by Geoff Wolak
‘And the people living in those condos?’ I pressed.
‘Could find that they don’t legally own the properties and be turfed out. Anyhow, what’s the plan with the Wolves?’
‘They settle in, train some local men, then radiate outwards. We have a map of the local gangs and Sinola bases, so we’ll attack them all, mile by mile secured.’
‘The new narco unit is now seen as the sexy place to work, many men wanting to apply for it.’
‘Got a stiff drink in your hand?’
‘Ah hell, more bad news?’
‘Just a theory -’
‘Never a fucking theory with you!’
‘Well my theory has Saudi money funding drug deals, the product shipped from Saudi to the States on military flights.’
‘Jesus … mother of fucking – if that hits CNN!’
‘Yeah, a problem, so we’ll try and deal with it quietly, no records.’
‘Fucking…’ I heard the sigh. ‘It happened in Vietnam, but today it would be bad all around.’
‘Leave it with me, take no action, keep it quiet, eh.’
‘No shit. Oh, got a report on my desk, a brothel in Northern Cyprus…’
‘The two Saudi men involved, they liked to place product on American military flights.’
‘You made it look like anything other than a hit. Good.’ He sighed out. ‘One stiff drink coming up.’
I called Max, annoyed at the Mexican Government. ‘It’s me. Release a story from me. The Mexican Government suffered greatly from the loss of their tourist trade, and now foolishly attempts to destroy their own lucrative retirement trade.
‘The Mexican Government will try to seize condos built with cartel money, and will turf out the people who bought condos in good faith. What they should do is allow the residents to live there till death, perhaps only claiming the property after death.
‘Where the tenants are paying rent, the authorities should collect that rent as a good income, not turf out the people living there. This latest move by the Mexican Government will further damage the Mexican economy and must be avoided. If people are put off retiring there, the only jobs left for the citizens of Mexico will be with the gangs – and that makes my work even harder.’
‘They won’t be happy with you, but I see what you’re saying, and they need the tourists back and the retirees, or they’re fucked.’
‘Release it. Thanks.’
When Tiny returned with Suzy, I waved them into the office with Joe as they puzzled what was up. ‘I have a job for some smart ladies with good English. I want a summary report of progress made, for London and Washington. Men from prison, ex-cartel men, hints at what information we got, what general areas we’re investigating, men we caught, who they worked for.
‘And then you expand it and update it each week. Let Joe or Tomsk read it before it goes, just in case we say too much, a copy for Mister Bob in France. Call it the Narco Bulletin.’
Tiny noted, ‘This is something to do after cocktails, yes?’
‘Tomorrow, sit down and type, employees.’
‘Employees?’ she repeated, cocking an eyebrow.
‘Yes, employees. You were recruited for your brain, remember.’
I left them undecided, undecided if they wanted to shout at me or not. Or hit me.
David Finch was on an hour later. ‘Are you trying to win friends in Mexico?’
‘You seen Reuters?’
‘Yes, and others have started to send similar messages to the Mexican Government, some quite loud messages it seems, not least from the States, where fund managers are threatening to pull out of Mexico, a serious blow to the Mexican stock markets coming on top of the recent issues.
‘Mexican news is running it, mention of your name, and loudly lambasting their own government policy, the White House joining in – they released a similar message half an hour after yours.’
‘That guy you had sit on the plane with me, his brother has a condo in Cancun.’
‘As does my neighbour, whom I’m sure is now very worried. But, if a property was built by the cartel and then sold, well … not much that can be done.’
‘How about … the Mexican Government takes ownership of the land and gives the condo owners a 99 year lease or something. If not, the tourist trade and retiree trade is fucked, and I’m fighting a populace with hungry bellies and a bad attitude whilst I’m trying to fight the damn cartels.’
‘Quite. Well all sides want a settlement, so something may happen soon, the poor old Mexican Government getting it from all sides.’
‘Oh, Tiny is going to produce a weekly bulletin for you, the Narco Report we call it.’
‘I’d like to send a man, advisor to Interpol and someone we can trust. He can help greatly.’
‘Sure, send him, but be sure he won’t blab.’
‘He’s related to the Director.’
‘Ah, in which case he can probably be trusted.’
‘We’d hope so. And he knows the ambassador there, they were in school together. Expect him soon.’
‘Meaning that you sent him already…’
‘I saw no issues with you rejecting him.’
‘Hmmm,’ I let out.
‘Oh, the JIC finally rubber stamped your suggestion from a while back, and a Special Projects budget will be created, to back your operations, extra money, and GCHQ will get extra money project by project.
‘Americans are jealous of GCHQ, which pleases the politicians no end, and now their penetration of the cartels is gaining favour.’
‘Anything you lot want to sell around here?’ I asked.
‘Milling machines, for factories. We have a few tenders in against the Germans.’
‘The Germans? They never assist me, so Rule Britannia.’
I went and found a manager who knew about Panama’s trade. ‘I want Tomsk to loan the government here money to buy British lathes and milling machines, and fast. Check what the tenders are and nudge the Panama Government. Buy British, not German!’
In the room, at 7pm, Tiny shoved me onto the bed and sat on me. ‘You trying to find work for me, Mister?’
‘Yes, so use your damn brain. You’re not here for your good looks.’
‘Well, I’m on your bed for my good looks.’
‘That’s different, and separate, and we still have jobs to do, not a romantic island to live on forever.’
‘But a romantic island is in the pipeline, yes?’
‘Maybe a week away. Five days tops.’
‘You’re all work, work, work, Mister.’
‘Yeah,’ I sighed out. ‘Could do with a holiday.’
She lay next to me. ‘Found a French guy that could be useful, he was a ship’s captain and he knows the shipping drug routes, contacts in France and around the Caribbean.’
‘Yes, useful.’
My phone trilled. ‘It’s Premier Khrushchev.’
‘Still with the delusions of grandeur?’
‘Well if I’m going to have a delusion it may as well be a good one.’
‘You settled in?’
‘We have rooms in a cabin, nice enough for a short stay. Met Carlos and his son, and shit - are they switched on!’
‘He has managers and tick lists.’
‘They have fucking computerised schedules! The works.’
‘That’s why I’m dealing with them.’
‘We have a target map, and we have the NSA up to speed, we have an AWACS listening in, and we have air strike capability and a shit load of Apache helicopters at our disposal.’
‘Then you need to be sure that CNN is not running this, because then Carlos and his family is in danger – and I’ll get mad at a few people.’
‘We’ll keep it tight and deny it,’ he assured me. ‘Oh, Hueys just arrived, two of them, plus some very old pilots, straight from the retirement condo.’
‘So long as they can fly … that’s all that matters. Does everyone have a bed?’
‘Huts can hold a lot of men,
and many will be on rotation on the walls or in the trenches here. There’s this cabin we had arrive today on a truck, towed up the hill by a second truck, and they’re raising tents inside the wall.’
‘How’s the food?’
‘Chow is good, three chefs and a shit load of tins stacked floor to ceiling behind them, even some beer.’
‘Who’s the senior man with the Wolves?’ I asked.
‘He’s a major, met you at the first Wolves recruitment base, but he’s temporary he said. Running Bear is a captain, so he’s second in command, and your guy Mitch is with us, a Lieutenant.’
‘They dispersed?’
‘They were, within a minute of landing, men in the trenches and on the walls, including hick-town Murphy.’
‘He’s my best man.’
‘He sounds like a teenager!’
‘He’d walk a hundred miles, shoot you in the eye a thousand yards out, and walk back with a cheeky grin on his face. He’s with me for a reason. Local soldiers there?’
‘About eighteen of them. They’re having lessons from Murphy and someone called Green.’
‘Greenie, yes.’
‘They measured out a 1600yard range, white markers and some targets placed, bottles and jars. I sat watching them for a while. They run around the compound, get up on the wall, sort themselves out, aim and shoot four rounds, then run off.’
‘The skill is in hitting the target when your chest is rising and falling, you heart beating in your ears, sweat in your eyes.’
‘Well they’re all getting some practise in, but quietly, silencers used.’
At 9pm, sat on the patio with Tomsk, something of a party going on, Mitch called. ‘You busy?’
‘In a disco,’ I told him.
‘Yeah, right. Well we have a target and a plan, and we have some bored pilots.’
‘What’s the plan?’
‘We’d fly south thirty miles, and around to fool anyone observing us, then north ten miles or so, fire down and drop smoke as a team lands, and we hit a drugs lab. It has a nominal ten guards on average, civvies working there mostly. We’d hit them at dawn.’
‘Here’s the modification to your plan. You have Murphy and his buddy, plus one local soldier, dropped six miles from the lab tonight. They walk in and get eyes on, and they call the shots when the action starts.’
‘That was my second option.’
‘You have a go. You make the plans with Running Bear and the CIA, kick around ideas, then call me. And watch out for traps, they’re not stupid. And after tonight’s raid they’ll be wary.’
‘Can’t move a drug lab in an hour,’ he pointed out.
‘True, very true. Let me know how it turns out. Oh, and we always try to grab the drugs and any cash, plus weapons. Don’t risk lives for it, but we can’t leave the drugs laying around. Get some fricking napalm grenades delivered and torch the place when you leave. Talk to that major.’
‘And the drugs and cash?’
‘Go to your host, Carlos the Jackal, through his man Rada, and he sends money back to the CIA, no records.’
‘No records, huh. OK, Boss, and enjoy the disco.’
Phone down, Tomsk asked, ‘All OK?’
‘The men with Carlos will raid a drugs lab at dawn, get the drugs to Carlos. After that – well - they’ll know we’re there.’
On the patio next to the pool, I stood with Allison and picked his brains on the Regiment, as it was before I joined up, and he knew Billy well. I called Billy just as he was going to bed, the phone handed to Allison, who was soon calling Billy names, not least “Rupert Cock Sucker”.
Call ended, phone handed back, and Allison was shaking his head. ‘A major and a pen pusher.’
‘Me too,’ I told him.
‘You’re no pen pusher,’ he scoffed. ‘You like the front line.’
‘Got family back home?’
‘Yeah, a kid and an ex-wife. We were divorced before I got banged up, but the kid wrote and I wrote back.’ He shrugged.
‘You can send them some money. How old is the kid?’
‘Now … twelve.’
‘You missed a lot of years…’
He shot me an angered look. ‘I missed a lot of years when she fucked off with another man, while I was in Kenya!’
‘Is that what drove you to merc work?’
‘Well … maybe. Not the smartest thing I ever did.’
‘Did you consider Saudi?’
‘I knew a lot of people out there of course, many go that way, but I heard the stories, and no one really likes the work. They like the pay, and that’s it. Oh, your man Rocko, I was in the Paras with him.’
‘He fucked his retina, so he’s now the unit Sergeant Major. He still comes on a few jobs with us.’
‘He was always solid, but he never fancied the Regiment.’
‘Attitude is better these days,’ I told him. ‘The Regiment, not Rocko.’
He laughed. ‘It has to be, you nicked all the good jobs off them.’
‘I created those jobs for myself, they were never listed by the UKSF Directorate. And one success led to another, and we got permission to launch jobs when they would have previously been denied.’
‘In all the time I was there we never launched a rescue other than the Embassy Siege, but we advised on a few. We would never have considered a job like Angola, not in a million years.’
‘Well, if it had gone wrong I would have been shut down quickly enough,’ I complained.
‘They don’t like risk, or failure, at least they never did in my time; men served ten years and never fired a shot in anger. I was in Oman with Billy, Northern Ireland of course, Falklands. That was about it. Most did three years and out, bodyguard work and a beer at the reunion.’
‘Billy never went to reunions,’ I noted.
‘A lot of hot air and shit flying around, yeah,’ he agreed. ‘Some were OK, I went to a few when I stood down.’
Miguel walked up. ‘Preevyet, kag dillar?’
‘Horrow-show,’ Allison replied with a nod.
‘This is the bosses adopted son,’ I told Allison.
They shook. Miguel asked, ‘You are working here now?’
‘I … was in prison here, just released.’
‘What were you in prison for?’ came an innocent question.
‘I was working for money, up in Nicaragua. A bad choice.’
‘I’m going to get an education, and then be a lazy bastard,’ Miguel said as he walked off, leaving us frowning at each other, then laughing loudly.
Stood with Rizzo and Gay Dave later, I asked, ‘You two friends now?’
‘He’s fit as fuck,’ Rizzo noted. ‘Good with a weapon as well. Just the small problem of him being a fucking poofter.’
Dave laughed up some of his beer. ‘I can live with caterpillar face,’ he told me.
Rizzo told me, ‘He knows some nice girls, so I’ll get to meet some. Poofters have always got nice girl-friends.’
‘They do,’ I agreed.
‘That Suzy gunna stay here and get married?’ Rizzo asked.
‘If she wants, yes.’
‘London allows that?’
‘They will, because she’s valuable to them to have here.’
‘And that little bird, Tiny, she tortured some guy out the back here?’
‘She did, and she likes that. When she’s burning a man’s balls she’s thinking of her ex-boyfriend.’
Rizzo screwed up his face. ‘Ouch.’
‘Around here, don’t get caught by the bad guys, they may have someone like Tiny working for them.’
I spoke to Suzy and her man, and they confirmed that they were considering getting married and starting a family. I offered to assist with a visa for her man, a holiday in England planned.
At 6am I was awake and I slipped out quietly as Tiny slept. But I stopped for a minute to stare at her naked body as she lay on her side. Outside, I called Murphy.
‘Hello?’ came an alert man.
‘
You awake, Murphy?’
‘Oh hey, Boss. Yeah, we’re just watching this here drugs lab, helos on the way.’
‘How does it look?’
‘Simple enough, one strong room to get into, other rooms is just long wooden huts and the like. We can get the guards from where we is, most of them, just six of them, and right lazy with it.’
I had breakfast, a night chef in attendance for the night managers, and at 7am I called back Murphy. ‘How’d it go?’
‘Got no one killed, but this here lady pulled a gun and wounded two Wolves, gut shots, but they’s gone on the helos.’
‘They’ll live?’
‘Should do, yes.’
‘The drugs?’
‘Gotta be my weight in bags, all loaded up, no cash but we got us twelve rifles back on the helos.’
‘You still there?’
‘Eight of us is, on the approach road. Mitch figured that they’d send a senior man out to this here place after they found out about it an all.’
‘Good idea. Who’s with you?’
‘Me and Terry, Greenie is here, and five Wolves, some I know like. We’re waiting some action, rotating the rest.’
‘Call me after the action is over, or if there’s a problem.’
Mitch called me fifteen minutes later. ‘You heard?’
‘Yeah, two wounded.’
‘Stupid mistake, pretty girl smiling at them, her tits hanging out.’
‘I think they learnt their lesson. Will they live?’
‘We think so, we patched them up and they’re already at a hospital Stateside.’
‘And the drugs?
‘This guy Rada says it’s good quality stuff, and a good load, say a hundred kilos in all.’
‘Have a small sample given to the CIA men, to send back for analysis, to see where it came from.’
‘Will do, but they might just sniff it.’
‘They know better than to do that. And keep an eye on the men, no sniffing.’
‘Some of them got covered in it.’
‘Then you throw a bucket of water over them and get it off!’ I barked.
‘My next task. Don’t shoot the messenger.’
‘If any get high by accident, I start shooting – even the messenger!’