Crisis (Luke Carlton 1) (50 page)

‘
La Machana!
’ He spat out the ranch’s name with contempt as he and Suarez sat on the veranda above the riverbank, smoking. It was the afternoon after their arrival from Colombia and the big man was still complaining of a bruise on his thigh, sustained early that morning when the pilot had brought down the Cessna a little too steeply onto the log-cutters’ road between the trees. Suarez had hit his head on the flimsy ceiling as they landed, but he chose to keep his complaints to himself.

The two men looked at the remains of their lunch, which lay beside them on a rattan table. The plates were already crawling with ants.

‘What is she trying to do to me, this simpleton of a cook?’ grumbled García. ‘Cassava bread and yoghurt? Tell me, do I look like a vegetarian to you?’

They regarded the Rio San Miguel that flowed beneath them in silence, its dark, placid surface broken occasionally by a liquid splash as a fish leaped, then vanished.

‘
Pirañas
,’ remarked Suarez, examining the tip of his cigar. ‘Now there’s a fish that knows how to hunt. You know what they do, Patrón? When they find their prey in the water they swarm all over it and use their teeth, like this.’ Suarez made a gnashing motion with his jaws. ‘They don’t eat straight away. They just chew bits off their victim and let them fall to the bottom, then go back and eat them when it’s stripped bare.’

‘Yes, I’ve heard that story,’ answered García, turning to look at his closest and most trusted confidant.

Suarez laughed. ‘How do I know?’ he continued. ‘I saw it on a nature programme once. Perhaps that’s what we should have done with that
bastardo
Englishman, Carlton. Let’s just hope he gets contaminated with the rest of them.’

‘Ah, yes.
La contaminación
.’ Colombia’s fugitive drug lord cheered up considerably at the thought of it. ‘How much longer now?’ he asked. ‘I can never understand these time-zone differences.’

Suarez went to his phone and checked the countdown function. ‘Less than twenty-four hours, Patrón. That
española,
the Spanish woman, Ana María, will send us the signal when it’s done. She has already proved herself. She is reliable.’

‘Don’t patronize me, Alfonso!’ snapped his boss. ‘Tell me exactly how long to go?’

‘Just under sixteen hours. And we are in a good place for when it happens.’

‘And then how long?’ persisted García. ‘How much more time do we have to spend in this malarial shit-hole? Hmm? You know what I saw this morning in my
baño
? A tarantula! Just sitting there all black and hairy. He was as ugly as you.
Madre de Dios
. . . I have to leave this place soon.’

‘Be patient, Patrón. It won’t be for long.’

‘And what’s wrong with the communications here, hmm? I want news of La Colección. Have they landed safely? I want to speak to them tonight. Please arrange it.’

‘
Sí, Patrón.
’

Their conversation tailed off and Suarez went off to check the guard detail he had organized. García, weary and irritable, slouched indoors for a siesta. The air-conditioning units on the wall rattled and wheezed. In his room, his temporary quarters in this godforsaken swamp, he lay back on his bed, which sagged in the middle. Yet another annoyance. He folded his arms behind his head on the pillow. As the air-con did its job and cooled him, the sweat from the humid afternoon evaporating off his forehead, he felt a familiar longing. He needed something to distract him. He needed the company of a woman, despite the problems he had been experiencing in that department. Again and again, his thoughts kept returning to that acupuncture girl, Valentina. Yes, it had probably been a mistake to leave her behind. He wanted her now. His mind was made up. In the morning he would send for her. And with that reassuring thought, El Pobrecito drifted off to sleep. He was out of Colombia, he was beyond the reach of the DIRAN
anti-narcóticos
, he was secure.

IF NELSON GARCÍA
could have seen what was being prepared for him downriver at the naval base, he might have thought twice about taking that siesta.

The roar was like nothing Luke had ever heard. It filled his ears and shook the damp, marshy ground on the banks of the Rio Putumayo where he stood, watching in awe. It was late afternoon at the equatorial base on the edge of the Amazon jungle, and the Griffon 2000 assault hovercraft were being taken out for a rehearsal and weapons check. The noise from the Deutz 350hp engine and the three-bladed propeller was so loud that most of the Americans were clamping their hands over their ears. In a riverine landscape more used to dugout canoes, with tiny hand-held outboards, this was the Amazon version of a shock-and-awe weapon.

‘I want these things to put the fear of God into García and his narcos,’ Miller had said in the briefing shed. ‘They think they’re safe across the border in Ecuador? Wrong. We’re comin’ for them.’

The noise of the hovercraft did not seem to bother the Colombian Marines, who were used to them by now. As the giant green turbofans reached full pitch the men clambered over the inflated black rubber skirts of the hovercraft and hauled themselves aboard. Up on the roof the gunner loaded a gleaming belt of ammunition into the .50-calibre Browning heavy machine-gun, a Second World War vintage weapon that could still lay down a
devastating rain of fire on any battlefield. With bullets the size of a man’s thumb, it was said that one of them had only to pass within a few millimetres of you for the shockwave alone to smash your arm or take it off altogether.

Luke felt a twinge of regret that he would not be going into action on one of these river beasts. But as MI6’s man on the operation, his was a subtle and far more important role. The Griffon 2000s would be the hammer. He would be right in the centre of the anvil. By agreement with Miller, Luke would join the screen force, inserted after dark by stealth helicopters, dropped into position behind the objective, ready to kill or capture García and his command team.

When the hovercraft moved off downriver towards the Brazilian frontier, throttles opening in a fountain of spray, they left behind a sudden stillness on the riverbank. Luke was aware that something was biting the underside of his arms. Sandflies. They were swarming up into the air from the mudbank and attacking any exposed flesh they could find. He rolled down his sleeves and tried not to think of visceral leishmaniasis, the debilitating tropical disease transmitted to humans by dogs via sandflies.

But biting insects were the least of his worries. While others had slept ahead of tonight’s mission, Luke had worried about Elise. If this was García’s attempt to unsettle him, it was working. He had called Sid Khan, he had called Angela, and had even called a mate in the police, in the vain hope that someone, anyone, might have some leads. And then, as he was leaving the riverbank to sort out his weapons, his phone buzzed once more.

‘Luke? It’s Angela. Good news. She’s been found.’

‘Is she OK? Can I speak to her? Where is she?’ Relief was flooding over him like a wave but he still had so many questions.

‘She’s being debriefed down at Wilton Park,’ replied Angela. ‘She’s shaken, but physically she’s OK. She’s a brave girl, Luke. I’m going to insist you take some serious time off together when this is over.’

‘Thanks. Jesus, what a relief.’

‘I’m sure,’ said Angela. ‘But things are getting very tense here.
There’s been talk of cancelling the Remembrance Sunday service at the Cenotaph. It’s going ahead, for the moment . . . Look, d’you have everything you need out there?’

‘Pretty much,’ replied Luke. ‘The Americans seem to have all the right kit. As ever.’

‘Good. So go in there and close down García’s operation once and for all and stop this nightmare for all of us. It has to end.’

THE REHEARSALS WITH
the Griffons on the Rio Putumayo were not the only ones under way that Saturday. Eight thousand kilometres away, on a parade square next to St James’s Park in London, the band of the Grenadier Guards had been putting in their final practice for Remembrance Sunday the next morning. The drum major had shouted himself hoarse as he made them go over the anthems time and again until he was satisfied. Anyone on Birdcage Walk, the road running from Buckingham Palace to Parliament Square, would have been treated to the stirring strains of ‘Heart of Oak’, ‘The Skye Boat Song’ and ‘Nimrod’ from Elgar’s Enigma Variations. The parade square at Wellington Barracks was a swirl of marching grey greatcoats and black bearskins.

Major General Rupert Milton (retired) was not in the habit of going into town on a Saturday. It was a day more usually reserved for shopping with Mrs Milton in the farmers’ market where they lived in Gloucestershire. But he took his duties exceptionally seriously, sometimes rather too seriously, according to her. And when it came to tomorrow’s parade he wanted nothing left to chance. He would stay up in town until it was over, he decided. In fact, he had booked himself a room at his club, the Cavalry and Guards on Piccadilly. Since early that morning he had been in his office at Horse Guards, going over the final details, running his finger down the list of VIPs who would be laying wreaths the next day.
The Duke of Kent . . . The Earl of Wessex . . . Prince Harry . . . then the politicians, PMs past and present. Blair, Brown, Major. Good, they’d all be there.

By early afternoon he could stand it no longer. The sound of the band rehearsing less than a kilometre away was drawing him in, like a moth to the flame. They were playing ‘Men of Harlech’. As a former Grenadier he was particularly proud that they would be performing this year. The band of the Grenadier Guards was the oldest in the British Army, dating back more than three hundred and fifty years, and he was damned well going to let everyone know it. It was time for an impromptu inspection, he decided. He would go and see how they were getting on right this minute. He put away his notes, locked them in a drawer, took his coat off the hook on the back of the door, the beige one with the velvet collar and the tiny hole in the breast where his clasp of medals was pinned, when, and only when, occasion demanded. His bowler hat was there too, but he would leave that for tomorrow’s parade.

Milton marched briskly down Birdcage Walk and presented himself at the gate with his pass. The young Guardsman on duty, stiffening to attention, was probably no more than a third of his age. And had probably already seen an operational tour in Afghanistan. Good man, he mused, good man.

Milton’s timing was perfect. He arrived on the parade square just as the band was taking a breather. ‘Drum Major! Glad I caught you,’ he barked, the red blood corpuscles in his cheeks standing out on this fine autumn afternoon.

‘Sir!’ replied the drum major.

‘All going well? Any problems? Got everything you need?’

‘All good, thank you, sir.’

‘I don’t suppose you’ve noticed that bit of building work on Horse Guards Parade, have you?’

‘Can’t say I have, General. Why?’

‘Well, it’s damned unsightly, all that disturbed earth and a row of orange cones. Not what we want to see on Remembrance Sunday.’

‘No, sir.’

‘Still,’ said Milton, ‘you won’t have any problems marching round it, will you?’

The drum major looked surprised. ‘If it’s on Horse Guards, that’s where we’ll end up once we’ve marched down Whitehall. I’m sure we’ll manage. Now, if you’ll excuse me, sir, we need to crack on one more time with “Rule Britannia”.’

IT WAS THE
waiting that always killed him. You train hard, thought Luke, you push yourself to the limit, you draw up your plan, you rehearse it, and then you sit around and wait. In this case, for darkness.

At 1745 hours, Luke’s phone rang, just as the tropical dusk was closing in around the naval base and the worst of the heat was draining from the day. It was Carl Mayne, at Vauxhall Cross – Luke seemed to be hearing more and more from him, these days. Had he replaced Sid Khan in the pecking order? He put that thought out of his mind. Right now, office politics were the last thing he needed to be thinking about.

‘Carlton? It’s Carl Mayne here at VX. Glad to hear your other half made it.’

Luke was pretty certain that wasn’t what the man had called him to talk about so he waited for him to go on.

‘Listen, there’s been a development. Rather a good one, as it turns out. Wait – what’s all that squawking?’

‘Oh, that? That’s the local birdlife. It’s the parrots coming home to roost. It’s nearly dark here on the equator.’

‘Right. As I was saying, we’ve got some traction on the García front. You may not need to go for a termination after all.’

‘I won’t?’
So why am I here?

‘Not if you can get him in front of you. We’ve got some information we’d like you to use.’

‘OK . . .’

‘It’s his extended family. He calls them his
Colección
.’ Luke hadn’t given a thought to García’s family – he’d been so busy going after the man himself. But yes, of course, El Pobrecito was bound to have cousins, siblings, other relatives. Maybe none were connected to his business, or maybe they all were, but he would certainly care what happened to them. Family was strong in Colombia.

‘Go on,’ said Luke.

‘We’ve got them. All of them,’ said Mayne, somewhat triumphantly.

‘Sorry, I’m not following you. You grabbed them in Colombia?’

‘No, in El Salvador. They landed this morning by executive jet at a place called El Papalon. It’s in the south-east. Tegucigalpa station picked up word they were coming in so we got the Salvadoreans to lift them when they landed. They’re being held now at the Intelligence Directorate in San Salvador.’

‘Does García know this?’ Luke was already thinking ahead as to how he could use this information. No doubt Mayne was going to lay it out for him anyway.

‘Not yet,’ replied Mayne. ‘But NSA have picked up several attempts by him to call them. He’s going to be worried about them, which is exactly where we want him. So you need to use this, Luke, but use it carefully. Remember what we’re going for here. Stopping the bomb. Nothing else matters. Put whatever pressure you can on him.’