Marine C SBS

by David Monnery

  ‘No, but . . .’

  ‘Then there’s the Tiburón Blanco,’ Cafell went on. ‘That at least is in international waters. We could try and board them during the transfer from chopper to sub, but what’s to stop them throwing the drugs into the sea. And there goes our proof. There’s no law against having two subs with the same number. The only other option is to intercept the sub with the stuff on board. Trouble is, the bloody thing’s faster than we are. We’d have to catch it in a fucking great net or something. And that does sound more like James Bond than reality.’

  ‘OK . . .’

  ‘And one last thing,’ Cafell insisted. ‘Even if we do catch them with the goods, we still haven’t implicated Arcilla. As it is he’ll just say that his underlings were acting on their own, and using his treasure hunt as cover. He’ll probably be indignant as hell.’

  ‘Probably.’ Marker gazed at the wall of mangroves sliding by, an idea beginning to form in his mind. He let his unconscious take over the task of bringing it to fruition. ‘We have a more immediate problem,’ he said.

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Our hosts. They may have given us the green light last night, but I have the feeling that this morning they’ll be expecting the explanation.’

  Cafell laughed. ‘Which is?’

  ‘Fuck knows. If we tell them we were chasing a submarine they’ll want to know where it went. If we say we lost it they’ll think we’re incompetent. Either way they’ll want to take over.’

  ‘These are their waters.’

  ‘Yeah, but this is our op. They wanted us to nail Arcilla, and that’s what we’re trying to do. And I’m not sharing anything with the Yanks before I know for certain whose uniform that guy at the lodge was wearing.’

  ‘OK,’ Cafell said equably.

  ‘And anyway,’ Marker added, ‘I always thought the idea of the sea belonging to anyone was a load of bollocks.’

  ‘The Native Americans thought the same about the land,’ Cafell volunteered. ‘Are you sure the man you saw in the canoe was an Indian?’

  ‘Nope, but he looked like Hollywood’s idea of one.’

  ‘Maybe he was just passing through.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  They stood in silence for a minute and more, watching the river widen to meet the open sea.

  ‘How about – we were on our way to RV with a possible informant,’ Cafell suggested. ‘But he didn’t show.’

  ‘He was scared off by the Coast Guard cutter,’ Marker added. ‘I like it. It’s thin, but so what – they aren’t going to call us liars. Not to our faces anyway.’

  ‘As long as they don’t take the Queen back,’ Cafell murmured.

  ‘Right. We’re going to need her for at least another week.’ Marker lobbed his empty can into the bin that had thoughtfully been provided. ‘And much as it pains me to say it, I think we’re going to need reinforcements from Blighty. Two should do for what I have in mind.’

  ‘And that is?’

  Marker told him.

  12

  Neil Colhoun shut the door of his office behind him, propped the umbrella up against a wall, and dropped himself in the tattered chair. The only sound he could hear was the rain beating a tattoo on his windows. It was something of a change from home, where the members of his family were indulging their belief that God provided rainy Sunday afternoons for testing the volume controls on the house’s three sound systems. Caught in the crossfire between his wife’s country music, his younger daughter’s new Björk single and his son’s current favourites – the Crash Test Dummies – Colhoun had decided the office was the best place to consider an SBS invasion of the United States.

  He picked up the transcription of the lengthy report Marker had sent by burst transmission on Friday afternoon, shortly after his and Cafell’s return from their jaunt in the Everglades. And put it down again. By this time he could probably have recited the damn thing word for word.

  He reached for the Admiralty and FO memos, which were almost as familiar. The Americans were not altogether happy with their British allies. In fact, they seemed to be a trifle hurt. In future it was hoped that cooperation in this particular endeavour could be more of a two-way street.

  Fuck ’em, Colhoun thought sourly, and knew he was being unfair. If SEALs were conducting themselves on British soil the way Marker and Cafell were behaving in Florida he would be outraged, and he knew it. But . . .

  He started leafing through the computer-enhanced blow-ups which the Illustrators’ Branch had generated from the pictures Marker had faxed. The quality wasn’t that great, but the negatives would be arriving by express post on the following morning and better reproductions would then be possible. There was one picture in particular which Colhoun wanted to examine more closely. It showed the back of the lodge, and in the blown-up version some unusual-looking machines could be made out through the windows of the door. They seemed to be partly made of clear plastic, and their shape had touched a chord in Colhoun’s memory. An unresponsive one, unfortunately.

  He went on to the next picture, which showed the two men sitting on the wooden dock. The uniform, as Marker had suspected, was that of an Everglades National Park Ranger.

  When it came down to it, Colhoun thought, he simply didn’t trust the American authorities. He didn’t trust their Special Forces to be efficient, and he had no faith in their security. If the man in the picture had been wearing a Coast Guard’s uniform he wouldn’t have been surprised.

  Americans might be no more prone to corruption than Brits, but those working in Florida law enforcement certainly had more than their fair share of temptation to overcome. With so much drug money swilling around in the state the real surprise lay in the continued existence of honest and dedicated officials. The problem was in knowing who they were. Without such knowledge, enlisting American help was like entering a lottery. One in which the losers were apt to die.

  It would be safer for all concerned to let Marker proceed with his plan. After all, Colhoun thought cynically, the four SBS men would simply constitute one more armed gang on American soil, and as far as the SBS CO knew, there was nothing against either carrying arms or gang membership in the US Constitution.

  He tried to imagine selling this argument to the Foreign Office and failed. But then there was no reason why the FO should be told anything. As far as Colhoun was concerned he had been given carte blanche to sort this business out, and until such time as someone revoked his authority he intended to make the most of it.

  Outside, the rain was still falling. He picked up the internal phone and called the duty office to tell them that he was on the premises. ‘If anything comes in from London or the States, I want to see it right away,’ he added.

  ‘There’s a fax here already,’ the corporal replied.

  Colhoun rolled his eyeballs at the ceiling. ‘Send it over,’ he said, and hung up.

  It turned out to be the intelligence report he had been waiting for. One of the Washington MI6 contingent had done some local research in Florida, and come up with the name and owners of the property on Hell’s Lake. Anhinga Lodge belonged to the Friends of Zion Health Care Trust, which ran hospitals in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Fort Pierce and St Petersburg. It functioned as a weekend wilderness resort for the Trust’s two thousand employees. There was a staff of ten on duty from noon on Friday to noon on Monday throughout the winter high season, and sporadically during the summer low season. There were two live-in caretakers. Staff, visitors and supplies were all flown in by one of the Trust’s four helicopters.

  Colhoun leant back in his chair, hands behind his head. There was something . . .

  He had it!

  He skimmed through the pages of his address book, found the number he was looking for, and reached for the phone.

  ‘Can I speak to your dad?’ he said when the child answered.

  ‘You may,’ the girl said primly, before apparently dropping the phone. A few moments later Dick Ferguson came on the line.

  ‘Di
ck, it’s Neil. I need to see you. Now, if possible.’

  ‘We’re just about to eat.’

  ‘At four o’clock?’

  ‘We eat late on Sunday, not that . . .’

  ‘It’ll only take a minute. I just need you to look at a photograph.’

  ‘Come on over.’

  Colhoun hung up, told the duty office he was leaving, and drove into Bournemouth. He had known Ferguson for five years now, since the doctor had performed the operation on his father-in-law. An initial prejudice against money-grabbing consultants had been eroded, if not completely removed, by a common Scots heritage, a mutual taste for malt whisky, and a love of rugby.

  Ferguson opened the door himself, napkin still tucked inside his collar, and led Colhoun into the empty living room.

  Colhoun handed him the blow-up. ‘Those,’ he said, pointing out the machines.

  Ferguson stared at them. ‘They look like Belzer-Kountz machines,’ he said at last. ‘I wouldn’t want to stake my life on it, but that’s what they look like.’

  ‘And what are Belzer-Kountz machines?’

  ‘They’re for preserving human organs between removal and transplantation.’

  Colhoun took back the photograph. ‘Thanks,’ he said.

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Aye, you can get back to your supper.’

  ‘Lunch.’

  Colhoun walked back to his car and sat behind the wheel, letting the pieces of the puzzle slip into place. The fact that a health trust owned the lodge, the fact that Russell, a paramedic, had been kidnapped rather than killed.

  And Cafell had been right, he thought. It had to be Haiti – there was no way the necessary facilities could be hidden on one of the empty Bahamian keys.

  Arcilla was smuggling human organs out of Haiti and into Florida, where desperate people were no doubt paying a fortune for something to which they had no earthly moral right. The more Colhoun thought about it, the angrier he felt.

  He gunned the car’s engine, and headed for home. He had already decided who Marker’s reinforcements were going to be.

  Fifteen miles away, Ian and Helen Dubery were parked in a New Forest lay-by, watching gusts of rain sweeping across the road. At least the weather was familiar, he thought unhappily. If this much wind and rain didn’t make his wife feel more at home, then nothing would.

  ‘I’m looking forward to seeing Mum,’ she said, confirming his suspicions. She always looked forward to her trips back home. He wondered if she ever told her family on Benbecula that she was looking forward to returning south. Some hope.

  But why should she? Her friends were there, as well as her family. In Poole she had only him and a job she hated.

  He had no doubt she loved him. After all, they had loved each other since they were about twelve. And he knew that loving him was enough to keep her here. But it wasn’t enough to make her happy.

  What could he do? He loved his work. Getting into the SBS had been like having every dream he had ever had come true, the realization of aspirations which had begun on the day his father first took him boating in the Sound of Monach. He was only four then, but the green sea and blue sky were still vivid in his memory.

  What was he supposed to do – give it all up? For what? There was no work in the outer islands. The fishing fleets were a shadow of what they once had been. All the young people left, just like he and Helen had done.

  For a moment he felt angry with her, but what was the point?

  The shower was ending as abruptly as it had begun, the sun breaking through the overhanging trees. She turned towards him, a smile on her face. As always, he felt his anger melt away.

  ‘Where now?’ he asked.

  ‘Home,’ she said.

  ‘Question twenty-nine,’ the Scouse voice boomed through the amplifier. Silence settled on the Hardy Arms. ‘What is the average lifespan of an ostrich? That’s an ostrich,’ the Liverpudlian repeated. ‘I’ll give you five years either way.’

  Three tables away, Stuart Finn leant forward and whispered ‘fifty’ to the team member who was writing in the answers.

  ‘You sure?’ one of his team-mates asked doubtfully. ‘My budgie only lasted about six months.’

  ‘That was because you breathed on it,’ Finn retorted.

  ‘Fifty does seem kind of old,’ Dave muttered.

  ‘How about forty,’ his girlfriend Jean suggested.

  ‘Jesus!’ Finn said. ‘Fifty’s the right answer, leave it alone.’

  ‘How come you’re so sure of a thing like that?’ Jean asked.

  Finn smiled at the woman. ‘I just am,’ he said, placing a beer mat on the edge of the table. He flicked it up and caught it deftly with the same hand.

  ‘The last question,’ the quizmaster bellowed. ‘That’s number thirty to youse who can count. What was the name of the Titanic’s captain?’

  Finn and the other six members of the Hounds of Heaven quiz team stared blankly at each other. ‘What a fucking question,’ Dave moaned. ‘Finn, you’re in the fucking navy,’ someone else said.

  ‘The Titanic wasn’t a warship.’

  ‘They’re all boats, aren’t they?’

  Finn ignored him. The girl on the next table was staring at him again, and this time he just smiled at her. She smiled brazenly back at him for several seconds before turning away. Maybe, Finn thought, the man next to her was her brother or something.

  She was going to the bar now, and Finn could see her legs for the first time. They were nice. Shame about the blouse, he thought, but then not everyone could have taste as good as his.

  ‘I’m still not sure about the ostrich,’ one of his team-mates lamented.

  ‘I am,’ Finn said, getting up, ‘and if you change that answer I will go out and find a dead ostrich and stuff it up your arse.’

  ‘He’s always right about those things,’ Jean said. ‘It’s depressing.’

  ‘He certainly has a way with threats,’ Dave said.

  Finn grinned and went to the bar, squeezing in beside the woman. ‘Can I buy you a drink?’ he asked.

  ‘No thanks,’ she said, ‘I’m buying one for my boyfriend.’

  ‘Lucky man,’ Finn said. ‘So why were you staring at me?’

  She handed a fiver to the barman. ‘I work at the Institute for the Deaf in Bournemouth,’ she said with a smile. ‘As a lip-reading instructor. No one on our team knew what the average lifespan of an ostrich was.’

  Finn was still smiling to himself the following morning, when he and Ian Dubery found themselves waiting for an audience with the CO. At first the summons had given Finn some cause for alarm – not that he could remember actually doing anything worthy of a reprimand – but his fellow-corporal’s presence had reassured him. Ian Dubery was not the type to get keelhauled across the CO’s carpet.

  Colhoun lost no time in telling them what they were there for, and was pleased, if not surprised, by the eagerness on each man’s face as he recounted the genesis of the operation and the developments to date. ‘You’ll be flying out from Heathrow this afternoon,’ he said. ‘One or both of the others will meet you at Miami Airport.’

  ‘Uniform, boss?’ Finn asked.

  ‘No. And as far as US Immigration is concerned, you’re just a couple of tourists come to do some diving on the reefs off the Florida Keys. So when they hand round the form on the plane, and you get to the question about purpose of visit, just tick “pleasure”, don’t write in “illicit military operations on US territory”.’

  The two men dutifully laughed.

  ‘Captain Marker will brief you on what you’ll actually be doing,’ Colhoun continued. ‘Any questions?’

  ‘Aye,’ Dubery said, almost apologetically. ‘Do we know exactly what it is these people are smuggling into Florida?’

  ‘Not for certain,’ Colhoun admitted. ‘But the door-to-door trip takes longer than ten hours, which apparently rules out hearts and livers. According to an expert I talked to last night the best bets are kidneys and cornea
s, and maybe bone tissue.’

  ‘It must be a pretty expensive business,’ said Finn, ‘running two helicopters, two submarines, a treasure hunt and a wilderness lodge. They must be either getting an astronomic price or shifting a hell of a lot of kidneys.’

  Colhoun checked the notes he had made while talking to Ferguson’s friend at the School of Tropical Medicine in London. ‘A kidney will fetch $20,000, a cornea about $7000,’ he told them. ‘A knee joint goes for about $2500. Three small ear bones – $750. You may find this hard to believe, but if you could extract an entire skeleton from a fresh corpse, and powder the bones, you would be talking nearly a quarter of a million.’

  ‘Christ,’ Dubery said.

  ‘Looks like my Dad is going to leave me something after all,’ Finn murmured.

  Colhoun smiled despite himself. ‘The reason’s simple,’ he said. ‘Supply and demand. The queues keep getting longer, and for the best reasons. Since seat belts were introduced here and in America road deaths – and particularly brain deaths, which allow the organs to be removed from a technically living body – have declined dramatically. So there are less organs for transplant. When they raised the speed limit in some US states from fifty-five to sixty-five the death rate increased again, and the transplant surgeons thought it was Christmas. And then some states started imposing handgun controls, which tightened the supply again.’

  ‘Sick,’ Finn commented.

  ‘Aye,’ Dubery agreed. ‘But if someone you loved was desperate for a new kidney . . .’ He shrugged. ‘It’s a hard call.’

  ‘This smuggling is illegal in America, right?’ Finn asked.

  ‘Oh aye,’ Colhoun said, checking his notes again. ‘The National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 made it a criminal offence to buy or sell a human organ. But it’s not illegal in a lot of Third World countries. In India it’s quite common for families to sell a daughter’s kidney. And even in places where it is technically illegal there seems to be a lot of it going on. In Russia loads of families can’t afford to bury their dead unless they agree to sell off the profitable bits. And there was a case in London the other day of a Turkish immigrant caught selling his kidney to some man from Birmingham. In some places in Central America gangs just round up children and help themselves. Even at its nicest this is a very nasty business. And we have no way of knowing if the organs being smuggled into Florida have been donated voluntarily or not. For all we know some bastard warlord in Haiti could just be slaughtering people and cutting them up. Carefully.’