The Cobra

by Frederick Forsyth

  “Names,” he said. “Columns of names, mostly foreign. And cities—airports, harbors, docks. And titles—they look like officials of some kind or another. And bank accounts. Account numbers and lodgments. Who are these people?”

  “Just print them out for me. Yes, black-and-white. On paper. Indulge an old man.”

  He went to a phone that he knew to be ultra-secure and called a number in Alexandria’s Old Town. The Cobra answered.

  “I have the Rat List,” he said.

  JONATHAN SILVER called Paul Devereaux that evening. The chief of staff was not in his best humor, but he was not known for it anyway.

  “You’ve had your nine months,” he snapped. “When can we expect some action?”

  “So kind of you to call,” said the voice from Alexandria, cultured, with a hint of Boston drawl. “And so fortuitous. Starting next Monday, actually.”

  “And what will we see happening?”

  “At first, nothing at all,” said the Cobra.

  “And later?”

  “My dear colleague, I wouldn’t dream of spoiling your surprise.” And he replaced the receiver.

  In the West Wing, the chief of staff found himself staring at a buzzing handset.

  “He’s hung up on me,” he said in disbelief. “Again.”

  PART THREE

  STRIKE

  CHAPTER 10

  BY CHANCE IT WAS THE BRITISH SPECIAL BOAT SERVICE that secured the first prey; a question of the right place at the right time.

  Shortly after the Cobra issued his “open season” edict, Global Hawk Sam picked up a mystery vessel on the ocean far below, which was tagged “Rogue One.” Sam’s wide-spectrum television scanner was narrowed as she dropped to 20,000 feet, still completely out of sound and sight. The images concentrated.

  Rogue One was clearly not big enough to be a liner or Lloyd’slisted freighter. She might be a very small merchantman or coaster, but she was miles away from any coast. Or she might be a private yacht or fisherman. Whatever she was, Rogue One had passed longitude 55° heading east for Africa. And she behaved oddly.

  She cruised through the night and then disappeared. That could only mean that at sunrise she closed down, her crew spread a sea blue tarpaulin and bobbed the day away on the water almost impossible to spot from above. That maneuver could only mean one thing. Then at sundown she rolled up the tarp and began to cruise east again. Unfortunately for Rogue One, Sam could see in the dark.

  Three hundred miles off Dakar, the MV Balmoral turned south and went to flank speed to intercept. One of the two American comms men stood beside the captain on the bridge to read out the compass headings.

  Sam, drifting high above the rogue, passed her progress details to Nevada, and AFB Creech told Washington. At dawn the rogue closed down and went under her drape. Sam returned to Fernando de Noronha Island to refuel and was back before dawn. The Balmoral steamed through the night. The rogue was caught at dawn of the third day, well south of the Cape Verdes, and still five hundred miles from Guinea-Bissau.

  She was about to cover herself for her penultimate day at sea. When her captain saw the danger, it was too late to spread the canopy or roll it up and pretend to be normal.

  High above, Sam switched on her jammers, and the rogue was enveloped at the base of a cone of “no transmit, no receive” electronic dead space. At first the captain did not try to transmit a message because he did not believe his eyes. Speeding toward him was a small helicopter barely 100 feet above the calm sea.

  The reason he could not believe it was the matter of range. Such a chopper could not be that far from land, and there was no other vessel in sight. He did not know that the Balmoral was twenty-five miles due ahead of him and invisible just over the horizon. When he realized he was about to be intercepted, it was too late.

  His drill was memorized. First you will be pursued by the unmistakable gray shape of a warship, which will be faster. It will overhaul you and order you to stop. When the warship is still far away, use the hull of your boat to shield you and deep-six the cocaine bales over the side. These we can replace. Before you are boarded, inform us by computer with the prerecorded message to Bogotá.

  So the captain, even though he could see no warship, did as he was told. He pressed Send, but no message went out. He tried to use his sat phone, but it, too, was dead. Leaving one of his men repeatedly calling on the radio, he went up the ladder behind the bridge and stared ahead at the approaching Little Bird. Fifteen miles back, still not visible but racing at forty knots, were two ten-man RIBs.

  The small helicopter circled him once and then hovered at 100 feet forward of the bridge. He could see that a rigid wasp aerial jutted downward, with a stiff flag spread behind it. He recognized the design. On the boom of the helicopter were the two words, “Royal Navy.”

  “Los Ingléses,” he muttered. He still could not work out where the warship was, but the Cobra had given strict instructions; the two Q-ships must never be seen.

  Peering up at the helicopter, he saw the pilot, black-visored against the rising sun, and beside him, leaning out but harnessed in, a sniper. He did not recognize a G3 scoped rifle, but he knew when a gun was pointing right at his head. His instructions were clear: Never try to outshoot any national navy. So he raised his hands in the international gesture. Despite the lack of “Transmission accomplished” signal on his laptop, he hoped his warning had gone out anyway. It had not.

  From his vantage point, the flier of the Little Bird could see the name on the prow of the rogue vessel. It was Belleza del Mar—Beauty of the Sea—the most optimistic title on the ocean. She was in fact a fishing boat, rusted, stained, a hundred feet long and stinking of fish. That was the point. The ton of cocaine in roped bales was under the rotting fish.

  The captain tried to take the initiative by starting his engines. The helicopter swerved and dropped until it was abeam, 10 feet off the water and thirty yards from the side of the Belleza del Mar. At that range the sniper could have whisked off either ear according to choice.

  “Paré los motores,” boomed a voice from Little Bird’s loudspeaker. “Cut your motors.” The captain did so. He could not hear them over the roar from the helicopter, but he had seen the spray plume of two approaching attack boats.

  That, too, was incomprehensible. They were many miles from land. Where the hell was the warship? There was nothing hard to understand about the men who poured out of the two RIBs that roared up to his side, hurled grapnels over the edge, made fast and leapt aboard. They were young, black-clothed, masked, armed and fit.

  The captain had himself and seven crew. The “Don’t resist” instruction was shrewd. They would have lasted seconds. Two of the masked men approached him; the rest covered his crew, all of whom had their hands well above their heads. One of the masked men seemed in charge, but he spoke only English. The other man interpreted. Neither removed their black masks.

  “Captain, we believe you are carrying illegal substances. Drugs, specifically cocaine. We intend to search your vessel.”

  “It is not true, I carry only fish. And you have no right to search my vessel. It is against the laws of the sea. It is piracy.”

  He had been told to say this. Unfortunately, his advice on law was less shrewd than that of staying alive. He had never heard of CRIJICA and would not have understood it if he had.

  But Major Ben Pickering was perfectly within his rights. The Criminal Justice (International Cooperation) Act of 1990, known as CRIJICA, contains several clauses covering interception at sea of vessels believed to carry drugs. It also contains the rights of the accused. What the captain of the Belleza del Mar did not know was that he and his vessel had been quietly recategorized as a threat to the British nation like any other terrorist. That meant that, unfortunately for the skipper, the rule book, civil rights included, had just gone where the cocaine would have gone if he had had the time—over the edge.

  The SBS men had been rehearsing for two weeks and had the drill cut to a few minutes.
All seven of the crew and the captain were expertly frisked for weapons or devices of transmission. Cell phones were confiscated for later analysis. The radio shack was smashed. The eight Colombians were shackled with hands in front of waists and hooded. When they could neither see nor resist, they were herded to the stern and made to sit.

  Major Pickering nodded, and one of his men produced a rocket tube. The maroon rocket went up five hundred feet and exploded in a ball of flame. High above, the heat sensors of the Global Hawk took in the signal, and the man over the screen in Nevada shut off the jammers. The major told the Balmoral she was clear to steam, and the Q-ship came over the horizon to berth alongside.

  One of the commandos was in full scuba gear. He went over the edge to search the hull below the water. A common ruse was to carry illegal cargo in a blister welded on the bottom of the hull or even to dangle bales on a nylon cord a hundred feet down, out of sight during any search.

  The swimmer hardly needed his full wet suit, for the water was bathtub warm. And the sun, now well over the eastern horizon, illuminated the water as by searchlight. He spent twenty minutes down there among the weeds and barnacles of the neglected hull. There were no blisters, no secret underwater doors, no dangling cords. In fact, Major Pickering knew where the cocaine was.

  As soon as the jammers were removed, he could give the Balmoral the name of the intercepted fisherman. She was after all on the Cortez list, one of the smaller vessels not on any international shipping list, just a dirty fisher from an obscure village. Obscure or not, she was on her seventh voyage to West Africa, carrying ten thousand times her own value. He was told where to look.

  Major Pickering muttered instructions to the rummage crew from the Coast Guard. The man from customs cradled his cocker spaniel. The hold covers came off to reveal tons of fish no longer fresh but still netted. The Belleza’s own derrick hoisted the fish out and dumped them. A mile down, the crabs would be grateful.

  When the floor of the fish hold was exposed, the rummage men looked for the panel Cortez had described. It was brilliantly hidden, and the stench of fish would have confused the dog. The hooded crew could not know what they were doing nor see the approaching Balmoral.

  It took a jimmy and twenty minutes to get the plate off. Left alone, the crew would have done this at leisure ten miles off the mangroves of the Bijagós Islands, ready to hand the cargo over the side to waiting canoes in the creeks. Then they would have taken on fuel barrels in exchange, tanked up and headed for home.

  The exposing of the bilges beneath the fish hold gave rise to an even fouler stench. The rummage men had their masks and breathers on. Everyone else stood back.

  One of the rummagers went in, torso first, with a flashlight. The other held his legs. The first man wriggled back and held up a thumb. Bingo! He went in with grapnel and cord. One by one, the men on deck pulled out twenty bales, just over a hundred pounds’ weight each. The Balmoral came alongside, towering above them.

  It took another hour. The Belleza’s crew, still hooded, were helped up the Jacob’s ladder into the Balmoral and guided below. When they were released from shackles and hoods, they were in the forward brig, prisoners below the waterline.

  Two weeks later, transferred to the Fleet Auxiliary in a second razzing, they would be taken to the British outpost of Gibraltar, rehooded, transferred by night to an American Starlifter and flown to the Indian Ocean. The hoods would come off again to reveal a tropical paradise and the instruction:

  “Have fun, don’t communicate with anyone and don’t try to escape.”

  The first of these were optional, the rest impossible.

  The ton of cocaine also went aboard the Balmoral. It, too, would be guarded until off-loaded to American custody at sea. The last task on the Belleza del Mar was left to the squad’s explosives man. He went below for fifteen minutes, came up and leapt over the side into the second RIB.

  Most of his companions were back on board. The Little Bird was already stowed again in her hold. So was the first RIB. The Balmoral went to “Slow ahead,” and a lazy wake appeared behind her stern. The second RIB followed her. When there was two hundred yards of clear sea between them and the scummy old fishing boat, the explosive man pressed a button on his detonator.

  The shaped charges of PETN plastic explosive he had left behind uttered only a low crack but cut a hole the size of a barn door in the hull. Within thirty seconds, she was gone forever, on a long, lonely, mile-long dive to the seabed.

  The RIB reboarded and was stowed. No one else in the central Atlantic had seen a thing. The Beauty of the Sea, her captain, crew and cargo had simply vaporized.

  IT WAS a week before the loss of the Belleza del Mar was wholly believed in the heart of the cartel, and even then the reaction was only perplexity.

  Vessels, crews and cargoes had been lost before, but, other than the total disappearance of the death-trap submersibles heading up the Pacific Coast to Mexico, there were always traces or reasons. Some small vessel had gone down in oceanic storms. The Pacific, so named by Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, the first European to see it, because on that day it looked so calm, could sometimes go crazy. The balmy Caribbean of the tourist brochures could play host to insane hurricane winds. But it was rare.

  Cargoes lost at sea were almost always hurled overboard by the crew when capture was impossible to avoid.

  For the rest, losses at sea were from interceptions by law enforcement agencies or navies. The ship was impounded, the crew arrested, charged, tried and jailed, but they were dispensable and their families bought off with a gracious donation. Everyone knew the rules.

  The victors held press conferences, showed the baled cocaine to gleeful media. But the only time product completely disappeared was when it was stolen.

  The successive cartels that have dominated the cocaine industry have always been riven by one psychiatric defect: raging paranoia. The capacity for suspicion is instant and uncontrollable. There are two crimes that are unforgivable within their code: to steal the product and to inform the authorities. The thief and the snitch will always be hunted down and revenge exacted. There can be no exceptions.

  It took a week for the first lots to sink in because, first, the receiving party in Guinea-Bissau, the chief of operation, Ignacio Romero, complained that a preannounced shipment had simply not arrived. He had waited all night at the appointed time and in the appointed place, but the Belleza del Mar, which he knew well, had never made landfall.

  He was asked twice to reconfirm that and did. Then the question of a possible misunderstanding had to be investigated. Had the Belleza gone to the wrong place? And even if so, why had her captain not communicated? He had carefully meaningless two-word messages to send if in trouble.

  Then the dispatcher, Alfredo Suárez, had to check the weather. It had been flat calm right across the Atlantic. Fire on board? But the captain had his radio. Even if he had taken to the lifeboat, he had his laptop and cell phone. Finally, he had to report the loss to the Don.

  Don Diego thought it over, examined all the evidence that Suárez brought him. It certainly looked like theft, and at the head of the queue of suspects was the captain himself. Either he had stolen the entire cargo to cut a deal with a renegade importer or he had himself been intercepted farther out at sea than the mangroves and murdered, along with his crew. Either was possible, but first things first.

  If it was the captain, he would have told his family before the deed or been in contact since his treachery. His family was a wife and three children living in the same muddy village where he kept his old fishing boat, up a creek east of Barranquilla. He sent the Animal to talk to her.

  The children were not a problem. They were buried. Alive, of course. In front of the mother. Still, she refused to confess. It took her several hours to die, but she clung to her story that her husband had said nothing and done nothing wrong. Finally, Paco Valdez had no choice but to believe her. He could not continue anyway. She was dead.

  The Don was regr
etful. So unpleasant. And, as it turned out, fruitless. But unavoidable. And it posed an even bigger problem. If not the captain, then who? But there was someone else in Colombia even more distressed than Don Diego Esteban.

  The Enforcer had practiced his trade after driving the family deep into the jungle. But the jungle is never quite empty. A peasant farmer of Indio descent had heard the screams and peered out through the foliage. When the Enforcer and his crew of two had gone, the peon went into the village and told what he had seen.

  The villagers came with an ox wagon and took the four bodies back to the settlement by the creek. There was a Christian burial for them all. The officiating priest was Fr. Eusebio, S.J. He was disgusted by what he had seen before the crude plank coffin was closed.

  Back in his mission rooms, he opened the drawer in his dark oak desk and looked down at the gizmo the local Provincial had distributed months before. Normally, he would never have dreamed of using it, but now he was angry. Perhaps one day he would see something outside the seal of confession; and then maybe he would use the American gizmo.

  THE SECOND strike went to the SEALs. Again, it was a question of the right time and the right place. Global Hawk Michelle was patrolling the great swathe of the southern Caribbean that extends in an arc from Colombia to the Yucatán. The MV Chesapeake was in the passage between Jamaica and Nicaragua.

  Two go-fasts slipped out of the mangrove swamps of the Gulf of Urabá on the Colombian coast and headed not southwest to Colón and the Panama Canal but northwest. Their journey was long, the extremity of their range, and both were packed with fuel drums apart from one ton each of baled cocaine amidships.

  Michelle spotted them twenty miles out. Although not racing along at their feasible sixty knots, they were cruising at forty, and that was enough to tell Michelle’s radars from 50,000 feet that they could not be anything but speedboats. She began to plot course and speed, and warn the Chesapeake that the go-fasts were heading in her direction. The Q-ship altered course to intercept.