by Darren Hale
He greeted Ramon with a gruff acknowledgement, and the second with a disingenuous smile and an expletive that he’d somehow managed to keep to himself.
Roberto Frakes…
Motherfucking Roberto Frakes…
The one man he had sworn to kill.
‘You two know each other?’ Ramon asked, having perhaps noticed the look that had passed between them.
‘We’ve met…’ Nathan admitted. Though he’d encountered the man only once before, many years ago, he’d recognised the voice instantly. It had branded him like an iron… A scar indelibly burned into his memories.
‘So, where’s the hat,’ said Frakes abstrusely, while flicking the air as if it was the brim of a cap.
‘I lost it.’
‘A shame… Seems to me that was your lucky hat…’
The Stetson had indeed saved his life, just as it had doomed that of every other member of his team. The man had sold them out, and his hat had been the signal – a promise of sanctuary from their prospective executioner, Roberto Frakes.
A hat that he had claimed from a dead man’s traitorous body.
An exchange of identity...
And Frakes had been none the wiser…
Ramon nodded. ‘Very well. If you have my payment, I have your product. Let us do business and be on our way.’
51
Monday 23rd October:
‘Team Cobra you have a go – go… go… go…!’
The voice was that of Chief Logan.
Wiśniewski moved forward, his LAR-15 carbine sighted on the assigned threat – a man leaning against one of the buildings while smoking a cigarette perilously close to a barrel of ether. The idiot! Flick his ash the wrong way and there’d be no one left to arrest. Highly flammable ether and cigarettes did not play well together…
Having reconnoitred the area, they’d learnt that the cocaine processing facility was nothing more than a rather grandiosely labelled collection of shacks in the middle of the jungle; little more than roofs thatched with the indigenous flora, supported on wooden frames the size of a village hall, the first of which housed rows upon rows of trestle tables bearing pans filled with the familiar white crystals, while another contained barrels full of the crude product in various stages of refinement.
‘DEA – levante as mãos e caia de joelhos,’ he ordered, instructing the man to raise his hands and drop to his knees. The man tensed, hunting for him in the shadows. The battery-powered lamps hanging from the canopy-like roof had chased the shadows to the edge of the clearing but no further. The man could not see him, nevertheless, he shrugged the hunting rifle he’d been carrying from his shoulder and pointed it towards Wiśniewski’s general vicinity.
‘Levante as mãos!’
‘Levante as mãos!’
The cries echoed around the clearing, inviting others to raise their hands and surrender.
Wiśniewski called out again. ‘DEA – levante as mãos e caia de joelhos.’
The man turned to fire but never got the chance. Wiśniewski’s shots hit him precisely in the chest, felling him before he could pull the trigger.
Gunfire erupted to the left and right of his position – LAR-15s mostly – his fellow operators, with the occasional crack of small arms fire as their targets struggled to fight back.
A fusillade of shots dropped another of the hostiles – a man wading through one of the vats. He’d been reaching for something in the back of his trousers – a gun probably.
More men came running.
And more shots followed.
And within minutes the skirmish was over.
Eight of the fifteen insurgents had been killed or otherwise incapacitated before the others, clearly outgunned, had seen sense enough to surrender.
Captain Ramirez and his military contingent had then arrived – an hour-and-a-half late and with fewer men than had been promised, though Chief Logan’s observation to that fact had been met by nothing more than a dismissive shrug and the observation that ‘the jungle is a difficult place…’
The captain had then assigned guards to the seven able-bodied prisoners, who had by this time been searched and bound, before having his men set fire to the vats and buildings.
‘What the fuck does he think he’s up to? He’s going to alert everyone within miles!’ Wiśniewski protested as they strode away, the buildings burning like funeral pyres behind them, while flaming cauldrons of coca-sludge and gasoline produced clouds of toxic black smoke that would, come the dawn, be visible for miles around.
Their arrival had been discrete.
Their departure was not.
Chief Logan glared back through the trees. ‘Men like that know only one approach,’ he said tersely. ‘So, let’s double the pace and make sure we get to that camp ahead of him.’
52
Monday 23rd October:
Enrique’s night had been a restless one, though he had himself been oblivious to the many ravings that had come from his mouth and the tossings and turnings that had torn the drip from his arm. His eyes had flickered open on many occasions though they had often failed to capture anything outside the madness of his dreams, and on only one occasion had he been lucid enough to help himself to some sips of water and a handful of pills, having ignored advice that they should be taken just one at a time.
But what harm could it do?
In those lucid moments, he’d been aware of the war waging inside his body and knew that it wasn’t going well.
And had they been the medicines he’d presumed them to be, he might have been right. But in his condition, the strong narcotic painkillers had only fuelled his delusions, all too quickly returning him to the dark places his mind had taken him. Had he been a doctor, he might not have mistaken the oxycodone he’d appropriated from Eduardo’s bedside for the antibiotic’s he’d imagined. After all, they’d made him feel better. For a while…
A tomb darker than the pits of hell and a body wreathed in flies …
The dead face of a long dead queen: skin as black as tar.
Pecking, biting, buzzing flies, crawling up his arms…
He would toss and turn and throw them away, his dreams playing his body as if it was a puppet for anyone that might have been watching.
‘Camarada Enrique, are you okay?’ Tomas asked, shining his torch over his commander’s face. He had been keeping watch outside when he’d heard someone call his name. Or so he’d thought.
Enrique’s eyes opened wide, bathing in the wandering yellow light.
Flickers of yellow gold before his eyes.
A treasure indeed.
‘Paititi.’
‘Camarada?’ Tomas asked, baffled by the one word he’d received in reply.
The torch cast shadows against the walls of the tent: shadows that writhed like ghosts.
The queen lifted herself from the burial plinth, her bones painted from shades of darkness as her claws reached out for him.
Enrique screamed and sat bolt upright. Raising his gun from his side, he put a bullet in the first of the shifting forms.
Struck in the centre of his chest, Tomas gasped and stepped back, stumbling across a rather dilapidated deckchair in the process and sending it clattering to the floor.
Dropping from his hammock, Enrique fired, hitting him twice more. His madness had not spoiled his aim.
******
The jungle seemed to recoil from the sound of the gunshot and for a moment everything seemed to go quiet; noises chased into hiding only to emerge again with the barking cry of the howler monkeys.
Nathan lowered his end of the crate as his hand moved to the weapon at his hip; a Sig Sauer P226 that harked back to his time in the US special forces. The deal had gone well. Too well... Having just received a radio message, Ramon had been quick to conclude their business, accepting their cargo of weapons in exchange for the full shipment of drugs and artefacts, and had been in the process of dispensing them to his men as the shots rang out.
‘What was tha
t?’ Doctor Lopez had known the answer to her own question of course. Having grown up in the suburbs of Bogotá, the capital of Colombia, she could easily distinguish the sound of a gunshot from a backfire or other noises.
‘A gunshot,’ Nathan replied, jutting his chin in the direction he was looking. ‘Small arms fire… And it sounds like it came from the camp.’
‘Trouble?’ she enquired, hoisting the crate she’d been carrying towards the captain. He took it from her hands and carried it to the hold.
‘A gunshot’s always trouble,’ Nathan observed sardonically.
Roberto Frakes hurried off towards the trees.
Nathan turned to follow him.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Ramon asked. ‘You’re coming with me!’
******
The Icarus threaded its way through reefs of obsidian clouds in a copper and cobalt sky having arrived on station just ahead of the military force that was at this time encroaching upon the camp; a swarm of man-sized blobs painted in colours from red through to blue as perceived by the drone’s thermal imaging software – visible despite the trees.
‘What just happened?’
Bradley Leavenworth had been watching over Raymond’s shoulder, overseeing this final critical stage in their operation; a plus one to the room’s usual complement of two, with Raymond on stick and Mick on data analysis.
‘I don’t know, but it sure looks like someone might have tipped them off,’ Mick observed as the blobs that had been clustered around the almost invisible outline of a single-engined plane, started to disperse, while other blobs representing members of team Cobra and the Peruvian military under the command of Captain Ramirez approached from the north. The blobs representing the insurgents were not, however, moving as if they were aware of the approaching force.
Remaining professional, Brad did not express his feelings in words. They had all been watching the operation unfold, praying that it would reach its conclusions without a hitch, but knowing that at some point something was bound to go wrong. The men they were chasing had ears everywhere and it seemed unlikely that, having involved some fifty or so members of the Peruvian military, there would not be one of them whose loyalty was divided.
‘Do we still have a fix on Snake Pit and our other high-priority targets?’ Brad asked.
The image panned back until it had included a single man-sized blob at the south-eastern corner of the airfield. Seen in this way, the blob looked no different than every other man-sized blob, except for the computer-generated box that had been stencilled around it and labelled with the word “Snake Pit”. Two other boxes had been drawn around images on the screen positively identified as Nathan Eades and Doctor Lopez. Though the light at this time remained insufficient for him to have positively identified anyone else, Snake Pit had been sure of the identities of these two, having followed them all night.
‘Okay, have Snake Pit stay where he is while we keep an eye on the primary assets.’
******
Three bangs and a sudden commotion snapped Catherine from her sleep. At some point in the last few hours she had managed to doze off despite the heat and the many biting insects that threatened to go places she hadn’t imagined. For her, sleep had been a rare thing; a momentary distraction from her fears. Angus, Simon, Miguel, and Carmen had all continued to deteriorate, and without proper intervention their condition would soon become hopeless.
The tent flaps flew open and Enrique stormed inside.
He’d changed. His skin now had that sickly grey hue of death, and was covered in bruises and boils in abundance; his eyes had gone wild, the whites effaced with angry scarlet haemorrhages; and that ember of murderous intent had become a conflagration ‘You!’ he exclaimed, waving his gun in Catherine’s direction. There was a loud bang, followed by the sound of something smacking into the dirt to her left, and a tell-tale whisper of smoke from the muzzle of his gun. ‘What is happening to me!’ he demanded. ‘And why… why… are you not affected? You’ve been holding out on me. I want the treatment – and I want it now!’
‘I’ve not…’
Enrique swung the gun to his left.
Another bang…
Miguel convulsed… His eyes flashing open in shocked surprise as a gurgle rose to his lips and scarlet petals bloomed from a hole in his shirt.
Carmen cried out in horror, then reached out to catch her friend as he toppled towards her.
Enrique’s gun flicked towards her.
‘Stop!’ Catherine glared at him, her eyes punctuating her shout as boldly as any exclamation mark.
His gun wavered, then turned on her instead.
‘Lower your weapon!’
The order had come from somewhere behind him.
Catherine did not recognise the voice.
‘Ramon?’ Enrique mumbled, somehow clutching a tenuous thread of sanity. ‘Is that you?’
‘Yes,’ the voice affirmed. ‘Now lower your weapon!’
‘I’m sorry Ramon – I can’t. We are all going to die… And it’s her fault!’ His gun trembled with unrestrained passion.
‘I said lower the gun!’
‘I can’t!’ Enrique whirled to face him, arm outstretched and murder in his eyes.
There was a gunshot.
Followed by another.
Though he would not have heard the second…
53
Monday 23rd October:
Morning had tried to insinuate its way between the leaves, its fingers of sunlight searching for holes in the canopy, but other than those manmade clearings around the camp and airfield, it had failed. Greedy shades of green had monopolised every square inch of the sky, and there were no gaps to be found for anything more than the feeblest of rays. Nevertheless, Martin’s eyes had become accustomed to the gloom, having spent many hours staring into it without sleep, watching for the patrols that had ever so occasionally come wandering in his direction
‘Snake Pit this is Cobra One… We are in position to the north-western edge of the runway. What is your sitrep – over…?’
The sudden incursion of a human voice, distorted as it came from the speakers of his radio, startled him, though the reaction was manifest as nothing more than the slightest tensing of the muscles in almost every part of his body. He’d been expecting the call.
‘Cobra One… this is Snake Pit. I am reading you in the clear. I report shots fired to my November Echo. Target “Ace of Spades” has relocated and last seen moving in that direction. I am relocating now.’ Then, as an afterthought, he asked, ‘were those shots anything to do with you?’
During the invasion of Iraq in 2003, high value assets had been designated using a simple pack of playing cards; a habit that had rather rubbed off on other agencies in the years that followed. Accordingly, the DEA had assigned its number one most wanted villain, Nathan Eades, the Ace of Spades, while Ramon Aguilar featured in the pack as the Jack of Clubs.
‘Negative Snake Pit. We are still moving into position.’
‘Copied Cobra One.’
******
‘Cobra six – hold your fire.’
Cobra One’s words had crackled from the radio as if reading his mind. The temptation to pull the trigger had been great. Nevertheless, he’d resisted. It was not the first time he’d felt that passion, nor was it the first time his weapon had alighted upon someone deserving of the point-three-o-eight round chambered in its breach.
Krystian Wiśniewski stared down the sights of his Remington 700P sniper rifle. Until moments ago, his crosshairs had been resting upon his target, Nathan Eades, who had been just one of the many figures clustered around the de Havilland Otter sitting on the leeward side of the makeshift runway.
Then the shots had rung out and his targets had scattered…
Panning his sights across, he’d kept his eye on the man as he ran towards the treeline.
‘Say again Cobra One – I am about to lose him.’
‘I say again Cobra Six – hold your fire!’
‘Shit!’
‘Cobra Six – hold your position and keep an eye on that plane. Crow’s Nest have our target under surveillance.’
Wiśniewski swept his sights back towards the plane and the two figures that had remained with it, loading the last of a stack of unidentified crates. The first was a civilian woman, identified as one Doctor Sylvia Lopez, and a person whose cap and uniform had identified him as the captain of the aircraft.
The figures disappeared inside.
And the steps followed.
Wiśniewski pressed the transmit toggle on his radio while speaking into his throat mike. ‘Cobra One… this is Cobra Six. It looks like the plane’s preparing to leave.’
There was a pause. Cobra One had no doubt reported the situation to Arlington and was awaiting instructions.
‘Cobra Six – let them go. I say again – let them go.’
‘You have got to be fucking kidding me!’
‘Say again…’
Having failed to remove his finger from the toggle quickly enough, Cobra One had received everything up to and including “Fu…”
‘Sorry Cobra one,’ he said, reapplying his finger. ‘I was just observing that this operation is going south rather rapidly. If we’re not careful, they’ll be adding our stars to the wall right next to those of Operation Snowcrest!’
‘Copy Cobra Six.’
This time, Wiśniewski took care to ensure that he was no longer transmitting as he added the words ‘fuck… fuck… fuck…’ to his report.
A storm of twigs, leaves, and other loose objects erupted behind the plane as its propeller came up to speed.
It began to shudder… its wings vibrating tunelessly as it clawed against the ground.
And the growl became a roar…
And then a howl.
Brakes released, it bolted along the runway, leaving the maelstrom of twigs and leaves whipping the air behind it.