Circle of Death - Strike Back Series 05 (2020)

by Ryan, Chris

  Bald looked on as Black Beard hefted up the coke-filled tyre and hauled it over to the pickup truck. Orange Shorts grabbed a couple of toothpaste-sized tubes from a bucket beside the hut. He took a knee beside the tyre and started applying a translucent gel, smearing it across the treads.

  ‘What’s that stuff for?’ Bald wondered aloud.

  ‘Pain relief gel,’ Miguel said. ‘Got all kinds of stuff in it. Eucalyptus. Menthol.’ He took a hit on his cigarette, exhaled. ‘Fucks with the sniffer dogs, you know? They smell that shit, they back off. Can’t stand it.’

  ‘Crafty,’ Bald said approvingly.

  Porter gave him a reproachful look. ‘I can’t believe you’re okay with this.’

  ‘Even if you don’t approve of their trade, you’ve got to respect the tactics. This is a slick operation.’

  Miguel dashed his cigarette and moved off to inspect the gel-smeared tyre, giving it a kick to make sure the coke was secured inside. Then Orange Shorts slid it back under the truck and Crucifix spun the jack handle, hoisting the tyre back into place. Bald gave it a longing look as it disappeared from sight. ‘We’re in the wrong profession, mate. Should be doing this.’

  ‘You’re not serious.’

  ‘Why not? Less risky than what we’re doing. This lot must be raking it in.’

  ‘Not just them,’ Vargas said. ‘Others get rich too.’

  ‘How’s that?’ asked Bald.

  Vargas pointed with his eyes at the truck. ‘All of this stuff goes to the coast. Then across the sea. Some shipments get lost.’ He flashed his rotten teeth. ‘Then people hunt for the white lobster.’

  ‘What the fuck is that?’

  ‘The currents. They bring the cocaine to the beach. At a place called Suarez. People go out on fast boats and fish for the packets. Sell them back to the cartels.’ He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together in a universal gesture. ‘Make big money.’

  ‘Lucky bastards,’ Bald muttered.

  Hulk came back over, putting his phone away. Porter nodded at the ex-SEAL. ‘Anything to report?’

  ‘No answer. I sent him a message. Told him we’re across.’

  Once the tyre had been secured underneath the truck, Crucifix grabbed a screwdriver and set of stick-on licence plates from the back seat. He dropped to a knee beside the front licence plate. Unscrewed it and replaced it with a clean stick-on plate secured with double-sided tape. Did the same for the back plate and dumped the old ones in the rear seat of the pickup. Then Miguel pumped Vargas’s hand and gave him a wedge of dollar bills. Around the same size as the one Reyes had given to the Canales family, back at the ranch.

  A few moments later, Dudley made his way back over from the Land Cruiser. Nodded at Hulk.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Looks good,’ Dudley said. ‘Nothing wrong with her, far as I can tell. She’ll get us there.’

  Miguel beamed. ‘See, bro. Told you.’ He stepped back and spread his hands. ‘Now, where’s my money?’

  Hulk’s eyebrows climbed up his face in surprise. ‘What money? You’ve been paid already. Our people have taken care of that.’

  ‘Price has doubled.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘Think we’re idiots?’ Miguel waved an arm at the foreigners. ‘You guys come over here, packing enough guns to start a fucking war. You’re up to some shit.’

  ‘Our business doesn’t concern you.’

  ‘Wrong, bro. Whatever you’re doing, it means more risk for me and my people. We do business with you, maybe it brings some heat our way. You want the wheels, you need to pay extra.’

  ‘How much?’ asked Dudley.

  Miguel narrowed his eyes in calculation. ‘Twenty thousand.’

  ‘We can’t do it,’ Hulk said. ‘We don’t have that kind of money on us.’

  ‘Then we have a problem.’

  Bald watched the Venezuelan closely. Behind him, four metres away, Crucifix leaned against the side of the truck with his arms folded across his chest. The guy also had a pistol stuffed in the waistband of his jeans, Bald saw. Vargas was standing beside Porter and Bald and Hulk in a line in front of Miguel, with Orange Shorts and Black Beard further to the right, near the smaller hut. The woman and kids were nowhere to be seen. Sheltering inside the main shack, he guessed.

  Hulk said, ‘You need to speak to the guerrillas. They’ll pass a message to our people. They’ll pay up.’

  ‘No good,’ Miguel said. ‘You give me the money now. Or maybe I make a call to my friends in the police. Tell them about the four armed gringos who just came across the river.’

  No one moved.

  ‘You deaf, bro? Pay the fuck up.’

  Then Bald raised his M4 and shot Miguel in the face.

  The Venezuelan didn’t see the round coming. His attention wasn’t focused on Bald. His ferret-like eyes were fixed on Hulk, waiting for a payday that would never come.

  The round spat out of the snout of the suppressed rifle and slammed into Miguel’s head at close range. The shockwave liquefied his brain, spewing melted grey matter out of the back of his skull in a bright-red mush. His head snapped back and then his arms flopped and he tumbled heavily to the ground a few metres away from Hulk. As if someone had just told him he’d win a million bucks if he played dead.

  In the periphery of his vision, Bald saw a sudden flicker of movement six metres away. He glanced over at the pickup truck and saw Crucifix reaching for his pistol.

  Bald arced his weapon across in a flash and emptied three rounds in a quick burst at the target. Two bullets struck Crucifix in the upper chest, punching a couple of holes in his lungs. The third round chinned him as he fell away, the lower half of his face exploding in a spray of blood and bone fragments. He nose-dived to the ground and face-planted next to the truck. His chunky gold crucifix gleamed amid the puddles of blood.

  A cold silence lingered over the dirt path for a half-beat. Then Bald heard the hysterical wails of the children inside the main shack, accompanied by the high-pitched shrieks of their mother. Orange Shorts and Black Beard had hit the dirt, lying face down on the ground next to the upturned crates. Freddy Vargas just stood there, rooted to the spot with fear and horror.

  Porter, Hulk and Dudley had raised their weapons as soon as the first round had been fired. An instinctive reaction, drilled into them over decades of combat. Weapons trained on the two dead bodies, fingers lightly resting on the triggers. Ready to neutralise any threat.

  Bald lowered his M4. So did Hulk and Dudley.

  Porter dropped his gun arm to his side.

  He spun round towards Bald. ‘Jesus Christ. The fuck did you do that for?’

  Bald pointed his gun barrel at Miguel’s lifeless corpse. ‘He was a problem. I decided to take care of it.’

  ‘You didn’t have to kill him, for fuck’s sake,’ Porter said as he fought to control his temper. ‘We could have sorted this out with the Company.’

  Bald shook his head forcefully. ‘This guy would have shopped us either way. Doubled his money. That’s what I would have done. An hour from now, we’d have every police officer and soldier in the country looking for four white guys in a Toyota Land Cruiser.’

  ‘You killed a fucking cartel lieutenant. We just made an enemy of the cartel. They’ll be out for revenge.’

  ‘Couldn’t risk him walking away. Or would you prefer to spend the rest of your days rotting in a Venezuelan jail?’

  ‘Your buddy’s right,’ Hulk added. He nodded in admiration at Bald. ‘That’s some ruthless shit you just did. Stone cold.’

  ‘Had to be done.’

  Hulk dropped down beside Miguel’s body. Rifled through his pockets and took out the keys for the pickup truck. Tossed them to Vargas and said, ‘You want to get rich?’

  Vargas stood in numbed silence. He looked from the keys to Miguel to Hulk and back again. His eyes were so wide they looked like they might fall out of their sockets.

  ‘Yes,’ he said after a pause.

  ‘Then listen care
fully. Get rid of the bodies. Weigh them down with rocks and dump them in the river. A few miles downstream from here. Lose the truck, too. Anyone asks, the guys drove off and you never saw them again. Keep the coke, sit on it for a month and then sell it. You’ll never have to work on a boat again. Think you can manage that?’

  ‘Yes,’ Vargas replied queasily.

  ‘You didn’t see us, right? You don’t know us. Otherwise we have a problem.’

  Vargas evidently saw the remorseless look in Hulk’s eyes and held up his hands, shaking his head frantically. ‘No problem, mister. I never see you in my life.’

  Hulk pointed the tip of his rifle at the shack. ‘You got food in there? Water?’

  ‘Some, yes.’

  Hulk spun round and nodded at Dudley. ‘Grab whatever supplies these people have got. Make it quick. We’re leaving.’

  Dudley hurried over to the hut and raided their supplies. At the same time Bald, Porter and Hulk fetched their rucksacks and carried them over to the Land Cruiser, the children whimpering inside the hut as their mother desperately tried to calm them down. Hulk popped open the boot and the three operators dumped their bags inside.

  Five twenty-litre jerry cans were stowed in the boot. A hundred extra litres of fuel, Bald calculated. Equivalent to twenty-two gallons, give or take a few drops. Plus the full tank. Enough fuel to cover the five-hundred-mile journey to the stronghold, and then the escape to the extraction point further to the east. All for a knockdown price, heavily subsidised by the state.

  A few moments later, Dudley came jogging over with a plastic bag and two litre-containers of drinking water. ‘Find anything?’ Hulk asked, nodding at the bag.

  ‘Plantains, corn cakes. Bread. Some fruit. Not much else.’

  ‘It’ll do. Dump it in the boot. Let’s get the fuck out of here.’

  Hulk shoved his rucksack next to the water bottles and jerry cans. Hooked round to the front passenger side door and climbed inside. Dudley was already on the other side of the wagon, taking the wheel and cranking the engine. Porter stowed his gear in the back and slammed the boot shut. Thirty seconds later they were pulling away from the Vargas property.

  Arrowing down the dirt track.

  Heading for the stronghold.

  TWENTY-THREE

  They left at exactly 11.14. Dudley took the wheel for the first leg of the journey. They agreed to drive in three-hour shifts. Make sure they were all fully rested and awake by the time they reached the road junction on the approach to the stronghold. None of them wanted to be going into the mission running on empty. They had a long twenty-four hours ahead of them. The drive to the president’s estate, the assault and rescue. Then the dash across country to the extraction point once they had rescued Fuller. Hulk rode shotgun, with Porter and Bald in the back seats, their M4s flat across their laps. The two guys in the front had their rifles stored in the footwells. Barrels pointing down for easy access. If they ran into any trouble, they could raise their weapons in an instant and start putting down rounds.

  The Land Cruiser was in good condition, despite its age. The previous owner had treated it well. A modern multimedia display had been retrofitted to the dash, with a bunch of brightly coloured icons and a satnav feature. Dudley punched in the address for Los Altos and followed the directions on the satnav as they roughly followed the course of the Arauca River, running west to east along the Venezuelan border. After twenty miles the road forked.

  The mission can go this way, or that way, thought Bald. Left or right. Win or lose. Live or die.

  They continued east on the metalled road. Coasting along the worn blacktop at sixty miles per hour, staying well below the national speed limit. They kept an eye open for police but getting pulled over was the least of their worries. Taylor had briefed them that law enforcement was virtually non-existent in the borderlands. Gangs and cartels competed for control of the terrain, he had told them, terrorising the locals and building airstrips to ship drugs north to Miami. The police seldom ventured outside of the towns.

  The route took them through the flattest landscape Bald had ever seen. Like gazing out across a giant billiard table. He saw endless stretches of farmland, fields of grazing cattle. Plains criss-crossed with estuaries and small brick-built farms, set under a cloudless blue dome. Hard to imagine they were in a country on the brink of collapse. By mid-morning the temperature had climbed into the low thirties and Hulk had cranked the air con up to full blast. Bald was just grateful Taylor wasn’t with them in the wagon. The guy would be sweating his own body weight by now.

  After around an hour on the road, at twelve-thirty, Hulk’s phone buzzed with a message. He read it, hit Delete and put his handset away again.

  ‘Message from Taylor. The team handling the distraction are running final tests. They’re still confident that they’ll trigger it before first light, but it might take longer than they anticipated.’

  ‘How much longer?’

  ‘He doesn’t know. Just says to check in with him once we’re at the LUP and await further instructions.’

  Porter said, ‘Any word on whether Vasquez is going to be there?’

  Hulk typed a message to Taylor. Got a reply back two minutes later. ‘Still no confirmation on that. But Colonel Gallardo’s contact doesn’t think the president has arrived yet.’

  ‘Sounds about right,’ Bald said. ‘The hostage only got there yesterday afternoon. He’s not going to rush over, is he? He’s got to make arrangements first. Get his security sorted, all of that.’

  They drove on. The road contoured around the outskirts of several small towns. Quaint-looking places with pastel-coloured buildings and whitewashed church steeples. Massive billboards overlooked the streets, the president grinning down at his people with his trademark salt-and-pepper beard and cowboy hat. In the streets below, Bald glimpsed derelict storefronts and abandoned factories and closed-down petrol stations. A whole country gone to seed. Socialism at its finest. Amid the decay he spotted a few well-kept baseball pitches and neatly trimmed gardens. Futile attempts to maintain a sense of order in a world of total economic chaos.

  They switched drivers at two o’clock, and then again at five. Hulk, then Porter. Each time they went through the same routine, pulling over at a lay-by a few miles beyond the limits of the nearest town. A minute or two to stretch their legs, take a pull from their bottles of water and graze on the corn cakes, fruit and bread while they kept watch on the horizon. Then they were back on the road.

  At six o’clock the road snaked around the fringes of a large town built on the southern side of a slow-moving river. Bald saw the same desperate faces as in the rural towns and villages. The same billboards. The same poverty, but on a bigger scale. They crossed the bridge over the river and carried on north along the main road. Two hundred miles to go, thought Bald. Another four hours until we get to the stronghold.

  Porter kept the Land Cruiser going along at a steady clip. Hulk gazed out of the window as they coasted past another ruined town and grunted. ‘Unbelievable, when you think about it.’

  Bald said, ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Place is sitting on the world’s biggest oil reserves, and this is how people live. Like dumb animals.’

  ‘Corruption,’ said Bald. ‘Way of life over here. Everyone’s in it for themselves. Government included.’

  ‘Doesn’t have to be that way.’

  Bald laughed. ‘These people have been shat on for two hundred years, mate. They’ll be shat on for another two hundred. Only difference is who does the shitting, and how much.’

  ‘You don’t believe in making the world a better place?’

  ‘I believe in making my bank account a better place. That’s my religion. Everyone else can go fuck themselves.’

  Hulk glanced at him in the rear-view mirror. ‘You’re a mean son of a bitch, John.’

  ‘Nah. I’m just a realist.’

  ‘And a good soldier. I mean it. Always had respect for you boys in the SAS. Never had the chance
to work up close and personal, though. Not until you showed up. Tell you the truth, it’s been a privilege working with you. True fucking warrior. Your buddy too.’

  ‘This is what we do, mate. Even Porter’s not a bad operator, when he can shoot straight.’

  ‘Hey, I’m just glad we’re on the same side. Wouldn’t want to be going into battle with anyone else, brother. The way you dealt with that guy back there, asking us for money? Real cold-blooded.’

  ‘That’s how we do it in the Regiment.’

  Hulk nodded and went back to staring out of the window. Bald watched him for a moment, something picking at the back of his mind. He couldn’t be sure, but there was something forced about Hulk’s compliments. As if the guy had been repeating lines he’d rehearsed in his head.

  At seven o’clock dusk began to descend across the plains, shrouding the landscape in grainy darkness. An hour later, they pulled over again. Hulk topped up the tank with two of the jerry cans from the boot, and then Bald took the wheel.

  The last leg of their journey.

  Two hours to their destination.

  A short while later, they left the plains behind them as the road sliced through a series of valleys with mountains on either side. At nine thirty they hit a small city about two miles square, built across the valley floor. There were signs everywhere of the recent protests against President Vasquez. Bald saw shattered glass shopfronts and burnt-out cars and debris all over the place. Gangs sat on their motorbikes at the sides of the road, chatting and staring at passing traffic. Ariana Grande tracks pumped out of a stereo somewhere. For a moment Bald worried that the gang might take an interest in them, but their old Land Cruiser was inconspicuous and they rolled on past the bikers without trouble.

  They steered north out of the city, and Bald knew from the maps they had studied that they were getting very close now. The satnav estimated sixty minutes until they reached their destination.