Stand By Stand By

by Chris Ryan

  ‘We expect Caquetá to conform to this new pattern. There’s an army airstrip at Puerto Pizarro, fairly close by, and a military outpost. But we’re not too struck on low-level air reconnaissance. First, the distances are very big. Second, if the facility’s a few kilometres off the river, you’re probably going to miss it on a single pass. Third, the narcos are more than capable of shooting down a low-flying aircraft. They have all modern weapons, including surface-to-air missiles.’

  I nodded. An awkward silence followed. I wanted to propose a plan of action, but at the same time I didn’t want this guy to think I was teaching him to suck eggs. In the end I said, ‘Do you mind if I make a suggestion?’

  ‘Go right ahead.’

  ‘If a major assault went in on the facility – say by helicopter gunships – the narcos would top the hostages and throw them in the river before any incoming troops could get on the ground. Now in a way this problem is of our own making. If possible we’d like to crack it ourselves. I have a team of ten men, all highly trained. We’re used to working together. We operate best as a self-contained unit, and our speciality is covert approach. We’d aim to infiltrate the area without being detected, find out the camp routine, and strike at whatever moment seemed most advantageous. We’re most effective in that covert kind of role. If we can be sure the hostages have been taken to this place, and you can lift us to within a reasonable distance of it, we’ll recover them on our own.’

  The General looked at me steadily, as if he was sizing up my fighting potential. Then he said, ‘Your men have won a lot of respect down at Santa Rosa.’

  ‘We’re jungle trained,’ I said.

  ‘We have helicopters – Hueys.’

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘All over.’

  ‘Could you get a couple down to Puerto . . . Puerto Pizarro today?’

  ‘I expect so, yes.’

  ‘We’ll need some logistics back-up, too.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Mosquito nets, hammocks, DPMs, medical packs. Ropes, in case we have to rope down out of a chopper. Inflatable boats, too, by the sound of it. Normally, we’d have all this as a matter of routine. But we didn’t come equipped for an operation of this kind. Rations, also. We brought a small amount of food with us, for emergencies, but not enough to deploy with.’

  ‘All that can be arranged.’ Nariño had been making some notes, and now looked coolly at me.

  ‘I’m sorry to break the training course. That’s going well.’

  ‘Too bad. Maybe you can pick it up again when this is over.’

  Once more I nodded. Then I said, ‘The immediate problem is, we left most of our stuff in the camp at Santa Rosa. We need to get back there fast to pick up our kit and weapons.’

  ‘Of course. One moment.’ He picked up a telephone, pressed a single button and began to speak, quietly but firmly. I could pick up the gist of it; he was giving orders for an aircraft to be made available. I sat looking at the big map, and the ocean of green, denoting jungle, that lay in the far south.

  The General put his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and asked, ‘Where are your men now?’

  ‘At the Hostal Bonavento.’

  He spoke into the receiver again, then turned back to me and said, ‘A truck will collect them at eleven o’clock and lift them out to the military airfield. The flight down will take less than an hour. The aircraft can refuel at Santa Rosa, and then fly you on to Puerto Pizarro.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I replied. ‘I appreciate your quick response.’ As soon as I’d said that, I thought it sounded phoney – but I didn’t want to seem too effusive. To appear a bit warmer I added, ‘Bill Egerton at the embassy asked me to give you his best wishes.’

  For the first time a slight smile lit up the broad, impassive face. With his right elbow on the desk he held out his hand, palm down and fingers extended, and in a curious gesture rocked it slightly to right and left, as if to express that a certain amount of give-and-take went on between the DAS and the embassy. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Bill is a good friend of ours.’

  As I got up to go, he brought out a card, scribbled a number on the back, and handed it to me. ‘This is my direct line, here or at home. You can call me any time,’ he said. ‘I’m glad to help.’

  Back at the embassy I found Tony talking on the satcom telephone. He was giving, or checking, some coordinates. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘that’s seventy-three fifty west, zero degrees fifty south. OK.’

  Seeing me come in, he turned and raised a thumb, then said into the mouthpiece, ‘Call back when you’ve seen the next one. Fine. Thanks.’

  He hung up and said, ‘We got it!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The hostage location.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Satellites. I called my guys in Fort Worth, and they went right through to Langley, Virginia. One satellite or another is passing over here every twenty minutes. They checked their records and found that a new construction site’s been growing during the past few weeks on a big bend of the Rio Caquetá –’

  I held up a hand. ‘Don’t think I’m trying to take the piss, Tony, but I know all that already.’

  I told what I’d heard from the general.

  ‘OK,’ he said equably. ‘Anyway, the controllers are going for a high-resolution shot of it on one of the next passes.’

  ‘Brilliant!’

  Our only map was too small-scale to be much use, but Tony had marked a dot in the green area just north of the river, about eighty ks east of the settlement. No road of any kind approached the township, or whatever it was.

  Already it was after 10.30. Time was zipping past. I phoned the hotel to warn the guys to be ready for the off at eleven. Then I called Hereford to update the boss on the situation. I said we were planning to set up a forward mounting base at Puerto Pizarro, and play it from there. I told him I’d leave Tony Lopez as anchorman in the embassy, and report in on our portable satcom phone as soon as I got back to it.

  I was on the point of leaving when Tony’s mate in Langley came through again to say that the close-up satellite shot showed details of the new workings at the Caquetá site. There were now three buildings, as opposed to two a week ago, and the snap-shot, taken twenty minutes earlier, showed a twin-engined aircraft sitting on a strip carved out of the jungle alongside the river about one k away.

  ‘That’s got to be the aircraft which took our party in,’ I said. ‘That clinches it.’

  Getting up to go, I tried to thank Bill Egerton for all he’d done. ‘I’m sorry. This has wrecked your weekend.’

  ‘Not a bit. If I wasn’t here, I’d only be sitting in the garden reading The Times weekly edition. This is much more entertaining!’

  Tony came down in the lift with me. ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘I’m really sorry to be leaving you here.’

  ‘No sweat, Geordie. I’m having a ball. Playing ambassadors is great.’

  ‘Yep, but if there’s some action, you’ll want to be part of it.’

  ‘Sure. But who knows where the action’s gonna be? Take care, anyway.’

  A battered army three-ton truck clattered up to the hotel a couple of minutes before eleven. I checked that all bills were paid and all rooms clear, then we bundled into the back and rode out to the airfield, a short run of less than fifteen minutes.

  The military field proved to be one side of the El Dorado civilian airport. A Herc, painted drab olive green, without markings, stood on the pan. A military truck was parked beside the tail-ramp, and guys were loading stores into it like ants. Our driver drew up alongside it and we piled out. Inside the back of the plane there was already a fair stack of kit, and as we arrived some of the loadies were starting to lash it down.

  The Colombian head-loadie came down from the flight-deck for a rapid conference with the boss of the logistic party, ticking items off a list. Then he turned to me with a cheerful grin and said, ‘Por favor’, waving us to go aboard. He followed us in, checking that we’d all belted up
into the canvas sling-seats along the sides. He said, ‘Fly one hour.’ Then he spoke to the pilot on the intercom, and hit the button to raise the tail ramp. The engines began to turn, and that dreaded whine built up to full strength as the big aircraft lumbered forward.

  The flight lasted no more than fifty minutes, but it gave me time to think. If we did manage to launch an operation against the new drugs complex, everything would depend on surprise. If the narcos got wind of a rescue attempt, or thought an attack was coming in, they’d top the hostages for sure. This meant that we had to get in covertly, establish an OP, discover the routine of the place, and take the defenders by surprise.

  The pilot never bothered to gain any great altitude, and air currents coming off the mountains made the flight pretty rough. I was glad when the plane banged down hard on the dirt runway at Santa Rosa, and there was Sparky, waving like a lunatic from the edge of the strip. I thought he was taking the piss out of us for coming back early, and spending all our money while he’d been hoarding his. Not at all. He was frantic for me to get on the satcom link to Tony in Bogotá.

  ‘But I’ve only just left the bugger,’ I protested.

  ‘I know, but there’s been a development. He says you’re to call immediately.’

  ‘OK, guys.’ I looked round. ‘Leave the Colombian stores on board. Everyone get their personal kit packed up and ready for the off. We need to load all our ammunition and PE, as well. Make sure we don’t leave anything behind.’

  ‘Aren’t we coming back?’ somebody asked.

  ‘Might be. Might not. It depends how things go. Anyway, we’re off in a few minutes.’

  Sparky had the spike of the little dish aerial stuck into the ground outside our accommodation block, but the satellite had wandered out of range, and for a couple of minutes we couldn’t make any contact. Then, having checked with his compass and reset the elevation, he suddenly hit it spot-on. The call went through, the line clear as clear.

  ‘Tony – hi. What’s on?’

  ‘The bastards have split the party. We got two separate reports from the toads within a few minutes of your leaving. One party’s gone to the Caquetá, all right. But the other’s in Cartagena.’

  ‘Jesus! Where’s that?’

  ‘It’s a port on the north coast.’

  ‘Fucking hell. Who’s where?’

  ‘One toad said that the gringa and four gringos, one old and three young, have been taken to the Rio Caquetá.’

  ‘That sounds like our party, with a couple of PIRA in tow.’

  ‘Yeah – but listen to this. The other toad said that a gringo con cabellos rubios had been put on board a ship at Cartagena.’

  ‘Jesus Christ! Fair hair – that must mean Peter, the Rupert.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Do we know what ship it is?’

  ‘Yep. It’s a cargo vessel called the Santa Maria de la Mar. Nine thousand tons. Panamanian registered. It’s making ready to sail for Amsterdam.’

  ‘God almighty. They’re trying to get him out of the country. The PIRA must have found out he’s from the Regiment.’

  ‘Right. They’ll beat the shit out of him to make him talk.’

  ‘Maybe they’re aiming to get him back to Northern Ireland. Tony, we need to hit that ship. Maybe we’d better turn round and come back.’ I thought for a moment. Then I realized that what we needed were the special skills of the Boat Troop. We could undertake more or less any operation on land, and a couple of us had trained for short periods with the boat guys. But if it came to a ship assault we were neither fully trained nor properly equipped.

  I said as much to Tony, then added, ‘We’ll carry on with our own operation. But I’m going to call Hereford and get the Boat Troop put on standby.’

  ‘Wait a bit. It’s not that easy. If we’re going to hit the ship we’ve got to hit the lab at the same time. And vice versa. We need two operations, co-ordinated down to the last few seconds. Otherwise the narcos will top the other half of the equation.’

  ‘OK. Two operations. But, Christ – when’s the ship due to sail?’

  ‘Some time tomorrow. Our information is that she’s heading for an offshore island, to trans-ship drugs. Our best tactic will be to hit her there, when the crew’s not expecting anything. But we need to know where she’s going. The toad said Amsterdam. That could be right, in the end, but it could be disinformation. She could head in any goddamn direction. What we’ve got to do is get a tracking device on board her before she sails.’

  Even as he talked, in my mind I was seeing the guys in the Boat Troop. I knew several of them well: Steve, Roger, Merv – all first-class operators. This looked like an ideal task for them.

  ‘The trouble is,’ I said, ‘our lot will never get here in time. They have to go round about four stops on the way, like we did, spread over several days.’

  ‘No,’ replied Tony. ‘But mine will. The SEALs’ll get there. There’s a team on standby in Florida all the time. Your government will have to clear it from England, but I’m going to call my guys right away and give them advance warning that they’re gonna go stick a device on the ship while she’s still in port. A hit out at sea or at an island would be another matter. That would stir the diplomatic shit, and it might need clearance from the Pentagon. But we can get a bleeper in place without anyone knowing.’

  ‘Great! Go ahead with that. I’ll speak to the headshed in Hereford and tell them the score.’

  ‘Listen,’ Tony said. ‘You got a pencil and paper? I did a couple of calculations, based on the satellite information. On your jungle location, you need to chopper in towards the target without getting close enough to alert anybody. The best thing will be to cut straight across from the base at Puerto Pizarro to the north of the target. Aim for the tributary and come down that. That way, you won’t fly closer to the laboratory than eight or nine ks, and nobody’s going to hear you. If you head out from the base on zero-eight-seven degrees, you’ll hit the Rio Cuemani ten ks north of the new airstrip.’

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘I got a note of that.’

  ‘South of the big river,’ he went on, ‘there’s a solitary mountain. I guess it’ll stand right out of the flat jungle. Looks like it’s got a conical peak. You’re never going to be closer to it than fifty ks, but you’ll see it away to your right. When you get level with it, you’ll be coming to your tributary.’

  He went on to describe the precise layout of the landing-strip, the link road (which didn’t run straight, but wound through the forest) and the buildings of the laboratory itself. As he talked I wrote and sketched details in my note-book.

  ‘Thanks, Tony. Zero-eight-seven will be our heading. I’ll get on to Hereford now.’

  I was about to line up the call when I saw Captain Jaime heading towards us. Pretending I felt happy, I said, ‘¡Hola, Capitán! Embarrada.’ A big problem.

  He seemed a bit disgruntled, and wanted some explanation. I gave it, itching to be on the move. ‘How many days will you be away?’ he asked.

  ‘One or two,’ I said casually. ‘That should do it.’

  Of course I hadn’t a clue. But I could see that he was getting the shits worrying how to keep forty-odd men occupied.

  Sparky tuned his dish again, and we got through to Hereford. Again they put me on to the CO. I briefed him on the situation, then said, ‘Boss, this has the makings of a first-class international fuck-up.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said the Colonel. ‘We’ve got the diplomatic side well under control. I don’t think there’s going to be any attempt to stop you. We’ve already cleared the SEALs’ involvement with the US government. It’s great that Tony Lopez is there to liaise.’

  ‘A big stroke of luck, I know.’

  ‘Wait one,’ said the CO. ‘Straighten me out on the different locations. I’ve got a map in front of me.’

  ‘OK. We’re calling them Green One, Two, Three and Four. Green One’s Tony, in Bogotá. I’m now on Green Two, at the training camp at Santa Rosa, about 250
ks south of Bogotá. But it’s only a camp and a village, so probably it won’t be on your map. The ship that we think Peter Black’s been put on is at Cartagena, on the north coast, about eleven o’clock from Bogotá. We’re calling the ship Blue One.’

  ‘Right,’ went the boss. ‘I have that.’

  ‘Green Three is an army outpost at Puerto Pizarro, on the Rio Caquetá, about seven o’clock from Bogotá, 400 ks further south from my present location, and right out in the Amazon basin. Again, you probably haven’t got that marked – it’s pretty small. Green Four is the other hostage location, fifty ks east of Pizarro, on the north side of the river, where it swings round in a big bend.’

  ‘Pizarro. Can’t see that either. What’s your plan, anyway?’

  ‘There’s a landing strip at the army outpost. DAS have put a Herc at our disposal, and we’re off down there in a few minutes. We’ll be there in a couple of hours. We’ll make the camp our forward mounting base. Then we’ll chopper out, establish an FOB, and put in an OP on the laboratory, to work out a recovery.’

  ‘You’re definitely going to need back-up.’

  ‘That’s right. We’re short of all assets, weapons particularly. Apart from pistols, we’ve only got two G3s and two 203s. The trouble is, it’ll take you bloody days to get here. It took us three days just to reach Colombia.’

  ‘Don’t worry. There’s a mountain of war stores sitting in Belize. We can organize some of that down to you in a matter of hours. So – more 203s. More grenades. What else?’

  ‘Basically, jungle gear for ten. Ponchos, mozzie nets, boots, hats. I think DAS have sorted some stuff out for us, but I don’t know how good it is.’

  ‘What about rations?’

  ‘We’ve got a few with us, and DAS have given us some more. Christ knows what they are, but they’re on board.’

  ‘Boats?’

  ‘Yep. They’ve lent us a few rubber dinghies. We haven’t unpacked them yet.’

  ‘OK, then. We’ll try to line up a couple more. Happy landings. Report when you’re on your new location.’

  ‘Roger. We’ll speak soon.’