by Chris Ryan
‘Home sweet home,’ Hands said.
Everything clicked. The tracks at the camp. The fire. It wasn’t laziness. ‘The campsite,’ Gardner said. ‘No self-respecting Blade would leave such a mess. It was deliberate, wasn’t it?’
Hands nodded. ‘A decoy. John’s idea. Put any nosy fuckers off the scent, know what I mean? He reckoned you’d figure it out for yourself.’
Thirty metres from the edge of the creek, which was tucked in behind a thick web of vines and ferns, Hands stopped. Gardner spotted a figure. The man was shaded by a nearby kopak tree that towered over the land, fifty metres high and half a metre thick. The trunk was crowded with buttresses.
Gardner paced ahead of Hands. The guy was sitting on a toppled tree trunk. He had a Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife in one hand, slicing the double-edged blade along a length of bark in his other hand, tucking the dry shavings into a small pouch on his lap. Four Bergens were propped up against the trunk, coloured in digital camouflage.
The man’s hands were black as soot, covered in welts and bruises. He was barefoot. A pair of brown socks hung from a long branch nearby. Gardner noticed that his right foot was swollen and purple, probably from where he’d been bitten by a spider or snake.
Gardner knew who he was, even before he stepped closer to him, when the jungle gloom eased and the face took on definition. His pale skin was masked by camo paint, eyes beaming like spotlights. He was bulkier than Gardner recalled, but still had the frown grooved into his forehead.
John Bald.
16
1633 hours.
He was close.
Weiss stumbled across the clearing and licked the air. It tasted zingy and heavy with topsoil. Like a bomb had gone off in his mouth. The battle that had raged in the clearing had occurred very recently, he figured. Smoke clung to his ankles, and the wounded had not yet died.
Make that ‘one of the wounded’, he thought as he approached the last survivor. The kid was not long for this earth. He was early twenties, a golden dollar-sign chain hanging from his neck, and a hole in his chest large enough to sink an orange.
Weiss squatted down beside him.
‘If you want, I can make it quick,’ he said, reaching a hand into his duster. ‘Tell me which way he went.’
The kid shuddered. It was a bitch of a choice for any human being to make: die now, or live longer and suffer. The kid chose death. He pointed a finger west.
‘Was he alone?’ asked Weiss, now feeling for the syringe.
The kid curled his thumb and index finger into a ball, leaving two fingers in the air. So, the target had company. He had all the information he needed. Time to honour his end of the bargain.
Weiss frowned. He couldn’t find what he was looking for. Pulling his coat wide open, he ran his peepers down the row of needles. He was missing a syringe, one loaded with a toxic alkaloid called aconitine. That’s too bad, he said to himself. You probably dropped it when you escaped from Rolex and Lakers. Aconitine was one of his favourite compounds, and he made a mental note to touch base with his chemist on his return to Ciudad Juárez.
The kid wanted a quick death, and Weiss obliged. He administered a high dosage of succinylcholine to the neck. Within seconds the kid’s muscles shrivelled up and he couldn’t breathe. Something flopped in his chest. He went over to the dark side.
Weiss moved on. He got about halfway across the clearing before he doubled over in agony and his guts contracted, as if someone was yanking at him with a bungee cord. He coughed up black goo; shivered in spite of the jungle heat. The tips of his toes were numb, his fingers likewise.
You’ve got a fever, he reasoned. After what Roulette and his goons did to you earlier, are you surprised? But don’t let it stop you. I won’t, but Christ, it hurts. He steadied himself, fearing he’d faint.
One glance west and he was on his feet.
He noticed the snapped branches and the crushed twigs. The footprints and the damaged undergrowth. Someone had beaten a path through the foliage and left evidence of their route. It was God’s will, he was sure of it. Thirty million dollars. So close now, he could almost smell the greenbacks.
Weiss ignored the fever and pushed on.
17
1701 hours.
John Bald looked at Gardner briefly, then went back to carving firewood from the wet bark. Crunching twigs sounded to his six o’clock. Hands drew near to him, and Bald put the bark to one side, knife dangling between his legs.
‘Took your time, man,’ Bald said.
Thinking the question was directed at him, Gardner made to answer. But Hands replied, ‘We got held up. Messengers had a little welcome party for us, yeah? Nothing to get your knickers in a twist about. Me and Jason Statham here gave them what for.’
Bald ran his tongue around his mouth. ‘Sure no one followed you?’
‘Gimme a break,’ Hands replied. ‘Those gang pricks couldn’t follow their own fucking shadows.’
Bald gave no indication of whether he agreed with Hands. Holding it up to the light, he examined the Fairbairn-Sykes. ‘Well, you got here just in time. I think our mutual friend is about to pass out from the pain. I need you to clean his wound and get some fresh dressing on it. And a shot of morphine too, keep him quiet.’
Hands strode past Gardner to a figure at his peripheral vision. He noticed the foot first. The boot had been cut off, a grey blanket tied around it and a long forked branch that stretched from his armpit to below his foot, tied with vines around the ankle.
The foot belonged to Falcon.
Gardner did a double-take. Couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He looked back towards Bald, who made no effort to explain anything to him, much less make eye contact. He seemed obsessed by the fighting knife.
‘What, what’s going—?’
‘You must be exhausted, man. Here,’ Bald said, tossing a canteen towards Gardner. ‘It’s from the stream. It’s got a wee kick to it from the purification tablets.’
This isn’t the John I know, Gardner thought. Bald never used two words when one would do the trick. But he was also warm and loyal. Now it seemed he was treating Gardner like a stranger. No ‘thank you’ for travelling halfway around the world.
Gardner unscrewed the cap on the canteen. Dark, filmy water sloshed about inside. He didn’t raise it to his lips. Instead, he looked at the stuffed Bergens beside Bald – calm, relaxed Bald – and wondered.
He laughed.
‘Something funny, Joe?’
‘You tell me,’ Gardner replied. ‘The tablets, the fake camp, the Bergens. You don’t mean to tell me you had all this kit with you for a patrol with BOPE. This took planning. Preparation. When you got jumped, all this shit was already in place.’
‘Aye, man. You’ve a fair point,’ Bald answered, his bottom lip weighing it up. ‘The truth of the matter is, we had to take some precautions.’
‘Who the fuck’s “we”?’
Bald extended an arm towards Hands and Falcon. Hands rinsed out Falcon’s wound with water, wiping it down with a gauze swab and wrapping a roll of sterile dressing around the open wound. The BOPE captain was feverish, fucking out of it like a pillhead in a rave club.
‘Why, my business partners, of course.’
Gardner lit up like an oil field. He felt duped, had the urge to punch someone in revenge, but he wasn’t sure who deserved a socking the most: Bald for his cry of help, Falcon for keeping shtum about his link to John, or Hands just for being, well, fucking Dave Hands.
‘You reached out to me,’ he said, pointing to Bald. ‘You said you were in the shit, John. Knee-deep in the stuff. That’s why I rushed out here at a fucking moment’s notice. Because you were in trouble.’
Bald slipped on his dried socks and boots.
‘But I am, Joe. I am. That’s why I asked you here. Listen, I’ll answer all your questions in a minute. First, I’ve got a question for you.’
He stabbed the Fairbairn-Sykes into the felled tree.
‘Can you still dri
ve a boat?’
18
1720 hours.
Gardner didn’t reply. He noticed Hands and Falcon edging towards Bald, hanging at his four o’clock. His brain tried to make sense of everything. The connection with dodgy Dave Hands. The need for a boat. The fake camp. Falcon’s unease about his BOPE comrades. Each question only led to more questions.
‘This is important,’ Bald continued. ‘Life or death. I need to know if you can help me.’
‘Help with what?’
‘Getting out, man. The airport’s a no-go, there’s checkpoints at the state borders, and it’s a long haul to Santos by road anyway. Boat’s the only option we have.’
‘You’re gonna have to be straight with me here, John. Either you’ve lost your passport, or there’s something a lot darker that you’re not telling me. I’ve come a long way – too far to be fucked about. So how about you cut to the chase?’
Bald chuckled and wagged a finger at Gardner. ‘That’s what I always liked about you, Joe. You call a spade a spade.’
He nodded to Hands. The skinny ex-Blade paced towards the Bergens and fiddled with the straps on the leftmost one, while Bald took from his pocket a tennis-ball-sized fruit, reddish and leathery, sliced it down the centre with his knife and popped one half into his mouth.
Then Hands tipped out the contents of the Bergen.
‘This,’ Bald said, ‘is your spade.’
A stack of five packages spilled on to the floor, each the size of a paperback book, wrapped in white paper, with the image of a scorpion stamped on the top of the package. Gardner had conducted anti-drug smuggling operations in Colombia and could identify a brick blindfolded. Each brick, he knew, was a solid kilo of pure cocaine.
Silence between the four men. Hands tucked the Bolivian marching powder back into the Bergen, and a single thought lodged at the front of Gardner’s brain. What the fuck?
‘The world is about opportunity,’ Bald said, Gardner not even meeting his eyes. ‘The winners seize it. The losers let it pass them by. You remember how it was in the Regiment, don’t you, Joe? Strike when you have the chance.’
Gardner’s eyes flitted between Bald and Hands. He didn’t like the fact Hands was clutching his Colt Commando at waist height, barrel pointed at the ground. A quick swing of the carbine and he’d be aiming directly at Gardner’s head. His own carbine dangled by his side, out of ammo and fucking useless.
‘This here,’ Bald said, waving his hand at the Bergens, ‘this is what opportunity looks like.’
‘You stole it from the Messengers of God.’
‘Well, I prefer “liberated”. Spoils of war and all that. It was actually Captain Falcon’s idea.’
Gardner thought back to his first encounter with Falcon. ‘The explosive entry course.’
‘All I can say is, Florida’s a good place to do business. There’s fifty keys of cocaine in total, with a street value of thirty million dollars, American. We brought young David on board because of his contacts. He knows people who are desperate for premium-grade snow in Europe. Care for some?’
Bald held out the other half of the fruit. Gardner shook his head.
‘Please yourself. The plan’s worked out well so far. Rafael arranged to meet with some of the Messengers and make a weapons swap. A common enough exchange with BOPE and some of the army units. Corruption here, you see, it’s part and parcel of daily life.’
‘Some of the gang had PP-2000s,’ said Gardner. ‘Top-end firearms. You sold them to the Messengers.’
‘The weapons exchange was just a front. After the deal went down we took the Messengers hostage and tortured them until they gave up the drug stash. They did – and quickly, too. Threaten to kill a man, he won’t say a word. Shove a broom handle up his arsehole, you can’t keep him quiet. But bugging out of the favela has proved more difficult.’ Bald gestured at Gardner with the knife tip. ‘Which is where you come in.’
Hands helped Falcon to his feet. The rupert tottered on his makeshift crutch to the side of Gardner, until he was at the fringes of his line of sight. Hands, Falcon and Bald were now spread out in a semicircle in front of him, the Scot playing it cool as Gardner slowly backed up on his heels.
‘To return to my problem. I didn’t sell you a bum steer, Joe. I really am in trouble. The Messengers know for sure we ripped them off, and Captain Falcon thinks his BOPE friends have their suspicions. Somehow we need to get this shipment down to the port of Santos, where David’s contact will rendezvous with us. The only way we’ll get there without being arrested is by boat. Rafael’s got a contact who can rig us a Hacker-Craft at the port, topped up with diesel and ready to roll.’
Gardner met Bald’s eyes. They were wide and shiny, like a man who’d just landed a prize catch.
‘So, the question is: are you with us?’
Gardner felt three sets of eyes burning holes in him.
‘Why the fuck would I want in?’
‘I’m offering you a share of the profits,’ Bald said, raising his palms. ‘A three-way split becomes four. Just think. Seven and a half million big ones. It’s yours. All you’ve got to do is pilot a boat two hundred and fifty kilometres down the coastline.’ He paused, trying to gauge Gardner’s reaction. ‘And this is only the start of business together. Rafa here says there are literally hundreds of drug trains coming out of the favelas. We can clean up, Joe. You and me.’
‘I don’t know—’
‘Life’s not easy for an old Blade,’ Bald cut in. He shook his head sadly. ‘In the Roman Empire, soldiers were like gods. Today we’re the shit on the heel of someone’s boot. Look at the way the head shed treated you, fobbing you off with a pension that barely stretches to a chip buttie and a tin of beans. You, me – deserve better.’
‘I don’t know,’ Gardner said, ‘who you are any more.’
Bald shifted on his feet.
‘We used to see drug smugglers as the scum of the earth.’
‘The world’s changed,’ Bald replied.
‘No. Just you,’ said Gardner, clocking Hands’ face as it morphed from grin to scowl.
‘Don’t get all moral on me. This is snow, for fuck’s sake. No one dies. If we didn’t have it, the Messengers would sell it on themselves. What’s the big deal?’
‘Coke here, heroin in the Afghan. Drugs helped kill some of our mates. If the Taliban didn’t get their profits from the poppies, maybe they’d never had the resources to plant all those IEDs. Maybe good lads – guys we fought alongside – would still be alive. Sorry, John. I’m not perfect, but I’m better than a lowlife like Hands. I’m not getting my hands dirty.’
Bald crimsoned. Spit gathered at the corners of his mouth.
‘You bloody well owe me. I risked my life to save you in the Afghan.’
‘Yeah, I remember all right. But the Afghan was then; this is now. And my answer’s still no.’
‘Fuck you, then.’
The voice cut like a spear across Bald’s shoulder. Hands had his Colt Commando raised level with Gardner’s head. Falcon’s right hand rested on his holstered Taurus, his other on the crutch.
‘I told you bringing this cunt into the fold was a bad move.’
‘Drop it, David,’ Bald said.
‘Nah, screw that shit. I don’t know why you were so desperate to have him on the team in the first place. He’s straighter than a fucking go-faster stripe, and he’s supposed to get an equal share when we’ve done all the legwork?’
‘We need him if we’re to reach Santos.’
‘I’ll fucking walk it there myself. Better than letting this prick in on the action.’
‘Another one of your bright ideas, Dave? Maybe you should offload a brick to a copper,’ Gardner said. Wish I had a round in my rifle, he was thinking. Just a single bullet would do the trick. Put one right between Dave’s eyes.
‘Think you’re funny, mate? You won’t be laughing in a minute. And know what? Killing you will be the best decision I ever make.’
Hands peered
down the sights of the Colt.
‘Put the gun down,’ Bald urged.
‘Enjoy the ride, mate.’
Hands depressed the trigger.
His finger pulled halfway before it happened. Before Bald thrust at him. Before Bald, stocky with legs like tree trunks, but fleet of foot and agile, leapt the three metres to Hands, socked him on the jaw and knocked him backwards, the chambered round in the Colt kicking up into the sky, panicking a flock of macaws.
Falcon clumsily pulled out his Taurus. Gardner broke right, trying to put some ground between himself and Falcon’s line of fire. A double crack split the air as he moved behind the kopak tree. He peered back towards the camp. Falcon’s corpse on the floor, Bald shadowing him, cursing under his breath. Hands unconscious by his side. Bald turned to the tree. To Gardner.
‘I make that twice, Joe. Christ, if I save your bacon again someone’s gonna have to keep score. Tell you what, pilot the boat and we’ll call it even-stevens. The good news is, I can offer you a three-way split, now that Rafael’s… indisposed. And who knows, David might have to accept a pay cut. More for me and you.’
Gardner crouched behind the trunk. Unarmed. How the fuck do you get out of this one?
The answer came in the form of a gunshot. Bald unloading a round at the tree. Bark sprayed Gardner’s face. Splinters nicked his hands.
‘Sometimes I think about how different things would’ve been, you know? If we’d waited for the sweeping team to come in and scan the area. I mean, those sand monkeys had worked out the tolerance of landmine detectors and there could easily have been another device waiting to kick off in my face. But if I followed protocol, you’d have bled out.’
Gardner couldn’t stand and fight. Not without a gun. He scanned the jungle.
‘Remember the kid, Joe?’
‘Connors. Pretty Boy Connors.’
Gardner kept him talking. Buying himself time. He looked towards the far side of the creek, where the land dropped off. Impossible to see how deep, or where it led to, but if he managed to get across there…