Last Light ns-4

by Andy McNab

  There was an abrupt command in Spanish as the nearest man shouldered his assault rifle. Aaron lifted his arse from the seat and searched around in his back pocket. I saw the red glow of cigarettes beyond the 4x4's headlights as figures moved about in the shadows.

  A green baseball cap and bushy black moustache shoved its way through Aaron's window and demanded something from me. I didn't respond. I didn't have a clue what he was asking and just couldn't dig deep enough for the energy to look interested. His M-16 swung round from his back and banged against the door. I saw sergeant's stripes and Tolicia' badges on his sleeve.

  "He wants your ID, Nick."

  Aaron presented his own. It was snatched away by the sergeant, who stopped shouting and stood back from the window, using his mini-Maglite to inspect the docs.

  "Nick? Your ID, please don't vex these people."

  I pulled out my plastic bag lethargically from under my jacket and rummaged in it like a schoolboy in his sandwich box, just wanting this to go away.

  The other policeman on Aaron's side had been standing behind the sergeant, his assault rifle shouldered. I heard boots behind the wagon, but couldn't see anything in the mirror.

  I gripped myself: What the fuck am I doing? Switch on! Switch on!

  My heart-rate pumped up a few more revs per minute, and at the same time as I looked in my bag I made a mental note of where the door handle was, and checked that the door-lock knob was up. Lethargic or not, if I heard the squeak of rusty hinges from the tailgate I'd be out and running. Handing my passport over to Aaron for the sergeant, I knew I was reacting too slowly to all of this.

  There's a body in the back, for fuck's sake!

  The sergeant was gob bing off about me as he looked at my passport with his Maglite. I only understood the odd word of Aaron's replies.

  "Britanico ... amigo vacaciones ..." He nodded away like a lunatic, as if he had some sort of nervous disease.

  The sergeant now had both our IDs in his hands, which would be a problem if I needed to do a runner. Without a passport, my only option was west, or the embassy.

  Straining my ears, I waited for the tailgate to open. I ran my hands through my hair, keeping my eyes on the door handle and visualizing my escape route, which wasn't exactly difficult: three steps into the darkness to my right. From there, I'd just have to take my chances.

  I was brought back to the real world by the sergeant bending down once more and pointing at my clothes as he rattled off something to Aaron. He replied with a funny, and forced a laugh, as he turned to me.

  "You're a friend and I picked you up from the airport. You wanted so much to see the rain forest so I took you in at the edge of the city. Now you never want to go in again. It was so funny, please just smile."

  The sergeant had joined in the laughter and told the other guy behind him about the dickhead britanico as he handed back the IDs. Then he banged the roof of the Mazda and followed the others towards the blocking wagons. There was a lot of pointing and shouting, followed by the roar of wagons being revved and manoeuvred clear of the road.

  Aaron was shaking like a leaf as he turned the ignition, but managed to appear relaxed and confident from the neck up for the police's benefit. He even waved as we passed. Our headlights caught four or five bodies lined up on their backs on the side of the road. Their clothes glistened with blood. One of the kids was still open-mouthed, arms flung out and eyes wide, staring up at the sky. I looked away and tried to focus on the darkness beyond the headlights.

  Aaron said nothing for the next ten minutes as we bounced along the pot-holed road, headlights lurching. Then he braked suddenly, pushed the selector into Park, and jumped out as if a bomb was about to go off. I could hear him retching and straining as he leant against the Bac Pac, but not the sound of anything coming up. He'd left it all at Clayton.

  I just let him get on with it. I'd done the same myself, when I first started:

  sheer terror engulfs you and there's nothing you can do but fight it until the drama is over. It's later, when there's time to think, not only about what's happened but, worse, what the consequences might have been if things had gone wrong that's when you part company with your last meal. What he was doing was normal. The way I had behaved back there wasn't, not for me.

  The suspension creaked as he closed the door, wiping his waterlogged eyes. He was plainly embarrassed, and couldn't bring himself to look at me. I'm sorry, Nick, you must think I'm a real pussy. Guys like you can handle this stuff, but me, I'm just not made for it."

  I knew that wasn't exactly true, but I didn't know how to say so. I never did at times like this.

  "I saw a couple of guys blown away a few years ago. I had nightmares about it.

  Then, seeing Diego's body and those kids back there hacked to death, it just..."

  "Did he tell you what had happened?"

  "It was a robbery. PARC. They cut them up with those things." He pointed down at the gollock.

  "It doesn't really make sense -they normally don't bother folks here. No money." He sighed, both hands on the steering-wheel, and leant forward a bit.

  "You see what they'd done to those kids? Oh, God, how can people behave like that?"

  I wanted to change the subject.

  "Look, mate, I think we'd better get rid of Diego. As soon as there's a bit of light we'll find somewhere to hide him. We can't go through that shit again."

  He lowered his head on to the wheel and nodded slowly.

  "Sure, sure, you're right."

  "It'll be OK, he'll be found sooner or later and buried properly..."

  We drove on. Neither of us wanted to talk about Diego or bodies any more.

  "What road are we on?"

  "The Pan-American Highway."

  It didn't feel like one. We were bouncing around in ruts and pot-holes.

  "Runs all the way from Alaska to Chile, apart from a ninety-three-mile break in the Darien Gap. There's been talk about joining it up, but with all the trouble in Colombia and the destruction of the forest, I guess we prefer it how it is."

  I knew about the southern part of the highway; I'd been on it enough times. But I wanted us to keep talking. It stopped me having to think. I leant down and rubbed the sweatshirt wrapped round my now very painful leg.

  "Oh, why's that?"

  It's one of the most important stretches of rain forest still left in the Americas. If there are no roads, that means no loggers and farmers, and it's kind of like a buffer zone with Colombia. Folks call it Bosnia West down there"

  The headlights were sweeping across each side of the road, illuminating nothing.

  "Is that where we're going, to the Gap?"

  He shook his head.

  "Even if we were, this eventually becomes not much more than a track, and with this rain it's just darned impassable. We're heading off the road at Chepo, maybe another ten minutes or so."

  First light was starring to edge its way past the corners of the sky. We bounced along for a while in silence. My headache was killing me. The headlights exposed nothing but tufts of grass and pools of mud and water. This place was as barren as a moonscape. Not much good for hiding a body.

  "There's not a whole lot of forest here, mate, is there?"

  "Hey, what can I say? Where there's a road, there's loggers.

  They keep on going until everything's levelled. And it's not just about money:

  the folk round here believe it's manly to cut down trees. I reckon less than twenty per cent of Panama's forest will survive the next five years. That's including the Zone."

  I thought of Charlie and his new estate. It wasn't just the loggers who were tearing chunks out of Aaron's jungle.

  We drove on as daylight spread its way gloomily across the sky. A primeval mist blanketed the ground. A flock of maybe a hundred big black birds with long necks took off ahead of us; they looked suspiciously like pterodactyls.

  Ahead and to our left I could see the dark shadows of trees, and I pointed.

  "Wh
at about there?"

  Aaron thought for a few seconds as we got closer, clearly disturbed again, as if he'd managed for a moment to forget what we had in the boot.

  "I guess so, but it's not that far to where I could do it properly."

  "No, mate, no. Let's do it now." I tried to keep my voice level.

  We pulled into the side of the road and under the trees. There wasn't going to be time for ceremony.

  "Want to help?" I asked, as I retrieved the gollock from under my feet.

  He thought hard.

  "I just don't want the picture of him in there, you know, in my head. Can you understand that?"

  I could: there were a whole lot of pictures in my own head I wished weren't there. The most recent was a blood-soaked child staring open-mouthed at the sky.

  As I climbed out the birds were in full song: daylight was nearly here. I held my breath, opened the back, and pulled Diego out by his armpits, dragging him into the treeline. I concentrated on not looking at his face and keeping his blood off me.

  About ten metres inside the gloom of the canopy I rolled both him and the wiped clean gollock under a rotted deadfall, covering the gaps with leaves and debris.

  I only needed to hide him until Saturday. When I'd gone, maybe Aaron would come back and do what he'd wanted to in the first place. It shouldn't be hard to find him; by then there'd be so many flies they'd sound like a radio signal.

  Having closed down the tailgate I got back into the cab and slammed the door. I waited for him to move off, but instead he turned.

  "You know what? I think maybe Carrie shouldn't know about this, Nick. Don't you think? I mean-' "Mate," I said, 'you took the words right out of my mouth." I tried to give him a smile, but the muscles in my cheek weren't working.

  He nodded and steered back on to the road as I tried to curl up once more, closing my eyes, trying to kill the headache, but not daring to sleep.

  Maybe fifteen minutes later we hit a cluster of huts. An oil lamp swung in one of them, splashing light across a roomful of faded, multicoloured clothes hung up to dry. The huts were made of breeze block with doors of rough planks nailed to a frame and wriggly tin thrown over the top. There was no glass in the windows, nothing to hold back the smoke from small fires that smouldered near the entrances. Scrawny chickens ran for cover as the Mazda approached. It wasn't at all the sort of thing I'd been shown in the inflight magazine.

  Aaron jerked his thumb over his shoulder as we drove past.

  "When the loggers leave, these guys turn up subsistence farmers, thousands of them, just poor people trying to grow themselves something to eat. The only problem is, with the trees gone, the topsoil gets washed away, and inside two years they can't grow anything except grass. So guess who comes in next -the ranchers."

  I could see a few minging-looking cows with their heads down, grazing. He jerked his thumb again.

  "Next week's burger."

  Without warning, Aaron spun the wheel to the right, and that was us quitting the Pan-American Highway. There were no signs on the gravel slip-road, just like in the city. Maybe they liked to keep the population confused.

  I saw a huddle of corrugated roofs.

  "Chepo?"

  "Yep, the bad and sad side."

  The compacted-gravel road took us past a scattering of more basic farmers' huts on stilts. Beneath them, chickens and a few old cats mooched around rusty lumps of metal and piles of old tin cans. Some of the shacks had smoke spilling from a clay or rusty metal chimney-pot. One was made out of six or seven catering-size cans, opened both ends and knocked together. Apart from that there was no sign of human life. The bad and sad side of Chepo was in no hurry to greet the dawn. I couldn't say I blamed them.

  The odd rooster did its early-morning bit as the huts gradually gave way to larger one-storey buildings, which also seemed to have been plonked randomly on any available patch of ground. Duckboards, instead of pavements, led here and there, supported on rocks that were half submerged in mud. Rubbish had been collected in piles that had then collapsed, the contents strewn. A terrible stink wafted through the Mazda's cab. This place made the doss house in Camden look like Claridge's.

  Eventually we passed a gas station, which was closed. The pumps were old and rusty, 1970s vintage, with an oval top. So much diesel had been spilled on the ground over the years that it looked like a layer of slippery tar. Water lay in dark, oil-stained puddles. The Pepsi logo and some faded bunting hung from the roof of the gas station itself, along with a sign advertising Firestones.

  We passed a rectangular building made from more unpainted breeze blocks. The mortar that oozed between the blocks hadn't been pointed, and the builder certainly hadn't believed in plumb-lines. A sinewy old Indian guy wearing green football shorts, a string vest and rubber flip-flops was crouched down by the door, with a roll-up the size of a Rastafarian Old Holborn hanging from his mouth. Through the windows I could see shelves of tinned food.

  Further up the road was a large wooden shack, up on stilts like some of the huts. It had been painted blue at one stage in its life, and a sign said that it was a restaurant. As we drew level I saw four leopard skins stretched out and nailed to the wall of the veranda. Below them, chained up in a cage, was the scrawniest big cat I'd ever seen. There was only enough space for it to turn round, and it just stood, looking incredibly pissed off as I would be, if I had to stare at my best mates pinned to the wall all day. I'd never felt so sorry for an animal in all my life.

  Aaron shook his head. There was obviously some history to this.

  "Shit, they're still got her in there!" For the first time I was hearing anger in his voice.

  "I know for a fact that they sell turtle too, and r?s protected. They can't do that. You're not even allowed to have a parrot in a cage, man, it's the law ... But the police? Shit, they just spend their whole time worrying about narcos."

  He pointed a little ahead of us and up to the left. We were driving towards what reminded me of an army security base in Northern Ireland. High, corrugated-iron fencing protected whatever buildings were inside. Sandbags were piled on top of each other to make bunkers, and the barrel and high-profile sight of an American M-60 machine-gun jutted from the one covering the large double gates. A big sign with a military motif declared this was the police station.

  Four enormous trucks were parked up on the other side of the station with equally massive trailers filled with stripped tree trunks. Aaron's voice was now thick with anger.

  "Just look at that first they cut down every tree they can get their hands on. Then, before they float the logs downstream for these guys to pick up, they saturate them in chemicals. It kills the aquatic life. There's no subsistence farming, no fishing, nothing, just cattle."

  We left the depression of Chepo behind us and drove through rough grassland cratered with pools of rusty-coloured water. My clothes were still damp in places, quite wet in others where my body heat wasn't doing a good enough job.

  My leg had started to feel OK until I stretched it out and broke the delicate scabbing. At least Aaron getting sparked up about what was happening in Chepo had diverted his mind from Diego.

  The road got progressively worse, until finally we turned off it and hit a rutted track that worked its way to some high ground about three or four kilometres away. No wonder the Mazda was in a shit state.

  Aaron pointed ahead as the wagon bucked and yawed and the suspension groaned.

  "We're just over that hill."

  All I wanted to do was get to the house and sort myself out -though from the way Aaron had rattled on in his eco-warrior Billy Graham voice, I half expected them to live in a wigwam.

  EIGHTEEN

  The Mazda rolled from side to side, the suspension creaking like an old brigantine as the engine revs rose and fell. To my surprise, Aaron was actually driving the thing with considerable skill. It seemed we had at least another hour and a half of this still to go so much for 'just over that hill'.

  We ploughed on through
the mist, finally cresting the steep, rugged hill. The scene confronting us was a total contrast to the rough grassland we'd been travelling through. A valley lay below us, with high, rolling hills left and right, and as far as the eye could see the landscape was strewn with felled, decaying wood. The trunks nearest us were almost grey with age. It was as if somebody had tipped an enormous box of matchsticks all over a desert of rust coloured mud. The low mist within the valley made it eerier still. Then, at the far end of the valley, where the ground flattened out, maybe five or six Ks away, was lush green jungle. I couldn't work it out.

  We started our descent and Aaron must have sensed my confusion.

  "They just got fed up with this side of the hills!" he shouted above the wagon's creaks and groans.

  "There wasn't enough hardwood to take, and it wasn't macho enough for the hombres to take these little things away. But hey, at least there are no farmers, they can't clear all this on their own. Besides, there's not enough water down here not that they could drink it if there was."

  We reached the valley floor, following the track through the downed trees. It looked as if a tornado had torn through the valley then left it for dead. The morning sun was, trying its hardest to penetrate a thin layer of cloud. Somehow it seemed much worse than if the sun had been properly out; at least then it would have come from one direction. As it was, the sun's rays had hit the clouds and scattered. It was definitely time for the Jackie O look again. Aaron followed my lead and threw his on too.

  We carried on through the tree graveyard until we were rescued by the lush canopy at the far end of the valley.

  "Won't be long now," Aaron declared.

  "Maybe forty-five, fifty minutes."

  Twenty would have been better; I didn't think the wagon could take much more, and neither could my head. I thought it was going to explode.

  We were back in secondary jungle. The trees were engulfed in vines reaching up into the canopy. All sorts of stuff was growing between them and above the track. It felt like we were driving through a long grey tunnel. I took off my Jackie Os and everything became a dazzling green.