Holcroft was silent for a moment, wondering, Davies guessed, how to present his case in the light most likely to please his boss. ‘I don’t wish to cast doubts on our forces’ ability to overcome the military problems inherent in such an operation,’ the Foreign Office man began, ‘but I have to point out that the perils of failure would be immense. For one thing we would look like a colonial power all over again, undoing all the good repair work our people have done in Latin America since the Falklands. The cost in trade would probably be severe …’
‘Even if we’re there by invitation?’ the MI6 man asked.
‘It won’t be by public invitation,’ Holcroft said acidly. ‘I repeat, the trade consequences will be severe. Secondly, our relations with the Americans will be damaged whatever happens. Latin America is their backyard, and they never forget it. If we inform them of any upcoming operation it will probably be leaked, and if we don’t they’ll accuse us of not even having the courtesy to tell them when we’re trespassing on their turf,’
He leant back in his chair. ‘I need hardly add that we will be risking the lives of many soldiers for the sake of two men whose lives, as far as we know at this moment, are not in immediate danger,’
The Prime Minister nodded. ‘Mr Pennington?’
‘I agree with everything Mr Holcroft has just said,’ he started diplomatically. ‘However, Colombia is potentially one of our most important trading partners in South America, and gaining the goodwill of the next President – whether it be Estrada or Muñoz – would be worthwhile in this respect. If successful, the operation would add to the prestige of both Britain and the SAS. The latter, if I may put it so’ – he glanced almost apologetically at Davies – ‘is a saleable commodity in its own right these days, and new demonstrations of prowess and efficiency make it more so. I realize such an operation won’t be front-page news, but I imagine those who matter will hear of it. And, with all due respect’ – another nod in Davies’s direction – ‘the same can be said of what appears to be yesterday’s failure …’
‘Señor Estrada seemed to hold the same opinion,’ the Prime Minister said dryly.
Pennington shrugged. ‘As for the Americans, such an operation would doubtless irritate some of them, but I think the added respect we’d get from others would probably more than compensate.’ He too leant back in his chair.
‘Do you have anything to add, Mr Spenser?’ the Prime Minister asked.
‘No.’
‘I do,’ she said. ‘I think the successful conduct of such an operation would increase our respect for ourselves. But, we cannot reach a final decision at this moment. In the meantime – Mr Spenser, please get your people in Colombia moving. Thank you, gentlemen, that is all.’ She got to her feet. ‘If you could stay behind, Lieutenant-Colonel Davies.’
Davies looked at the framed picture of a tea schooner as the others filed out. In Victorian times Palmerston would just have sent a gunboat, he thought to himself. Nowadays they’d send the SAS. It felt desperately old-fashioned, and it made him feel proud just the same.
‘Lieutenant-Colonel … Barney,’ she corrected herself with a smile. ‘Start planning. And assume it’s on unless and until I tell you it’s off.’
‘Yes, Ma’am,’ Davies said to her disappearing back.
He walked thoughtfully back to his car, and sat staring out through the windscreen at the tops of the bare trees in St James’s Park. ‘Hereford!’ he said suddenly to himself. He’d ring the kids on the car phone once he was on the M40. It was only a couple of hours since he had seen them – they would still remember who he was.
Joss Wynwood, now dressed in dry clothes, albeit ones that looked like they had been danced on by horses, carefully descended the hill beyond the roadside restaurant, taking care to keep whatever tree cover there was between him and the back windows. For three hours he had been waiting and watching a long line of trucks pull into the parking area, and at last one had parked in the exact place which he had been hoping for.
Reaching the foot of the hill Wynwood found he had got his angles right. Anyone crossing the ground between the trees and the truck’s cab could not be seen from the restaurant’s windows. He walked swiftly across, found the cab door open, and slid into the sleeping space behind the two seats.
About twenty minutes later the driver returned, opening the door and pausing to belch loudly before climbing up into the driving seat. He pulled the door to, belched again, rather more softly, and caught sight of Wynwood in the his rear-view mirror.
‘Qué?!’ he exclaimed, turning round angrily. ‘Qué …?’ he started again, breaking off abruptly when he saw the Browning.
‘I need a lift,’ Wynwood said softly in Spanish.
‘Sure, sure,’ the driver said, his hand reaching almost involuntarily for the door. ‘But please, no guns.’
‘If you open the door I shall shoot you,’ Wynwood said steadily. ‘Now start the engine, and let’s go.’
‘Yes, yes. Where? Where do we go?’
‘Where are you headed?’ Wynwood asked.
A look of cunning flashed across the driver’s face. ‘Cali,’ he said. ‘Cali.’
‘You just came from Cali,’ Wynwood said patiently. ‘You’re going north. Where to?’
‘Ibagué.’
‘That will do fine. Drive. In the meantime …’ He reached past the Colombian for the paper bag. ‘I think my need is greater than yours.’
‘If you are hungry I can go back for more.’
‘Nice try, bozo. Drive.’
‘I am Manuel,’ the driver said indignantly.
‘Figures,’ said Wynwood.
‘Qué?’
‘Drive!’
Manuel pulled the truck out onto the highway.
‘Jesus, she’s gorgeous!’ Kilcline almost groaned.
‘You could say that,’ Bourne agreed, licking the Guinness head off his upper lip and following his partner’s gaze. Its object was sitting at a table on the other side of the Slug and Pellet: a girl in her late teens with pale skin and lipstick which matched her billowing dark-red hair. Her black dress seemed to be unravelling at both ends, revealing extra yardage of both creamy breast and black-tighted thigh with each subtle shift of position.
‘Jesus!’ Kilcline repeated. He was on his fourth pint and it was beginning to show. The Killer just could not take his drink like he used to, Bourne thought. Which was hardly surprising: their wives only let them out like this on Boxing Days.
Kilcline groaned again, causing the girl to flash him a smile.
‘Down, boy!’ Bourne said, but he need not have bothered. The girl’s boyfriend, a large and probably harmless oaf, had had enough. He approached their table, looking like a wing forward come to investigate a suspicious ruck.
He leaned forward across the table, hands palm down, his face no more than a foot away from Kilcline’s. ‘You want a photograph, grandad?’ he said with a startling lack of originality.
Kilcline smiled at him. ‘Naked?’ he asked.
The boy’s face tightened still further. ‘OK,’ he sneered. ‘I know you’re probably too old to get it up any more, but I think I’m gonna kick the shit out …’ His friend was tugging at his sleeve. ‘What?!’
‘We need to talk,’ the friend told him, offering Bourne and Kilcline the hint of an apologetic smile.
‘Now?!’
‘Yes, now!’ He pulled him away.
‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ he snarled over his shoulder.
‘Mine’s a pint of Dark Star,’ Kilcline shouted after him.
‘Why do boys that age think boys our age are beyond sex?’ Bourne asked himself out loud. The letters ‘SAS’ could be heard in the conversation taking place across the bar.
‘I’m almost inclined to kick the shit out of him anyway,’ Kilcline mused. ‘I don’t like being called grandad.’
‘You’ll be one in a few months.’
‘Maybe, but I’ve only been forty for a few weeks, and I could still wrap that
shithead round a lamppost.’
‘That’s what they’ve just told him,’ Bourne observed. The offended party, friends and girlfriends were on their way out, all eyes on the door, save for the vision in red and black, who could not resist giving them a farewell smile.
‘I was enjoying that,’ Kilcline said.
‘It’s called voyeurism,’ Bourne said. ‘She’s a lot younger than your daughter.’
‘So was Lolita.’
‘How’s the other one?’
‘The other daughter? Oh, Kate’s fine – she won a couple of medals last weekend at the county championship. Four hundred metres and long jump. It’s the West of England next. I think she could go all the way.’
‘Sounds good. And Jill?’
‘I thought wives were out of bounds on this occasion.’ He sighed. ‘She’s fine – sent her love. How’s Lynn?’
‘Same. Are we getting old, do you think?’
‘Yes, grandad. One more for the road, I think … Same again?’
Bourne nodded, and watched his friend shoulder his way through the scrum to the bar. Nearly twenty years they had known each other. They had met in Oman, high on the Jebel Massif in the middle of an operation against the adoo terrorists. Kilcline had been working his way through every known Elvis song at the time, and if the adoo had not shot him his own side probably would have. It was not a serious injury though, and through later months of fly-blown boredom they had become good friends. Both had spent three terms in the SAS before returning to their original units – in his case the Royal Signals, in Kilcline’s the Royal Engineers – and they had wound up back together in the SAS, both Majors, commanding the Counter Revolutionary Warfare and Training Wings respectively. Bourne still preferred Otis Redding to Elvis, but otherwise they got on pretty well.
Kilcline was on his way back, when Bourne felt a hand on his shoulder. For a second he thought it was the oaf come back, but it wasn’t.
‘This is the fifth pub I’ve tried,’ Barney Davies said, sitting down.
‘Hi, boss,’ Bourne greeted him, with that lack of formality which characterized most SAS conversations between ranks.
‘What would you like, boss?’ Kilcline asked, placing the pints of Guinness and Dark Star on the table.
‘Nothing, thanks,’ Davies said. ‘I need to talk to you both.’ He looked round. ‘But not here. Can I invite you back to my place? For a coffee perhaps,’ he added, watching Kilcline’s difficulty in completing the journey from upright to seated.
‘Now?’ Bourne asked.
‘Yes, if you don’t mind.’
It was not exactly a request, and within a minute they were emerging from the pub into the cold air, then diving into the warmth of the CO’s BMW. Jazz came on with the ignition, and no one spoke during the ten-minute drive to his cottage on the western outskirts of the town.
Davies deposited them in the living room, apologized for there being no fire – ‘I’ve just got back from London’ – and went out to the kitchen to make coffee. Kilcline and Bourne exchanged glances. ‘What the fuck’s happened?’ Kilcline murmured.
‘I expect he’ll tell us when you’re sober enough.’
‘I’m not that pissed!’
Davies came back with three mugs of black coffee and a packet of sugar. ‘Right,’ he said, sitting down. ‘Sergeants Wynwood and Anderson have gone AWOL in Colombia. Probably kidnapped. At least, we hope so because if they haven’t been then they’re probably dead.’ He stirred two spoonfuls of sugar into his coffee.
Bourne and Kilcline waited for him to continue, suddenly feeling much soberer.
Davies recounted what was known of the events in Cali.
‘I don’t suppose the Government are going to do anything about this,’ Kilcline said bitterly.
‘That was my expectation,’ Davies agreed, ‘but for once we may be wrong. The possibility of action was discussed.’ He went over the political arguments that had been put for and against. ‘As far as I could tell the PM is determined that we should take action. She told me the rescue operation – our rescue operation – would be on until such time as she called it off …’
‘That’s great,’ Bourne said.
‘Brilliant,’ Kilcline agreed.
‘Yes, but I also got the feeling that she’s going to need all the help she can get. The Foreign Office don’t like the idea – that was obvious enough – and God knows what the Cabinet will say, if she ever puts it to them. I think she’d like a little help … What do the Israelis call it when they plant a few more settlements on the West Bank? – “establishing facts”. The more “on” we make this, the harder it’ll be for anyone to call it off.’
For a moment there was silence.
‘A four-man team inserted by land, right away,’ Bourne said, as if to himself. ‘Then anything up to a couple of dozen troops for insertion by air, depending on what the ground team reports back.’
‘Sounds good,’ Davies said. ‘Now go home and get some sleep, both of you. I want something on my desk by noon tomorrow.’
The road ahead seemed clear of both other traffic, houses and possible phones. The last sign had announced that Ibagué was only eight kilometres away. ‘Pull over,’ Wynwood said.
‘Why?’ Manuel wanted to know.
‘Just do it.’
The truck shuddered to a halt. Manuel looked distinctly nervous.
‘Do you know the bus station in Ibagué?’ Wynwood asked him.
‘Of course. It is my town. I will take you to it,’ he added eagerly.
‘No. I’m afraid this is where we part company.’
‘You are leaving?’ the Colombian asked hopefully.
‘No, you are. I’m afraid you’re going to have to walk the rest of the way.’
‘Qué?!’
‘It’s not far.’ He reached into his pocket, and counted out the peso equivalent of twenty pounds, which he guessed would be a week’s wages to someone like Manuel. ‘This is for your trouble,’ he said. ‘Of course if I’m arrested I’ll have to tell them I gave it to you,’ he added, hoping that would prove a sufficient deterrent should Manuel find a phone round the next corner.
‘But my truck!’ the Colombian protested.
‘I’ll leave it as close to the bus station as I can,’ Wynwood promised. ‘Now out!’
Manuel got reluctantly to the ground, and looked up woefully at Wynwood as he slammed the truck into gear. Glancing in the rear-view mirror as he pulled back onto the road Wynwood could see the Colombian busily counting the money.
It was beginning to grow dark now, and the lights actually flickered on beside the road as he drove in through the outskirts of Ibagué. They had come less than three hundred and twenty kilometres in eight hours, but like every cross-country Colombian journey Wynwood had ever taken, it had seemed like there was a mountain to cross every couple of kilometres, and most of them seemed at least that high.
He parked the truck as promised, no more than a hundred metres from the bus station, bought a ticket for Bogotá on the fast night bus and found a table at the back of an anonymous-looking restaurant. Steak, cassava and potatoes restored his sense of well-being, and over a large cup of coffee he thought about Susan for the first time that day.
Damn the woman! He wondered where and how Anderson was. A phone on the wall suggested the possibility of calling the embassy in Bogotá and finding out, not to mention telling someone he was alive himself, but the risk, though probably minimal, did not seem worth taking. He would be in the capital by six in the morning and, if he had any say in the matter, on a plane for home not many hours after that.
Chapter 2
A freight train rumbled across the North London Line girder bridge as Eddie Wilshaw jogged towards it along the River Lea towpath. The diesel wore a different livery from that of his childhood train-spotting days, but he still recognized it as a Class 47. The train was probably on its way from the freight terminal at Felixstowe to the marshalling yard at Willesden.
It wa
s strange what crap the brain kept filed away, he thought, passing under the bridge. A couple of hundred metres ahead of him three black youths were standing in a circle astride the path, apparently deep in conversation with each other.
Eddie wondered. This stretch of the towpath between Carpenter’s Road and the Eastway was notorious for muggings and – if you were female – worse. There was no exit between the two roads, just the canalized river on one side, high wire fences on the other. There weren’t even any homes overlooking the river, just grimy industrial premises. If he were the nervous type, Eddie thought to himself, he would do a rapid U-turn and get the hell out of there.
As it was, he had never really been afraid of anyone in his life, and two and a half years in the SAS had done nothing to undermine such confidence. He jogged on, wondering if the boys on the path ahead had suffered a worse Christmas than he had.
He was twenty metres away when the tallest of the youths turned in his direction. A long, unbuttoned black trenchcoat revealed red baggy trousers and a bright-green sweater. Dreadlocks spilled out of a Rasta beret to frame a handsome face. The mouth broke into a wide smile. ‘Edward, my man!’
Eddie laughed. ‘Lloyd, my man,’ he echoed, offering his palms for the ritual greeting.
‘These is Martin and Stokely,’ Lloyd said, introducing the others, who nodded without much enthusiasm. ‘You still defending the British Empire?’ Lloyd asked.
‘You still worshipping a dead Ethiopian president?’
‘I reckon,’ Lloyd said, smiling. ‘You home for Christmas?’
‘Yeah. See my dad, you know.’
‘He still live in Keir Hardie?’ Lloyd asked, looking back over his shoulder at the tower blocks rising beyond the Eastway bridge.
‘Yeah. There’s no way he can get out.’
‘No job?’
‘You’re kidding. My dad was unemployed when there was full employment.’
Soldier D: The Colombian Cocaine War Page 4