At the door he turned to see the Merc pulling up on the other side of the lot, close to the river. Inside, Bobbie had chosen an ideal table, close enough to the door that he would get a good view of the enemy when they came in. If they came in.
They did. There were three of them, two fairly young and one who looked around forty. The two young ones were both wearing tight-fitting suits which had not been tailored to take account of the shoulder holsters they were wearing. If the older one was carrying a gun it was at his waist. As the three of them walked across to a table on the far side of the restaurant, none of them cast so much as a glance in Wynwood’s direction.
He and Bobbie both chose steak and eggs. The waiter delivered their order at the serving hatch, then went to take the threesome’s. The older man asked him something, and the waiter cast a quick glance back at Wynwood’s table. He had been asked what the gringos had ordered, Wynwood guessed – they did not want to order a good meal themselves and then have to abandon it half-eaten.
He smiled to himself.
‘Aren’t you hot in that jacket?’ Bobbie asked.
‘No,’ he lied.
They chatted about Bogotá until the food arrived. It was good, and there was lots of it. Bobbie cleared her plate with relish. No fears of anorexia for this one, Wynwood thought.
The threesome across the room were still in mid-meal. Wynwood loudly ordered coffees, and just as vociferously asked where the men’s toilet might be. Out the back, he was told, as expected.
He went through the doorway indicated, and found himself in a corridor leading to a back entrance. Once outside he broke into a run, reaching the Merc in a few seconds. He had been intending to shoot out its tyres, but the door was open and it took only a second to take off the handbrake, get round the front and start pushing the car towards the river. As he strained to push it across the slightly raised area of ground by the river bank he wondered if he was doing the right thing. His pursuers would just steal another car …
What the hell, he thought, and with one last heave tipped the £20,000 car over the rim of the bank and down into the water. The car slid in up to its roof before the current started to tug it away.
He turned away to find the three men walking towards him, all with guns in hand.
‘Gringo!’ the older one shouted.
Wynwood remembered Andy’s question: ‘Do you ever feel like you’re in a Western?’
‘I think we will have to use your car now,’ one of the younger ones said.
There seemed to be no grounds for compromise, Wynwood thought. And they had made a stupid mistake – he would be almost invisible against the darkness of the far bank, while they were silhouetted against the light from the restaurant.
He pulled the Browning from its holster, raised it with both arms and aimed at the younger man on the right. Not at the head, his training told him – it’s too dark. He put a double tap through the upper torso, another through the same portion of the older man in the centre, then sank to one knee as the third man fired wildly over his head. Wynwood fired again and the third man went down.
He walked carefully across to the three prone figures. They were all dead. He took a deep breath and started pulling them one by one to the edge of the river. Once he had done that he tipped each one in beside the rapidly disappearing Merc, then walked back towards the restaurant, wondering how much had been heard.
His Browning was silenced, but they would have had to be deaf to miss the shot fired by the Colombian.
Maybe they were, maybe they weren’t. No one seemed to be calling the police or cowering behind the hatch.
‘You’ve been a long time,’ Bobbie said as he rejoined her. ‘I was beginning to get worried. And I thought I heard a shot.’
‘They say gunfire is the national music of Colombia,’ Wynwood said. ‘Shall we go?’
They reached Neiva two hours later. Bobbie asked him if he wanted to share a hotel room. ‘Just friends,’ she added hastily, in case he had misunderstood. Why not, he thought. He found her about as sexually stimulating as a teddy bear, and he had kind of grown to like her over the last eight hours.
Chapter 5
Troopers Sam ‘Blackie’ Blackman and Charles ‘Bonnie’ McCall sat side by side in the belly of the Hercules C-130. Somewhere beneath them was the Gulf of Mexico. They seemed to have been flying for ever, but according to Bonnie’s watch it was only thirteen hours.
‘We must be running out of fuel,’ Blackie said, running a hand through what the barber had left of his hair. He was a tall Liverpudlian, with a body that looked more gangling than it actually was.
‘No such luck.’ Bonnie tried to make himself more comfortable for the umpteenth time. He was slightly smaller than Blackie, a ginger-haired Scot with an abundance of freckles. ‘I joined the Army to see inside exotic women’s blouses,’ he complained, ‘not the inside of some ugly transport plane.’
‘You’d enjoy Oman,’ Blackie said. ‘The women are exotic and they don’t even wear blouses. It’s the Arab tradition – they wear veils across their faces and nothing else.’
‘Bollocks!’
‘It’s true. You ask the boss here.’
Mike Bannister was just making his way past them en route for the forward section. ‘Ask me what?’
‘Is it true that the women in Oman wear nothing but veils, boss?’ Bonnie asked.
‘Absolutely,’ Bannister said with a straight face, winking at Blackie as he moved on.
‘Told yer,’ Blackie said, rubbing it in.
‘Still sounds like bollocks to me. The place would be knee-deep in tourists.’
‘It is.’
‘I never knew anyone who went there.’
‘Majorca – that’s in Oman.’
‘No, it fucking isn’t.’
One of the older troopers across the plane opened his eyes. ‘Will you two stop filling the air with bullshit!’ he half roared.
Bonnie and Blackie looked at each other and burst out laughing.
‘Kids!’ the older trooper said vehemently, and closed his eyes once more.
‘Sorry, grandad,’ Blackie muttered under his breath. Both he and Bonnie were only twenty-two, which might well have made them the youngest men on the plane. They had only returned from jungle training in Brunei a few days before Christmas, and had been expecting a couple of weeks’ leave before resuming normal duties in Hereford. Neither of them had seen active service since winning their SAS badges the previous summer. And their nervousness at the prospect, as both were more than half aware, was what was making them behave even more like idiots than usual.
‘How much longer?’ Blackie asked Bannister, who was passing them again, this time in the opposite direction.
‘About an hour,’ he told them. ‘But it’ll seem like three,’ he added cheerfully. He had been on enough flights like this to know how long they seemed to the uninitiated.
‘One hour,’ Bonnie repeated, after Bannister had moved on. ‘Thank Christ for that. Do you have any idea where this place is that we’re going?’ he asked Blackie.
‘Belize?’
‘No, the place in Colombia.’
Blackie shook his head. ‘We’ll get briefed soon enough.’
‘It’s a nice feeling, though, knowing that if you get taken by the enemy, the Regiment’ll come and get you back. Makes you feel wanted, don’t you think.’
‘I doubt if the Regiment would come looking for you plonkers,’ observed the veteran with closed eyes.
‘I don’t think he likes us,’ Blackie said.
‘He’s just a bit nervous,’ Bonnie suggested. ‘He doesn’t want to let us down when the time comes.’
‘Your time’ll come sooner than you expect if you don’t shut the fuck up!’
‘See, I told you. He’s all heart really.’
‘Who did you ring from Heathrow?’ Chris asked Eddie. They were only an hour out of Quito, but it felt like a world away as their bus ground its way up the road towards the distant
mountain pass. To their left the land dropped away like a stone, down to where a toy river flashed silver in the morning sun.
‘Her name’s Lisa,’ Eddie admitted. ‘I only met her this week,’ he added, as if that absolved him from further questioning.
‘Where?’ Chris asked.
‘In a wine bar. She’s a student, but she waitresses to help pay the bills.’
‘Uh-huh. What’s she look like?’
‘Er, lovely body, dark hair – long, nice smile.’
‘Well that narrows it down.’
‘Christ, I don’t know. How do you describe someone? I guess her face is a bit cat-like, if you know what I mean.’
‘Yeah. What colour eyes?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Don’t know!?’
‘Brown, probably. I never notice the colour of people’s eyes.’
‘Bet you noticed how big her tits were.’
‘Yep.’ He smiled at the memory. ‘Perfect,’ he added.
‘You sound …’ Chris hesitated. ‘How can I put this without you feeling insulted … You sound interested in this one.’
‘Could be.’
Chris laughed. ‘Mr Commitment.’
Eddie grinned. ‘You know what it’s like in this job. You never get the time.’
‘I know. I sometimes think that’s why some of us do it.’
‘You?’
‘I sometimes wonder. You gonna see her again?’
‘Hope so. We gotta get home first.’
‘Yeah,’ Chris agreed.
They sat in silence for a minute or so. ‘But look at it,’ Chris said eventually, staring out at the vista of mountains receding into mountains beneath a pure blue sky. ‘Fucking beautiful. It just makes me want to get out. Moments like this I love the SAS and I hate it. Love it for bringing me out here and hate it for rushing me through it at a hundred miles an hour.’
Eddie followed his gaze. ‘It’s an improvement on the Falls Road,’ he said.
Four seats back the Dame was staring out at the same scenery. Before leaving Quito they had agreed not to travel as a threesome, even on the Ecuadorian leg of the journey, and it had not been hard deciding who would be the odd man out. All of them knew that in any group of three loners the Dame would out-loner the other two. So, unless there was some sort of emergency, he would not be communicating with Chris and Eddie until they all ‘accidentally’ checked into the same hotel in Popayán. Which suited him fine. He liked the two of them, but he liked his own company better.
Wilbur Smith’s was not bad either, but the suspension on the bus was so bad that reading was impossible. He supposed the landscape was beautiful, but he was bored with looking at it. Trying to traverse it on foot would be something; cruising through it on a bus, no matter how uncomfortable the seats, was no challenge to anyone.
But the Dame had to admit there was something else too. He had always found landscapes like this – gargantuan bloody landscapes – made him feel a bit uneasy. He remembered feeling that way, feeling vaguely threatened by it all, when he was about ten and the family had gone to Scotland for their summer holiday. Maybe that was why he wanted to get out and show it who was boss, he thought suddenly. Yeah, maybe that was it.
He had a sudden mental picture of the two Provo bodies lying in Kenneally Street, the blood and the rain. He had done that. Shown them who was boss. He had had no choice. But was that all it meant? Could you just walk away? Or did it leave some invisible mark on you? Some patch of darkness somewhere.
His dad had always laughed at religion, even though his mother had always gone to church on Sundays. ‘She only goes for the singing,’ his dad used to tell them, but she didn’t. ‘Somebody must have dreamt all this up’ she would say, and it was hard to imagine anyone other than God dreaming up the Garth flats in Sunderland.
His dad had been unimpressed by the logic. He had ‘better things to do than pray to some bearded old fart the rich had invented to make the poor feel better’. Like drinking himself into his usual Sunday stupor with his mates.
‘You’ll roast,’ his mother used to say, and maybe that was what his dad was doing. But the Dame could not really believe it – just about everybody who knew the man had loved him, and that had to count for something.
His mother and his sisters loved the Dame, but would that go on one side of some balance sheet, the bodies in the rain on the other? Was that how it worked? If so, how did they measure it all, the good and the evil? It all seemed crazy.
But he had killed eight people now, and though every one of them had been trying to kill him, it still seemed a lot. Maybe that was how you measured it, by how it felt. In which case Hitler must have gone to heaven. Which was nuts.
There was no way of knowing. Maybe you did just walk away.
‘The British Ambassador,’ the President’s personal secretary announced from the door. The President rose somewhat reluctantly to his feet and ushered the Queen’s representative in Bogotá into the ornate Spanish chair which faced his desk. He checked the office door was properly closed and reseated himself in the rather more comfortable product of a modern Swedish manufacturer.
‘Good morning, Mr President,’ the Ambassador began. ‘I have some good news.’
‘Yes?’ Estrada said, his palms together in front of his chin.
‘The operation will soon be under way.’
Estrada lifted his eyebrows. ‘How soon?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t have that information as yet. But of course as soon as I do, you will be informed.’
Before or after it’s all over, Estrada asked himself. ‘Thank you, Mr Ambassador,’ he said.
‘I have also been advised that the United States Government has been apprised of the situation to date, and that it is possible there may be limited United States participation in the operation,’ the Ambassador went on. ‘But,’ he added, ‘I am asked to convey to you personally the assurance of both my Government and the United States Government that no United States troops will set foot on Colombian soil.’
Estrada grunted. ‘Is that all?’ he asked.
‘That is all,’ the Ambassador agreed, getting to his feet.
‘I would appreciate as much notice as possible of the actual operation,’ Estrada said, his hand on the doorknob.
‘Of course.’ The Ambassador bowed and left.
‘Get me Señior Quintana,’ Estrada told his secretary. ‘I’ll be upstairs.’
They reached the border town of Tulcan soon after eleven. From there it was a taxi ride to the border itself, which was marked by a river at the bottom of a small valley. Border posts had been set up on either end of the river bridge. The Ecuadorians just waved them through, and they walked across to where the Colombian border guards, all toting sub-machine-guns, were waiting to herd them into a long, low building. Inside an officer was waiting to examine their passports. He had a sub-machine-gun lying carelessly on the desk beside him.
Chris and Eddie were behind an American couple in the queue, and this turned out to be good news. After aggressively asking the two Americans a string of questions in staccato Spanish, and nearly reducing the woman to tears before finally letting them through with ill-concealed reluctance to the paradise that was Colombia, the officer greeted the two SAS men with a wide smile and enquiries about the health of Mrs Thatcher and Gary Lineker.
Eddie told him how much he admired the Colombian player Carlos Valderama, which made the officer’s day. ‘Enjoy your stay in Colombia!’ he said, waving them through with a flourish.
They watched from a distance as the Dame came through, hoping he didn’t think he had time to convince the Colombian that Sunderland were a football team.
Another fleet of taxis carried everyone on into the town of Ipiales, where they climbed reluctantly into another bus for the six-hour trip to Popayán. So far so good, Eddie thought, as they started off on the first leg to Pasto, climbing a valley that seemed large and deep enough to lose the Grand Canyon in. He could see what Chris
meant, sort of. He almost felt like getting out himself. Almost.
Luis Quintana was shown into the President’s private quarters, and was pleased to find that just for once no American soap opera was flooding the room with ‘sound and fury signifying nothing’. Where did that line come from? he wondered. He couldn’t remember.
The TV was on, but with the sound turned down, and the obvious delight of the local game-show contestants was mercifully muted. The President was staring into space, a look of frozen anxiety on his face. Looking at him, Quintana wondered if his own ambitions for the presidency were at all sensible. He did not want to end up like Juan Estrada, perpetually unsure of himself, a virtual prisoner in his own palace, only ever at ease in front of televised fantasies from North America.
‘Buenas tardes, Juan,’ he said, lowering himself onto the other sofa without waiting to be asked.
Estrada grunted and bit his thumb. ‘The English are on their way,’ he said unhappily.
‘I thought that was what you wanted.’
‘I’m not so sure any more. In fact I’m beginning to regret letting you talk me into it.’
Quintana smiled thinly, but did not bother trying to correct this minor revision of history. ‘It was a good idea last Monday, why is it not a good idea today?’
‘Perhaps it was not a good idea on Monday.’
Quintana tried a change of tack. ‘What do you mean – they are on the way? When? How many of them?’
‘Oh, they don’t tell me that. You know what the English are like – they tell you nothing very politely and at great length. “Soon” – that’s what it comes down to. “Soon”. A few days? A week? They say they will give me exact times and dates when they have them, but I wouldn’t put it past them to tell me after it’s all over.’
Quintana could not help thinking that if he was in the English commander’s shoes he would do just that. He went back to the first problem. ‘I still do not understand why it is a bad idea,’ he said calmly.
Soldier D: The Colombian Cocaine War Page 11