by Matthew Hall
‘I’m sorry. This is unusual,’ the woman said. ‘We don’t have many visitors.’
‘I understand. My name’s Leo. Leo Black.’
She swept him cautiously with her eyes. ‘Isabel. My colleague is María Luisa.’
‘Is this an orphanage?’
‘Not all of them are orphans, but most.’
‘May I ask what happened?’
‘Their parents were miners. Illegal miners. They were here for years, since the 1990s. Our mission tended to them. Just north of here there’s a trail that leads down to the river that will take you across the border to Brazil. That’s where we’re from, my order – Boa Vista.’
‘The families were cleared out?’
Isabel nodded. ‘Two years ago there was a government ultimatum. The mineral rights were sold to a private company. The miners who refused to go were hunted down and killed. Men and women. The lucky ones were taken to work elsewhere. The children were left to fend for themselves. In a bankrupt country there is nowhere for them to go. Brazil doesn’t want them either. So –’ she shrugged – ‘that is why we’re here.’
‘Was it Sabre who killed them?’
She hesitated before giving a guarded nod. He admired her courage, coming out unarmed to meet a strange man who had emerged from the forest.
‘I think my friend, Mr Finn, had been working for Sabre. I believe he may have disliked what he saw there.’
His words seemed to register. She looked at him squarely as if deciding to trust him.
‘Would you like some coffee?’
‘Yes, please.’
She led him to the open-sided hut, gesturing to María Luisa to leave the visitor to her. María Luisa smiled uncertainly at Black, then turned back to the sullen teenager she had been tending to.
They entered the shade of the hut. Black sat on one of the wooden stools arranged around a rough-hewn table while Isabel poured coffee from a pot on the stove. She set down two tin mugs and took a seat opposite. Black thanked her, noticing her tough, practical hands as they lifted their cups to their lips.
‘So, tell me – what do you want to know?’ Isabel said.
‘What were the children’s parents mining?’
‘Coltan. Also gold. Believe me, none of them got rich.’
‘And the company that bought the rights, is that Sabre?’
‘Yes. They have a mine twenty kilometres from here.’ She nodded towards the east. ‘Some of these children have parents who are employed there.’
‘Does the company give you money?’
‘No. But they leave us alone.’
She held him in a level gaze which was neither friendly nor hostile but which asked him to get to the point.
‘My friend, Mr Finn, is dead,’ Black said. He noticed a flicker of emotion register on Isabel’s face. ‘He was killed last month – in Paris, France, as a matter of fact. He was working on something unconnected but I fear his death had something to do with his time with Sabre. You said he was here –’
Isabel took another sip of coffee, her eyes softening a little. ‘Almost one year ago, he arrived here one morning. He was sick with fever, delirious. He had nothing, no possessions, just the clothes he was wearing. We thought he might die … he didn’t. After a week or so he started to recover. He stayed for another week doing some repairs on the mission house. Then we told him how he could travel over the border into Brazil. He was a good man …’ Her voice carried a hint of sadness. She glanced over to María Luisa, who was still talking gently to the boy. ‘That’s Rafael. He doesn’t speak. He’s fifteen years old. He’s been with us for two years. He sits all day by himself. Your friend, Mr Finn, he got Rafael to help with his work. Taught him how to use a saw and a hammer. He was good to him.’
‘He had children of his own. Three.’
‘Yes, he told us.’
‘Did he tell you anything else – what he’d seen at the mine, perhaps?’
‘Only that he didn’t like the way it was run. He had a disagreement with the people there and decided to leave, even though he was sick. He thought we should leave here, too. He was worried we might be in danger.’
‘In danger of what?’
‘These children are all witnesses. One day they might give their testimony.’
‘He had a point. What’s stopping you?’
‘Their lives have been disturbed enough. If we have to leave, we will know.’
‘God will tell you?’
Isabel gave a hint of a smile. ‘I thank you for your concern, Mr Black. You don’t have to worry about us. We will be looked after.’
Black looked into her dark, determined eyes and hoped that she was right. Eyes that Finn must also have gazed into as she told him the exact same thing. We will be looked after. What would Finn have done? The man he knew would not simply have left them to their fate without any prospect of help.
The sound of a child’s cry carried over the sound of the football game. They looked over to see María Luisa picking a sobbing boy off the ground. He was bleeding from a cut on his knee.
‘I should let you get back to them,’ Black said. He finished his coffee and stood up from the table. ‘Goodbye. And good luck.’
He waited for a moment in order to give her the opportunity to ask him what exactly he was doing here at her mission in the middle of the rainforest. She was wise enough not to take it.
‘Goodbye, Mr Black,’ Isabel said. ‘I am sorry to hear about Mr Finn. We liked him very much.’
She gathered up the empty cups then went to help María Luisa with the crying child.
Black headed back the way he had come.
The silent boy, Rafael, rose up from his haunches and watched him until he disappeared from view.
51
Riley and Fallon were waiting impatiently, Bergens on, ready to march out.
‘Finn was here. Almost a year ago exactly. He deserted. Arrived sick. They nursed him. There’s a trail around the far side that leads to the Brazilian border. I think we may have found our way out.’
‘They’re sure it was him?’ Riley said.
‘They knew his name.’
‘And Fireballs didn’t know he’d been here?’
‘Not that he told me.’
‘Does he make a habit of withholding information?’
The question came from Fallon.
Black thought carefully before answering. ‘Not usually without good reason.’
Riley and Fallon exchanged a glance.
‘What’s the reason?’ Riley said.
‘Best guess – Finn took dirty money working for Sabre. Crossed one of my red lines.’
‘And you wouldn’t have come if you’d known?’
‘It’s not a question worth asking. We’re here.’
‘What did you tell the woman?’ Fallon said.
‘That I was a friend of Finn’s trying to find out what happened to him.’
‘Do you trust her?’
‘They’re two nuns looking after the orphaned kids of miners murdered by Sabre thugs – no doubt the kind Finn was employed to train.’ He pulled on his Bergen. ‘Are we ready?’
‘We need to be clear what the objective is, boss,’ Riley said. ‘Is this purely a sabotage and rescue or are you and Towers looking to settle a score?’
‘I had no idea Finn had been here. Yes, the fact that he was gives me a keener edge but the objective remains the same.’
His answer was met with silence.
‘Is there a problem?’
‘The way you dealt with those two last night,’ Fallon said. ‘The three of us could have done it with bayonets. Clean. No risk.’
‘What was the risk? You were ten feet away ready to shoot.’
Neither answered.
‘My objective was to neutralize them as silently as possible. That’s what I did.’
Still no response.
Black looked from one to the other, straining to keep his rising anger in check. ‘Would one of you be ki
nd enough to tell me what’s going on?’
‘There was no need for it,’ Fallon said, prompting a glance from Riley. ‘And no need to risk talking to those women.’
His patience snapped. ‘If either of you wants out, you know the way.’ He pointed to the far side of the clearing. ‘You have my permission to leave.’
He turned and headed back down the slope, following the footprints they had made on their way up. He continued on alone, picked up the first flash, then made his way to the second. He was nearly at the third when he heard footsteps jogging behind him. He glanced round to see Riley.
‘Boss.’
They walked on in silence. They had covered more than a mile and were back on their easterly bearing when Fallon caught up with them. An exchange of nods was enough to bury the hatchet. It was twelve miles to the Sabre compound and they had four hours of daylight in which to get there. Black took the lead and upped the pace.
They marched for two solid hours through dense, unyielding understorey, before the ground started to rise up a gentle gradient that led them to higher, rockier terrain where the trees were sparser and light shot down through the canopy in golden shafts.
It was like an omen.
But whether it was one of life or death, Black had no idea.
The low rumble of diesel engines, at first almost indistinguishable from the background hubbub of the jungle, was the first indication that they were drawing close. It rose steadily in volume as they drew nearer, reverberating through the trees until they could hear the sounds of individual engines shifting gears. And beneath them, like a steady bass rhythm, the chug of an industrial generator.
The light was fading. Black brought them to a halt and proposed they camp, eat and sleep before commencing their recce at three a.m. They could use tomorrow’s daylight hours to plan their attack and rest before making their move the following night. Tired at the end of their relentless march, Riley and Fallon agreed without objection.
Black estimated that they were within 400 yards of the perimeter fence. The satellite images had shown that a hill rose steeply from this northern end of the compound where the mine workings were sited. He led off in that direction. Several minutes later they hit the base of a steep slope and tacked upwards, their boots slipping on damp rocks that were criss-crossed by knuckles of roots. It was as inaccessible and inhospitable as Black had hoped. No regular patrol would bother coming this way.
They climbed for several hundred feet and, as darkness enveloped them, found a thicket of bamboo flourishing along the line of a small spring that trickled out from the rocks above them. Wearing their night-vision goggles, they cut down stems as thick as their arms until they had carved out three individual spaces in which to hang their hammocks. Dinner was more self-heating rations, tepid and bland, but after a day’s march as good as a feast …
Black took first turn on watch. The air was unnaturally still with no breath of breeze and in the suffocating heat the animals were restless. Monkeys quarrelled high in the branches overhead and mice and rats, drawn towards their camp by the lingering smell of food, skittered over the rocks. Peering into the night through the green-tinged lens of his goggles, Black watched a tree snake drop noiselessly from a thick, hanging drape of creeper to the ground. Sensing his presence, it lay still, then cautiously craned its head to peer at him through curious slits of eyes. Not liking what it saw, it raised its body back towards the foliage from which it had descended, and, as if drawn by an invisible cord, slowly wound its way back upwards to its nest.
They moved out at three a.m. with rifles cocked, full canteens and webbing pouches crammed with GPS units, ammunition and grenades.
The distance they had to cover before reaching the compound was even shorter than Black had estimated. After approximately one third of a mile they arrived at its edge. The forest was cut back to a distance of ten yards from a sturdy fence, which stood twelve feet high and was topped with coiled razor wire. From cover Black scanned the fence from left to right. Tall metal poles were spaced at twenty-yard intervals, each of them fitted with what appeared to be motion-activated cameras. It was primitive security of the sort that wouldn’t pass muster at a facility in the US or Europe, but was sufficient to deter the unlikely incursion of any chancers or bandits in this out-of-the-way corner of the Amazon.
From their elevated position at the compound’s north-west tip they had an uninterrupted view through the trees over its full length. It was almost exactly as they had seen it from satellite photographs but with the addition of several new prefabricated buildings, and with a bigger chunk quarried out of the hill to their left. It was an impressive sight. An opencast mine with a military encampment attached. Two outsize excavators, each with shark-toothed buckets, stood close to the exposed hillside. Behind them were a number of JCB earth movers which transferred the spoil torn from the earth on to a conveyor. This led to a separation plant: a building in which grading machinery sorted the valuable coltan ore from the rest. The waste emerged on a further conveyor angled upwards at forty-five degrees, which deposited it in a large mound. Two outsize bulldozers spread this out across a large flat area that over months and years would rise up into a vast spoil heap.
The mine workings took up two-thirds of the entire site. The remaining third, separated by a large drainage ditch and a further secure fence, housed Sabre’s less conventional venture. Four long, single-storey buildings were arranged in rows at right angles to a roadway, which led from a gate at the compound’s entrance at its south-eastern corner. This was guarded by a sentry post. The furthest building was distinguished from the others by an array of satellite dishes attached to its roof. A fifth building, which was double the width of the others, stood between the other four and what looked to be a parade square and training area, complete with a military assault course.
A sixth substantial structure, and the one of most interest to Black, stood by itself on the far side of the square. Unlike the others, which were prefabricated metal structures, it was built from concrete breeze blocks and had metal grilles bolted across the windows. It was approximately 150 feet long and 25 wide and was the only building on site with air-conditioning units attached at regular intervals to the outer walls. From this Black concluded that it must be where the four scientists were being held.
Several much smaller buildings were arranged in the south-west corner of the compound, close to a grassed area on which a single heli – the same Super Puma they had identified from the images at Credenhill – was parked. Black guessed that these sheds housed the compound’s vital plant – the generator and water and sewage pumps. Next to these was an area protected by an earth bund, which, it was safe to assume, had been built around large tanks storing aviation fuel and far larger supplies of diesel oil to power the generator and mining machinery. Black counted six identical Toyota pick-up trucks parked close to the helipad, two of them with heavy machine guns mounted on their beds. Water was stored in a large cylindrical tank supported on steel legs that held it fifteen feet from the ground to generate a head of pressure. The whole inhabited area was dimly lit and, viewed without goggles, glowed a flickering orange.
‘Not much sign of life,’ Fallon whispered.
‘There’s a couple of guards – walking this way from behind that building,’ Riley said.
Black adjusted the focus on his goggles and zoomed in. A pair of sentries, dressed in identical uniform to those worn by the two men they had encountered thirty hours before, had emerged from behind the breeze-block building, rifles slung over their shoulders. They continued to circle it and even at this distance gave the impression of being tired and listless, as if the last thing they were expecting was any trouble.
‘Where’s the water coming from?’ Black said. ‘See any pipes?’
‘There’s one coming from that building at the mine,’ Riley said.
Black spotted it. A large pipe, perhaps two, emerged from the building, travelled across the ground as far as the drainage ditch,
then turned ninety degrees to follow it to the compound’s far edge, where the ground fell away into a shallow valley. The compound, it seemed, sat on a large flat shelf, slightly raised above the floor of the valley, along which, he suspected, ran one of the many thousands of tributaries of the Orinoco.
‘That’ll be the barracks,’ Fallon said. He indicated the double-width building. ‘You could house two hundred men in there. You really think we can take all of this down with three of us?’
‘Sometimes being outnumbered is an advantage,’ Black said.
Fallon gave a dismissive grunt.
‘A rat runs through a crowded room and then down an empty alleyway. Where is he most in danger?’ He waited for Riley and Fallon to give it some thought. ‘Think like a rat. The lowest, filthiest kind. OK, I want to check out their plumbing before first light.’
Staying under the cover of the trees they circled the north end of the compound, navigating the steep side of the unexcavated hillside before descending its eastern side and continuing along its flank until they were level with the drainage ditch. Here a muddy swathe, some 30 yards wide, was cut through the forest and sloped steeply downwards for around 200 yards, where, as Black had suspected, it met a small river. Two plastic pipes, one twice the bore of the other, ran above ground from the compound down towards the water. It was reasonable to suppose that the narrower of the two was the supply and the other discharge. He motioned the others to follow.
They picked their way down the slope, treading silently, aware that a single slip or a tumbling stone might be sufficient to give them away. Eventually they arrived at the bottom, close to the banks of the river. The sound of running water was a relief from the monotonous hum of the jungle. Creeping tentatively through dense, fleshy clumps of vegetation, they spotted a light off to their left. Crouching low, Black made his way to the water’s edge and saw that it was coming from a pump house, approximately twenty yards up ahead, sited on their side of the river. A dam ten feet high, constructed from wire gabion baskets filled with rocks, created a pool behind it, from which the compound’s water was being extracted.