Chapter 20
Santa Pola, Spain, August 1999
The air in the Coast guard communications centre on the Alicante harbour side was electric with expectation. It was also hot, stale and filled with the blue haze of cigar smoke mixed with the ozone smell that is peculiar to electronic equipment running hot, and that inexplicable musty odour that all government offices seem to acquire, a mixture of dust, paper and stale tobacco. All the windows were open to the night air and a ceiling fan was spinning slowly in a vain attempt to cool the room. It did not help much. The walls were familiar to Government buildings the world over having been painted in a non-descript shade of beige and a long time ago at that. On different walls, various out of date notices displayed rules and regulations that had been considered vital when they were first sellotaped into place. These shared the space with duty rosters and other more up to date material pinned to a corkboard above the duty desk.
The room was situated on the first floor of the Harbour Master's building overlooking Alicante's commercial harbour and this helped it to catch any slight breeze that was going, only tonight there wasn't one. Jack Ropell, with no equipment to monitor or look after, went once more to the water dispenser to try and moisten his throat, dry from the tension of waiting combined with the heat and cigar smoke. The water was lukewarm. Ramon Garcia was sat in front of the radio panel wearing a headset. In the ashtray next to him was the large cigar that was causing most of the current air pollution; thankfully it seemed to have gone out.
"Haven’t you people ever heard of air conditioning?"
Garcia did not turn away from the radio as if he felt to look elsewhere would lose him contact with the other end. He picked up his cigar and re-lit it. Ropell groaned inwardly. Almost a minute went by in silence.
"I think it’s the cost."
"Pardon?"
"The air conditioning. I think the last time we asked they said it would cost too much to install it in all the offices."
It was an automatic response and it was obvious that the last thing Garcia was interested in at this moment in time was air conditioning. Jack waved a hand at the radio.
"Why don't you leave that to the operator?"
"Pardon?"
"I said, why don't you leave that to the operator? The last leadership course I attended said that one should not overshadow ones men, especially if it looked as if you thought something might be too important to leave for them to do."
This was all said in English. Garcia thought for a moment, shrugged and taking off the earphones passed them back to the operator.
"You are right of course." He patted the operator's shoulder and spoke to him in Spanish. "We are going outside for some air, call me when they make contact."
He Beckoned to Ropell and the two men left the radio room and went down the stairs and out onto to the harbour side where Garcia again re-lit his cigar and moodily stared out across the harbour to the Mediterranean.
"I didn't know you smoked?"
It was a question brought on by the fact that in the last four days Ropell hadn't once seen Garcia smoke.
"This?" Garcia held up the cigar. "Only at celebrations and in times of the utmost stress, amigo."
He shrugged and threw the now half smoked cigar into the harbour.
"Better?"
"Much."
They turned as of one accord and strolled along the wall of the dock from which the patrol boats had left about two hours ago to head for the pickup area. The crews of the patrol boats had been briefed that once they arrived in the general area of the drop zone they were to run a pattern that would make it look as if they were two trawlers hunting a shoal of fish. When the suspect freighter came into close radar range, about twelve miles in this case, they were to do nothing except transmit a code sentence and then repeat it. This again was to sound like one trawler communicating with another on the whereabouts of the fish they were chasing. They were then to wait until the pick up craft arrived at the area, always keeping to landward at a range of about a kilometre away and challenge it while it stopped to recover the drugs. The whole thing depended on the pickup boat believing that they were fishing boats sufficiently to ignore them and start the pick up. The operators voice brought the two of them out of their individual brooding.
"Capitan. Hacemos contacto."
It was the radio operator calling to them through the open window. Garcia turned.
"You caught that."
"Yes. They have made contact, its time to go back. Come on"
The two men turned and headed back to the communication office at a fast walk, both trying hard not to break into a run.
On the bridge of the more southerly of the two patrol boats Lieutenant Fernando Alvaro Boria turned to talk to his second in command. At that moment she was staring hard at the radar screen in front of her.
"Sergeant, how far away is the freighter from the dropping zone now?"
She answered without taking her eyes from the screen.
"About five kilometres and she is now back in the normal shipping lane, Jefe."
"Any sign of the pick up boat?"
Sergeant Matilda Bonito allowed her gaze to come up from the screen and onto his face. In the shadowy, subdued lighting of the bridge, the radar screen and some panel lights being its only illumination, she could just make out his striking profile. She and Fernando had been seeing each other more and more frequently in the last three months and if regulations were to be properly followed, they would soon have to declare their interest in each other. She would then be transferred to another unit. She allowed herself to smile at him, aware that in the semi-darkness the helmsman could not see it but that he would know.
"There are four likely suspects, but the one I think is most likely is this one here."
She pointed at the radar screen that showed several bright blobs.
"One moment ago it was not there and now it is, and yet it would appear to be travelling at only about four knots an hour."
She frowned.
"I left this screen for only one minute to make the contact call to base when we identified the freighter and it was not there before that. When I came back it was two kilometres within the radar scan. It must have been travelling a lot faster than it is now to penetrate to there in that space of time."
He came over and looked to where her finger was pointing at the screen, the finger and thumb of his left hand pulling at his lip.
"If he is the one, he is coming from the other direction to where I would have expected. He is coming from Cartajena and I would have said it should be from the north. From Barcelona."
Matilda Bonita shrugged.
"Maybe so, but why is a fast launch hanging about out there at all in the middle of the night and so conveniently close to where a freighter has supposedly dropped over one hundred kilos of Cocaine, if it is not involved?"
He put his hand on her shoulder and gently squeezed. He put his mouth close to hear ear and murmured.
"OK Cariña, OK. Let me know what he does."
He turned to the helmsman.
"Raoul, when the time comes, whatever else we do we must keep between him and the shore and force him towards the other boat. I don't care who gets him, Jaime, or us just as long as one of us does. Tonight we will nail the bastards."
He picked up the intercom and spoke to the engine room.
"Francisco."
"Jefe."
The answer came back loud and metallic, but from where Matilda stood almost indistinguishable over the sound of engines that came with it.
"In few minutes we are probably going to be completing some high speed manoeuvres, is everything OK down there with the engines?"
The answer evidently pleased him for he continued.
"Manolo?"
"Yes, Capitan."
This time the reply was from the deck gunner and could be heard clearly.
"Get the cover off the guns. When he comes by I will wait until he reaches the drop zone and then give him a few minu
tes to get started. When he has been stationary for two minutes we will go to flat out on both engines and approach him on the landward side. As soon as we are within three hundred meters we will illuminate him with the spotlight and I want a two second burst over his head. Got that?"
"Yes, Capitan. A two second burst."
Boria continued.
"I want it close to him, but for Christ's sake don't hit him with that first burst just in case it is some bloody tourist out night fishing. However, if he then tries to run for it you blow the bastard out of the water, and that instruction comes straight from Captain Garcia. That's all."
He put down the intercom and turned to Matilda.
"Tell Captain Garcia we have contact and that we will give the call sign the moment we go to all ahead."
Matilda Bonito allowed herself a smile, pleased that he had such confidence in her opinion and turned to the radio. She was twenty-eight years old, attractively dark eyed, olive complexioned and in love with her Commander. At the wheel the helmsman, Raoul, also smiled to himself that they should think the rest of them too blind to notice their interest in each other.
Back in the control room the tension could now be felt like a live entity. With some self restraint Garcia had resisted taking over again from the radio operator and was sitting back in his chair staring out across the black water of the harbour towards the sea, as if he could see what was happening out there by will power alone. Ropell was sat with his chair tipped back against the wall staring at the ceiling fan, his hands behind his head. Trying to appear as if this was not of any vital importance to him. Two of Ramon's Sergeants were sitting together in a corner waiting to see if their waterborne colleagues could make the arrest or if they would have to race down to the waiting cars to try and make an intercept if they failed out at sea and the pickup boat came in to land the stuff. It was completely silent except for the ticking of the wall clock, which read three fifteen.
Out at sea on the midnight blue workboat, the helmsman looked over at the man standing by the radar scanner.
"Well?"
"I'm sure they are just fishing boats. They have been running that pattern for about half an hour now and I think they are hunting a shoal with their echo sounders."
The helmsman nodded.
"OK, lets do it or we will still be here when the sun comes up."
The boat's speed went up as they closed on the dropping zone. The second man was studying the Satellite Navigation intently until suddenly.
"That's it. We are within two hundred meters of the drop zone. Cut the drive."
The boat came down from the plane and slowed to a stop. The second man turned to the radio direction finder and switched it on. He took the remote control from his pocket in preparation and studied the direction finder.
"Come round five degrees towards the north and go to slow ahead."
As the helmsman obeyed he went out into the night and made his way forward to the bow of the craft where he aimed the hand control out into the night and was immediately rewarded by the flashing light. He made his way back to the cabin and began to prepare one of the dingy davits in readiness for boarding the cargo. He was happy and began to hum softly to himself the chorus of a pop tune. The helmsman had cut the engines and was reaching for the boat hook to fish the radio buoy out of the water when he happened to glance at the radar scanner.
"Holy Mother of god, Its the fucking Coast Guard."
The dots on the scanner that five minutes before had been fishing boats, were now moving across the screen too fast to be any trawler he had ever seen.
"Alfredo, get the cover off the gun. They are travelling too fast to be just checking. Someone has blown us."
Alfredo Romero dived out of the cabin and started to rip the cover from what at first glance looked to be a deck winch, but as the canvas came away it revealed a twin fifty millimetre automatic cannon. By touch he checked that the ammunition belt was loaded correctly and fastened himself into the gunners harness so that he could not be thrown overboard by any high speed manoeuvres and then leaned back against it with both handles gripped firmly and his thumbs hovering over the firing buttons. Seconds went by as the now hardly moving boat rolled into the waves until a spotlight suddenly split the night sky and pinned the boat to the sea with Its brilliant beam. A ripping noise filled the air at the same time as a stream of thirty millimetre shells passed less than half a meter over his head, sounding like angry wasps. He turned slightly and growled at the man at the wheel.
"When, Jesus? When for gods sake, when?"
The helmsman snarled back at him.
"Hold it, Alfredo, hold it. We don't know how many of the bastards there are out there and I want to make sure we stop him completely. There were at least two of them and we don't want a running battle all the way back to shore, do we amigo?"
All the time he was gently backing one outside engine against the other to keep the bows of the boat turning with the progress of the Coast guard vessel. Then, when he felt the angle was correct he slammed the throttles open.
"Now, Alfredo, now.”
Alfredo sighted along the twin barrels at the searchlight, came down a fraction and pressed down with both thumbs.
At first Matilda Bonito was mesmerised by the line of fiery red lights that came towards her, so slowly at first and then as they came closer, travelling with the speed of a jet fighter. Through the window of the wheel house in the reflected glow of the searchlight she saw the forward machine gun position raked by a line of explosions and Manolo flung away and into the sea. She watched hypnotised as the fiery line stitched across the deck towards the wheelhouse, leaving holes the size of tennis balls.
Someone grabbed her and threw her to the deck and she knew it must have been Fernando. She fell with a numbing thud onto her back and watched dazed as Fernando’s head exploded, leaving his body with Its hands still stretched out in front of him trying in vain to stop the lethal rain and she was showered in warm sticky blood and fragments of bone and brain. Something heavy landed very hard on top of her and she struggled to free herself from the weight of Raoul's the helmsman's body. The boat was still shuddering from the impact of the canon shells and now no longer under control of the wheel. The engines spluttered once, twice and then stopped, the boat coming down off the plane and slowing as if it had hit a brick wall as the holes punched along the hull went below the sea and water flooded in. An instant fifteen degree list occurred and then it went silent and the night was again jet-black and still, the searchlight smashed or without electricity.
After a time, she didn't know how long, the immediate shock wore off and she began to take stock. She realised that the shooting had stopped and that none of the lights were still working and with a sudden panic knew she was the only one left alive on a ship full of dead men, that was probably sinking. She thought about trying to move Raoul's body so that she could get up, but then she remembered Fernando had no head and she decided to stay where she was. Secondary shock hit her and she began to shiver. She realised that she was crying, but she didn't know who for. Herself for being all alone in this sea of death or for her dead comrades or just Fernando. Then someone touched her arm and her heart leapt.
"Raoul, are you still alive."
The voice that answered her was not Raoul's, but Fransico's.
"Matilda, you are still alive? I thought every one was killed. I thought I was alone here. Thank god your alive as well."
She heard the tears in his voice and remembered that he was very young. She also remembered that she was the sergeant and was now in command of what was left of this vessel and its crew.
"Fran, help me will you? Get Raoul's body off me and help me up."
She realised that there was a pain in her right leg that meant more than a bruise and knew she had been hit by a bullet or a splinter. She waited for Fransisco to do something, but he just knelt there crying.
"Come on, Fran or we may both die."
It was cruel to frighten him furth
er, but it worked and she felt the weight of Raoul's body roll from her. She tried to get her mind working.
"Look in the cupboard above the radar screen, if its still there. There should be some torches."
There were scuffling sounds mingled with the sobs and then suddenly and miraculously there was light. Fransisco turned the torch towards her and then immediately switched it off again as it illuminated the carnage on the deck.
"Switch the bloody light on again, Fran."
He obeyed, but kept his head turned away. She dragged herself across the slippery deck to the radio operator’s chair and pulled herself up into it, her hands now sticky with the blood from the deck, Fernando' blood? At her urging Fran found a second torch that worked and handed it to her. By Its light she could see the tears streaming unchecked down his face as he looked at her, waiting to be told what to do and she remembered again that he was only twenty years old. She examined her leg. A jagged splinter of grey steel or plastic, some fifteen centimetres long and about three wide, had entered through the muscle at the back of her left thigh and was sticking out a clear three centimetres on either side. At the moment it was not over painful, but she knew that when the shock wore off it would be agony. She found the first aid box still miraculously in place and bound the leg tightly while the engineer just watched.
When she had finished she looked up at him.
"Get the distress flares out of that cupboard, Fran and let one off every two minutes until you receive a reply."
Still crying he fetched them and let one off up into the night sky through the shattered roof of the wheelhouse. It burst with a fiery red light that reminded her again of the horror she had just seen, while the boat rocked gently on the slight swell. An answering flare went up almost immediately and he came back to tell her.
"I know I saw it. Well done. Now come over here."
He made his way slowly over to her, being careful to avoid any contact with the bodies of his former comrades. He made an attempt to pull himself together and stopped in front of her with his shoulders at attention.
"Yes, Sergeant."
"Fran, will you do something else for me please?"
He nodded and she held her hands out to him.
"Will you please hold me very close until they get here."
She felt his arms go around her and his tear wet face press against hers and she allowed her own tears to come.
"The bastards used a fifty millimetre automatic cannon with a mixture of tracer and explosive shells, according to the armourer."
The speaker was a Colonel of the Guardia Civil and was dressed in full uniform.
"That's a full blown weapon of war and it means that whoever these bastards are they didn't just mean to shoot back. They meant to sink anything we sent against them. They should have succeeded as well. The only thing keeping that boat afloat when the others got there were the built in buoyancy tanks. They are made of foam."
The wave of his arm indicated the patrol vessel, now tied up against the dock in the Alicante inner harbour where she was drawing the attention of the media and the curious. These were being kept at long range, but they were doing their best to get their pictures with a battery of telephoto lenses.
Ramon Garcia was standing with Jack Ropell and the Colonel and all three were staring at the vessel. On one side the bow was a hole you could drive a motorbike through, where the combination of cannon shells and water pressure had done their work on the reinforced plastic hull. Then a line of jagged holes were stitched up her side to the main deck, climbing as the gunner had sought to put out her searchlight. The thirty-millimetre machine gun was pointing drunkenly at the sky with one barrel almost blown completely away from the main body of the gun. The main cabin had also taken a great deal of punishment and was now barely recognisable. They had been aboard when she had first been towed in by the shocked crew of the second vessel and seen for themselves the massacre in her main cabin. Sergeant Matilda Bonito had insisted in giving her report before collapsing in shock and being taken to hospital to have her wound seen to and Engineer Francisco Jose Balletta had also been taken to hospital suffering from severe shock. The only reason he was unwounded being that he had been on the other side of the massive engines when the shells had smashed through the flimsy wall of his ship.
"Have the families been informed?"
"Yes, Colonel. I did it myself this morning."
"Three dead. These animals must not get away with this."
He turned to Ropell.
"Will we get another chance do you think, Señor Ropell?"
"I don't know, Sir. This isn't the first time this person has given us information, but we do not know who he is or why he does it. We only know that he is very high up in their organisation." He shrugged. "Even if they did not know before that someone is giving us information this incident will at least make them examine the possibility. We may get one more chance, but I don't know when or where."
The Colonel nodded.
"I see, but if god is just he will give us one more chance at these sons of whores. I am the officer in command here and I am supposed to remain logical and use reason, but I tell you both that what I want to see is these bastards laid out in the same mortuary in which we have laid out our sailors."
He turned his eyes away from the wrecked patrol boat
"I must return to give my report."
He shook both men by the hand, allowing his other hand to clasp the opposite forearm when it was Garcia's turn. He spoke to him in Spanish, either forgetting or not caring that Ropell could understand him.
"I am sorry for the losses, my friend. Perhaps the Englishman will provide us with the chance to avenge them."
He tightened his grip and looking straight into Garcia's eyes spoke slowly and clearly.
"If and when he does, I want the dead to be only on their side. You have my permission, my instruction, to use any means that insures this."
He whipped his hand up to his forehead in salute and turning sharply on his heel, strode off to his car, which he entered, his back ramrod straight. Completely ignoring the clamouring of the media behind the barricades that prevented them from crawling all over the wrecked patrol boat.
Ignoring them also, Ropell and Garcia walked slowly back to the communications room.
"Do you think they will try again soon, Jack?"
"I am not sure, Ramon, but considering that we pulled nearly a hundred kilos of Cocaine from the sea this morning they must have lost at least most of their expected load." He put his hand on Garcia's arm. "What was all that from the Colonel about making sure that only the other side gets killed next time? How does he expect you to do that?"
Garcia turned and looked at him.
"This is Spain, Jack and we do not always follow the Queensbury rules. Especially when the other side uses what we feel to be unfair tactics. The Colonel was just reminding me that I should do what is necessary." He lifted his hands palms upward in a continental shrug. "Coming from a country where a policeman is criticised for shooting a man who is pointing a gun at him, just because with hindsight it is found that the gun was not real, you would not appreciate this." His face showed his disgust at such attitudes towards the guardians of the law. "Here we are much more realistic in our expectations of the forces of law and order. Here we would say that such an idiot brought it upon himself."
"Capitan, the telephone for Señor Ropell."
The voice of the communications sergeant brought the conversation to an end and both men lengthened their stride.
Once more in the radio room Ropell took the proffered telephone, the radio operator whispering to him that it was from Inglaterra.
"Ropell here."
"Hello, Jack, Peter Romsey. Have you got your satellite phone with you?"
"Yes sir."
"Then give me a call straight away on the scrambled line will you?"
The phone went dead and Ropell turned to Garcia.
"Do you have an office I can
use to call the Old Man?"
Garcia Beckoned and led him down the corridor to an empty office where he left him. He was gone over half an hour.
When he returned there was a strange look on his face. He beckoned Garcia and went back down the corridor to the small and scruffy office he had used to make his telephone call. He sank down into one of the ancient metal-framed chairs in front of the desk and waved Garcia to the other one. For some moments he did not speak, but just sat there with his elbows on his knees, staring at his shoes. Then he straightened up and looked at the other.
"I have to return to England as soon as possible, but first I think we have some work to do here. I don't know where to start so I will tell it to you as I got it from the Old Man."
He ran his fingers through his thick hair.
"Last Friday night while acting on a tip off, the drugs squad raided a public house in Brixton, that's an area of London, called the Silver Goddess. There they intercepted a delivery to the landlord of two kilos of Cocaine. The courier was an extremely beautiful girl in her early twenties. She had no identification on her, refused to talk and for several days the police have been trying to find out who she is. Yesterday morning a girl answering her description was reported as missing. They checked it out and it was the same girl."
He turned to look Garcia in the eyes and gave a small, savage grin.
"Her name is Angelique Jennifer Parsouel."
He sat back and watched the other's reaction with unconcealed pleasure.
"Then you have him, yes? You have this Parsouel vermin in the palm of your hand, amigo."
"I don't think so, Ramon, not yet. You see it was Henri Parsouel who reported her as missing and so helpfully supplied the photo that identified her."
"But what are you saying."
Ropell held up his hand.
"Stay with me for a minute. There is more and the next bit involves you."
He composed himself and began again.
"This morning in London a man went to the offices of the Metropolitan Police at New Scotland Yard and asked to speak to a Senior Officer on the drugs squad. As he would not speak to any one else this request was eventually granted. He identified himself as one Wayne Doolan, a small time crook and fence from Liverpool, who jumped probation just over a year ago and disappeared."
He took a small notebook from his pocket and checked against it.
"He claims that he went to London where he assumed the identity of one Graham King, a man who actually now resides in Australia. The Metropolitan Police guys are checking all this out of course. However, the interesting part of his story is that he reckons that he was working for a drugs ring and that his job was to recruit girls for distribution of the stuff."
Jack's face broke into a grim smile.
"Here's the bit I like. He claims that one of the girls he recruited was Angelique Parsouel. Yes that's right. Henri Parsouel's daughter"
He held his hand again up to curtail Garcia who looked about to burst with excitement.
"Hang on I haven't finished. This guy claims that he was brought to Spain with another one of his girls who was acting up and had become unreliable. He says they came firstly to get this girl away from England and have her quietly murdered and secondly, to get him away from England in case the Parsouel girl put the finger on him. They were accompanied by an older woman who was going to do the actual killing with a Heroin overdose."
He shook his head.
"Here it all gets a bit complicated. This Wayne Doolan claims that it turns out they also intended to kill him at the same time and in the same way. You know, two young people fooling about with sex, drugs and booze on holiday with the usual tragic consequences. But he claims it was all being done on the orders of the top guy and that this is Henri Parsouel. It was because our Henri had found out that one of the girls Wayne Doolan had recruited was his own daughter. Hence the immediate death sentence."
He laughed.
"And he had just identified her to the police when he reported her as missing. As far as I can make out that means that the daughter didn't know what her daddy does to make his money and Parsouel didn't know she was acting as a mule. It has its humorous side you have to admit."
Garcia stood up.
"May I speak now? Good."
He paced around the narrow office.
"How does this piece of dirt, this Doolan, know that Henri Parsouel was going to have him killed?"
"Claims that the man visited him here in Spain and told him personally"
Garcia lifted a sceptical eyebrow.
"Then why is he still alive." He gestured out of the window towards the harbour. "We can prove that these people do not mess around when they decide to kill."
Ropell went to him and put a hand on his arm.
"Ramon, there is still one part you do not know about and that you are not going to like." He handed him a piece of paper. "According to Doolan, there are three dead bodies at this address. One of them is the girl that came with him and one of them is the older woman, who he claims killed the girl and was about to kill him."
"And the third?"
"This is where I start to lose it. Doolan claims that the third body is the son of the older woman, who he only knows as Mother, and Henri Parsouel."
Garcia read the address and shrugged wearily.
"Then we had better go and have a look."
He opened the door and shouted down the corridor to his sergeant. "Pepe."
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