooting to middle ranking staff, who would call the police or the lower workers. If before 11pm they would call the top estate, never later, never before 9am.
‘We used the theory across a dozen incidents, and the pattern was the same. When there was a simple road traffic accident there was no pattern, just on gang killings.’
‘Excellent work.’
‘On your map, looking at the middle estate, there’s a road six hundred yards north, snaking west. Where you see a tight bend, two hundred yards above is ... something, regular phone use, but the map says nothing there, old satellite images say jungle.
‘Above the estate with the leadership in, phone and radio use all night long, a hundred yards up the hill -.’
‘Guards.’
‘Yes. And something four hundred yards west, a hub.’
I marked the map.
‘OK, got a larger scale map?’
‘Yes.’
‘Look west twelve miles, a crossroads like a crucifix.’
‘OK, got it.’
‘South two miles, road ends, track starts. South a mile, west four hundred yards, small lake. From the lake go north six hundred yards, a large facility there, satellite has just trees.’
‘Underground.’
‘Back to the crucifix, east along the road, second turning south, down that road till it stops, track going west. Where that track ends, come back four hundred yards, go south four hundred yards, something there.’
‘Go it, and so far your data matches the local intel, but that intel was vague.’
‘Ah, good. Well from that last road junction, where it went south, go east two miles and see a straight stretch. End of the straight stretch, go due south a mile, cliffs indicated on the map. Something there.’
‘Caves?’
‘Satellite shows nothing. OK, back to the estates, best map scale you have.’
‘OK, go ahead.’
Big Sasha walked in, hand signal for a coffee.
‘Tea,’ I told him, then went back to the phone.
‘Senior staff estate, draw a sketch of five villas north to south. Bottom villa, lowest priority, then top villa, then second to top, middle two are senior, they got woken up the least, only a select few numbers ever call them.’
‘Maybe they’re just lazy.’
‘Next, south of the city is a cement factory -’
‘Got local intel about them owning it.’
‘Yes, many calls to that business, but a mile south is something, an isolated building, senior men calling it.’
I marked the map. ‘A target for me perhaps, it has jungle near it.’
‘There are many buildings of interest in the city, do you want them?’
‘Not fucking likely, we’ll stay in the jungle.’
‘Very well.’
‘Your intel confirms the local intel, but pin-points the targets. I would have been searching a mile of jungle otherwise.’
‘Next, we have a current satellite phone data, and they have people near - and in - La Palma obviously, some outside the town.’
‘Give me the positions.’ I wrote down the grid references.
‘We have one active movement. Hold on ... it’s just four hundred yards of you -’
‘Sasha!’ I shouted. He came running. ‘Wake everyone, Cali Cartel coming here!’
He ran out.
‘You got a position fix?’ I hurriedly asked.
‘Four hundred yards due west of you.’
‘I’ll get back to you. Keep the updates coming on that sat phone.’
I grabbed my rifle and cocked it as men shouted, bandolier on, webbing thrown on in a hurry, and I ran around to the bunkhouse, banging on doors. ‘British snipers, get ready, we have company! Boots on, rifles ready! Outside!’
Back inside the villa I found Tomsk in a robe.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘British Intel tracked a Cali sat phone, four hundred metres west of us here.’
‘They send someone,’ he noted, wide-eyed.
I gathered the guards and shouted instructions, the lights turned off, the night guards totalling more than twenty men. I took six, and waited for my snipers, who came around together, putting kit on still.
‘You English, right behind me. You six guards, a hundred yards west, careful who you shoot.’ I put my facemask and gloves on, the snipers copying. ‘Tie shoe laces!’ I told Tomo with an accent.
The Russian guards notified the senior man via their radios as I led them off to the gate. Out the gate I turned right along the wall, due west, and into the trees at a fast pace, a dangerous pace, but I figured I had a few hundred yards to play with.
At one hundred yards I left the guards, positioning them this side of an opening, and led my lads on through dark jungle, no radios in ears. Thirty yards on I said, ‘Dead quiet, dead slow, they’re coming to us, so let them.’
‘Who is?’ Tomo asked.
‘Cali gunmen, and probably amateurs, but stay sharp.’
Finding a stream and an opening I had Nicholson get up a tree, Tomo below, Leggit and Swann sent fifty yards north, off to my right. And we waited, the jungle alive with insect calls.
My sweat cooled, my heartbeat easing down. Only then did I switch my phone to vibrate, not an audible trill.
‘What’d you reckon?’ Tomo whispered.
‘Small team, good snipers. But they’d need RPG to do some damage. Sniper is no good when the fucking target is tucked up in bed.’
‘My birds were tasty, and very keen to oblige,’ he whispered. ‘So far it’s all good, Boss.’
‘Don’t get used to it, back to the UK in a week.’
‘But we could visit regular like...’
I smiled unseen inside my facemask. ‘You took two girls?’
‘Yeah, one to moisten and one to fuck.’
‘I ... have an idea what that means, and yes - I do need to get out more often.’
Ten minutes later a small twig hit me on the head. I glanced up; it was a signal. ‘Get ready,’ I whispered to Tomo.
Bushes rustled, twigs snapped quietly, and a dark figure appeared across the stream, some thirty yards off, a little moonlight to illustrate his stealthy outline. He was camouflaged, and wearing webbing. I frowned at that, now worried.
Additional dark figures appeared, all soon knelt, hand signals given, all very professional. Their M16s worried me greatly; could this be an American special forces operation I didn’t know about? If it was, I was about to get myself a long prison sentence. Then I considered the Panamanian Army, and did someone over there want a little extra cash, a new car to impress his wife.
The dark figures were all short, not tall, and that eased my mind a little. Mahoney and Castille were taller.
A burst of fire from Swann and Leggit, and two figures dropped, fire returned north. I had set automatic because it was dark, and we were in tight jungle, and now I fired a long burst left to right and back again, immediately firing on the trees behind as cracks sounded out from Tomo and from Nicholson above me, the dark figures still firing towards Swann and Leggit for now.
The firing eased, and I swapped magazines as I hid behind a tree, some fire coming my way. Ready, I sprayed the trees left to right and back again, Tomo copying, and I was soon onto my third magazine.
‘Ceasefire!’ I shouted through the dark.
It fell quiet, ju
st trees frogs, who were not about to interrupt their search for a mate just for us.
A groan, a wounded man.
‘Nicholson, get down. On me!’
Swann and Leggit ran in and knelt.
‘You hit?’ I asked.
‘No, Boss, all good. Who were they?’
‘I think ... Panamanian soldiers wanting some extra cash for a new sofa.’
‘Need it for the hospital bills now,’ Tomo put in.
Nicholson slid down a vine, rifle slung. He knelt, his rifle soon adopted.
‘OK, on me,’ I whispered, and we tracked back the way we came slowly, half an hour used up. ‘You there?’ I shouted in Russian as I found what I figured was the right spot.
‘Over here!’
‘Put your rifles down or I’ll shoot you in the fucking balls!’ I shouted back in Russian.
We moved forwards through the dark and met up, two groups of black figures.
‘You killed them?’ a voice asked.
‘Not all of them, some ran off.’
‘Who were they?’
‘I think Panamanian soldiers; they looked like them at least. Back to the villa, wait the dawn before you search.’
I led them back, slow and steady, listening out, sniffing the air, and we reached the villa lights and the wall, jeeps coming in. Inside the walls now, I sent the snipers to bed, telling them to put a chair up against the door, rifles ready – but to get some sleep.
‘All buzzed up now,’ Tomo told me. ‘Going to wake my birds and shag them senseless.’
Rocko walked around with Rizzo, rifles ready. ‘Bit of a flap on?’
‘Dealt with now, go back, relax,’ I told them, accented.
‘Cali Cartel?’ Rizzo asked.
‘Yes, hired guns,’ I told him. ‘Now a bit dead.’
‘Mercenaries,’ Rocko baulked. ‘Best paid men in the cemetery!’
Tomsk was waiting in the kitchen with No.2 and Big Sasha. I had taken my boots off, now in smelly green socks. ‘Well?’ Tomsk asked, still looking worried.
‘I think they were local soldiers, paid to attack. Looked just like Panamanian soldiers.’
‘They would never go up against me!’
‘How much fucking money do Cali have, eh!’ I shouted.
‘Well ... maybe,’ he quietly responded.
