by Ryan, Chris
Reyes stared at him. ‘Did anyone follow you?’
‘Not a chance.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘We’re ex-military, love. If someone was tailing us, we’d know about it.’
‘How far is your camp from here?’ asked Porter.
‘Not far.’ She pointed to a ridgeline a few hundred metres away from the stream junction. ‘On the other side of that hill. You will come with us now, okay?’
Reyes and Zapata turned on their heels, crossed the stream again and set off up the side of the densely forested hill. Bald, Porter and the Mendoza brothers followed them on foot, leading their mules up the gentle slope. Bald gave Reyes a long lingering look and glanced over at Porter, a crafty look in his eyes.
‘Tell you what. I wouldn’t mind having a crack at that.’
Porter stared at him with barely concealed disgust. ‘Do you ever think about anything other than shagging?’
‘Come on. You’re saying you wouldn’t?’
‘We’ve got a fucking mission to do.’
‘Doesn’t mean we can’t have a bit of fun along the way.’
‘You’re a dirty bastard, Jock.’
‘I like a nice pair of tits and a cracking arse. Nothing wrong with that. At least I know how to appreciate a good woman.’
‘It’s not about that.’
‘Yeah, it is. You’re just jealous, mate. Been so long since you’ve got laid, I’m surprised your manhood hasn’t fallen off.’
Porter clenched his jaws and looked ahead as they carried on up the hill. A short while later they hit the ridgeline and followed a track snaking down the far side of the hill, leading towards the valley below. The ground was thickly layered with foliage and Porter could see no further than fifteen or twenty metres in front of him as they plodded along the valley floor, picking their way through the dense undergrowth. After two hundred metres they hit a patch of bamboo and navigated around it, and suddenly the landscape opened up in front of them and they found themselves at the edge of a vast camp. Like a theatre curtain being pulled back to reveal a grand stage.
‘This is the place?’ asked Bald.
Hector grinned. ‘See, mister. Told you we’d get you here safely.’
Bald ran his eyes over the guerrillas’ camp as they drew closer. To the left there was a training ground where a dozen new recruits were being put through their paces while a stout guy in an olive-green hat shouted at them. There was an accommodation area to the right, with a scattering of hammocks and shacks with tarpaulin roofs. Groups of guerrillas were chopping wood and cleaning weapons. Others washed their clothes in a stream running alongside the camp. There had to be at least forty guerrillas, Bald guessed. Some of them appeared to be veterans, grizzled old sweats who had been through the wars, but there were plenty of younger faces as well. And several women, he noticed. At the far end of the clearing he noticed a larger timber-framed structure with the Colombian flag draped outside, next to a banner with Che Guevara’s mug on it.
Reyes and Zapata led Bald and the others through the entrance and down the main track until they stopped beside the training ground. Zapata told them to wait while Reyes hastened over to fetch the stout guy in the hat shouting at the recruits. She said something to him. He swung round and marched over to greet the new arrivals.
He nodded curtly at the Mendoza brothers, turned his attention to Bald and Porter. Up close, Bald saw that he had a dark pencil moustache and scars on his cheek, as if someone had been chalking off days on his face with the tip of a knife. Like the other guerrillas, he wore rubber boots and a jungle camouflage uniform, with an armband on his left sleeve bearing the FARC coat of arms: a pair of rifles crossed in an ‘X’ shape, over a map of Colombia, with the colours of the national flag in the background.
He said, ‘You’re the Englishmen?’
‘He is.’ Bald nodded at Porter. ‘I’m from Scotland.’
His face broke out into the world’s biggest grin. Half of his teeth were gold. The other half were missing. ‘Land of Braveheart! Whisky! Kenny Dalglish! My favourite country. One day, I visit.’
‘Good fucking idea.’
The guerrilla offered his hand. He spoke surprisingly good English, with little trace of an accent. ‘Andres Uribe. Company Commander.’
Bald shook his hand. ‘Jock.’ He pointed to Porter. ‘This is John.’
‘The one who cannot ride a mule properly. My men found this very funny.’
Porter knitted his brow. ‘You were watching us?’
‘But of course. My men have all the approaches covered.’ He indicated a high point twenty metres due west of the camp.
Bald narrowed his eyes and searched the clump of bush and trees. At first he could see nothing. Then his eyes adjusted, and he spied a cammed-up sentry manning a heavy machine gun in a position between the trees.
‘There are others, too,’ Uribe went on. ‘We cover the approaches day and night, changing watch every two hours. Some have machine guns, others have RPGs. In case of attack.’
The soldier in Bald was impressed. The guerrillas clearly weren’t slackers when it came to organising a defensive perimeter.
‘We might be peasants, but we know how to fight. And how to survive.’
Porter scanned the camp, frowning. ‘Where are the Americans? We’re supposed to RV with them here.’
Uribe waved in the direction of the large timber building with the Colombian flag and Che portrait. ‘In the meeting house. I’ll take you there. One minute.’
Uribe barked an order at Zapata and Reyes. They hurried over to the Mendoza brothers, set down their rifles and helped the kids unload the drums fastened to one of the mules. Reyes prised open the lids on both drums with the tip of his bayonet. Then Zapata reached inside the first drum and hauled out several clear plastic bags filled with lumps of what looked like white chocolate.
Porter snapped his gaze back to Uribe. ‘Is that stuff what I think it is?’
Uribe flashed his gold-toothed smile and winked. ‘You’ve seen coca paste before, eh?’
‘Once or twice in my life. The fuck are you lot doing with it?’
‘We need money to continue the struggle. This is how we make it.’
‘By trafficking coke?’
Uribe shrugged indifferently.
‘What about the poor fuckers shoving this junk up their noses. Crackheads stealing to get their next fix. Their families. What about them?’
‘That’s rich,’ said Bald. ‘Coming from a broken-down alkie like yourself.’
Uribe smiled. ‘You expect these poor farmers to care about some junkies in New York? In London? Around here, this is the only way they can survive.’
Bald understood. The dissidents were glorified drug smugglers now. They had spent decades trying to overthrow the government, had lost the war and now the handful of them left in the jungle were making a profit from buying up the coca paste. They would have cocaine processing labs somewhere else in the jungle, he figured. From there it would be sold on to the traffickers and smuggled overseas.
Big money. Hard to turn it down.
Uribe ignored Porter’s piercing gaze, strode over to the sentries and stooped down, picking up one of the white lumps to inspect it. Bald watched the commander and rubbed his stubbled jaw.
‘He’s got a point. You can’t make a living in these parts growing plantain.’
Porter shook his head angrily. ‘We’re working with criminals.’
‘We’ve worked with worse. Compared to some of the psychopaths we did business with in the Regiment, this mob are practically saints.’
Porter said something else, but Bald wasn’t listening. He was too busy counting the number of coca bags the sentries had emptied from the drums. ‘There’s got to be twenty kilos of base in those bags. That’ll be worth millions on the streets.’
Porter rounded on him. ‘Don’t even think about it.’
‘Think about what?’
‘Lifting their coke stash.’
‘I’m not thinking shit. Just making an observation.’
‘Bollocks. I know what you’re like. You can’t resist lining your pockets if you’ve got half a chance.’
‘Fuck off, mate. Don’t tell me you’re not thinking the same thing.’
‘We can’t,’ Porter hissed. ‘Jesus, we need these people to get us across the border. We can’t piss them off.’
‘Who says they’ll notice if a few lumps go missing?’
Something snapped in Porter. He stepped closer to Bald, anger pulsing in his veins. ‘If you lift their supply, they’ll find out about it. You’ll wreck the op.’
‘There’s only one prick who’s in danger of doing that,’ Bald said. ‘And it’s not me.’
Porter shot him a fierce look and felt an urge to punch him in the face. He remembered why he had always tried to keep a certain distance from Bald in the past. The world had made Jock hard-edged and ruthless. His rough upbringing had helped turn him into a brilliant soldier, one of the most skilled operators Porter had ever fought alongside. But he was also merciless and cynical and shamelessly corrupt. In Bald’s world, everyone was either a target to kill or a victim to plunder. And he had a way of getting inside Porter’s head. Of teasing his demons, tempting them out from the dark recesses of his mind.
The anger passed. He heard Uribe calling out to them. Looked round and saw the commander straightening up, watching with satisfaction as Reyes and Zapata carried the bags of coca paste over to one of the shacks. Hector and Luis were following close behind, while another pair of guerrillas tethered Bald and Porter’s mules to a wooden post.
‘Come,’ Uribe said as he started down the track. ‘This way. The Americans are waiting to meet you.’
FIFTEEN
Uribe led them towards the meeting house at the opposite end of the camp, passing the tented shelters and the stream on their right and the training ground at their nine o’clock. A network of old slit trenches ran through the camp, Bald noticed. Presumably built in case the guerrillas came under attack. The trenches looked badly maintained and were filled with several inches of water.
‘My comrades will set you up with ponchos and hammocks,’ Uribe explained. ‘For your shelters. You’ll share meals with us, but otherwise my people have been told to keep their distance. No questions. Nobody is to bother you. My orders.’
‘Works for us,’ said Porter.
Bald glanced round. ‘How safe is this place?’
Uribe smiled wryly. ‘You’re worried about an ambush?’
‘We’ve got an op to plan for. If there’s a chance of it going tits-up because your security is slack, we need to know.’
‘The camp is safe,’ the Colombian said proudly. ‘This place is very hard to spot from the air. Lots of tall canopy, lots of camouflage nets.’ He gave Bald a reassuring pat on the shoulder. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll be fine here.’
They trudged past an animal pen and what looked like a storeroom loaded with bags of rice, pasta and fresh vegetables. Nearby, a cluster of women in guerrilla kit tended to a vegetable patch. Hens roamed freely around the camp, pecking at the dirt. Laundry hung from lengths of paracord tied between the trees. The camp was ordered, but untidy, Bald thought. And stifling hot. Like wearing a tracksuit in a sauna.
He looked ahead as they neared the meeting house. Which technically wasn’t a house at all. There was a rectangular dirt-floored space beneath a tarpaulin roof, with a timber frame on three sides and an open-sided entrance instead of a door. There was a TV fixed to the back wall, next to a noticeboard with the regimental timetable listed on it. A trestle table occupied the middle of the room, with several timber benches arranged around it.
Three guys sat around the table. They were facing away from Bald and Porter, hunched over maps while a fourth man in a white linen shirt, a pair of Bermuda shorts and a bush hat stood at the end of the table, addressing the others in a low voice. He was sweating profusely, mopping his brow with a patterned handkerchief. As Bald, Porter and Uribe approached, the guy abruptly stopped talking and looked towards the former Blades. So did the others.
Uribe jabbered at him in quick-fire Spanish. The latter replied in the same tongue. Which made him the CIA contact, Bald decided. An ex-SEAL might possess a smattering of local dialect for operational purposes but he wouldn’t know enough to converse fluently with a guerrilla commander.
‘Thanks, Andres,’ the guy added in English, pausing to dab his brow again. ‘We’ll take it from here.’
Uribe nodded and left. To inspect his lucrative coke stash, presumably. The American watched him go and then turned to Bald and Porter. ‘You guys got here fast. We weren’t expecting you until later this afternoon.’
‘We’re ex-Regiment,’ Bald said. ‘We don’t piss about.’
‘Evidently.’ The guy smiled thinly. His face was glossed with sweat, Bald noticed. ‘Name’s Blake Taylor. I’m from the Company.’
Bald and Porter introduced themselves and looked the man up and down. He was a typical CIA officer. White male, mid-forties with an utterly forgettable face and an accent from Nowheresville, Middle America. He was carrying a little too much timber around the midriff, probably from the years spent toiling away at his desk, analysing data and intelligence reports. His skin was so white he looked as if somebody had kept him in the cellar for the past decade.
‘I’d welcome you to the camp,’ Taylor said, wiping the back of his neck. ‘But it’s not exactly the Hilton out here. Damn hot. Ticks and spiders all over the place.’
‘Won’t bother us,’ Bald said. ‘We’ve spent a long time in the jungle over the years. We’re used to all them creepy crawlies.’
‘Rather you than me, friend. Far as I’m concerned, the sooner I’m out of here, the better. Anywhere with some fucking air con.’
Porter said, ‘When did you get here?’
‘Yesterday afternoon.’ Taylor waved an arm at the three other guys around the table. ‘Now you’re here, allow me to introduce the rest of the team. This is Curtis Westwood, team leader.’
Bald trained his eyes on the guy Taylor had indicated. He was six-one and broad-shouldered, with a deep tan and a blond moustache shaped like a horseshoe. The sleeves of both arms were covered in intricate tattoos and his fingers were inked with ancient Greek symbols. He wore a black T-shirt with a Harley-Davidson print on the front and a beige baseball cap. His eyes were hidden behind a pair of Ray-Bans and he was chewing on a mouthful of tobacco. He paused to spit juice out of the corner of his mouth.
He took a step towards them. Thrust out an arm.
‘Everybody calls me Hulk,’ he said.
Bald shook his hand. Hulk had a grip that could snap a giraffe’s neck and a grin as wide as the Rio Grande.
‘Blake tells us you boys fought in Iraq, back in the day,’ he went on. ‘That true?’
Hulk had a gruff Midwest accent, Bald noted. Minnesota, maybe, or Montana. Somewhere with a lot of farms, where people rode horses and lived off the land and went out hunting.
‘We did a few rotations. Me and Porter have kicked down a few doors in our time.’
‘Always a pleasure to meet a couple of brother warriors. Bet you’ve got some tales to tell.’
‘One or two.’
‘Ain’t you a little old, chief?’ a ginger-bearded guy on the left of Hulk said in a Boston Irish accent. ‘I didn’t realise the Brits were sending us a couple of grandpas.’
Bald and Porter simultaneously arced their gazes towards the guy who had spoken. He was the youngest of the four around the table. And also the biggest. He looked like a Ken doll on steroids. His legs were the size of granite blocks. He was enormous, but without any real definition. The kind of guy, Bald guessed, who could bench-press twice his own body weight but couldn’t climb a set of stairs without getting out of breath. His beard was as thick as a clenched fist. He had tattoos etched on both arms. There was an image of an IRA gunman wearing a balaclava on his left forearm, and an Irish tricolour
on the other with the words ‘EASTER RISING 1916’ below it.
‘We’re not as young as we used to be,’ Porter admitted. ‘But we’ve got experience. We know how to get the job done.’
‘Guess we’ll see about that.’
‘That’s Bobby McGee,’ Taylor said. ‘Comms specialist and mechanic. Anything on two wheels or four, Bobby can fix.’
‘Nice tats,’ Bald said. ‘You must be a big fan of terrorism.’
‘The fuck you say?’
‘Just pointing out. Your IRA tattoos. Them lot were terrorists. Thought you Yanks were against all that these days.’
‘Go fuck yourself, chief.’
‘Ignore his ass,’ the third guy said. ‘Bobby’s an ignorant Mick. Can’t help being an asshole.’
‘Fuck you, Brendan.’
Bald turned his attention to the third guy. He was the least muscular of the four seated around the table. Which still made him bigger than the average bloke on the street. He was tall and wiry, with short clipped hair and a goatee styled like an upside-down wizard’s hat. He wore a red baseball cap with a Dixie flag emblazoned across the front.
‘Brendan Dudley,’ Taylor said. ‘Team medic and sniper specialist.’
Porter’s eyebrows inched upwards. ‘Good shot, are you?’
Dudley smiled, revealing a set of terrible teeth. Half of them were missing. The rest were blackened or yellowed nubs.
‘Good ain’t the start of it. You want someone or something dropped from a mile away, I’m your guy.’
He spoke with a strong country twang. He sounded like the lead singer in a honky tonk band, thought Bald. There was a wild look in his eyes. The kind of guy who was capable of anything, under the right circumstances.
‘Dudley’s something of a legend. Finished first place in the 2009 Spec Ops Sniper Competition. Which officially makes him the deadliest guy in the military.’
‘From ten years ago,’ Bald pointed out. ‘Not today.’
Dudley stared at him, a shrewd gleam in his eyes. ‘Guess we’ll find out. Maybe I’ll show you a trick or two. Show you how we do things down in Georgia.’
