The Cobra

by Frederick Forsyth

  His formal education was fractured to the point of near nonexistence, but he became wise in other ways: streetwise, fight-wise. Like his departed mother, he did not grow tall, topping out at five feet eight inches. Nor was he heavy and muscular like his father, but his lean frame packed fearsome stamina and his fists a killer punch.

  By seventeen, it looked as if his life would follow that of his father, shoveling dirt or driving a dump truck on building sites. Unless . . . In January 1968 he turned eighteen, and the Vietcong launched the Têt Offensive. He was watching TV in a bar in Camden. There was a documentary telling him about recruitment. It mentioned that if you shaped up, the Army would give you an education. The next day, he walked into the U.S. Army office in Camden and signed on.

  The master sergeant was bored. He spent his life listening to youths doing everything in their power to get out of going to Vietnam.

  “I want to volunteer,” said the youth in front of him.

  The master sergeant drew a form toward him, keeping eye contact like a ferret that does not want the rabbit to get away. Trying to be kindly, he suggested the boy sign for three years, as opposed to two.

  “Good chance of better postings,” he said. “Better career choices. With three years you could even avoid going to Vietnam.”

  “But I want to go to Vietnam,” said the kid in the soiled denims.

  He got his wish. After boot camp, and with his noted skill driving earthmoving equipment, he was sent to the Engineer Battalion of the Big Red One, the First Infantry Division, based right up in the Iron Triangle. That was where he volunteered to become a Tunnel Rat and enter the fearsome network of scary, black and often lethal tunnels dug by the Vietcong under Cu̓ Chi.

  In two tours of nearly suicidal missions in those hellholes, he came back to the States with a hatful of medals, and Uncle Sam kept his promise. He was able to study at college. He chose law, and got his degree at Fordham, in New York.

  He had neither the backing, the polish nor the money for the big Wall Street firms. He joined the Legal Aid Society, speaking up for those destined to occupy the very lowest reaches of the legal system. So many of his clients were Hispanic that he learned fluent and rapid Spanish. He also married and had a daughter, on whom he doted.

  He might have spent all his working life among the unrepresented destitute, but when he was just over forty, his teenage daughter was abducted, forced into prostitution and sadistically murdered by her gangster pimp. He had to identify her battered body on a marble slab at Virginia Beach. The experience brought back the Tunnel Rat, the one-on-one man killer.

  Using his old skills, he tracked down the two pimps behind his daughter’s death and gunned them down, with their bodyguards, on a pavement in Panama City. When he returned to New York, his wife had taken her own life.

  Cal Dexter abandoned the courts and appeared to retire to become a civil attorney in the small New Jersey town of Pennington. In fact, he took up his third career. He became a bounty hunter, but, unlike the great majority of his trade, he operated almost exclusively abroad. He specialized in tracking down, snatching and bringing back for due process in the USA those who had committed evil crimes and thought they had got away with it by seeking sanctuary in a non-extradition country. He advertised extremely discreetly under the pseudonym “Avenger.”

  In 2001, he had been commissioned by a Canadian billionaire to find the sadistic Serbian mercenary who had murdered the old man’s aid-worker grandson somewhere in Bosnia. What Dexter did not know was that a certain Paul Devereaux was using the killer Zoran Zilic, now a freelance arms trader, as bait to lure Osama bin Laden to a rendezvous where a cruise missile could wipe him out.

  But Dexter got there first. He found Zilic holed up in a filthy South American dictatorship, slipped in and hijacked the killer at gunpoint, flying him back to Key West, Florida, in his own jet. Devereaux, who had tried to have the interfering bounty hunter eliminated, found his two years of planning in ruins. It soon became irrelevant; a few days later, 9/11 would ensure that Bin Laden was not going to attend any unsafe meetings outside his caves.

  Dexter vanished back into the persona of the harmless little lawyer from Pennington. Devereaux later retired. Then he had the time, and he used it to trace the bounty hunter called simply the Avenger.

  Now they were both retired: the ex-Tunnel Rat who came up from the ranks and the dandified aristo from Boston. Dexter looked down at the handset and spoke.

  “What do you want, Mr. Devereaux?”

  “I have been summoned out of retirement, Mr. Dexter. By the commander in chief himself. There is a task he wishes performed. It affects our country quite grievously. He has asked me to accomplish it. I will need a first deputy, an executive officer. I would be most grateful if you would consider taking the post.”

  Dexter noted the language. Not “I want you to . . .” or “I am offering . . .” but “I would be most grateful . . .”

  “I would need to know more. A lot more.”

  “Of course. If you could drive over to Washington to visit with me, I would be happy to explain almost everything.”

  Dexter, standing in the front window of his modest house in Pennington, looking out at the fallen leaves, thought it over. He was now in his sixty-first year. He kept himself in shape, and, despite several very clear offers, had declined to marry for a second time. All in all, his life was comfortable, stress-free, placid, small-town bourgeois. And boring.

  “I’ll come over and listen, Mr. Devereaux. Just listen. Then decide.”

  “Very wise, Mr. Dexter. Here is my address in Alexandria. May I expect you tomorrow?”

  He dictated his address. Before he hung up, Cal Dexter had a question.

  “Bearing in mind our mutual past, why did you pick me?”

  “Very simple. You were the only man who ever outwitted me.”

  PART TWO

  HISS

  CHAPTER 3

  FOR SECURITY REASONS IT WAS INFREQUENT THAT THE Hermandad, the controlling super-cartel of the whole cocaine industry, met in plenary session. Years earlier, it had been easier.

  The arrival in the presidency of Colombia of fiercely anti-drug Álvaro Uribe had changed that. Under his rule, a clearing out of some elements of the national police force had witnessed the rise to the top of General Felipe Calderon and his formidable chief of intelligence in the anti-narcotics division, Colonel Dos Santos.

  Both men had proved that, even on a policeman’s salary, they were bribeproof. The cartel was not accustomed to this and made several mistakes, losing key executives, until the lesson was learned. After that, it was war to the knife. But Colombia is a big country with millions of hectares to hide in.

  The unchallenged chief of the Brotherhood was Don Diego Esteban. Unlike a former cocaine lord, Pablo Escobar, Don Diego was no psychopathic thug drawn from the backstreet slums. He was of the old landed gentry: educated, courteous, mannerly, drawn from pure Spanish stock, scion of a long line of hidalgos. And he was always referred to simply as “the Don.”

  It was he who, in a world of killers, had, by force of personality, forged the disparate warlords of cocaine into a single syndicate, highly successful and run like a modern corporation. Two years earlier the last of those who had resisted the unification he demanded had departed in chains, extradited to the U.S., never to return. He was Diego Montoya, chief of the Cartel del Norte del Valle, who had prided himself on being the successor to the outfits of Cali and Medellín.

  It was never discovered who had made the phone call to Colonel Dos Santos that led to the raid on Montoya, but after his media appearance, shackled hand and foot, there was no more opposition to the Don.

  Colombia is slashed, northeast to southwest, by two cordilleras of high peaks, with the valley of the river Magdalena between them. All rivers to the west of the Cordillera Occidental flow to the Pacific or the Caribbean; all water east of the Cordillera Oriental flows away to join the Orinoco or the Amazon. This eastern land of fifty rivers is
a vista of rolling open range studded with haciendas the size of counties. Don Diego owned at least five that could be traced and another ten that could not. Each had several airstrips.

  The meeting of autumn 2010 was at the Rancho de la Cucaracha outside San José. The other seven members of the board had been summoned by personal emissary and had arrived by light aircraft after the dispatch of a score of decoys. Even though the one-time-use-and-throw cell phone was deemed extremely secure, the Don preferred to send his messages by handpicked courier. He was old-fashioned, but he had never been caught or eavesdropped upon.

  That bright autumn morning, the Don personally welcomed his team to the manorial house in which he probably slept no more than ten times a year but which was maintained at permanent readiness.

  The manor was of old Spanish architecture, tiled, and cool in the summer, with fountains tinkling in the courtyard and white-jacketed stewards circulating with trays of drinks under the awnings.

  First to arrive from the airstrip was Emilio Sánchez. Like all the other division heads, he had one single function to master: production. His task was to oversee every aspect from the tens of thousands of dirt-poor peasants, the cocaleros, growing their shrubs in Colombia, Bolivia and Peru. He brought in their pasta, checked the quality, paid them off and delivered tons of Colombian puro, packaged and baled, at the refinery door.

  All this needed constant protection, not only against the forces of law and order but against bandits of every stripe, living in the jungles, ready to steal the product and try to sell it back. The private army came under Rodrigo Pérez, himself a former FARC terrorist. With his aid, most of the once-fearsome Marxist revolutionary group had been brought to heel and worked for the Brotherhood.

  The profits of the cocaine industry were so astronomical that the sheer ocean of inflowing money became a problem that could be solved only by laundering from “tainted” dollars into “clean.” Then they could be reinvested in thousands of legitimate companies worldwide; but only after deduction of overheads and contribution to the personal wealth of the Don, which ran to hundreds of millions.

  The laundering was mainly accomplished by corrupt banks, many of whom presented themselves to the world as wholly respectable, using their criminal activities as an extra wealth generator.

  The man charged with laundering, Julio Luz, was no more a thug than the Don himself. He was a lawyer specializing in financial and banking law. His Bogotá practice was prestigious, and if Colonel Dos Santos had his suspicions, he could never raise them above that level. Señor Luz was the third to arrive, and the Don greeted him warmly as the fourth SUV arrived from the airstrip.

  José-María Largo was the supremo of merchandising. His arena was the world that consumed the cocaine and the hundreds of gangs and mafias that were the clients of the Hermandad for its white powder product. He was the one who concluded the deals with the gangs spread across Mexico, the USA and Europe. He alone assessed the creditworthiness of the long-established mafias and the constant stream of newcomers who replaced those caught and jailed abroad. It was he who had chosen to award a virtual European monopoly to the fearsome Ndrangheta, the Italian mafia native to Calabria, the toe of Italy, sandwiched between the camorra of Naples and the Cosa Nostra of Sicily.

  He had shared an SUV, because their aircraft had arrived almost together, with Roberto Cárdenas, a tough, scarred old street fighter from Cartagena. The interceptions by customs and police at a hundred ports and airports across the U.S. and Europe would have been five times higher but for the “facilitating” functions of bribed officials. These were crucial, and he was in charge of them all, recruitment and payoff.

  The last two were delayed by weather and distance. Lunch was about to be served when an apologetic Alfredo Suárez drove up. Late though he was, the Don’s courtesy never failed, and he thanked his subordinate warmly for his effort as if a choice had been involved.

  Suárez and his skills were vital. His specialty was transportation. To secure the safe and unintercepted transit of every gram from refinery door to handover point abroad was his task. Every courier, every mule, every freighter, liner or private yacht, every airplane, large or small, and every submarine came under him, along with their crews, stewards and pilots.

  Argument had raged for years over which of the two philosophies was the better: to ship cocaine in tiny quantities but by thousands of single couriers or to send huge consignments but far fewer of them.

  Some had it that the cartel should swamp the defense of the two target continents with thousands of expendable know-nothing mules carrying a few kilos in their suitcases or even just one, swallowed into their stomachs in pellet form. Some would be caught, of course, but many would get through. The sheer numbers would overwhelm the defenses. Or so ran the theory.

  Suárez favored the alternate. With three hundred tons to supply to each continent, he favored about one hundred operations per year to the U.S. and the same to Europe. Cargoes should be from one to ten tons, justifying major investment and planning. If the receiving gangs, having taken delivery and paid up, wished to split the cargoes into penny packets, that was their business.

  When it failed, it failed badly. Two years earlier, the British frigate Iron Duke, patrolling the Caribbean, had intercepted a freighter and confiscated five and a half tons of pure. It was valued at $400 million, and that was not street value because it had not yet been adulterated six-to-one.

  Suárez was nervous. What they had been convened to discuss was another huge interception. The U.S. Coast Guard cutter Dallas had taken two tons from a fishing boat trying to slip past it into the creeks near Corpus Christi, Texas. He knew he would have to defend his philosophy with all the advocacy at his disposal.

  The only one from whom the Don kept a chilly distance was his seventh guest, the near-dwarf Paco Valdez. If his appearance was ludicrous, no one laughed. Not here, not anywhere, not anytime. Valdez was the Enforcer.

  He stood barely five feet three inches, even in his Cuban “lifts.” But his head was inordinately large and, weirdly, had the features of a baby, with a slick of black hair on top and a pursed, rosebud mouth. Only the blank black eyes gave hint of the psychopathic sadist inside the little body.

  The Don acknowledged him with a formal nod and thin smile. He declined to shake his hand. He knew the man the underworld had nicknamed “El Animal” had once plucked out the entrails of a living man to toss them on a brazier with that hand. The Don was not sure he had washed his hands afterward, and he was very fastidious. But if he were to murmur the name Suárez into one button ear, the Animal would do what had to be done.

  The food was exquisite, the wines vintage and the discussion intense. Alfredo Suárez won his corner. His big-consignment philosophy made life easier for merchandising, the “facilitating” officials abroad and laundering. Those three votes swung it for him. He left the hacienda alive. The Enforcer was disappointed.

  THE BRITISH Prime Minister held his conference with “my people” that weekend, once again at Chequers. The Berrigan Report was passed around and read in silence. Then the shorter document prepared by the Cobra to define his demands. Finally, it was time for opinions.

  Around the table in the elegant dining room, also used for conferences, was the cabinet secretary, controller of the Home Civil Service, from whom no major initiative could be kept anyway. Next to him sat the chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, known inaccurately by the media as MI6 and more commonly by its intimates and colleagues as the “Firm.”

  Since the retirement of Sir John Scarlett, a Kremlinologist, the simple title “Chief ” (never “Director General”) had gone to a second Arabist, fluent in Arabic and Pashtun, and with years in the Middle East and Central Asia.

  And there were three from the military. These were the chief of the Defence Staff, who would later, if need be, brief the chief of General Staff (Army), the chief of Air Staff and the First Sea Lord. The other two were the director of Military Operations and the director
of Special Forces. All in the room knew that all three military men had spent time in Special Forces. The young Prime Minister, their superior in rank but junior in age, reckoned that if these three, plus the chief, could not cause a mischief to be performed on an unpleasant foreigner, no one could.

  Domestic service at Chequers is always performed by the RAF. When the Air Force sergeant had served coffee and left, the discussion began. The cabinet secretary addressed the legal implications.

  “If this man, the so-called Cobra, wishes to”—he paused and searched for the word—“enhance the campaign against the cocaine trade, which is already imbued with many powers, there is a danger he will have to ask us to break international law.”

  “I believe the Americans are going ahead with that,” said the PM. “They are going to change the designation of cocaine from a Class A drug to national threat. It creates the category of terrorists for the cartel and all smugglers. Inside the territorial waters of the U.S. and Europe, they remain gangsters. Outside, they become terrorists. In that case, we have the powers to do what we do anyway, and have been since 9/11.”

  “Could we change, too?” asked the chief of the Defence Staff.

  “We would have to,” replied the cabinet secretary. “And the answer is yes. It would mean a statutory instrument, not a new law. Very quiet indeed. Unless the media got hold of it. Or the bunny huggers.”

  “That is why the need-to-know principle would have to keep those in the know to a very tiny group indeed,” said the chief. “And even then any operation would need a damn good cover story.”

  “We mounted a hell of a lot of black ops against the IRA,” said the director of Special Forces, “and since then against Al Qaeda. Only the tip of an iceberg ever got out.”

  “Prime Minister, what exactly do the cousins want from us?” asked the chief of the Defence Staff.

  “So far as I can learn from the President, intel, input and covert-action know-how,” said the PM.