The Black Art of Killing

by Matthew Hall

  Black turned around in his seat and gave the others a weary thumbs up. Riley responded with his usual irrepressible grin. Fallon unclipped his belt, hauled himself to his feet and walked unsteadily to the back of the aircraft, where he dropped to his knees and retched.

  Buganov maintained a steady altitude of 500 feet, which, he claimed, would keep him under both the civilian and military radar. He continued due east for a further 100 miles before heading south to make his way through the mountains. Holding the aircraft well below the ridgeline, he navigated through a network of deep valleys, ensuring his passengers’ hearts stayed in their mouths as his wing tips threatened to graze the rocky cliff edges each time he made another turn.

  At last they emerged from between the peaks and breathed easily again at the sight of the wide, glinting expanse of the Orinoco River stretching from the eastern horizon to the west. And, beyond it, an uninterrupted expanse of rainforest, smothering the contours of an unending, gently undulating plane.

  ‘That’s your jungle, Mr Black,’ Buganov said. ‘You like it? Nowhere to put down between here and Platanal. Five hundred kilometres.’

  Black looked out at the green ocean spread out in all directions. Even from inside the aircraft, he could smell it. Its scent was heavy and humid, perfumed and dank like the inside of the glasshouse in Oxford’s botanical gardens magnified a hundred times.

  Oxford. It was the first time he had thought of it in days. His existence there seemed so remote as to belong to another life. From his seat in a rickety plane skimming the Amazon, the very thought of lecturing and theorizing seemed absurd. He couldn’t begin to conceive that he might find himself resuming such a cosseted, irrelevant existence.

  This was where he belonged.

  There was no sensation that could begin to match it: the thrill of the hunt.

  Fifty miles out from Platanal, Buganov switched on the radio and listened. There was nothing but the crackle of static. He flicked through all the channels with the same result. There was no chatter at all. Nothing except an occasional exchange of Portuguese-speaking voices from across the border in northern Brazil. They had now travelled several hundred miles having seen not a single road and only the occasional clearing. They truly were at the back end of beyond.

  Buganov waited until they were thirty miles out from their destination before ascending to 4,000 feet and sending a message over the radio. ‘Platanal, soy Bravo Alpha 954. Se puede escucharme?’ He repeated the same call three times before the voice of a man woken from his siesta replied drowsily in the affirmative.

  Buganov gabbled excitedly back at him. Now attuning to Buganov’s brand of Spanish, or at least to the words that vaguely resembled English, Black caught the essence: Thank God. Thank God. I’ve had electrical and mechanical problems. Lost all my instruments. I’ve been flying blind for hours. Am I free to land?

  ‘Si. Claro. Libre de aterrizar.’ Yes. All clear. You’re free to land.

  Buganov continued to communicate with the ground as they closed in on the runway. Once again, the silver streak of the Orinico appeared ahead of them. The jungle settlement of Platanal lay in a clearing on its banks, not far from the river’s source in the jungle to the east. The river travelled in a great semicircle that embraced much of the country and within it, beneath the rainforest canopy, lay the untapped minerals and precious metals that the government was now so eager to exploit.

  A long, rectangular patch of brown appeared ahead of them: Platanal’s unpaved airstrip. Beyond it Black made out a disorderly collection of buildings, some roofed with tin, others thatched in the traditional manner with dried vegetation. It was closer in size to a small village or hamlet than a town.

  Buganov took the plane in a sweeping curve, first out to the right, then turning back left to line up with the runway. They were now three or four miles out, descending from 4,000 feet at a steady rate. The tension inside the aircraft rose. Through the windows in the cargo bay Riley and Fallon could see the ground drawing closer. Black glanced behind to warn them they were no more than a minute from landing. He saw that Riley’s grin had faded to a fatalistic smile. Fallon’s face was corpse white.

  Buganov eased off the throttle. The noise of the engine faded. They entered their final approach.

  ‘You sons of bitches,’ Buganov muttered beneath his breath, his eyes locked on to the runway, which was surrounded on all sides by thick, unforgiving forest.

  200 feet. 100. They skimmed the tops of the trees. Buganov pushed the throttle forward and raised the wing flaps. The wheels thumped heavily on to the uneven ground. Buganov pushed down on the brake pedals, willing them to hold. The treeline at the end of the runway bore down on them.

  Black shot their pilot a look – they weren’t going to stop in time. Buganov pressed down harder. Black felt the brakes engage. He was thrown forward against his seat belt but still their rate of deceleration was too slow – they were heading straight for the trees.

  Taking matters into his own hands, Black stamped down as hard as he could on the co-pilot’s brake pedals. The brakes bit and held. The Caribou juddered to a stop thirty yards short of tree trunks that would have crushed them to pulp.

  Black looked over at Buganov to see him staring out through the windshield in a daze. ‘What were you doing?’

  ‘I was afraid to burst the hose.’ He shook his head and reached into the carrier bag at the side of his seat and brought out the remaining bottle.

  Leaving him to his drink, Black unbuckled his seat belt and issued orders to Riley and Fallon. ‘Kit out. Packs on. We’re going to hit the bush without being seen.’ He addressed Buganov: ‘Taxi slowly back round to the left. Keep tight to the trees and stop on my order.’

  Buganov took several more mouthfuls of Palmero and wiped his wet lips with the length of his forearm. ‘The number.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Buganov reached into his pocket and handed over his phone.

  ‘I’ll log the details under Towers,’ Black said. ‘Colonel Freddy Towers. Call him as soon as you get to Georgetown and tell him you’ve delivered us safely to Platanal.’ He keyed the number of Towers’ personal mobile phone into the directory of contacts, pleased to see that the phone’s screen was reporting ‘no service’. For good measure he added an invented address for the British Embassy. He had no doubt Towers would be able to string him along for a few days while they completed their business. After that Buganov faced an uncertain and unhappy fate.

  Black handed over the phone. ‘Thank you, my friend.’

  The Russian took another pull on the rum and belched from the depths of his belly.

  Riley and Fallon moved quickly to extract their packs and three holdalls from their crates. Black joined them in the back, pulled on his pack, pulled the waist belt tight and grabbed the heaviest holdall containing the ammunition. He called out to Buganov to start taxiing, then opened the cargo-bay door. He waited until the wing tip was grazing the undergrowth at the runway’s edge and gave the order to stop.

  They jumped out with a second between them. Black went last. He landed heavily but his ankles held. Following the others, he plunged into the forest. They had made it to the ground and their fate was back in their own hands. Just the three of them, the jungle and their objective.

  48

  Black led them north-eastwards for half a mile, before calling a halt in a small puddle of light let in by a fallen barrigona tree. Unprompted, all three paused to listen out for any sound to indicate that they were being followed. They heard nothing except the hypnotic insect drone of the forest overlaid with a cacophony of bird calls. There were approximately two hours of daylight left before nightfall. If they moved quickly, they could cover four or five miles and be safely buried deep in the jungle before they made camp. It was a little over fifty miles to their objective, which if they made steady progress from sunrise to sunset, meant a further two days’ solid hike.

  Barely exchanging a word, the three of them reverted to the drills t
hat in their early training had been so firmly cemented that they had become second nature. The first task was to change into their hiking gear. Tough cotton combat trousers tucked into lightweight, calf-length boots and cotton khaki T-shirts to wick the sweat away from their skin. They smeared their faces, necks, arms and the backs of their hands with camouflage cream, tied khaki bandanas around their heads to stop their sweat from trickling into their eyes and sprayed themselves from head to toe with DEET. Next, they assembled the three AK-47s, fitting them with bayonets and thirty-round magazines, then loaded each of the Smith and Wesson pistols to their full capacity of nine rounds. The pistols were secured in shoulder holsters worn outside their shirts and the rifles were strapped to the sides of their packs. Lastly, they distributed the remaining ammunition equally between them and took ten grenades each, storing them in webbing pouches fastened across their chests. Black then hid the three empty holdalls beneath a carpet of dried leaves. Packs on and armed with razor-sharp machetes, they were ready to move.

  The Sabre facility lay on a bearing of eighty-five degrees, taking them almost due east towards the Brazilian border. From their examination of satellite photographs they had detected signs of a dirt track connecting it to Platanal but had decided not to risk using it. Instead, they planned to follow a route running parallel to the road, approximately two miles to its north. Using a compass in order to preserve the precious battery life of his GPS, Black set a course and took first shift in the lead.

  The deeper they pressed into the forest, the hotter and more humid it became, so that they soon found themselves gasping for air. The ground was covered with several inches of slippery mud that made the going harder still and, despite the DEET, Black experienced regular sharp stabs, like jabs from a needle, as fat mosquitos attacked his neck.

  Physical discomfort, the extreme variety, could be tolerated. The body could anaesthetize itself to pain with the help of a determined will, but the pervading claustrophobia of the jungle was far harder to master. Without trails, waymarks or lookout points, the mind’s natural demand to orientate itself was frustrated. It had only a needle on a compass on which to focus. Pressed in on all sides and with no recognizable change in the landscape, it was easy to believe that you were travelling in endless circles and would never see open country again. Black was aware that this was his weak point, that his chief enemy was a restless desire to push on faster, risking draining previous reserves of energy. He made a conscious effort to hold himself in check and attempted to settle into a steady rhythm – walking, slashing, walking, slashing – reminding himself that the jungle was not something you could ever overcome. The most you could achieve was to adjust yourself to its laws and assimilate. Anything less would be fatal.

  After thirty minutes at the front Black ceded the lead to Fallon, who seemed to make easy progress. He cleared their path with slow, lazy strokes of his machete that absorbed minimum effort. His body was young and agile and slow to tire. Bringing up the rear, Riley was noisy and bull-like in comparison. Black had fought alongside both kinds of men and appreciated their relative strengths and weaknesses. The Fallons of this world were stealthy and clinical, at their most useful in operations in which patience and invisibility were paramount. In face-to-face combat, you wanted a Riley at your side. Finn had been one of those: a man who would have been at home wielding a broadsword in a medieval pitched battle. Black’s skills lay somewhere in between. He was neither the strongest nor the stealthiest, but Finn used to joke that he had a sixth sense, an awareness of danger that at times bordered on witchcraft. Black thought of it as a simple will to live. He had known soldiers who were reckless and some who were infected with romantic ideas of noble sacrifice. Both were equally alien to him. So long as he drew breath, he was certain of one thing: he would do whatever it took to keep doing so.

  The light began to fade. They arrived at a stream with thick ferns growing along its banks. On the far side was a small clearing. Black stopped to switch on and check his GPS. It confirmed that they had covered a little over four miles and had remained on course.

  ‘Pitch up for the night?’ Riley said.

  ‘As good a place as any.’ Black peered into the gathering shadows. It was impossible not to imagine unseen figures hiding in the gloom.

  Fallon arrived alongside him and shrugged off his pack. ‘I don’t know about you boys, I could eat my own mother.’

  In the few remaining minutes of daylight they suspended their hammocks and fly sheets from trees on three sides of the clearing and filled their canteens – all fitted with integral filters – from the stream. They quenched their thirst, then, using a simple hexamine-tablet stove, brewed the best coffee Black had tasted since the last time he had spent a night in the open. Dinner was foil-packed, self-heating portions of beef and vegetable stew with mashed potatoes. Despite the state-of-the-art packaging, the contents were the same old army rations Black remembered – all tasting identical, regardless of the contents. They followed them with handfuls of small tart fruits called camu camu, which Fallon had spotted growing on a shrub beside the stream.

  By eight p.m. they had changed into their dry sets of clothes and were lying in their hammocks listening to the pulsing throb of the jungle night. Black’s limbs were heavy and aching and his mind flooded with images from their long and eventful day.

  ‘Good to be back, boss?’ Riley said.

  ‘Feels like I never left.’

  ‘Finny would’ve loved this,’ Riley said. ‘Never known a bloke so keen to get stuck in.’

  ‘One of a kind.’

  ‘That’s what he said about you,’ Fallon said in a voice halfway to sleep.

  ‘Don’t tell me anything more.’

  Riley didn’t give him any choice: ‘He said God made man and the Devil made Black.’

  Black said nothing.

  ‘I think it was a compliment, boss.’

  ‘From Finn? Never.’

  Black woke from a deep sleep in the darkness. He pressed the button that illuminated the face of his watch. Five thirty a.m. Thirty minutes before sunrise. He swung silently out of his hammock, found his upturned boots, carefully shook them out to dislodge any unwanted intruders, and pulled them on.

  With his eyes adjusting to the tiny amount of ambient light he walked a few yards away from camp to relieve himself against a tree. Unable to see more than a few feet, he was alive to every sound and smell. The surrounding vegetation rustled and cracked with the movements of insects. His nostrils flooded with the scent of decomposing leaves which formed a carpet on the forest floor. He finished and zipped up, then on turning back to camp, felt a sensation through the soles of his feet. The faintest of vibrations that gradually intensified until, over the course of a full minute it became an audible thump-thump. At first he mistook it for something or someone running towards them, but then another faster sound in a higher register accompanied it and became the familiar rapid chop-chop-chop of a large heli moving steadily in their direction. It grew louder, coming from the east, then slowly tracked away west in the direction of Platanal, no doubt following the line of the road.

  Black walked back into camp to find the others on their feet.

  ‘Sabre?’ Riley said.

  ‘Can’t see who else it could be.’

  ‘I’m going to enjoy blowing that little baby up,’ Fallon said.

  In the semi-darkness Black saw him smile broadly for the first time since they had boarded the plane, invigorated by their first sniff of the enemy.

  They washed in the stream, breakfasted on porridge and struck camp by six thirty. Half an hour later the heli passed by again, making its return journey. This time it seemed to come closer. Black felt the beat of its rotors in his chest. He pictured the crew inside. Relaxed and chatting. Another well-paid day in the jungle.

  And with no idea what was coming to them.

  They marched silently throughout the morning with renewed purpose, each taking turns in the lead. They moved neither quickly nor slo
wly but at an even pace agreed unconsciously between them. When not at the front, Black stroked a whetstone along the length of his machete – one stroke for every two footsteps – the rhythm of the motion rendering him into a semi trance. At midday they paused briefly to eat – fallen cacao fruit and cereal and protein bars that tasted foul but refuelled their tiring muscles. Then they pressed on, matching their previous speed of a steady two and a half miles per hour.

  As the afternoon wore on, fatigue set in. Rubbing straps and aching feet conspired to deny Black the comfortable, somnambulant state in which he had spent the first part of the day. The deeper he dug into his physical reserves, the more his mind roved restlessly. Images of Finn on the mortuary slab, his empty boots among his children’s shoes, the smiling picture on the kitchen wall and Kathleen’s pale and tragic face. Domestic, wrenching, weakening thoughts that began to merge with dim ghosts of memories from distant childhood. Stripped of all distractions, Black was plunged into the dark pool of his subconscious mind, the silt at its very bottom stirring up so thickly he could taste it. He tried in vain to retreat from it, to contain his thoughts to the business of putting one foot in front of another, but the inner world became as vivid as the outer. Was he trying to tell himself something? Was he afraid? Unsure of his abilities? Or was he searching for a motive powerful enough to steel his resolve?

  The power of this final thought sent a chill sensation the length of his spine. With it came the realization that in all his years of soldiering he had scarcely thought of motive, only of objective. Identify, isolate and destroy. Nothing more was needed. He had operated at the level of instinct and reflex, no more self-questioning than a snake poised for the kill. Self-consciousness and doubt were the enemies of action, more dangerous than any bullet.

  He was suddenly envious of his two younger colleagues, confident and comfortable in their own skins. This was just another job to them. The kind of excitement they couldn’t live without. An adventure to recount to their mates in Credenhill. That had been him and Finn once. Forces of nature. No more complicated than a pair of wolves. Kill, eat and howl at the moon.