Condor (The Gabriel Wolfe Thrillers Book 3)

by Andy Maslen

  Gabriel looked down.

  He twisted the gear selector to Sport mode.

  Then he jammed his foot down hard on the accelerator pedal, mashing it into the thick black carpet, and slid down in the seat. No sense in giving them an easy head shot.

  Even with a kerb weight of over two tonnes, the Range Rover was a hugely powerful beast of a car. The five-litre, supercharged V8 engine instantly remapped for high performance over comfort and launched the car forwards.

  The cops leapt back as the Range Rover surged through the gate. It took them a good two or three seconds to realise that he wasn’t going to stop.

  With the exhaust howling behind him, and the engine raging up front, Gabriel was not, at first, aware of the clattering of the cops’ rifles as they opened fire. Then a round hit the rear window, shattering the glass before exiting through the passenger window, having been deflected by the front seat. That was their only hit on target. They’d had their weapons set to full auto, so they had very little control over their accuracy. And they were cops, not soldiers, so they probably hadn’t spent as much time on the range, or with their instructors, as they should have done. By the third second, Gabriel was out of effective range, and he could see in the mirror that they’d turned and were running back into the plant, presumably to warn everyone that someone had planted a bomb.

  He drove for two hours without stopping then pulled in to the side of the road. He slammed his palms against the steering wheel.

  “Fuck!” he shouted.

  How am I supposed to get from here to Eden? There’s no road: we flew out. Only now, I need money to hire a plane. And you don’t give a suicide bomber spending money, do you?

  50

  The War on Drugs

  TORON LEANED FORWARD AND JABBED his finger at the screen. His face had darkened into a scowl. He spoke.

  “When’s your boy going to detonate the bomb? Those sons of bitches are still up there, all in one piece.”

  For once, Jardin’s face betrayed his emotions. No smirk this time, no look of otherworldly calm. He was chewing his lower lip and had drawn his brows down, furrowing his forehead with five or six parallel lines of wrinkled skin.

  “I don’t know. I really don’t. He was properly conditioned. He was drugged up to his eyeballs on Valium. He should be a red splatter at the bottom of a crater by now.”

  On the screen, the Colombian justice minister had started wagging his finger at the cameras. Jardin felt the gesture was aimed directly at him. Bernardo Menel reached the climax of his speech.

  “Here, ladies and gentlemen, is where the new war on drugs begins. You are witnesses to the first shot in that war that we, together with our partners in Amazonas State,” he looked to his right and bared his horsey teeth at the state president, “have begun against the lawless, evil men who run Colombia’s cartels, specifically, the Muerte Eterna, under the leadership of Diego Toron. And now, we have intelligence that the Muerte Eterna are in business with a pseudo-religious cult called the Children of Heaven right here in Amazonas State. President Salazar will tell you more.”

  The older man stepped forward to his mic.

  “Thank you, Bernardo.” He cleared his throat and smoothed his hair back. “Working undercover, at great personal risk, agents of the state government’s anti-cartel squad have learned of plans by Muerte Eterna and the Children of Heaven to start manufacturing cocaine right here in Amazonas State.” He looked directly into the cameras, so that he appeared to be looking straight at Jardin himself. “I have news for you, Senhor Toron. And your business partner. We are coming for you.”

  As the speech drew to a conclusion, Jardin leapt from his seat and kicked the huge flat-screen TV over, smashing the screen with a shower of sparks and a curl of white smoke that stank of burnt plastic.

  “No!” he shouted. “This is not right. They should be dead. I ordered it. I gave the Second Order.”

  Toron stood, too. He looked at Jardin, who was running his fingers through his hair as he paced around the sitting room.

  “Maybe someone gave him new orders. To save his skin and blow the whistle on us.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” Jardin said, turning on his partner. “He’s been brainwashed. The best techniques the Chinese and the Russians could come up with, modified with some nice little tweaks courtesy of the CIA. And he’s been under direct supervision since he arrived.”

  “You call me a fool?” Toron’s mouth hardened into a slit and his eyes narrowed. “You? The man who dresses like Moses then watches TV and uses the Internet? Let me ask you something. Who plans a drugs operation then lets one of his people rat us out to the authorities? Who sends a suicide bomber who doesn’t fucking commit suicide? No, my friend. It is you who is the fool. And my only foolishness was to believe you could be trusted to keep your side of the deal.” Toron pulled his pistol and pointed it at Jardin’s face. “I could kill you now and nobody would ever know. Give me one reason why I shouldn’t use my mata-policia on you. Just one, hey?”

  Realising he had overplayed his hand, Jardin lowered his voice and tried for a smile. He stroked his moustache as he calculated the best way to save his financial relationship with one of Colombia’s most powerful crime bosses. And his own life.

  “Diego, forgive me. I was upset. Justifiably, I think you’ll agree.”

  “Fine,” Toron said, breathing more calmly now and lowering the barrel of the pistol. “But we still have a major fucking problem. It won’t take them long to find this place and then we’re fucked. All that work. Wasted.”

  Jardin paused before speaking. He was weighing the pros and cons of a fairly drastic course of action. Yes, it was time.

  “Listen. I had a backup plan all along. I’m sure I told you. We’re going to scrap the factory here. In fact, we’re going to scrap Eden altogether. It served its purpose, but now we need to leave and set up somewhere more … conducive.”

  “I’m not flying you and your fucking followers anywhere. There’s hundreds of them.”

  Now Jardin did smirk. “I’m not asking you to. Just me. I’ll give them all the Second Order. Tomorrow. Listen, you know the Diazepam you supply.”

  “Of course. You’ve got your own little zombie army haven’t you?”

  “Exactly. And every morning they queue up for their medicine. My orders.”

  “So?”

  “So, I have an alternative formulation stockpiled. I’ll line them up to take my sacrament and within ten minutes they’ll all be dead. Who’s to say I’m not among them? Nobody knows me. My identity disappeared in France years ago. When the cops and the soldiers arrive, this place will be a mass graveyard. Nobody knows what I look like. They’ll assume one of the Uncles was the leader. I’ll be long gone. Then we’ll find a new site, maybe in your country, closer to home for you, eh? I’ll find some new recruits and we can start anew. Believe me, there’s no shortage of young kids willing to believe there’s a better life for them just around the corner. Maybe I’ll play up the environment next time. Gaia’s Children, what do you think? Plenty of empty-headed, eco-handwringers would buy that message.”

  Toron’s eyes widened. “Really? You’d kill them all?”

  “Why not? They all want to go to a better place. I’ll just send them all at once.”

  “You know, you are a very cynical man.”

  Jardin grinned. “Come on, you can help me mix a very special batch of our sacrament: one part Diazepam, one part phenobarbital, and just a splash of cyanide, courtesy of a former professor of botany at the University of Texas. You’d be surprised how many plants out here are full of the stuff. We might need to add a bit more cordial this time.”

  51

  Daylight Robbery

  APPROACHING A BAR, GABRIEL SLOWED. It appeared to be hosting some sort of family celebration, a wedding maybe, or a christening party. The car park was full of 4x4s, cars, and motorbikes. About thirty people were sitting round a long outdoor table covered in a white cloth, scattered with bottles,
glasses, dishes of food, and plates. Gabriel kept driving.

  After another thirty minutes, he saw a sign shimmering in the heat haze ahead. Decelerating, he gave himself time to scope it out. No cars or bikes parked outside. Good. He pulled in to the gravelled parking area and killed the engine.

  Inside, the bar smelled of last night’s beer and cigarette smoke. An ancient air conditioning unit was fixed into one of the windows facing the road. It was doing a reasonable job, although the cost was a noisy rattle from the motor, and a flapping from half a dozen strips of coloured plastic that fluttered in the artificial breeze. Behind the counter, a man was drying beer glasses with a dishcloth so thin from washing it was almost transparent. He was thickset, with cropped grey hair. His forearms were massive, decorated with tattoos of lizards, skulls and flowers. Gold hoops dangled from both his ears. He looked up, took in Gabriel with a glance and said, in English, “Help you?”

  “A beer, please.”

  Gabriel settled himself on a stool that wobbled as it took his weight and placed his elbows on the thickly varnished bar. The wood looked like toffee.

  The man pushed a stemmed glass of Brahma beer in front of Gabriel, which he drank off in a single, long draught.

  “Thirsty, huh? Again?”

  “Please. How did you know to speak English?”

  The bartender put another beer in front of Gabriel. “You’re not Brazilian. Figured you were US media, whatever the cap says. But you’re British, right?”

  “Yeah. Freelancing for TeleGlobo. You speak English very well.”

  “Thank my wife. She’s from California. Pasadena. You’re a long way from home. How does an Englishman wind up working for a TV company in Brazil?”

  “I burned out in the UK. Took off on a trip. Ran out of cash in Rio. Friend of a friend put me in touch with the head of production at TeleGlobo. Bingo! Here I am.”

  “OK. Well, shout if you need another beer.”

  With that, the man turned and started wiping down the rear shelf where bottles of tequila were ranged in order of price, Gabriel assumed, from the stuff you’d chuck down between licks of salt and bites of lemon to the classier brands you’d probably savour like a fine cognac.

  He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Silently, he slid off the bar stool, placed the flat of his right hand on the wooden surface and vaulted over the counter, kicking the man in the back with his booted feet.

  The man let out a yell as his face hit the edge of the shelf and he fell to his knees. Gabriel was crouched ready, his weight on the balls of his feet, and with a hard chop to the side of the man’s neck he put him down on the ground. He drove the ball of his right thumb into a small pit on the back of the man’s neck, just under the bony ridge at the back of his skull. The man’s struggles subsided almost as soon as they began and he slumped, unconscious, to the floor.

  Gabriel ran to the end of the bar, hit the button on the till to open the cash drawer and scooped out the paper money held under three spring clips. He returned to the prostrate form of his latest victim and rifled through his pockets. He was in luck. A creased and worn brown leather wallet shoved into the right hip pocket yielded more notes. Gabriel made sure the guy was face down with his head to one side, so he wouldn’t choke if he vomited. Then he ripped a couple of bar towels into strips and bound his wrists behind him and tied his ankles to one of the steel legs supporting the bar.

  He was back in the Range Rover and pulling out of the car parking area twenty seconds later. He wasn’t precisely sure of the exchange rate for the Brazilian Real, but he didn’t think he had enough to hire a plane back to Eden. It was a start, though.

  The Range Rover would be a liability now. With more time, he could try to sell it to a garage owner in a small town, but time was against him. The cops back at Santa Augusta would have radioed the State Police and the Federal Highway Police and now he had a seriously pissed-off bar owner on his case, too. Time to ditch the wheels and find an alternative source of transport.

  Ten miles down the road he saw a sign: ‘Ponto de vista 1 km’. A viewpoint. Perfect.

  After a few minutes he came to the turn and swung off the highway down a bumpy dirt road. Another five minutes brought him to an empty scrape of earth bordered by a low, steel-rail fence. Beyond the rail was the rainforest. Millions of square miles of trees that started a deep intense green and faded towards the horizon, ending in a pale, misty grey. Gabriel wasn’t interested in the view. He was more concerned with what lay below the rail. Which was a good two thousand feet of air. He stood on the edge of the cliff and leaned over. He’d never suffered from vertigo or any kind of fear of heights. His training for the SAS had included a jump from the UK mainland to a three-hundred-foot column of basalt, nicknamed by the locals, Old Tom. The gap had been negligible, five feet at most. He’d done it with ease. Unlike Smudge, who he’d saved from plummeting to his death with a hand like a crane grab that closed round the falling man’s wrist, pulling up him to safety and a job in the Regiment.

  There was more forest at the foot of the cliff. At this distance, it resembled a mottled green carpet, wreathed in silver wisps of mist. He walked back to the Range Rover, which he’d left with the engine running, and reversed up the road for sixty yards. Under the floor of the load space, where, until recently, there’d been a homemade bomb, he found a white polypropylene tow-rope and a small toolkit. He took out both and slammed the tailgate shut again. To hold the steering at the straight-ahead, he tied one end of the tow-rope to the passenger door grab-handle with a bow-line knot. He ran it through the steering wheel, then looped it around the driver’s seat before securing it to the steering wheel again with a reef knot. He wasn’t sure his father, a keen amateur sailor, would have approved, but it would do the job for the ten seconds or so it would need.

  Gabriel tugged the bonnet release lever and went round to the front of the car. Using the pliers and a screwdriver, he wedged the throttle open and closed the bonnet. The engine screamed in Neutral as the revs rose to the redline. One last task remained. Gabriel popped open the fuel filler cover and unscrewed the cap. The sharp tang of petrol wafted up into his nostrils. Crouching just inside the driver’s-side door, he shoved the brake pedal down with his right hand, the brushed aluminium cool against his palm. With his left, he twisted the rotary gear selector knob one damped click clockwise into Drive. Instantly, the transmission strained against the brakes, pulling forward, and he simply let go with both hands and rolled away into the dirt.

  The Range Rover picked up speed rapidly over the short run down to the fence. By the time it hit the steel rails, it was doing over forty miles per hour. There was a brief screech as the metal rails ripped free of the stanchions and a bang as the heavy car tore through them and leapt out into the abyss.

  Gabriel sprinted back to observe the descent. He arrived at the gaping gash of metal just as the car, which now resembled a tumbling sugar cube, disappeared into the trees. One heartbeat later there was a brief flash, visible through the hole the Range Rover had torn in the canopy, followed half a second later by a boom, as the petrol tank exploded. A ring of whitish-grey smoke rolled out of the trees as if blown by a skilled cigar-smoker, then dissipated in the air currents that raced up the sun-drenched cliff-face.

  Now all Gabriel had to do was find more cash and an airfield. Hitching seemed the best move.

  52

  Blood and Wine

  JARDIN LED TORON FROM GRACIOUS living room to fully-equipped chemistry lab. At the back of the house, behind the kitchen, was a door. He pulled on a dirty length of string that hung round his neck, and from inside his robe a brass key appeared. The lock turned easily with a series of soft clicks. Beyond the door, all trace of the tropical luxury hotel disappeared. Jardin turned on the lights. As the fluorescent tubes over their heads clinked and flickered into life, Jardin spread his arms.

  “Welcome to my vestry.”

  The room beyond the door was spartan and windowless, twenty feet long by four
teen across. Set into a stainless steel counter that ran the length of one of the long walls was a huge stainless steel sink, wide and deep enough to hold a full-grown man. Beneath the counter were racks of drawers and doors with slots for handles, and there were eye-level cupboards running right round the room’s circumference. The centre of the room was dominated by a table of the sort referred to as a butcher’s block. Four sturdy legs on castors supported a foot-thick solid slab of pale wood, five feet on one side and three on the other. Against the wall opposite the sink were three tall refrigerators. They were huge, professional models with brushed steel doors and hard, right-angled corners, humming in an unsettling, disharmonious chord as their pumps moved the coolant around the pipework, struggling to keep their contents chilled.

  Jardin walked over to the nearest fridge and pulled the door open. The seal gave with a dry, sucking sound. Inside, stacked floor to ceiling on heavy-duty steel racks, were ten tall aluminium canisters, eighteen inches high and eight inches in diameter. They resembled miniature milk churns, with tops closed against their rubber seals by lever-catches.

  “Help me with these, would you?” Jardin said. He lifted a canister from the shelf and carried it round the butcher’s block before dumping it on the stainless steel counter.

  Toron grunted but took off his navy suit jacket, folded it, and placed it on the counter then grabbed a second canister.

  “Which is this?” he asked, placing his canister next to Jardin’s.

  “The Diazepam. The regular sacrament.”

  Jardin returned for a second canister and Toron followed. They repeated the process three more times until the ten canisters of Diazepam were arranged in two ranks of five, to the left of the sink.

  After pushing the plug down into the sink, Jardin turned to Toron.

  “We’ll start with this,” he said, then popped the catch on the nearest canister and tilted it until the clear, syrupy liquid glugged from the lip of the canister into the sink. Toron grabbed another canister and followed Jardin, emptying the contents into the shallow pool that spread out over the sink’s shining floor. He leaned over the growing pool of liquid and sniffed, then wrinkled his nose and drew his head back.