by Ryan, Chris
‘Long time ago. Twenty-six years.’
‘What were you doing here?’
‘Business trip,’ Bald lied.
He didn’t want to tell the kids the real reason they had been in the country. They had been serving with the Regiment at the time, training up a specialist unit tasked with taking on Pablo Escobar and the drug cartels. The unit’s secondary task had been to hunt down the FARC units operating deep in the jungle. He remembered what Merrick had told them back in London. About Hector’s father, Alberto. He’s connected to the guerrillas. Bald didn’t want to provoke the kid by admitting he’d once helped train soldiers to kill them.
‘Colombia is very different now,’ Hector said. ‘Lots of tourists. Lots of Americans, Chinese, English. And Venezuelans.’
‘Venezuelans?’ Porter repeated.
Hector sucked the dregs of his cigarette, flicked the butt out of the window and nodded. ‘They come across the border every day. Thousands of them.’
‘Must be shite over there.’
‘Like you wouldn’t believe. They come here to find food, medicine, work. Some beg on the streets. Some join the gangs. A few join the guerrillas.’
Bald said, ‘What’s the deal with you two and your old man? You’re with the old FARC mob as well?’
‘Our father used to fight. Then the army bombed their camp. Many dead and wounded. My father was badly injured. Now he works on the farm.’
‘And you two?’
‘We help our father around the place. Do what we can to support the guerrillas. Food, information, supplies. Whatever our friends need, you know.’
‘How do you know our people at MI6?’
‘We don’t. One of the old commanders, he works in Bogotá these days. In politics. Has a contact at the American Embassy. Whenever they need something done, they speak with the commander. He tells our father, we send the message to the camp. Sometimes, we take people to meetings with the guerrillas too. Like your friends. The Americans.’
‘What did they tell you about us?’
Hector made an expressive shrug. ‘Just that you’re friends of the Americans. They told us to take you into the jungle, to meet our brothers and sisters. Then they’re going to take you across the border to Venezuela.’ Hector glanced back. ‘Is that true?’
‘More or less.’
‘That place is fucked up. The police, they’re shooting people in the streets. Had to call in the army. Nobody’s seen the president in weeks. They think he’s hiding.’ Hector shook his head. ‘You ask me, anyone crossing the border is crazy.’
‘I’m beginning to agree,’ muttered Bald.
They rolled on through the Colombian countryside. They passed undulating green fields and low hills studded with trees, and single-storey farmhouses with corrugated tin roofs and battered old pick-up trucks dumped on dirt-track driveways. They passed fields of grazing cattle and timber-built ranches and a handful of dilapidated rest stops. Bald and Porter scanned the landscape, searching for signs of a threat.
Traffic was light. They passed delivery trucks and long-haul lorries and the occasional motorcyclist buzzing along at the side of the road, and not much else. Luis kept the Cherokee ticking along at seventy miles per hour, fingers drumming on the steering wheel to the beat of the rap music spilling out of the radio. His older brother stared out of the window at the dense grey clouds and smoked.
They stopped twice. Once at a petrol station with a small roadside diner next door, serving up tamales and fried plantains. Then for a second time a couple of hours later, in a small town roughly two hundred miles from Bogotá. A speck-on-a-map type of place with a few businesses hugging the side of the road. A motorbike repair shop, an Internet cafe that doubled up as a bar and a restaurant with a bunch of beer-bellied guys in straw hats sitting outside at plastic tables, smoking cigarettes and chatting over bottled beers. None of them paid much attention to the two foreigners travelling with the Mendoza brothers.
Half an hour later, they hit a military checkpoint.
There was a sandbagged guard hut to one side of the road and a bunch of soldiers standing around, gripping their automatic weapons. A uniformed guard marched over to the Cherokee, tapped on Luis’s window and barked at him in the local lingo. Bald and Porter handed their passports over to the guard. He took a long hard look at them and there was a brief exchange with Hector, with lots of exaggerated hand gestures and gesturing to the maps of the eastern plains area.
The guard turned on his heels and marched over to the other soldiers, still clutching the passports.
‘What the fuck is he doing?’ said Bald.
‘He says he has to make a call,’ Hector said.
Bald felt his muscles tighten. ‘Shit. If he suspects something, we’re in fucking trouble,’ he muttered.’
‘It’ll be fine.’
Bald watched the guard closely as he made a call on his satellite phone. He sensed that the mission was hanging in the balance. If this goes wrong, we’ll be wearing handcuffs in a couple of minutes. The operation will be over before we’ve even reached the camp.
Sixty seconds passed. The guard seemed to be having a deep conversation with the person on the other end. Then he killed the call and marched back over to the Cherokee. Bald’s stomach clenched tighter. Is he going to arrest us?
The guard handed over the documents, stepped back from the vehicle, waved them through. Bald eased out a sigh of relief as they drove away from the checkpoint.
They rolled on for another ten or twelve miles. As the last streaks of daylight tinged the horizon they crossed a rusting truss bridge and Luis took the next left turn, arrowing the Cherokee down a rutted dirt track flanked by dense tangles of forest. Like driving down a tunnel. After two hundred metres the track curved gently to the right before it widened to a driveway at the front of a modest-looking farmhouse.
Luis skidded to a halt on the driveway and killed the engine.
‘We’re here,’ said Hector.
Bald and Porter debussed from the back of the wagon and stretched their legs as they glanced round.
The farmhouse looked rustic and run down. It had been built in the middle of a clearing, with a terracotta-tiled roof and exterior walls painted the colour of orange peel. A low brick wall surrounded the property, with cultivated parcels of land to the north and south. There was another field at the rear of the farmhouse with a pair of old bangers and a few outlying buildings. A narrow dirt track led from the back of the farmhouse towards a thick wall of jungle two hundred metres away. The area around the farmhouse looked neglected. Bald saw rusted farming equipment, old car tyres. A couple of scrawny-looking dogs chained to a painter barked at the foreigners. In a paddock to the north, half a dozen mules were grazing on the long grass. Bald had the impression of a family scraping by, living from hand to mouth, just about making ends meet.
‘Welcome to our home,’ said Hector.
‘Nice place,’ Bald replied. ‘Very chic.’
The screen door rasped open, grating on its rusted hinges. An old guy in a loose-fitting shirt, waterproof trousers and farming boots emerged from the gloomy interior and limped across the patio to greet his sons. They hugged him in turn, and then Hector introduced him to Bald and Porter.
‘This is our father, Alberto.’
Bald pumped the farmer’s hand. He could have been forty-five or ninety or anywhere in-between. It was impossible to tell. The guy had one good eye and about three teeth. His face was all shrivelled up, as if it had been left out in the sun for too long. His hand was heavily calloused, and his hair was the texture of coarse wool. He flashed a gap-toothed grin at Bald and said something to Hector.
‘He says, you must be very tired after such a long journey,’ Hector translated. ‘He says he’s made up the beds in the spare room for you. There’s food, too, if you’re hungry.’
‘Starving,’ Bald said. ‘I’ll have a beer and all, if there’s one going.’
Alberto Mendoza made a pained face. He said something else to He
ctor. Who then said, ‘We have no beer. But my father says he has some rum in the kitchen.’
‘Good enough.’
‘And for you?’ Hector asked Porter.
‘Coke will do. Or juice. Or water. Just as long as there’s no booze in it.’
Hector looked confused. ‘I thought all Englishmen drank?’
‘This one’s a lightweight southerner,’ Bald cut in. ‘Give him a couple of beers and he’s a wreck.’
Porter scowled at him. Then he swung back round to face Hector and said, ‘How far is it to the training camp?’
‘From here? Seven hours or so.’
‘Bloody great,’ Bald muttered. ‘Another seven hours in a fucking wagon.’
Hector said something to Luis and chuckled heartily. Luis gave Bald another big thumbs-up and grinned at him, as if he had just said something really dumb.
‘What’s so funny?’ he demanded.
‘You cannot get to the camp by road,’ Hector explained, composing himself. ‘Impossible. Too dangerous.’
‘How are we supposed to get there, then?’
‘We won’t be driving. We have another way.’
FOURTEEN
They ate dinner with the Mendoza clan – plates of bland rice and corn and boiled chicken, washed down with a sugary soft drink Bald had never heard of – and an hour later they crashed on a couple of lumpy mattresses in a cluttered spare bedroom with exposed brickwork and a small window and ceiling fan that didn’t work. They woke at five o’clock the next morning with the dawn chorus. The birds in the treetops began their usual shrieking racket an hour before first light, squawking and chirruping and signalling the start of the new day. After their morning ablutions, Bald and Porter grabbed their backpacks and shook hands with the shrivelled-faced old man. Then they headed out through the screen door.
The first streaks of daylight fringed the horizon as they emerged from the farmhouse. They found Hector and Luis at the side of the paddock, fastening baggage to four mules tethered to a timber hitching post. Supplies for the FARC fighters, Bald guessed. Food, medical equipment and fresh clothing, plus drinking water and snacks for the trip. One of the mules, he noticed, had a pair of forty-five-gallon drums hooked to its sides. The lids on both drums were sealed shut.
‘Can’t believe we’re having to ride these things through the jungle,’ Porter grumbled.
‘Only way to the camp, mister.’
‘Screw it,’ Bald said. ‘Beats walking.’
‘You two know how to ride, yes?’ asked Hector.
‘A little,’ Porter said.
Bald said, ‘We’ll manage. What’s the plan?’
‘We’ll meet two of the guerrillas in the jungle,’ Hector explained. ‘They’ll be waiting for us at a meeting point. They’ll lead us the rest of the way to the camp. Make sure we’re not followed.’
‘Not taking any chances?’
‘They’re wanted men, mister. They’re taking a big risk helping you.’
‘What do they want, a fucking hug? I’m sure they’re getting nicely compensated.’
‘We need to get moving,’ Porter said. ‘We’re expected at the camp.’
Bald nodded, checked his watch. Six o’clock. If we leave now, he thought, we’ll arrive at the camp at around one in the afternoon. They needed to get there as soon as possible, so they could be in position when the hostage was moved.
Every second we spend here means less time at the camp. Less time to prepare for the mission. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.
The two Brits hefted up their backpacks and attached them to the pack-saddles on their respective mounts. Porter rode a whinnying beast called Escobar. Bald was given a stubborn mule called Scarface. Hector told them he had named them himself, in honour of his heroes. The kids helped them climb into their saddles, checked that their packs were secure and untied the ropes from the hitching post. Porter clumsily gripped his reins in his left hand, his right hand clamping the saddle horn to steady himself as his animal lurched from side to side.
Luis and Hector mounted their own mules with the practised ease of kids who had been riding since before they could read or write. They set off down a narrow track leading towards the jungle to the rear of the farmhouse, two hundred metres away.
It was sweltering hot beneath the canopy, humid and gloomy. Within minutes, Bald was sweating heavily. Drops ran down his face and trickled down his back, starching his shirt. The ground was sodden and a vile stench of rotting vegetation and dead leaves assaulted his nostrils as they pushed deeper into the jungle. The terrain was closer to bush than dense forests. There were rolling hills and valleys and small trees, criss-crossed with bushes and animal tracks. Movement was difficult, and slow.
But the route was safe, Hector assured them. There were few roads in this part of the forest, making it impossible for the army to patrol. The guerrillas had complete control of the area, he said.
‘Who are they fighting?’ asked Porter. ‘I thought the war with the government was over.’
‘Most of them laid down their arms. But some chose to stay in the jungle. Carry on the struggle against the state.’
‘Why?’
‘They don’t trust the government. Too many broken promises. They prefer to stay in the camps and fight.’
‘Bet the locals are thrilled about that,’ said Bald.
‘They don’t have a choice. In these parts, you’re either with them, and support them, or you’re against them. Anyone who betrays them, bad things happen. Many bad things.’
‘Sound like a friendly bunch, your mates.’
‘They keep the peace. Kill criminals. Protect the farms. Without them, we would be at the mercy of the cartels and the gangs.’
As the sun climbed higher into the sky they made steady progress, following the route that Hector took. The mules were occasionally difficult but surefooted and handled the terrain effortlessly. By eight o’clock the counter in Bald’s head told him that they had covered around five miles. A speed of around two-and-a-half miles per hour. Hector had said that the guerrilla camp was a six-hour ride. Which meant that the camp was roughly fifteen miles into the jungle.
After another fifty minutes or so they stopped beside a small stream for a water break and drank from the canteens the Mendoza brothers had loaded onto the saddle packs.
‘How much further?’
Hector rinsed out his mouth with water and squinted at the track ahead. ‘Six miles. No more. We’ll get to the meeting point by noon.’
Luis nudged him and winked. ‘Good job it’s not much further, no? Your friend, he don’t look so good.’
Which was putting it mildly, thought Bald as he glanced over his shoulder. Porter was resting on a fallen log, his body leeched in sweat, grimacing and breathing heavily between greedy gulps of water from his canteen. Bald marched over to him, wearing a contemptuous look on his face.
‘Fuck me, mate. Talk about letting the side down. We’re only halfway there and you’re already hanging out of your arse.’
‘I’m fine,’ Porter snapped.
‘Bollocks. When was the last time you did any proper training?’
‘I’ve been on the job,’ Porter hit back. ‘That’s kept me in shape.’
Bald almost choked on his water. ‘Call that physically demanding? Sitting around some rich tosser’s house, having brews and going for a stroll in the grounds?’
‘There’s more to it than that,’ Porter growled.
‘Bullshit.’ Bald took another hit from his canteen, screwed the cap back on. ‘You’d better sharpen up once we get to the training camp. Can’t have your ragged arse slowing us down when we cross the border.’
‘I can handle it.’
‘Once upon a time, yeah. But not now. All them years of going on the piss are catching up with you.’
‘It’s just the heat, for fuck’s sake,’ Porter snapped. ‘Besides, I’m not the only one with a drinking problem.’
Bald stepped towards his mucker, his expression
hardening like cement. ‘What are you saying?’
‘Come on, mate. You’ve put away a lot of beers over the years too. You’re almost as bad as me, when it comes to the drink. Your body’s not exactly a Rolls-Royce anymore, either.’
‘Maybe not,’ Bald said. ‘But I’ve still got what it takes to do this op. Unlike some.’
Porter was about to reply when Hector called over to them, tapping his watch and signalling that it was time to move on again. Porter clamped his jaws shut, biting back on his rage as he stowed his canteen and climbed back onto his mule. A few minutes later they set off again through the forest.
Two hours later they came to a shallow stream junction. Hector tugged his reins and called for his mule to stop beside the edge of the water, next to a pile of stones.
The others dismounted and waited, and three minutes later Bald heard movement coming from beyond a bamboo thicket on the opposite side of the stream. The squelching of mud, the faint rustling of branches.
As Bald looked on, two figures decked out in camouflage kit emerged from behind the thicket, crossed the river and approached, their M16s slung over their shoulders. A man and a woman. The guy was tall and skinny, with bandoliers of ammo draped diagonally across his front. Long shaggy hair and a red sweatband.
The woman was a few years younger than the guy. Early twenties. She looked tough and capable, with a strong muscular physique and a stern expression. But she was undeniably beautiful, too, with high cheekbones and alluring green eyes. She wore a multi-coloured charm bracelet and a heart-shaped locket hung around her neck. Bald found himself imagining her in a pleasingly tight-fitting dress.
The sentries and the Mendoza brothers exchanged a warm greeting, and then Hector thrust an arm in the direction of Bald and Porter, introducing them to his friends. They eyed up the ex-SAS men suspiciously.
‘Guys, this is Carlos Zapata,’ Hector said, pointing to the skinny bloke with the sweatband. ‘And this is Daniela Reyes. They’re from the local unit. Reyes’s father was a teacher. She speaks some English.’
‘Fuck me,’ Bald said, ‘they didn’t tell us that FARC was recruiting Playboy models these days.’
