‘Send ’em down,’ he shouted up to Shepreth, and the three Mexicans descended the stairs. Once Shepreth had joined him Docherty fastened the three men’s wrists and ankles with wire. They wouldn’t have much trouble getting free once their captors were gone, but by then it wouldn’t matter. As the other three started down the tunnel he cast a wistful look back at the hoard of drugs, thinking that it would have been nice to wash them down a drain. Unfortunately it would also have taken most of the night.
The tunnel, which proved to be about a kilometre in length, ended in another chamber at the bottom of another shaft. Docherty climbed the metal stairs and listened for signs of life above. Hearing none, he pulled the switch which rolled back the concrete slab and climbed out into a warehouse full of shoeboxes. He called down the all-clear and went in search of the outside world.
A single bolted door led him out on to one of El Paso’s darker streets.
The other three emerged, and all four of them started walking towards the better-lit street in the distance. The neon signs of several hotels appeared above the rooftops, and they were just nearing the crossroads when a police car cruised into view. Docherty instinctively put his arm around Marysa’s neck, knowing without looking that Shepreth had done the same with Carmen. Marysa flinched and then stiffened at his touch, but she didn’t pull away, and after one lingering stare at the late-night revellers the cop drove on. Two minutes later they were bribing a night receptionist to give them rooms.
Docherty was woken by the sun streaming in through the crack which he had deliberately left in the curtains. Shepreth was still asleep in the other bed, snoring slightly.
The Scot lay there for a moment, then got up and gently prised open the connecting door. In the adjoining room the two sisters were sleeping like spoons, Carmen’s left arm wrapped protectively around Marysa’s waist. They looked like young girls, a picture of innocence.
He had heard Carmen and Shepreth on the balcony in the middle of the night. They had been whispering at first, but then there had been silence for a while, and finally the ecstatic breathing of lovemaking, her muted cry, his muted groan. Docherty could remember a handful of occasions in his adult life when he had been an unseen witness to others’ pleasure, but this time he had taken a strange delight in the sounds. This was love he was listening to, not just sex.
He had no idea what would happen to the two of them. They came from different worlds – Shep had the worst job in the world for relationships, Carmen a sister who would be needing more attention than most children. Maybe he was turning into a romantic in his old age, or maybe he was just seeing his younger self and Isabel reflected in their mirror, but Docherty found himself believing that they would a find a way to be together.
It was almost seven-thirty. He took a shower and then woke Shepreth, who looked groggily up at him. ‘You’re on guard,’ he told the MI6 man, picking up Bazua’s ledger from the top of the TV and letting himself out of the room.
The hotel still seemed half asleep, but the rest of El Paso was already well into its stride. Docherty walked across the palm-lined square thinking that the town looked more Mexican than American, and nothing like the place described in the Marty Robbins record he’d bought in 1959.
The office supply store was just opening as he reached it, allowing him the choice of the six copier machines in the window. There were almost five hundred sheets in Bazua’s ledger, which meant that he would be turning them for the best part of two hours.
As the copier whirred and the bright light slid to and fro he stood there, turning the pages on automatic, thinking about Guillermo Macías, whose name he had found under the date of his arrest. Toscono had not lied about the reason for that – the boy had been picked up with a group of others and charged with ‘spreading malicious propaganda’. For five weeks he had been repeatedly hung by the wrists and given high-voltage shocks with electric cattle prods, for no other reason than the warped pleasure of his captors. On Christmas Eve he had been one of seven dropped from a helicopter into the River Plate, his wrists bound with wire.
To judge from many of the other entries he had been one of the luckier ones, but Docherty didn’t imagine the boy’s parents would see it like that.
He thought about the five young women who had been kidnapped into slavery more than a year before. Marysa had told them that Rosalita had killed herself after only a few weeks on the island, but had so far refused to say anything more about the long ordeal. Placida and Irma were also dead, Victoria and Marysa damaged in ways he couldn’t begin to comprehend. He asked himself how his fellow-men could behave in such a way and got no answer.
The machine whirred on, and eventually the entire ledger had been copied. He packed it into a box provided by the store and then made three additional copies of the two pages which detailed the involvement of two named American Intelligence operatives – there was no mention of which agency they worked for – in the extended torture and gang-raping of four female student prisoners at the Rosario army base in early 1977.
After making three copies of the covering letter he had composed in the early hours of the morning he gathered everything together and headed for the post office. Half an hour later the box was on its way to his own address in Chile and the three envelopes were travelling express to the New York Times, the Guardian and the German magazine Der Spiegel.
He re-emerged into the sunlight with the original ledger and dodged his way through the busy traffic to the centre of the square. It was still only ten o’clock, and on impulse he bought a coffee from the kiosk and sat in the shade to drink it. The people, like the town, were mostly Mexican, and he sat there watching as they went about their daily business. Maybe it was the sunshine, the riot of colours, but now, as in 1977, he found these people so full of life.
Maybe that was why they needed their Days of the Dead – yearly reminders that life was also hard and cruel.
Docherty didn’t think he needed the health warning any more. Maybe this time the good guys had emerged relatively unscathed, but there had been enough times in the past when that hadn’t been the case, and he had his doubts whether either of the surviving women would ever be the same again.
But then even the bad guys had souls.
Docherty looked up at the pure blue sky, sighed and got back to his feet. He had seen enough days of the dead. He was ready to write the fucking memoirs.
OTHER TITLES IN THE SAS OPERATION SERIES
Behind Iraqi Lines
Mission to Argentina
Sniper Fire in Belfast
Desert Raiders
Samarkand Hijack
Embassy Siege
Guerrillas in the Jungle
Secret War in Arabia
Colombian Cocaine War
Invisible Enemy in Kazakhstan
Heroes of the South Atlantic
Counter-insurgency in Aden
Gambian Bluff
Bosnian Inferno
Night Fighters in France
Death on Gibraltar
Into Vietnam
For King and Country
Kashmir Rescue
Guatemala – Journey into Evil
Headhunters of Borneo
Kidnap the Emperor!
War on the Streets
Bandit Country
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Days of the Dead Page 24