by Chris Ryan
At last, right on the nose, the outline of the mountain Tony had mentioned began to show through the haze ahead, and soon afterwards the pilot began his descent. As we came down, the river grew until it seemed as wide as the English Channel. From a high altitude it had shone dully like pewter, but at low level it turned muddy brown, with occasional swirls that showed the strength of the current. In the last couple of minutes we saw a huddle of shacks on the north bank, with a few more substantial buildings behind them, and a couple of boats moored alongside a jetty.
Then we were over the perimeter of the camp, which looked much the same as the one we’d just left: a dirt strip, a high boundary fence, two lines of single-storey white buildings, one small warehouse, and goalposts with sagging crossbars at either end of a dusty football field. The best thing about it was the sight of a Huey helicopter parked on the pan outside the warehouse.
As we debussed, the heat hit us. Down at this level the air was ten times hotter and stickier. We were greeted by an army lieutenant, with circles of sweat spreading out from under the arms of his khaki fatigues, and wearing big shades. His English was even sketchier than my Spanish, so I had to make a real effort to communicate. After struggling for a while, and establishing that the chopper was out of action with a gearbox defect, I had an inspiration: call Tony and get him to interpret. I needed to speak to him anyway.
‘We made it to Puerto Pizarro,’ I told him.
‘What’s it like?’
‘Hot as hell. Just a little camp surrounded by jungle. There’s one Huey here, but it’s gone US. Spare parts are supposed to be on the way. What news your end?’
‘The SEALs are deploying. They’re going in tonight to stick a tracking device on the Santa Maria. Then it doesn’t matter where she sails — we can go get her to coincide with your operation.’
‘Great!’
‘Your Boat Troop guys are on their way, too. I don’t know how he hacked it, but the CO’s got an RAF TriStar held back, and they’re flying direct to Belize tonight. One hop only. They’ll be there at 0100 local time.’ He paused, then said, ‘Hey — I got you some pretty good detail from the satellite station. You have a pencil and paper?’
‘Wait one.’ I brought out the little notebook I always carry in the breast-pocket of my shirt, with a miniature pencil down the spine. ‘OK. Fire away.’
‘The new lab complex is near that big bend of the river, like we said. But it’s four ks north of the Caquetá. The airstrip’s confirmed along the bank of the tributary, and some kind of jetty’s been built there, on the west bank. The buildings are grouped round a small compound one k west of the airstrip. There’s a road of sorts connecting the two, probably earth. It snakes around through the trees.’
As he talked, I was drawing a sketch. ‘D’you have the layout of the building?’
‘Sure. There’s two rectangular structures that look finished, each about fifty metres long. They’re set out in a line, running east-west. The third building, across the end of the compound, is still under construction.’
‘Tony,’ I said, ‘I’ve been thinking the best way to make a covert approach would be to come down the tributary at night in a rubber dinghy, then slide in for a CTR. What about that?’
‘Sounds good. I confirm. Chopper out of your present location on zero-eight-seven, dead straight for sixty ks. Then you hit the Cuemani, coming down from your left across your front. The alignment of the tributary’s very nearly north-south. It’s coming from three-five-zero and heading to one-seven-zero. Famous last words, but you really can’t miss it. OK, Geordie? But for Pete’s sake don’t try swimming. Those rivers are full of crocs.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘I’m calling this Operation Crocodile. Op Croc. Listen, the lieutenant here doesn’t speak much English. Could you run through the plan with him? Thanks.’
I handed the receiver over. Suddenly I began to feel rather good. We were within spitting distance of some action. Things were about to become interesting.
The lieutenant listened to Tony for a while, asked a few questions, and said, ‘Si,’ a great many times. When he seemed to have finished, I beckoned for him to hand the receiver back. ‘Tony,’ I said, ‘tell him for Christ’s sake to get the Huey airworthy. I don’t know what’s wrong with it — I think it’s a gearbox problem. He’s supposed to be flying parts in, but I’m not too sure.’
The guys were humping the stores out of the Herc and loading them on to a trailer pulled by a Willys jeep, vintage about 1942. ‘As you value your bollocks,’ I told them, ‘no swimming in the river. It’s heaving with crocodiles.’ I turned to the beshaded lieutenant and made extravagant jaw-snapping motions with my arms. ‘¡Si, si!’ he confirmed. ‘¡Cocodrilos — muchísimos!’
‘Fucking great!’ said Murdo. ‘That’s all we want. If the Amazon’s the arsehole of the world, I reckon we’re about 5,000 ks up it.’
Murdo had a point. The facilities the Colombians offered us were as crappy as could be. They themselves looked to be fairly well set up in the better of the two barrack-blocks, with a generator, mozzie screens and fridges — and I didn’t grudge them whatever comforts they’d been able to devise. If you had to spend any length of time in that hell-hole, you’d need everything you could get to stay sane. The block they gave us was another matter: no electricity, bare concrete rooms without doors, the iron bedsteads all rusted, no water in the showers, the bog an open hole in the floor.
When we unpacked the stores, things looked up a bit, because the General had done us well: there were four dinghy packs, two outboards, hammocks, mozzie nets, waterbottles, machetes and twenty sets of jungle DPMs. Once we’d sorted them out, everyone got a size that more or less fitted him, with another set in reserve. There were also four big boxes of MREs — US forces’ standard-issue Meals Ready to Eat, or, as they’d been known in the Gulf, Meals Rejected by Ethiopians. In fact they were pretty good, especially the things like corned-beef hash and chilli con carne. The guys soon got brews going with their hexi cookers, and after some sort of a meal, spirits picked up.
In the usual way, we planned our tactics at an O-group that took the form of a Chinese parliament, with everyone sitting round in a circle on the ground. Obviously we weren’t going anywhere that night, but there was no harm in having a plan ready. The sun was already sinking towards the jungle in a thick haze, and the temperature was dropping slightly. Even so, we were all still sweating like pigs.
Even if the Huey became airworthy, its maximum load, besides the pilot and navigator, would be three guys plus kit, one dinghy kit plus engine, and skeleton equipment and stores.
I offered to stay back, but everyone agreed I should lead from the front. That made me one of the three to fly. The second had to be Sparky Springer, as he was our radio specialist. For the third, I nominated Murdo McFarlane. Provided he left his blasted pipes behind, he’d be as good as anyone in the jungle.
The next wave — which would follow us in the next evening by the same route, provided the Huey was serviceable — would consist of Johnny Ellis, Stew McQuarrie and Mel Scott.
THIRTEEN
Author’s Note
Because I was in the jungle at the time, I could not witness the SEALs’ approach to the Santa Maria de la Mar, or the Boat Troop’s assault on the island of Desierto. I have therefore built my account of the actions on the reports of men who took part. All were well known either to Tony Lopez or to me, and I am satisfied that the account is substantially accurate.
The SEAL team landed at a military airfield outside the old colonial town and port of Cartagena. The unmarked Herc which brought them from Florida touched down at 1600 local time, leaving them enough daylight for a quick scout round the port. As Tony later emphasized, they would normally have carried out a much more thorough reconnaissance, watching their target for several days to establish the routine on board and looking for weak spots; but this was a. fastball, and left no time for niceties.
DAS had laid on two nondescript vans to trans
port the team and their gear. They also provided a local liaison officer to brief Master Sergeant Al Layton, the team leader. The Colombian informed him that the ship was lying in berth No. 7 on No. 1 Pier, the western of the two main arms at the Terminal Maritimo on Manga Island, at the north side of the bay. The dock gates were guarded by regular police, and there was no chance of gaining access through them, but the ship could be seen from the south side of the bay. Al therefore had the team driven to an observation point on the southern shore.
Casual clothes did much to disguise the physiques of the eight team members. Al was twenty-six, and although of only medium height he was extremely powerful, with particular strength in his upper body. His colleagues were all much the same, built up by years of swimming, running and work in the gym. Had they all stripped off on the beach they would have started a riot.
The vans parked on the south-east side of the bay, on a stretch of the shore that nobody had yet got around to developing. Other vehicles were already scattered along it, so that the new arrivals attracted no attention, and Al’s guys were able to carry out covert observation without hindrance. The Old Town, out on the point beyond the harbour, did not interest them. Nor did the new, high-rise blocks in the smart suburb of Bocagrande, away to their left. They wasted no time looking at the tourist boats drifting in and out of the harbour as they plied to the coral reefs offshore. Their attention was focused exclusively on the Santa Maria.
The ship was a fair distance across the bay, but through binoculars and a 30-power telescope they were able to make out useful details. She was moored with her bow facing the bay and her starboard side to the quay, so that they were looking at her port bow. She was second in line on that side of the harbour, with other ships moored close up fore and aft. Her hull was black and her upperworks white, but showing rusty patches, and she was flying the Panamanian flag. She looked scruffy, at least twenty years old. As Al and his men watched, she was still being loaded; two tall dock cranes were swinging nets over her deck and lowering them into the forward hold. According to DAS information, her cargo was officially coffee, but almost certainly included cocaine, probably several tons of it. With a street value in the United States of $35,000 a kilo, the illicit element in her holds could well have been worth over a hundred million.
For the SEAL team, the position of the ship was ideal. From where they were, they could swim straight to her without coming close to any other vessel or the dockside. At their normal average speed of a hundred metres in three minutes, it would take them just under half an hour to cross the bay. They decided that their best access point was forward of the accommodation, and beside the third hold; the hatch-cover stood three or four feet proud of the deck, and would help conceal them as they came over the rail. Having sized things up, Al opted for a midnight departure; because she was still loading, it was clear that the Santa Maria wasn’t on the point of sailing, and if they reached her well after midnight there was a good chance that all the crew except the gangplank guard would be in their bunks.
During the interval, the team repaired to an empty warehouse which DAS had taken over. There they had plenty of room to lay their gear out and check it through. As usual, Al split his party into two four-man teams, A and B, each of two pairs. Team A would do the swim and place the device, with Team B in reserve, keeping a lookout and ready to go after them or stage a diversion, should the need arise.
By 2345 both teams were back on the dockside at their launch point, clad in their black Spandex wetsuits. Working in pairs, each man checking his buddy, they squeezed out all the excess air and breathed themselves down until the suits were clinging to their bodies. Over the neoprene suits went their ops waistcoats, loaded with weapons and ammunition. Each man had an MP 5 and three spare magazines, besides a Browning and two spare mags for that. The weapons had all been soaked in Silverspeed and thoroughly oiled; immersion in water would make no difference to them. For safety’s sake each man clipped his shooters to him with nylon lanyards and small karabiners.
Working with his buddy, Gus Ford, Al breathed down all his equipment to clear the air from it, then lashed a hooligan bar — an angled jemmy with a spike on one end — to the middle of Gus’s back. Each man checked the other off:
‘MP 5?’
‘Yep.’
‘Magazines?’
‘Three.’
‘Lanyard?’
‘Yep.’
‘Hooligan bar?’
‘Yep.’
‘Respirator?’
‘OK.’
Al was also carrying the transponder, sealed in polythene and attached by a lanyard to a ring on his waist. Normally, in salt water, he needed eight kilograms of extra weight to stop him bobbing on the surface. The transponder, together with its magnetic fastener, weighed one kilo, so he loaded one more kilo weight into a spare pocket. Finally the men pulled on their Drega rebreathing kits — cumbersome, heavy outfits incorporating mask, hood and oxygen bottle, that use a sealed circuit so that they let out no bubbles. Again each buddy checked his partner, then the supervisor said, ‘OK, guys. Go on gas.’
To purge his lungs of extra nitrogen, Al took three deep breaths of oxygen, in through the mouth, out through the nose. His mask misted up immediately, and he was uncomfortably aware that he had thirty ks of equipment slung round his neck. Even though he’d been diving for ten years, he still hated this moment. If he was going to get an O2 hit, this was when it would come. He himself had never gone down with oxygen poisoning, but he’d seen other guys go into spasm and then arc back, rigid. The cure was plenty of fresh air, quickly — but the experience was one he could do without.
Once in the water, everything changed. He felt comfortable and secure in a world with which he was completely familiar. After one last check to make sure his three companions were ready he set off, swimming on a bearing of 305 degrees.
The night was very dark. There was no moon, and hazy cloud was blocking the starlight. The water of the bay lay still as black ink, with the distant lights of the harbour and the town reflected in it. For the first half of the journey Al judged it safe to remain on the surface. He swam gently, keeping well within his capabilities, and watching the compass, depth-gauge and timer on the swim board held out ahead of him.
After fifteen minutes, with the party out in the middle of the bay, an offshore breeze started up, putting a ripple on the water. Then Al heard a speedboat approaching from behind his left shoulder. It could have been narcos, running a consignment of drugs across from Bocagrande to one of the ships in the harbour. It could have been late-night revellers taking a short-cut home. Whatever, he was taking no chances, so he and the others dived — and the speedboat passed harmlessly above them.
Thereafter he swam at a depth of four metres, coming up at the end of every three minutes to check his position. At twenty-one minutes the harbour lights were much closer, but still it was impossible to tell which ship was which, and he had to rely on the compass bearing to keep him oriented. All the time Gus was one man’s length behind him, guided by the phosphorescence which Al’s passage through the water was creating. The other two followed at similar intervals behind.
At twenty-seven minutes he slowed, and when Gus came alongside he gave him one squeeze on the arm to indicate that he was surfacing for another observe. This time he found a big hulk of ship right in front of him, but he could tell by the outline of her bow against the sky that she was the first in the line. They had drifted slightly to the left of their target. The tide must have been going out faster than they’d expected. Sinking back, he gave Gus two squeezes to indicate that they were approaching the target, then swam on, heading right. Three minutes later he surfaced again. This time he was just off the bow of the Santa Maria. The big white letters of her name stood out boldly from the sweep of the black hull.
Diving again, he gave Gus three presses to tell him they’d arrived. Gus passed the message back to the other pair. All four men surfaced and swam gently to their right, observing fro
m a distance. Apart from one light showing through an open doorway in the accommodation block, and one naked bulb dangling from a cargo derrick, the ship was dark.
Satisfied that their plan was good, Al swam in and clamped himself to the side with two magnets. Now he was close, a faint hum of generators told him that the ship was alive. There was also the usual background noise of water slapping gently against the hull. Four presses, passed back through the team, confirmed that they were at the entry point. Al pulled off his rebreathing kit and magneted it on to the side, out of the way, and the others did the same. If anything went wrong while they were on board, they could jump over the rail and recover the sets from this temporary storage. Peering up, Al was glad to see that the curve of the hull put them out of sight — and range — of anyone looking down.
It took Gus only a few seconds to assemble the telescopic pole which had travelled strapped to his back. As he fitted the lengths together, the No. 3 swimmer, Jack Ashby, was unrolling the thirty-foot kevlar ladder. Then, with two of the others holding him steady on short ropes, Gus swam out a few feet, hoisted the pole and hooked the ladder over the ship’s rail.
Al was the first up. His jungle boots made only faint scuffling sounds on the ship’s side. When his head reached deck level he paused, listening. Then with a quick scramble he was over the rail and against the hatch cover, Browning in hand. A moment later he holstered the pistol and brought his MP 5 to the ready. A tug on the ladder: two up. Another tug: three up. The fourth man, Sonny Mitchell, came up and took station to secure their entry point.
The other three moved cautiously aft, keeping in the deep shadows thrown by the single light high on the derrick. Al was thinking to himself, ‘Now we’ve got this far, why don’t we go in and rescue the hostage?’ The trouble was, they didn’t know which part of the ship the poor bastard was in — he could have been down in one of the holds — and in any case, he was bound to be guarded.