Stand By, Stand By gs-1

by Chris Ryan

  ‘What time is it now?’

  ‘Quarter to midnight. We’re five hours behind you.’

  ‘Wait one. I’ll speak to the CO and call you back.’

  Five minutes later he came on again. ‘I’ve talked to the CO,’ he said. ‘Recovery of the personnel is the number one priority. Everything else has to give place to it. You’ll have to suspend the training course, or cancel it if need be.’

  ‘Roger. We’ll keep this phone manned from now on. It’s the best comms base by far.’

  ‘Good. The other thing is, this whole saga needs to stay under wraps. Officially, you aren’t there. The diplomatic shit’s already stirring over the guy at Essex University, so it’s essential you keep your head down, if you can.’

  ‘That’s fine by me.’

  I rang off. ‘As I thought, they don’t want the Colombians involved,’ I told Egerton. ‘Is that going to make things awkward for you?’

  ‘We’ll have to see what happens. If the DA doesn’t reappear fairly soon, we’ll have to report his absence. But we can give it a few hours anyway. The Ambassador’s gone off for the weekend; if we can avoid having to drag him back, all the better.’

  ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘This is really very good of you. Don’t let me land you in it too.’

  ‘That’s all right. I had a brother in your Regiment, so it’s a pleasure to help.’

  TWELVE

  Egerton announced that he was going to stay over, and called his wife to tell her. Then he revealed that there were a couple of bedrooms behind the offices, and offered me one of them. As this seemed a better option than returning to the hotel, I took it. Before I turned in, I phoned Tony again and brought him up to date. I said he should get his head down.

  I tried to do the same, but couldn’t. I was half-listening through the open door for the phone, half-cursing the way things had gone to ratshit. In a way it was my fault. If I hadn’t recognized Farrell and reported his presence, nothing would have happened. On the other hand, I couldn’t have ignored him and left him to carry on with whatever villainy he was engaged in. If the PIRA were into drug-running to the extent of sending him to Bogotá, it was really bad news for the Province, and something that ought to be tackled right away.

  I think I lay awake most of the night, imagining various scenarios; but in fact I must have gone to sleep, because suddenly I became aware of Egerton standing over me with a brew of tea. It was 6 o’clock in the morning.

  ‘Things are moving,’ he said. ‘We’ve had a police report of a disturbance outside your restaurant, so I guess that was it. Also, I made a couple of calls. They should produce results within an hour.’

  ‘Brilliant. Is there a back way out of the building?’

  ‘Certainly. If you carry on down to the lower garage level in the lift, you can walk out of the pedestrian exit.’

  ‘Great. I want to nip back to the hotel to square things away. Now that this has happened, there’s bound to be someone watching the embassy, and I don’t want to be seen.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  By then it was mid-morning in England. I called Hereford again, and was put straight on to the CO.

  ‘No positive news yet?’ he asked.

  ‘No, but things are on the move. What do you advise about our location? I could send the team back to camp, but that’s more than four hours out of town. I’d rather have them on hand in case we have to head off somewhere quickly.’

  ‘I understand. Are they in a secure place?’

  ‘Reasonably. The hotel think we’re hydro engineers.’

  ‘Keep them there for the moment, then. If you find out where the hostages have been taken, you’ll need to set up a forward mounting base in the area, and get your people into it.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘We’ve been looking at ways of getting a squadron out to back you up. It’s been to Defence Minister and Foreign Minister level. We’re just waiting for clearance from the FO.’

  ‘Good. We’re OK for the moment. I’m getting first-class support in the embassy.’ As Bill was temporarily out of earshot I asked, ‘Do you know of a guy in the Regiment called Egerton?’

  ‘Donald? Don Egerton. Of course. He was a star. Killed on an exercise in Africa four or five years ago.’

  ‘Oh — right. I thought the name was familiar. It’s his brother in charge here.’

  ‘Glad to hear it.’

  I hung up and glanced at my watch. I knew that, whatever might be said officially, ways would be found to get reinforcements out to us. Once the Regiment’s involved in an operation of this kind, obstructions tend to fall away.

  Then… there was a good chance that on this Saturday morning Tracy would be at home. Worth a try, anyway.

  I dialled — and there she was.

  ‘Geordie! What’s happening?’

  ‘Nothing. Everything’s cool. I just got a chance to call.’

  ‘Well, great. Where are you?’

  ‘In Bogotá.’

  ‘How’s the weather?’

  ‘All right. Not as hot as in camp. We’re 9,000 feet above sea-level. What about there?’

  ‘Typical March — cold and wet.’

  ‘How’s Tim?’

  ‘On top form. He’s got a friend here for the day — Alex Kirkby, from the village.’

  ‘Oh, great. Everything all right, then?’

  ‘Yes. Well… it was funny. A man rang last night.’

  ‘What did he want?’

  ‘He just asked how you were enjoying yourself in the sun.’

  ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘No. I asked what he meant, but he rang off.’

  I felt a stab of anxiety. ‘What sort of a voice did he have?’

  ‘Nothing special. I couldn’t place it.’

  ‘Not Irish?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say so.’

  ‘Listen. If it happens again, call the police. OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘And don’t worry. It was probably just some nutter.’

  I said goodbye and rang off. Although I’d pretended to be nonchalant, I was disturbed. Outside the Regiment, nobody was supposed to know where we were. Who’d passed word around that I was in Colombia?

  Before I had time to start worrying, Bill Egerton returned and showed me the way out via the fire-stairs, lending me a key so that I could come back in the same way.

  I ran down to the lower garage floor and came out of the door cautiously. The car-park was three-quarters empty, and there was nobody in sight. The rear of the block was deserted, too. I turned to the right and set off, noticing for the first time that the building was flanked by a garden full of spectacularly bright flowers.

  I walked the short leg to the hotel without picking up a tail. Tony had dragged everyone out of bed, and I got them all into the room he and I had been sharing. Most of them were looking rough. As I predicted, Mel had lost his money. He still had his wallet, but he’d got so smashed that someone had nicked all his cash from it without him noticing. The only things he had left were some emeralds he’d bought from a guy in the street and stashed in a pocket of his jeans. At least, he thought they were emeralds. The others reckoned they were bits of green glass.

  ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘The shit’s hit the fan.’

  I told them the score, then said, ‘We’re to stay put for the moment. Then, if we find out where the hostages are, we’ll go in and get them out. Meanwhile, I’m going to phone Captain Jaime and tell him the course is suspended for a couple of days. I’m heading back to the embassy now. Tony’ll follow me, to man the secure phone. The rest of you are going to have to stick it out here in the hotel. OK?’

  At the sniff of an operation their hangovers fell away, and everyone gladly ditched their plans to buy leather jackets. Those could wait. I had a shave and a shower and got some breakfast down me, then grabbed a taxi to the back of the embassy. Egerton was certainly well organized. His wife had come in, bringing his shaving kit and some weekend clothes.

  ‘P
rogress,’ he began. ‘We’ve got a lead. Word is that the party’s flown out to a brand-new refinery in the jungle on the Rio Caquetá.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Way down south, in the Amazonas, near the border with Peru.’

  ‘How do you get there?’

  ‘Not easy. There are no roads. The only way’s to fly.’

  ‘In that case we’re definitely going to need help from your friends in DAS. Will your friend fix things for us?’

  ‘I think so.’ He picked up a telephone, dialled and began speaking rapidly in Spanish. He glanced at me a couple of times as he was talking, and ended with, ‘Si, si. Muchas gracias.’

  He turned to me. ‘He wants to see you.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Now. A car will collect you in a few minutes.’

  ‘Does he speak English?’

  ‘Perfectly. He went to Harvard.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘General Felipe Nariño.’

  At that moment the door-buzzer sounded and Tony arrived. ‘The guys are standing by to move,’ he announced. ‘I’ve called Captain Jaime at the camp and told him the course is suspended for the time being. Also, I spoke to Sparky and put him in the picture.’

  ‘We’d better get our arses back down there,’ I said.

  Egerton cleared his throat. ‘I think you’ll find you’ve got air transport at your disposal. You’ll need to go back to get your kit and presumably the camp you’ve been at has a landing strip?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Then it might pay you not to send anyone off by road. Hang on until you’ve seen the general.’

  Five minutes later I was in the back of an air-conditioned Mercedes 500 with smoked-out windows, sweeping through the outskirts of the city towards the palatial establishments perched on the slopes of the mountain. I didn’t feel by any means secure. It wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that I was being lifted. But no — surely DAS were on our side? Not only were we training the bodyguard for them; we’d now got caught up in the fight against the narcos, and so were in a position to give them help.

  This was not a peaceful environment. Outside the big condos, all protected by high wire fences, bodyguards openly flaunted sub-machine-guns. My driver — young, swarthy, grey-uniformed — handled the car well but with amazing arrogance. Twice he went straight over red lights, and at every opportunity he blasted pedestrians out of the way with his horn. No doubt he was immune from prosecution.

  Soon we arrived at a pair of high wire gates, set in a twelve-foot wall of concrete blocks topped with broken glass. Except that I couldn’t see any closed-circuit TV cameras, the compound was unpleasantly similar to the RUC stations in Belfast. The gates were opened mechanically by some unseen person, and we drew up outside a brand-new office block. The Merc had hardly come to rest before a man stepped forward, opened the door beside me and ushered me into the building.

  In the passage he muttered, ‘Disculpe,’ and ran his hands over me in a swift, skilled frisk, which instantly brought to light my Sig, which I was carrying in a pancake holster on my waist. ‘Disculpe,’ he repeated as he removed the weapon. Then he led the way up a shallow flight of stairs and knocked on a door.

  General Nariño was short and stocky, with a broad forehead, greying hair swept across it, and slightly hooded eyes. His appearance immediately made me think of Marlon Brando — a dangerously sleek version of the actor, but a look-alike all the same. He was wearing an expensive-looking sky-blue suit and a black tie with a lightning strike down the centre. As I came in he got up from behind his desk and came forward to greet me. His hand was soft and gentle.

  ‘Sergeant Sharp? Pleased to meet you,’ he said. ‘Take a seat.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  As Egerton had said, the General’s English — or rather, American — was perfect. But in spite of his superficial geniality I felt he was hard and cold.

  Whatever else, he had a magnificent office. Because the building was perched high on the side of the mountain, the windows commanded a panoramic view of the city. His king-sized desk and long, oval conference table were both made from some fine, rich-coloured wood like mahogany, but not so dark. The floor was made of wood as well, with a couple of bright rugs to give colour. No linoleum or chrome or glasstopped tables here. As I sat down, a tray with a cup of coffee on it appeared at my elbow. Again it crossed my mind that the coffee could be laced with the drug we’d heard about in Hereford — burundanga — which removes your will to resist; but again I thought, No, this is all above board.

  ‘You have a problem, I think,’ the General began.

  ‘That’s right. These three people have been lifted.’

  ‘And you think the IRA is involved?’

  ‘I know it is.’ I gave him a short run-down on Farrell, without explaining my personal connection. I simply said that I’d worked in Belfast and seen him there.

  ‘Well, it sounds as if your group has been flown to a site on the Rio Caquetá.’

  ‘I gather that’s very remote.’

  ‘It sure is. Look.’ He stood up and went over to the end wall, where he switched on a spotlight to illuminate a huge map of the country. Using a billiard cue, he began to point out details.

  ‘We’re here, in Bogotá, nearly in the centre of Colombia. Away down south is this vast area known as Los Amazonas. It’s part of the Amazon basin. As you can see, it’s one hell of a size. Eight hundred kilometres from here to here. No roads, just thousands of square kilometres of rainforest.

  ‘Now, for some weeks past we’ve been getting rumours of a new laboratory on the bank of the Rio Caquetá — here.’ He ran the tip of the billiard cue along a river flowing in a big curve towards the Amazon itself. ‘It’s here —’ he drew a circle — ‘downstream of a settlement called Puerto Pizarro. A few days ago, American satellites picked up a new construction site.’

  He came back and sat down again. ‘The reasons the narcos set up in places like that are simple. First, it gives them protection — we don’t have the resources to find them. Second, they can bring in their raw supplies by boat upriver from the Amazon. Third, they’re close to the Peruvian border, and in a few minutes they can flip across by light plane.

  ‘In the past they built the labs right beside airstrips, but lately they’ve gotten more sophisticated. Now they put the buildings some distance from the strip, which makes them harder to find. Communication between the two may be by road, but it could also be by water. Say by a tributary of the main waterway.

  ‘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.’