by Ryan, Chris
Bald said, ‘What’s the situation?’
‘Anthony, the local resident, is calling Vauxhall now. They have my number. Madeleine is going to call back on a secure line.’
‘Whatever plan they’re gonna cook up,’ Bald growled, ‘it had better be fucking good.’
‘They’ll get us out of here.’
Fourteen minutes later, her phone buzzed again. Bald saw the blue-green glow of the display light up with an incoming call. He thought: five o’clock in the morning in Venezuela. Ten o’clock in the morning in London. Strickland would be at her desk, hacking through her in-tray.
Fuller went to swipe-answer.
Bald said, ‘Put her on loudspeaker.’
Fuller looked at him.
‘Strickland knows me,’ he added. ‘She’ll want me to listen in. I’m going to need to know the details of the exfiltration plan.’
She paused, then swiped and tapped at the touchscreen again. A moment later, Bald heard a familiar Glaswegian-accented voice on the other end of the line.
Strickland said, ‘Caroline? Are you there?’
‘Here,’ Fuller said. ‘I’m okay.’
A light sigh of relief sibilated down the line. ‘Where are you?’
‘Fifteen miles from the stronghold,’ Bald cut in. ‘Heading north towards the coast.’
There was another long pause. ‘John? Is that you?’
‘Aye.’
‘What the hell is going on?’
‘The op turned into a clusterfuck,’ Bald said. ‘Porter’s dead. Vasquez too. The Americans almost slotted us as well. They fucking set us up.’
He drove on while Fuller briefed Strickland on the situation. She gave a concise summary of events. Everything from the time of her capture by the Venezuelans to the escape from the mansion. Strickland said very little. She listened in silence as Fuller told her about the CIA-led plot to assassinate Vasquez. The cyber-attacks. Cantwell’s involvement. Hulk putting a hole in Porter’s head. Their attempt to frame Bald and Porter for Vasquez’s death. Bald interrupted occasionally, adding details here and there.
‘Where are the Americans now?’ she asked.
‘We left them at the stronghold,’ Bald said. ‘They’ll be on the road. If they’ve got any smarts about them, they’ll be heading back down to the Colombian border. Getting the fuck out of Dodge.’
‘And President Vasquez?’
‘Dead, as far as we know,’ Fuller said.
‘Jesus,’ she muttered. ‘This is a disaster.’
‘Did you know about any of this?’ Bald demanded.
‘Of course not. Why would you think that, for God’s sake?’
‘Wouldn’t be the first lie you told us. You fed us that bag of bollocks about Fuller. Told us that she had nothing to do with your people.’
‘That was necessary to keep her cover story intact. We didn’t want to share that information with the Americans in case it leaked. We were trying to protect her. Nothing more.’
Bald grunted. ‘It’s getting fucking hard to know who to trust these days.’
‘We’re on the same side. We didn’t have anything to do with the Vasquez hit. You have my word, John. From one Scot to another.’
‘I’m not interested in your bullshit. Just get us the fuck out of here. We need an emergency extraction, right bloody now.’
Strickland said, ‘We’re working on it as we speak. But it’s going to take some time to arrange a rescue team. This is a complicated operation, as you might imagine.’
‘I don’t give a monkey’s,’ Bald snapped. ‘Tell your people to hurry up and pull their fingers out, before we have the whole fucking country searching for us.’
‘We understand the urgency. We’ve got our best people on the case. As soon as our assets are ready to move in, we’ll let you know. In the meantime, head for the emergency rendezvous location. I’ll send you the coordinates once this call is over. Once you get there, you’ll await the rescue team and prepare for immediate extraction.’
‘What’s the RV?’
‘An old airstrip, to the east of your position. One of the air bridges used by the cartels to export cocaine to Europe. The traffickers abandoned it a while ago but the strip is still intact. You’ll make your way there and wait for the team to arrive.’
‘Do the Americans know about it?’
‘We don’t share every operational detail with Langley, John.’
‘Your team had better not keep us waiting long. We’re going to be exposed, sitting around waiting for an aircraft to come in.’
‘We’re doing the best we can. Keep this phone switched on. I’ll be in touch as soon as we have more information.’
She clicked off. The phone screen darkened. Then brightened again, trilling to announce a new text. Fuller glanced at it before showing the screen to Bald. The message contained two strings of numbers. Latitude and longitude. Fuller finger-punched the icon for the satnav on the multimedia display and selected the option for lat and long. She typed in the coordinates and tapped Drive.
The map zoomed out. A bright-blue line showed the route from their present location to their destination to the east. An isolated spot, thirty miles due south of the coastline and at least fifteen miles from the nearest town. A 250-mile journey, according to the satnav. Roughly six hours away. Estimated arrival time at around 11.00.
Fuller said, ‘Is there enough fuel in this thing to get us there?’
Bald did a quick mental calculation. The jerry cans in the back, plus the two-thirds in the tank. ‘Yeah. Plenty.’
She was silent for a while as she stared out of the window at the slowly rising sun. Bald followed the route on the satnav and said, ‘I thought you lot didn’t have any assets on the ground over here.’
‘We don’t.’
‘What assets was Strickland talking about just now, then? For the rescue team.’
Fuller thought about it for a few seconds, shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Let’s just hope they get it sorted soon.’
‘You’re worried about them Venezuelans?’
‘Not just them. The Americans. They’ll be mobilising any reinforcements and allies they have. The Company will do whatever it takes to stop us from getting away.’
‘They can’t track us, lass. We ditched the electronics. They’re out of the picture.’
They both stared quietly ahead. After a while she turned to him and said, ‘I’m sorry. About your friend.’
Bald shrugged. ‘He was a Blade. You wear that beret, you know the deal. When you step through that door, one of two things happens. You’re either the hero who saves the day, or the fucker who gets one between the eyes.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘It’s not him I feel angry about.’
Fuller angled her head. ‘Who, then?’
‘That maid. The one Dudley nailed.’
‘Why her?’
‘Killing her is one thing. But with the skills he’s got, that Yank sniper could have put one in her head. Could have ended her life painlessly. Instead he plugged her in the guts. That was deliberate. The sick cunt wanted her to suffer.’
They carried on towards the emergency RV, the sun glowing behind shreds of cloud as they headed east. They stuck to the main roads, avoiding the quieter secondary roads. A conscious decision. They were using the traffic to hide in plain sight, making the Land Cruiser less conspicuous. And hence less likely to attract the attention of any passing cops. Bald kept an eye on the horizon, looking out for military checkpoints. If they spotted one, he would detour on to the next dirt path or trail and box around the checkpoint before re-joining the main road several miles further along.
They cantered through rolling green valleys, the peaks wreathed in early morning mist. Small villages scattered like dice along the slopes. Bald was running on fumes now. After a few hours the landscape flat-lined and they catapulted along the coast, the Caribbean at their left, denim-blue against the morning sky. They passed squalid villages and strips of empty white beach and hotels
fallen into disrepair. Bald vaguely recalled something Freddy Vargas had said to him. Something about white lobsters and go-fast boats. He shook off a wave of tiredness and glanced over at the satnav: 09.00.
Two hours to their destination.
Not much further now.
A few more hours and we’ll be out of this place.
Forty-nine minutes later, Fuller’s phone buzzed again.
Another incoming call from Strickland. She swipe-answered and tapped to put it on loudspeaker, Bald listening in as he kept the Land Cruiser coasting along the nearly empty road.
‘We’ve made some calls,’ Strickland said. ‘A rescue team is being assembled to come in and extract you. They’re being briefed right now.’
Bald said, ‘Who are they?’
‘A detachment of soldiers from 22 SAS. D Squadron.’
‘They’re coming over from Hereford?’
‘Colombia. They’re out there on a team training job. Along with a bunch of guys from the Special Boat Service. Training up local security forces to help fight the emergent cartels. They’ll going to fly across in a Hercules C-130 and pick you up.’
A question stabbed at Bald. ‘Your fucking errand boy Merrick didn’t mention anything about a load of Regiment lads being right next door to us.’
‘The D Squadron guys aren’t supposed to be out there. We couldn’t risk telling you in case you were captured by the Venezuelans and compromised their operations. You understand, John.’
More fucking lies, Bald thought. Rage pounded in his veins. ‘How many lads are we talking about?’
‘One section. Air Troop. That’s all we can spare.’
Bald nodded to himself. Technically there were supposed to be sixteen guys to an SAS troop, but in his experience they were always short. We’re looking at anywhere from eight to a dozen operators.
Plenty of firepower.
Enough to take on anyone who tries to ambush us.
‘What’s their ETA?’ he asked.
‘Twelve o’clock. They’ll be in the air in the next thirty minutes.’
Bald looked over at the satnav again and make a quick calculation. They were around eighty minutes from the RV. Which meant that they would be waiting for the Hercules for approximately an hour.
‘What happens once we’re out of the country?’
‘A reception party from Six will be waiting for you on the ground in Colombia. One of our guys from the embassy in Bogotá will meet you there. He’ll provide you with clean papers and drive you to another airfield. You’ll then be flown back to London for a full debriefing.’
‘Those reinforcements had better be on the button. We can’t be hanging around there for long.’
‘They’ll be on time. Just get to the RV. We’ll get you safely back home. Then we’ll take care of Cantwell and his chums.’
TWENTY-NINE
They left the main road at ten o’clock and cut inland, swathing past sparsely forested fields and the occasional smallholding or village. A few minutes later a helicopter roared overhead, alarming Fuller, but it soon raced off towards the coast. Bald stayed calm. He wasn’t worried about the chopper. He very much doubted the Venezuelans knew what car they were driving. Not unless the Americans had tipped them off about the Land Cruiser. And they weren’t about to do that. They’d want to catch Bald and Fuller themselves. Kill them before they could spill their guts.
After thirty minutes the road degraded as they took another turn and the Land Cruiser juddered and rocked over muddied tracks as they headed south through a wide plain punctuated with clumps of forest. They were miles from the nearest town now. Twenty miles from the northern coast. The middle of nowhere. The Venezuelan backwoods. The only signs of habitation were the rough trails criss-crossing the landscape and the power lines trailing through the plains. They rolled on for another two miles, between corridors of trees, and then the satnav cheerfully pinged to announce that they had arrived at their destination.
Bald eased off the gas and crept along for two hundred metres until they hit the eastern edge of a long narrow airstrip surrounded on all sides by walls of tall-canopied forest. The strip looked to be at least a kilometre long and more than fifty metres wide. To his right, a few hundred metres further along, he saw a pair of aluminium-roofed huts on a grassy patch on the side of the strip. The strip itself was little more than a stretch of rough ground, dotted with weeds and puddles.
An isolated area, Bald thought. No one will be looking for us here.
He checked the time: 10.04.
Fifty-six minutes until the Herc was due to land.
Fuller said, ‘What now?’
Bald nodded at her phone. ‘You got reception on that thing?’
She tapped the screen awake and squinted at it. ‘Two bars. Why?’
‘We’ll need to check the condition of the airstrip. Make sure there’s no obstacles. Feed that information back to Vauxhall, so they can pass it on to the pilot.’
She looked doubtfully at the strip. ‘Can the Hercules really land there?’
‘It’ll be tasty for the lads on board. But the Herc can handle it. You can bring them things down on really rough ground. As long as the strip is long enough, she’ll be fine.’
He steered the Land Cruiser left and trundled south, towards the southern end of the strip. When he was level with the threshold Bald slewed the wagon round and stopped in the middle of the airstrip, facing north towards the other end of the makeshift runway. He reset the trip meter on the odometer, then turned in his seat to face Fuller.
‘We’ll drive up the length of the strip,’ he said. ‘Measure its length and look for obstructions. You’ll check your side, I’ll do mine.’
‘What are we looking for?’
‘Potholes, ditches, large rocks. Any shit like that. Make sure this thing is fit for purpose.’
Bald pumped the gas and started down the middle of the airstrip, keeping the Land Cruiser to a fixed speed of twenty miles per hour. Fuller ran her eyes over the right side of the strip while Bald checked the ground to the left, paying attention to the foliage and looking for any overhanging branches that might snag against the Herc’s wingtips. The strip was in decent condition, despite its age and neglected surroundings. He noted a few clumps of weed and divots, but nothing to cause the crew serious difficulties. Fuller reported that everything was clear on her side, and then they reached the northern threshold and Bald tapped the brakes again. He looked round, checking the radius of the turning circle. The Herc was a big beast of an aircraft, with a forty-metre wingspan. If the circle wasn’t wide enough there was no way the crew would be able to swing her round for take-off.
He made a note of the distance on the trip odometer, told Fuller to wait in the Land Cruiser and then climbed out. Wandered over to a patch of grass, took a clump of it and let the blades tumble to the ground, gauging the direction and strength of the wind. Stood up and strained his eyes at the horizon, looking out for any obstacles. Telephone lines, electricity pylons, tall trees. He hurried back across to the Land Cruiser and hopped up into the driver’s seat.
‘Send a message to Strickland,’ he said. ‘Tell her that the airstrip is running north to south and we have a north-by-northwest wind blowing. The pilot should approach from the south. The airstrip is fifteen hundred metres long and is serviceable. They need to watch for high trees when they come in.’
Fuller rapidly typed out a message on the phone, nodding along as she repeated to herself. ‘North-by-northwest wind. One-point-five kilometres long. Approach from the south. High trees. Got it.’
She zapped off the text and said, ‘What now?’
Bald pointed to a shaded area at the edge of the canopy, fifteen metres due west of the turning circle to the north. ‘Head for that spot and wait in the shade. When that Herc lands, it’s going to approach that circle, swing round and drop its tailgate. As soon as it does, we’ll leg it from the canopy to the aircraft and get on board.’
‘Where are you going?’<
br />
‘To hide this wagon.’ Bald waved a hand in the general direction of the shacks at the side of the strip, five hundred metres to the south.
‘Shouldn’t we leave the car here? In case we need to make a quick getaway?’
Bald shook his head. ‘Some randoms might stroll up the track and spot it. Run off and sound the alarm. Better to hide it. The motor’s hot now, anyway. Americans will be looking for it.’
Fuller reached down into the storage compartment on the passenger-side door and snatched up the Browning Hi-Power pistol. Sprang the door lever and jumped down to the ground, shoving the Browning down the back of her jean. Set off towards the shaded area at the edge of the turning circle.
Bald watched her move away, then drove back south for six hundred metres until he had almost drawn level with the two shacks. To the left of the nearest shack was the overgrown path he had spotted when driving down the middle of the airstrip. The path led through to a small clearing in the forest, about the size of a tennis court, containing the rusted hulk of a Cessna light aircraft and several forty-gallon drums. He parked the Land Cruiser beyond the Cessna, concealing it from view behind a thin scattering of trees. Then he dismounted, grabbed his daysack from the back seat and his M4 rifle from the footwell, and jogged back towards the airstrip. A few minutes later he reached the shaded patch of ground near the forest. Fuller was checking something on the phone as he approached.
‘What’s the news?’ he asked.
‘Madeleine says they’ve passed the information on to the pilot. He’s being updated.’
‘Any word on their ETA?’
‘They’re on schedule. Left their camp ninety minutes ago.’
Bald checked his G-Shock: 10.22.
Thirty-eight minutes until the Herc was due to land.
They took up their positions on the verge beside the turning circle. The palm trees provided some much-needed cover from the scorching mid-morning sun. Fuller checked her phone and took pulls of water from the bottle in Bald’s daysack. Bald alternated between staring at the horizon and glancing at his watch. Counting down the minutes until the Herc was due to come in. His heart started to beat faster.