A couple of hundred metres to his right, perched in a tree which almost overhung the outer fence, the Dame scanned the compound through the Schmidt & Bender telescopic sight. The adjustable rubber butt pad of the L96A1 sniper rifle rested comfortably against his shoulder. The subsonic 7.62-calibre ammunition rested in a convenient niche of the tree.
He aligned the crossed hairs of the sight on the head of the taller roof guard and gently squeezed the trigger. ‘Pooff,’ he said to himself. If there had been a bullet in the chamber the man would have been be dead.
In a couple of hours’ time there would be a bullet in the chamber. The man’s life depended on what time they changed shifts, and that did not seem much in the way of life insurance. The Dame wondered why these thoughts never worried him when the time came for action.
Blackie and Bonnie watched as the two of the air crew manoeuvred the Controlled Air Delivery System (CADS) chutes into position. These, which would carry the 81mm mortars, were radio-controlled ’chutes. Two of the troop would have the task of guiding them down through the Colombian night by hand-held transmitters. Blackie was glad he was not one of them – he had the feeling his hands were full enough already.
Three metres away Bannister’s watch reached another deadline. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said loudly. ‘Time to hook up.’
Each man leant forward and attached the plastic hose from his mask to one of the two oxygen consoles in the centre of the gangway. ‘This is the bit I hate,’ Bonnie murmured to himself a few seconds later as the pilot began depressurizing the plane and his ears popped. It slowly grew colder.
Bannister’s eyes were almost continuously on his watch now. Blackie stared at him, wondering what would happen if the watch suddenly stopped. He was beginning to feel the adrenalin flow. Though he had made only a dozen or so jumps he was not afraid – far from it. In fact he found it hard to think of anything that for sheer thrills could begin to compete. And yet he wondered if you ever got used to these last minutes of waiting or that moment on the ramp with the whole bloody world waiting to watch you drop. He doubted it.
‘Time to switch to personal,’ Bannister’s voice came in loud and clear through the helmet. Each man shifted the hose connector from the console to the bottle at his belt. There was about thirty minutes of oxygen in each bottle, more than enough to reach breathable air, barring some catastrophe like landing on a giant condor’s back.
The Hercules was slowing down. ‘On your feet,’ Bannister told them. There was a low rumble and the night sky suddenly appeared in the widening gap as the back of the plane divided to make the jumping ramp.
‘We’ll check the helmets,’ Bannister said.
‘One,’ said the first voice. The numbers two to fourteen followed. ‘Fifteen,’ Bannister finished off. ‘Break your partner’s light.’
Each of the American helmets had a chemical light set in its upper rear face which was activated by cracking its shell. As seen through the PNGs, they would help guide the troop down in a tight formation.
The ramp was fully down now, the lead jumper waiting beneath the glowing red light. Behind him thirteen other troopers, two CADS and, bringing up the rear, Mike Bannister.
The light turned green.
As usual the last few seconds waiting his turn to jump seemed eternal to Blackie, but once he was out on the ramp there was no time for thought. He followed Bonnie into space, straight into the free-falling position, facing down but with the body arched back, arms and legs stretching out. Meanwhile the eyes were homing in on Bonnie’s light below, and the body was struggling to stabilize itself before the brain finished counting to ten and the hand pulled the ripcord.
The ’chute’s release jerked him upright. So far so good. Blackie grasped hold of the control toggles and started to turn a fall into a glide. Beneath him, ahead and slightly to the right, the red chemical light on the back of Bonnie’s helmet was clearly visible through the PNGs. Blackie manoeuvred himself into line and, for the first time in a crowded half minute, had time to think.
‘I’m going to South America,’ were the words that came into his mind. He would have laughed out loud if the oxygen mask had not made it impossible.
For the next few minutes Blackie concentrated on breathing and flying his ’chute, watching Bonnie below and taking glances at the altimeter built into his reserve chute. The land below was still an undifferentiated black mass, showing no shadows from the moon he knew was behind him. Despite the thermal suit he felt bitterly cold.
It could only get warmer, he reminded himself. They were below 8000 metres already, and for the first time things were beginning to take on shape below. The circular horizon was slowly rising towards them, the air was getting warmer.
Flying the ’chute became a pleasure only alloyed by the slight anxiety which went with any imminent landing. Ahead of him the team was descending in a long graceful curve to the left as Number 1 corrected their course to compensate for either an error of navigation or an unexpected wind strength. They were heading due south down towards and along the spine of a mountain range. If Blackie’s memory served him well the dropzone was a meadow somewhere on the western side of these mountains at around 2300 metres. So far he could see nothing but sheer faces and steep slopes. But his altimeter had only just gone through 5500 metres, and the highest peaks were still rushing up to meet them.
The line swayed again, this time to the right, passing the peaks on its left, gliding diagonally down across the upper western slopes.
A kilometre and a half from Totoro, and at least three hundred metres closer to God, Chris and Eddie were huddled together beneath a slight hillock on the edge of the landing zone. In front of them half the world seemed to be silhouetted against a violet sky. Above them the moon shone white and razor-edged, and the stars seemed closer and clearer than they ever did in England.
‘Visibility is approximately ten light-years, Captain,’ Eddie murmured.
‘Thank you, Mr Spock,’ Chris said. Even with a view like the one in front of him, the adrenalin was beginning to pump through his veins.
He looked at his watch again. It was forty-nine minutes since Belize had told them over the PRC 319 that the jump was in progress. Any minute now.
But it was Eddie who saw them first. ‘Here they come!’ he said, a sense of excitement seeping out through the laconic Cockney accent.
And there they were, looking like a string of widely spaced pearls in the northern sky, slowly growing into a long line of Tinkerbells floating down towards Never-Never Land, and finally revealing themselves as fully equipped SAS soldiers swinging down towards the plateau.
Blackie could see the meadow now – a large light patch on the dark slopes – and gingerly applied his air brakes as he began swinging out slightly to the left of the direction Bonnie was taking below him. The one great peril of landings like this was landing on top of the man in front, so even numbers had been assigned the right-hand approach, odd numbers the left. This effectively doubled the time between landings.
Blackie corrected his course slightly, moving himself farther away from the forested slope to his left, then released the air brakes and slid down towards the meadow, aiming for a straight run of grass between darker growths of vegetation. He hit the ground running, almost tripped, but managed to stay upright.
He got out of his harness, folded the canopy and packed it into his bergen, and looked up just in time to see Captain Bannister cover the last few feet to earth.
They were down.
Chapter 9
In the bathroom attached to his private rooms Chirlo lay half-submerged, thinking about Victoria Amarales. All evening, while Ramón had quizzed him on the state of their defences, and how they could be be improved the next day, she had been destroying his concentration by giving him the eye. And when she had finally announced to Ramón that she was staying the night she had given Chirlo a look which could hardly be misinterpreted.
They had never slept together here at Totoro; all their past a
ssignations had been in hotels in Popayán or Bogotá or Cartagena. Either she was tired of subterfuge or so bored that she hoped to precipitate a family crisis. It did not make much difference either way. She knew he would go along, and she was right.
He was probably not being very wise, but so what? She was ten years older than him, probably cleverer than him, and certainly boasted a finer lineage. The Amarales were as near pure Spaniard as you could get, whereas he could trace Spanish, German and Indian blood in his own veins. He thought Ramón and Miguel would probably be outraged by his sleeping with their sister. Miguel would, certainly. Ramón might be more amused. But her husband would not care. Armando Noguera was not interested in anything over the age of fourteen.
Not that Noguera caring would matter anyway – like Chirlo, he was just an employee of the Amarales. But he supposed Ramón and Miguel did matter. He had done well out of working for them – half a million dollars in the Bogotá branch of the Bank of Venezuela. He could probably double that in the next two years and retire a millionaire at the age of twenty-six.
On the other hand, he thought, he was pretty sure he could find similar employment elsewhere, if he wanted it. He didn’t, but he could. He didn’t need the Amarales any more than they needed him – it was a relationship of equals, regardless of whose blood was the purest. And it was not as if he would be raping their sister; she enjoyed it every bit as much as he did. He stood up and reached for the towel.
Five minutes later he was in the security room, making sure that everything was running smoothly. ‘I don’t want to be interrupted for an hour unless it’s absolutely necessary,’ he told the duty officer.
‘S, boss,’ the man said, and went to answer one of the routine call-ins from the guards outside.
Chirlo walked upstairs, past the guard at the head of the stairs, and checked that the two guards outside the prisoners’ rooms were awake. Satisfied, he turned and walked back along the long corridor, passing Ramón’s rooms and the ones Miguel used when he was staying. The light was still on under the door of Victoria’s suite, which did not surprise him.
He stood there a second, wondering if love and lust was driving him into a major mistake, and decided they were not. He knocked softly.
‘Come in,’ she said.
He closed the door behind him. The room in front of him was lit but empty; her voice came from the one beyond. ‘You took your time,’ she said.
‘I had duties to finish,’ he replied stiffly, walking through. She was lying on the bed, a book lying open and face down across her breasts, but otherwise completely naked.
Her body was everything he remembered it was.
She put the book aside, exposing her beautifully formed breasts. ‘Take your clothes off,’ she said.
He did so, pleasantly conscious of her eyes on him, then came across and leant over her, kissing her on the lips. She responded for a second, then gently pushed his mouth down till he was sucking on her nipple.
He tried to shift his body astride hers, but with a smooth shift of her legs she trapped him between them, and in almost the same motion started pushing his head further down, running his tongue across her stomach and down. With one final push and a tightening of her legs around his back she had him where she wanted him. ‘Now you can start kissing me,’ she said.
Chris and Mike Bannister had known each other for years, and they greeted each other warmly. The two of them might have just run into each other in a Hereford pub, Eddie thought watching them, rather than halfway up a Colombian mountain, still with a house-call to make on a drug baron. He only hoped Bannister did not ask Chris about the bird-life, or they would be stuck up in the meadow till dawn.
C Squadron’s Air Troop were packing away their chutes and oxygen equipment, helping to unload the two remote-controlled CADS, and generally preparing themselves to march. Eddie exchanged silent smiles with those men he had run into before, some in his training intake, others in the Stirling Lines canteen or the pubs of Hereford.
Chris and Bannister talked for only a couple of minutes. Eddie was given a bergen containing radio helmets for himself, Wynwood and the Dame. They synchronized watches, checked that everyone was ready and started off down the mountain.
Seventeen Brits, Eddie thought. The Stray Cats’ ‘Sexy and 17’ started playing in the back of his brain. The silvery light of the crescent moon danced on the single file of helmeted heads below him. It was on nights like this that a man felt really alive.
With silence more important than speed, Chris did not try to force the pace. In addition he was mindful that the line of troops behind him were carrying a lot more than he was, had just spent almost an hour engaged in the exhausting business of guiding a parachute down from 10,000 metres, and had not walked this route before in daylight, let alone by the feeble light of a ten-per-cent moon.
In London it was shortly after six in the morning. The Prime Minister was working her way through one of several waiting red boxes in her private office when the telephone rang.
‘It’s Lieutenant-Colonel Davies, Prime Minister,’ the secretary told her.
‘Put him through.’
‘I thought you’d like to know,’ Barney Davies said, after they had exchanged good mornings, ‘our troops are on the ground in Colombia.’
‘That’s splendid. How long will they be … on the ground?’
‘Four hours is the period we’ve allowed for.’
‘I’d like to be kept informed, Colonel.’
‘Of course, Ma’am.’
She thoughtfully replaced the receiver and went to look out of the small window. At that moment a ray of sunlight seemed to alight on the roof opposite. It seemed like a good sign.
It took them a little over an hour to reach the head of Totoro’s valley. Here Eddie’s path diverged from the Troop’s, and he could afford to speed up his progress. Another twenty minutes brought him to the Dame’s tree. The Wearsider received the news of the Air Troop’s successful arrival in his usual phlegmatic way. He had no news – the valley below had apparently gone to sleep.
Wynwood was more obviously relieved by Eddie’s tidings. He put on the helmet and listened to the younger man’s explanation of how it operated. ‘Bannister will call you up when he’s in position,’ Eddie concluded.
On the other side of the valley Chris led the Air Troop along an imaginary contour line about a hundred metres up from the edge of the forest. Dropping off Puma patrol with the first mortar due south of the inner compound, the remaining eleven men walked on another four hundred metres to a position near the edge of the trees level with the outer gate. Jaguar, comprising Bannister and seven other men, were to remain here. Bannister would coordinate the entire diversionary action, using the seven men under his command to intervene if and when it seemed useful.
This left Ocelot, comprising Chris, Bonnie, Blackie and a South Londoner who bore the endearing nickname of Dopey, to continue on to the road. They emerged from the trees a few minutes later and there it was, skirting the feet of the hill. By Chris’s reckoning the intersection with Totoro’s entry road was out of sight round the next bend, about four hundred metres to their right. ‘Ocelot to Jaguar,’ he said quietly into the helmet mike, ‘road clear.’
They waited for a full minute, listening to the light breeze in the foliage above them and the steady chatter of the river that lay just beyond the road. Then Chris led them down, moving slightly to the left to take advantage of the cover offered by a lone copse of trees.
They crossed the road and reached the river’s edge. The water ran fast, but not deep. It looked cold. It was cold. The patrol carried the mortar across and advanced down the left bank, all wearing their PNGs.
The outer gate came into sight through another line of trees. Two men were standing chatting just beyond it by an unlit gatehouse. They did not look like they were expecting anything other than boredom.
Invisible against the dark slope and inaudible against the rushing water, the patrol moved forward u
ntil it found a sighting of the gates that was uninterrupted by trees. Chris hand-signalled for them to set up the mortar. When Blackie’s thumbs up announced completion of this task he spoke softly into the helmet mike once more: ‘Ocelot to Jaguar: ready to go.’
Crouched on his haunches about four hundred metres to the east, looking down along the front line of fence which contained the main gate, Bannister acknowledged the message. He had already received the same message from Puma patrol. He looked at his watch. It was 01.55 hours. Ten minutes behind schedule, so far. ‘Jaguar to Condor,’ he said, ‘Are you ready to go?’
‘Condor to Jaguar,’ Wynwood said, ‘we’re ready.’
Bannister took a deep breath, thinking for a second how silent it all was. ‘Jaguar to all units,’ he said succinctly. ‘Time to party. You have two minutes, Condor. Ocelot, prepare to fire at the end of those two minutes.’
‘We’re on our way,’ Wynwood replied. He and Eddie raised themselves from their prone position and began to edge their way down through the trees. At the forest’s edge, thirty metres of bare ground away from the high wire fence, they stopped and waited and watched. Neither had their PNGs down over their eyes: the lights were far too bright.
About now, Eddie thought to himself.
On the other side of the river Bonnie dropped the shell into the mortar tube and covered his ears. The explosion shook the valley. As it died away another followed echo-like on its heels, and the fence below them seemed to shiver with fright. Wire-cutters at the ready, Wynwood ran down the bare slope, Eddie right behind him.
Soldier D: The Colombian Cocaine War Page 17