Last Light

We reached the end of the bay and what was obviously the rougher side of town.

The buildings here had flaking, faded paint and some were derelict. None the less, there was still a touch of civic pride. A metre-high wall ran the length of the bay, more to stop people falling on to the beach than as a sea defence.

It was decorated with blue mosaic tiles, and a gang of about ten women in jeans and yellow T-shirts with "Municipad' stamped on the back were busy scrubbing it with broom heads dipped in large buckets of soapy water. They were also pulling up all the green stuff that was fighting its way between the paving slabs. A couple of them seemed to be on their break, leaning against the wall drinking the milk from a coconut and pink liquid from a plastic bag with a straw.

Sticking out to sea for about a K in front of me was the peninsula on which perched the old Spanish colonial town, a mishmash of ancient terra cotta roofs huddled around the pristine white towers of a church. Aaron hung a right that took us away from the bay and into an even more run-down area. The road was bumpier and my headache worsened as the Mazda's suspension creaked and groaned.

The buildings were low-level, flat-roofed, decaying tenement blocks. Their once multicoloured facades had been bleached out by the sun, and the high humidity had given them dark stains. Big cracks in the plaster exposed the breeze blocks beneath.

The street narrowed and the traffic slowed. Pedestrians and scooters threaded their way between the vehicles, and Aaron seemed to need all his concentration to avoid hitting anyone. At least it shut him up for a while.

The sun was directly overhead now and seemed to push down on this part of town, keeping a lid on the heat and the exhaust fumes, which were much worse here than on the boulevard. Without circulating air I was leaking big-time and the back of my hair was soaking. The two of us were turning into the sweat-hog brothers.

I heard the roar of a bulldozer, and saw rusty metal grilles covering every conceivable entry point into the ramshackle buildings. Washing hung from the windows and balconies, kids shouted at each other across the street.

The road became so narrow that vehicles were forced right up to the kerb, their wing mirrors occasionally scraping pedestrians. Nobody seemed to care; the crowds were too busy gossiping and snacking on fried bananas or drinking beer.

It wasn't long before the traffic flow congealed and every driver immediately leant on his horn. I could smell strong, flowery perfume as women pushed past, and wafts of frying food from an open doorway. The whole place walls, doors, even adverts was a riot of red and yellow.

We nudged our way forward a bit, then stopped by two old women flicking their hips to blaring Caribbean music. Beyond them was a dimly lit shop, selling gas cookers, washing machines, canned food, aluminium pots and pans, from which a Latin samba spilled on to the street. I liked it: mini Manhattan did nothing for me; this was more my kind of town.

We passed through a street market and the traffic started to move a little more smoothly. This is El Chorrillo. Do you remember Just Cause you know, the invasion?"

I nodded.

"Well, this was ground zero when they we attacked the city. Noriega had his command centre here. It's an open space now. Bombed flat."

"Oh, right." I looked out at a row of old women sitting behind flat card tables, with what looked like lottery tickets laid out neatly on display. A muscle-bound bodybuilder, a black guy in a very tight Golds Gym vest and jeans, was buying some tickets from one of the tables, looking an absolute nugget with a City gent-style umbrella in his hand to keep the sun off.

We eventually squeezed out of the market area, hit a T-junction and stopped. The road in front of us was a busy main drag. From the little I'd seen, the law here seemed to be that if you were bigger than the vehicle you were heading towards, you didn't have to stop: you just hit the horn and put your foot down. The Mazda wasn't exactly the biggest toy in the shop, but Aaron didn't seem to realize it was still big enough to get out there.

To my right was a wooden drink shack. Pepsi had won the cola wars hands down in Panama: every other hoarding was covered with their ads, alongside stubble chinned cowboys welcoming us to Marlboro Country. Next to the shack, in the shade of a tree and leaning against the tailgate of a highly polished Ford Explorer, with sparkling chrome wheels and a Madonna hanging off the rear-view mirror, were five Latino guys, young men in their twenties. Shoehorned into the rear of the Explorer was a massive pair of loudspeakers, banging out Latin rap.

All the guys looked sharp, with their shaved heads and wraparound mirror shades.

They wouldn't have looked out of place in LA. There was enough gold hanging round their necks and wrists to keep the old woman begging at the other side of the road in three-course dinners for the rest of her life. Lying all around them on the ground were mounds of cigarette ends and Pepsi bottle tops.

One of the boys caught a glimpse of my Jackie O specials. Aaron was still rocking the wagon back and forth at the junction. The sun beat down on the static cab and turned up the oven temperature. A tailback of vehicles had developed behind us waiting to get out of the main. Horns were hit, and we were starting to attract some attention.

By now the news had spread about my fashion accessory. The Latino guys were getting to their feet to have a better look. One of them leant against the tailgate again and I could clearly see the shape of a pistol grip under his shirt. Aaron was still tensed over the wheel. He saw it too, and got even more flustered, cocking up getting out of the junction to the point where there were now more cars hooting on the main for us to get back in than behind us telling us to get the fuck out.

no

The boys were laughing big-time at my eye wear and obviously making some very funny Spanish jokes as they high-fived and pointed. Aaron was staring straight ahead. Sweat poured down his head and beard, gathering under his chin and dripping. The steering-wheel was slippery with it. He didn't like one bit what was happening with these guys only about five metres away.

I was sweating too. The sun was toasting the right side of my face.

All of a sudden we were in a scene from Baywatch. Two uniformed men with hip holstered pistols had arrived on mountain bikes, clad in dark shorts and black trainers, with Tolicia' printed across the back of their beige polo shirts.

Dismounting, they parked their bikes against a tree and calmly started sorting out the chaos. With their bike helmets and sunglasses still in place, they blew whistles hard and pointed at traffic. Miraculously, they managed to open up a space on the main drag, then pointed and whistled at Aaron, waving him on.

As we drew away from the junction and turned left, the air was thick with angry shouts, mainly at the policemen.

"Sorry about that. Crazoids like those shoot at the drop of a hat. It creeps me out."

Very soon we were out of the slums and moved into upscale residential. One house we passed was still under construction and the drills were going for it bigtime. Men were digging, pipes were being laid. All the power was coming from a generator that belonged to the US Army. I knew that because the camouflage pattern and the "US Army' stencilling told me so.

Aaron obviously felt a lot better now.

"See that?" He pointed at the generator.

"What would you say? Four thousand dollars?" I nodded, not really having a clue.

"Well," there was undisguised outrage in his voice, 'those guys probably laid out less than five hundred."

"Oh, interesting." Was it fuck. But I was obviously going to get more.

"When SOUTH COM couldn't clear out all the five remaining bases by the December deadline, they decided to abandon or simply give away any items valued at less than a thousand dollars. So what happened, to make life easier, nearly everything ill was valued at nine hundred and ninety-nine bucks. Technically it was supposed to have been given away to good causes, but everything was just marked up and sold on, vehicles, furniture, you name it."

As I looked around I realized it wasn't just that that had been offloaded. I spotted another gang of street cleaners in yellow T-shirts. They were digging up anything green that stuck out of the pavement and everybody seemed to be wearing brand new US Army desert-camouflage fatigues.

He started to sound like the village gossip.

"I heard a story that a two hundred-and-thirty-thousand-dollar Xerox machine got the nine ninety-nine tag because the paperwork to ship it back up north was just too much hassle."

I was looking around at a quiet residential area, nice bungalows with rubber plants outside, estate cars and lots of big fences and grilles. He pointed out nothing in particular as he continued.

"Out there somewhere, there are guys repairing their vehicles with fifteen-thousand-dollar jet aircraft torque sets that cost them sixty bucks." He sighed. 'I wish I could have laid my hands on some of that stuff. We just got odds and ends."

The houses were being replaced by parades of shops and neon signs for Blockbuster and Burger King. Rising into the sky about a couple of Ks ahead, and looking like three towering metal Hs, were the stacks of container cranes.

"Balboa docks," he said. They're at the entrance to the canal. We'll be in the Zone," he corrected himself, 'the old Canal Zone, real soon."

That was pretty evident just by looking at the road signs. There didn't seem to be many in this country, but I saw the odd US military one now, hanging precariously from its post, telling us that USAF Albrook wasn't far away. A large blue and white faded metal sign on the main drag gave us directions for the Servicemen's Christian Association, and soon afterwards we hit a good quality grey concrete road that bent right round an airfield full of light aircraft and private and commercial helicopters. As we followed the airfield's perimeter road, Balboa docks were behind us and to our left.

"That used to be Air Force Albrook. It's where PARC stole those choppers I told you about."

We passed a series of boarded-up barrack blocks, four floors high, with air-conditioners poking out of virtually every window. Their immaculately clean cream walls and red-tiled roofs made them look very American, very military.

Skyscraping fifty-metre steel flagpoles that no doubt used to fly enormous Stars and Stripes were now flying the Panamanian flag.

Aaron sighed.

"You know the saddest thing about it?"

I was looking at part of the air base that seemed to have become the bus terminal. A big sign saying "United States Air Force Albrook' was half pasted over with details of the bus routes, and lines of buses were being cleaned and swept out.

"What's that?"

"Because of this nine ninety-nine giveaway, the Air Force was in such dire need of forklifts they actually had to start renting some of their old ones back to get the final equipment loaded to the States."

As soon as we cleared the air base the road was flanked again on either side by pampas grass at least three metres high. We hit another row of toll booths, paid our few cents and moved through.

"Welcome to the Zone. This road parallels the canal, which is about a quarter of a mile that way." He pointed over to our left and it was as if we'd just driven into a South Florida subdivision, with American-style bungalows and houses, rows of telephone booths, traffic lights and road signs in English. Even the street lighting was different. A golf course further up the road was advertised in English and Spanish. Aaron pointed.

"Used to be the officers' club."

A deserted high school on the right looked like something straight out of an American TV show. Beside it squatted a massive white dome for all-weather sports.

We were most definitely where the other half lived.

"How long till we get to the house?"

Aaron was looking from side to side of the virtually deserted road, taking in the detail of the Zone close down

"Maybe another forty, fifty minutes. It was kinda busy downtown."

It was time to talk shop now.

"Do you have any idea why I'm here, Aaron?"

Not much, I hoped.

He shrugged evasively and used his gentle voice that was hard to hear above the wind.

"We only got told last night you were coming. We're to help you in any way we can and show you where Charlie lives."

"Charlie?"

"Charlie Chan you know, the guy from that old black and white movie. That's not his real name, of course, just what people call him here. Not to his face, God forbid. His real name is Oscar Choi."

"I like Charlie Chan a lot better," I said.

"Suits him."

Aaron nodded.

"For sure, he doesn't look an Oscar to me neither."

What do you know about him?"

"He's really well known here. He's a very generous guy, plays the all-round good citizen thing patron of the arts, that kind of stuff. In fact, he funds the degree course I get to lecture on."

This wasn't sounding much like a teenager.

"How old is he?"

"Maybe a bit younger than me. Say early fifties."

I started to get a little worried.

"Does he have a family?"

"Oh, yeah, he's a big family man. Four sons and a daughter, I think."

"How old are the kids?"

"I don't know about the older ones, but I know the youngest son has just started university. Chose a good course environmental stuff is cool right now. I think the others work for him downtown."

My head was thumping big-time. I was finding it hard to concentrate. I got my fingers under the glasses and tried to get my eyes working.

Aaron obviously had views on the Chinaman.

"It's strange that men like him spend all their lives slashing, burning, pillaging to get what they want. Then, once they've amassed all their wealth, they try to preserve everything they used to try to destroy, but underneath never change. Very Viking, don't you think, Nick?"

What is he, a politician?"

"Nope, doesn't need to be, he owns most of them. His family has been here since the labourers started digging the canal in 1904, selling opium to keep the workers happy. He has his fingers in every pie, in every province and in everything from construction to "import and export"." Aaron gave the quote sign with his right forefinger.

"You know, keeping up the family tradition -cocaine, heroin, even supplying arms to PARC or anyone else down south who has the money.

He's one of the very few who are happy about the US stand-down. Business is so much easier to conduct now we've gone."

He lifted his left hand from the steering-wheel and rubbed his forefinger and thumb together. This has many friends, and he has plenty of it."

Drugs, guns, and legal business, it made sense: they usually go hand in hand.

"He's what my mother would have called "someone's wicked son" he's smart, real smart. It's a well-known story round here that he crucified sixteen men in Colombia. They were local-government people, policemen, that kind of thing, trying to cut him out of a deal he'd made with them for moving coke. He had them nailed up in the town square for everyone to see and let them die someone's wicked son for sure."

A chain-link fence line started to appear on the right.

This is," he corrected himself once more, 'was Fort Clayton."

The place was deserted. Through the fence was a line of impressive military buildings. The white flagpoles were empty, but still standing guard in front of them were perfect rows of tall, slim palm trees, the first four feet or so in need of another coat of whitewash.

As we drove further on, I could see the same accommodation blocks that were at Albrook, all positioned in a neat line with concrete paths crisscrossing the uncut grass. Road signs were still visible telling troops not to drink and drive, and to remember they were ambassadors for their country.

We lapsed into silence for a few minutes, surveying the emptiness.

"Nick, do you mind if we stop for a Coke? I'm feeling pretty dry."

"How long is it going to take? How far until we get to Charlie's place?"

Maybe another six, seven miles after the Coke stop. It's only a few minutes off the route."

Sounded good to me: I was going to be having a long day.

We passed the main gate of the camp and Aaron sighed. The bold brass letters that were secured to the entrance wall now just read "Layton'. "I think they're going to turn it into a technology park, something like that."

"Oh, right." Who cared? Now he'd talked about it, all I wanted was a drink, and maybe an opportunity to find out more from him about the target house.

TWELVE

We stayed on the main drag for maybe another half-mile before turning left on to a much narrower road. Ahead of us in the distance, on the high ground, I could just make out the superstructure and high load of a container ship, looking bizarre as it cut the green skyline.

That's where we're heading, the Miraflores locks," Aaron said.

"It's the only place round here to get a drink now everyone moving along this road comes here, it's like a desert watering-hole."

As we started to reach the higher ground of the lock a scene unfolded that made me wonder if Clinton was about to visit. The place was packed with vehicles and people. A line of brightly coloured buses had brought an American-style marching band and eighteen-year-old baton twisters. Red tunics, white trousers and stupid hats with feathers sticking out were blowing into white enamelled trombones and all sorts as the baton girls, squeezed into red leotards and white knee-high boots, whirled their chrome sticks and streamers. It was a zoo up here: teams putting up bunting, unloading fold-up wooden chairs from trucks, lumbering around with scaffolding poles over their shoulders.

"Uh-oh," Aaron sighed, "I thought it was going to be on Saturday."

"What?"

The Ocaso."

We drove into the large wired compound, jam-packed with private vehicles and tour company MPVs, around which were dotted some smart and well-maintained colonial-style buildings. The sounds of brass instruments tuning up and fast, excited Spanish poured into the cab.

"Not with you, mate. What's the Ocaso?"

It's a cruise liner, one of the biggest. It means sunset in English. Two thousand passengers plus. It's been coming through here for years, runs out of San Diego to the Caribbean."

While trying to find a parking space, he checked out some posters stuck up along a chain-link fence.

"Yeah, it's this Saturday, the four hundredth and final transit. It's going to be a big deal. TV stations, politicians, some of the cast of The Bold and the Beautiful will be on board that show's a big deal here.

This must be the dress rehearsal."

Just a few metres past the buses and chain-link, I caught my first glimpse of the enormous concrete locks, flanked by immaculately cut grass. None of it looked as breathtaking as I'd been expecting, more a hugely scaled-up version about three hundred metres long and thirty wide of any normal-sized set of canal locks.

Manoeuvring into the first lock was the rust-streaked blue and white ship, five storeys high and maybe two hundred metres long, powered by its own engines but being guided by six stubby-looking but obviously powerful aluminium electric locomotives on rails, three each side. Six cables slung between the hull and the lo cos four at the rear, the other two up front, helped guide it between the concrete walls without touching.

Aaron sounded off with the tour-guide bit as he squeezed between two cars.

"You're looking at maybe six thousand automobiles in there, heading for the west coast of the States. Four per cent of the world's trade and fourteen of the US's passes through here. It's an awesome amount of traffic." He gave a sweep of his hand to emphasize the scale of the waterway in front of us.

"From the Bay of Panama here on the Pacific side up to the Caribbean, it only takes maybe eight to ten hours. Without the canal you could spend two weeks sailing round Cape Horn."

I was nodding with what I hoped was the required amount of awe when I saw where we'd be getting our Coke. A truck-trailer had grown roots in the middle of the car park and become a cafe-cum-tourist-shop. White plastic garden chairs were scattered around matching tables shaded by multicoloured sun umbrellas. Hanging up for sale were enough souvenir T-shirts to clothe an army. We found a space and got out. It was sweltering, but at least I could peel my sweatshirt off my back.

Aaron headed towards the side window to join the line of tourists and two red tunics, each with a lump of brass under their arm, as they leered at a group of athletic-looking baton girls paying for their drinks. 'I'll get us a couple of cold ones."

I stood under one of the parasols and watched the ship inch into the lock. I took off my Jackie Os and cleaned them: the glare made me regret it immediately.

The sun was merciless, but the lock workers seemed impervious to it, neatly dressed in overalls and hard hats as they went about their jobs. There was an air of brisk efficiency about the proceedings as a loudspeaker system sounded off quick, businesslike radio traffic in Spanish, just managing to make itself heard above the nightmare around the buses and the clatter of scaffolding poles.

A four-tier grandstand was being erected on the grass facing the lock, supplementing the permanent one to the left of it, by the visitors' centre, which was also covered in bunting. Saturday was going to be very busy indeed.

The ship was nearly into the lock, with just a couple of feet to spare each side. Tourists watched from the permanent viewing platform, clicking away with their Nikons, as the band drifted on to the grass. Some of the girls practised their splits, professional smiles, and top and bottom wiggles as they got into ranks.

The only person at ground level who seemed not to be looking at the girls was a white man in a fluorescent pink, flowery Hawaiian shirt. He was leaning against a large, dark blue GMC Suburban, watching the ship as he smoked with deep, long drags. The guy was using his free hand to wave the bottom of his shirt to circulate some air. His stomach had been badly burned, leaving a large scar the size of a pizza that looked like melted plastic. Shit, that must have been painful. I was glad my stomach pain was just from a session with Sundance's Caterpillars.

Apart from the windscreen, all the windows had been blackened out with film. I could see it was a DIY job by a snag mark in one of the rear door windows. It made a clear triangle where the plastic had been ripped down three or four inches.

Then, as if he'd just realized he'd forgotten to lock his front door, he jumped into the wagon and drove out. Maybe the real reason was because he had a false plate on the CMC and he didn't want any of the police to scrutinize it. The wagon had been cleaned, but not well enough to match the even cleaner plate. I'd always hit the carwash immediately before changing plates, then took a drive in the country to mess both the plate and the body-work before using the vehicle for work. I bet there were a lot of people with false plates down here, keeping the banking sector vibrant.

A fragile-looking Jacob's ladder of wooden slats and knotted rope was dropped over the side of the ship and two men in pristine white shirts and trousers climbed aboard from the grass below, just as Aaron came back with four cans of Minute Maid.

"No Coke they've been overrun today."

We sat in the shade and watched the hydraulic rams slowly push the gates shut, and the water twenty-seven million gallons of it, according to Aaron flooded into the lock. The ship rose into the sky before us as the scaffolders downed tools and took a seat in preparation for the girls' rehearsal.

Quiet contemplation obviously wasn't Aaron's thing and he was soon waffling on.

"You see, the canal isn't as most people think, just a big ditch cut through the country, like the Suez. No, no, no. It's a very complicated piece of engineering quite amazing to think it's more or less Victorian."

I had no doubt it was completely fascinating, but I had other, more depressing, things on my mind.

The Miraflores, and the other two sets further up, lift or drop these ships eighty feet. Once up there, they just sail on over the lake and then get lowered again to sea level the other side. It's kind of like a bridge over the isthmus.

Pure genius the eighth wonder of the world."

I pulled the ring on my second orange and nodded towards the lock.

"Bit of a tight fit, isn't it?" That'd keep him waffling for a while.

He responded as if he'd designed the thing himself.

"No problem they're all built to Panamax specifications. Shipyards have been keeping the size of the locks in mind for decades now."

The vessel continued to rise like a skyscraper in front of me. Just then, the trumpets, drums and whistles started up as the band broke into a quick-tempo samba and the girls did their stuff to the delight of the scaffolders.

Ten minutes later, when the water levels were equal, the front gate was opened and the process began all over again. It was like a giant staircase. The batons were still getting thrown into the air and the band were marching up and down the grass. Everyone seemed to be getting very Latin as some of the brass section chanced a few dance moves of their own as they strutted their stuff.

A black Lexus 4x4 with gold-mirrored side windows pulled up opposite the shop.

The windows slid down to reveal two shirt-and-tied white-eyes. The front-seat passenger, a muscular, well-tanned twenty something got out and went straight to the trailer window, ignoring the queue. One of the new small, chrome-effect Nokias glinted from his belt along with a weapon holstered on his right hip.

Just as with the CMC, however, I thought nothing of it after all, this was Central America. I just tilted my head back to get the last of the drink down my neck, thinking of getting another couple for the journey.

A young American voice called out from the Lexus as the twenty something went back with the drinks.

"Hey, Mr. Y! What's happening, man?"

Aaron's head jerked round, his face breaking into a smile. He waved.

"Hey, Michael, and how are you? How was your break?"

I turned as well. My head was still back but I instantly recognized the grinning face leaning out of the rear passenger window.

Finishing the drink, I brought my head down as Aaron moved over to the car. My tiredness disappeared as adrenaline pumped. This was not good, not good at all.

I looked at the floor, pretending to relax, and tried to listen above the music.

The boy held out a hand for Aaron to shake, but his eyes were on the girls.

"I'm sorry, I can't get out of the car my father says I have to stay in with Robert and Ross. I heard they'd be here today, thought I'd get a look on the way home, know what I mean, Mr. Y? Didn't you check out the pompom girls? I mean, before you got married ..."

I could see that the two BG (bodyguards) weren't remotely distracted by the girls or the infectious Latin tempo, they were doing their job. Their faces were impassive behind tinted sunglasses as they drank from their cans. The engine was running and I could see the moisture drip from the air-conditioning reservoir on to the tarmac.

The band stopped playing and now marched to the command of a bass drum. Michael jabbered on with excitement, and something he said made Aaron arch an eyebrow.

"England?"

"Yes, I returned yesterday. There was a bomb and some terrorists were killed. My father and I were very close by, in the Houses of Parliament."

Aaron showed his surprise as Michael pulled back the ring on his can.

"Hey, Nick, did you hear that?" He pointed me out to the target with a cock of his head.

"Nick he's British."

Shit, shit, Aaron no!

Michael's eyes turned to me and he smiled, displaying perfect white teeth. The BG also moved their heads casually to give me the once-over. This wasn't good.

I smiled and studied the target. He had short black shining hair, side parted, and his eyes and nose looked slightly European. His smooth unblemished skin was darker than most Chinese. Maybe his mother was Panamanian, and he spent a lot of time in the sun.

Aaron had realized he had fucked up and stammered, "He kind of hitched a lift from me in the city to take a look at the locks -you know, and check out the chicks ..."

Michael nodded, not really that fussed. I turned back to the ship as it left the dock, wanting very much to walk right over and ram my can in Aaron's mouth.

After a minute or so of university stuff Michael got a nod from the BG and started to wind down the conversation. As he held out his hand again for a farewell he glanced over one more time at the leotards and pompoms. A whistle sounded out commands and the drums sparked up once more.

"I have to go now. Will I see you next week, Mr. Y?"

"Sure thing." Aaron gave him a high five.

"You get that project done?"

"I think you'll like it. Anyway, catch you later." Out of politeness he nodded to me over Aaron's shoulder, then the window powered up and the Lexus moved off, leaving behind a poodle-size piss puddle from the air-conditioning.

Aaron waved until they were out of sight, then spun towards me, his face abject as the brass section and girls joined in the fast drum rhythm.

"Nick, I'm really sorry." He shook his head.

"I just didn't think. I'm not really cut out for this kind of thing. That's Charlie's son did I tell you he's on the course I teach?

I'm sorry, I just didn't think."

"It's OK, mate. No damage done." I was lying. The last thing I needed was to be introduced to the target and, even worse, have the BG knowing what I looked like. There was also the connection with Aaron. My heart was pounding. All in all, not a good day out.

Those guys with him Robert and Ross? They're the ones who hung up those Colombians. They're Charlie's special guys, I've heard stories about-' Aaron's expression suddenly changed.

"Did you have something to do with that bomb in London? I mean, is this all about-' I shook my head as I swallowed the last of the juice. I could feel the blood rushing around my head.

I'm sorry, it's not any of my business. I don't really want to know."

I wasn't too sure if he'd believed me, but it didn't matter.

"How far have we got left to Michael's house?"

"Like I said, five, maybe six miles. If the picture back at our place is anything to go by, it's some kind of palace."

I started to get my cash out as I walked towards the trailer window.

"I think I'd better have a look at it, then, don't you? What about another drink while we wait for Michael to get home and settle down?"

The expression on his face still said guilty.

"Tell you what," I said, 'you buy and then we're even."

At least that got a fleeting smile out of him as he delved into his grubby pockets for coins.

"And see if they have anything for a headache, could you?"

Over the other side of the car park was an ATM with the HSBC logo. I knew I wouldn't be able to withdraw any more money today, but within hours of me attempting to, the Yes Man would at least know I was in-country.

We spent the next forty minutes killing time at the plastic table with just the sound of the lo cos humming along their tracks as the entertainment took a break for lunch. I had the Jackie Os back on, trying to rest my eyes and head. It seemed no one ever got a headache round here.

Aaron took the opportunity to explain about the US stand-down the previous December. The fact that he could reel off all the dates and numbers so precisely emphasized his bitterness about what had happened.

In total, more than four hundred thousand acres of Canal Zone and bases, worth more than $10 billion, had been handed over -along with the canal itself, which had been built and paid for by the US to the tune of a further $30 billion. And the only way they could come back was under the terms of the DeConcini Reservation, which allowed for military intervention if the canal was endangered.

It was all interesting stuff, but what was more important to me was confirming that Michael would be at university this week.

"For sure." Aaron nodded.

"They'll all be headed back. The semester started for most folks last week."

We headed for the house, driving into Clayton. Aaron explained that now the US had gone Charlie had got his hands on some of the Zone and built on it.

The only security these days at the guard house was an old guy sleeping on the veranda of the guard room with half a jam-jar of something resembling black tea by his side, looking quite annoyed to be woken up to lift the barrier.

Clayton might become a technology park one day, but not yet. We passed deserted barrack blocks with tall grass growing between them. The US Army's legacy was still very much in evidence. I could see stencilling on steel plates above every barrack door: Building 127, HQ Theater Support Brigade, Fort Clayton, Panama, US Army South. I wondered if our SOUTH COM bosses during my time in Colombia had sent us our satellite photography and orders from these very buildings.

The neighbourhood looked as if it had been evacuated before a hurricane. The children's swings between the deserted bungalows and palm-fringed, two-floor apartment blocks were showing the first signs of rust through their blue paintwork, and the baseball ground, which needed a good mow, still had the results of the last game displayed on the scoreboard. US road signs told us to travel at 15 mph. because of children playing.

We reached the other side of the massive fort complex and headed into the mountains. The jungle closed in on both sides of the narrow, winding tarmac road. I could only see about five metres; after that everything blurred into a wall of green. I'd heard about a patrol in Borneo in the Sixties who had a man down with a gunshot wound. It wasn't fatal, but he did need evacuation. Leaving him comfortable at the bottom of a high feature, all hands moved uphill to cut a winch point out of the jungle so the rescue helicopter could pull him out and cas-evac him to hospital. This was no big deal, and the wounded man would have been airborne by last light if only they hadn't made the fatal error of not leaving anyone with him or marking where he was lying. It took them over a week to find where they'd left him, even though it was less than a hundred metres away at the bottom of the hill. By then he was dead.

The sun beat down on the windscreen, showing up all the bugs that had smashed against it and been smeared by the wipers. It couldn't have been easy for Aaron to see through.

This was secondary jungle; movement through it would be very, very difficult. I much preferred primary, where the canopy is much higher and the sun finds it difficult to penetrate to ground level so there's less vegetation. It's still a pain in the arse to travel through, because there's still all kinds of stuff on the ground.

Grey clouds were starting to cover the sky and make everything darker I thought again about all the months I'd spent living in jungles whilst on operations. You'd come out two stone lighter, and because of the lack of sunlight your skin becomes as white and clammy as an uncooked chip, but I really liked it. I always had a fantastic sense of anticipation when I entered jungle, because it's the most wonderful place to be; tactically, compared with any other terrain, it's a great environment to operate in. Everything you need is there:

shelter, food and, more importantly, water. All you really have to get used to is the rain, bites by mozzies (anything small that flies), and 95 per cent humidity.

Aaron leant forward and peered up through the windscreen.

"Here they are, look right on time."

The grey clouds had disappeared, pushed out by blacker ones. I knew what that meant and, sure enough, the sky suddenly emptied on us. It was like sitting under an upturned bath. We hurriedly wound up our windows, but only about three quarters of the way, because humidity was already misting up the inside of the windscreen. Aaron hit the de mister and its noise was drowned as the roof took a pounding.

Lightning cracked and sizzled, splashing the jungle with brilliant blue light.

An almighty clap of thunder boomed above us. It must have set off a few car alarms back at the locks.

Aaron slowed the car to walking pace as the wipers went into hyper drive slapping each side of the windscreen and having no effect at all as rain stair rodded into the tarmac and bounced back into the air. Water splattered through the top of the side window, spraying my shoulder and face.

I shouted at him, above the drumming on the roof.

"Does this road go straight to Charlie's house?"

Aaron was leaning over the wheel, busy wiping the inside of the windscreen.

"No, no this is a loop, just access to an electricity sub-station. The new private road to the house leads off from it. I thought maybe I could drop you off where the two join, otherwise I'd have nowhere to go."

That seemed perfectly reasonable to me.

"How far to the house from the junction?"

"If the scale on the imagery is right, maybe a mile, a mile and then some. All you've got to do is follow the road."

The deluge continued as we crawled uphill. I leant down and felt under my seat, trying to find something to protect my documents. I wasn't going to leave them with Aaron: they were going everywhere with me, like communication codes, to be kept on the body at all times.

Aaron looked at me. What do you need?" He was still strained forward against the wheel, as if that was going to help him see any better through the solid sheet of rain as we crawled along at about 10 mph.

I explained.

"You'll find something in the back, for sure. Won't be long now, maybe two or three miles."

That was fine by me. I sat back and let myself be mesmerized by the rain bouncing around us.

We followed the road as it curved to the right, then Aaron moved over to the edge of the road and stopped. He pointed just ahead of us. That's the road that goes to the house. Like I said, maybe a mile, a mile and a half. They say from up there Chan can see the sun rise over the Caribbean and set in the Pacific.

What do you want me to do now?"

"First, just stay here and let me get into the back."

I got out and put my jacket back on. Visibility was down to maybe twenty metres.

Rain hammered on the top of my head and shoulders.

I went to the rear of the wagon and opened the tailgate. I was soaked to the skin before I got half-way. I was just pleased not to be in a country where being wet also meant freezing my bollocks off.

I rummaged around in the back. Four five-gallon US Army jerry-cans were fixed with bun gees to the far end of the flatbed, adjacent to the cab. At least we wouldn't be running out of fuel. Scattered around them were more yellowing newspapers, a jack, a nylon tow-rope and all the associated crap that would be needed for a wreck like this. Amongst it, I found what I was looking for, two plastic carrier bags. One contained a pair of greasy old jump-leads, the other was empty, apart from a few bits of dried mud and vegetable leaves. I shook them both out, tucked my passport, air ticket and wallet into the first and wrapped them up. I put that into the second, gave it a twist, and placed it in an inside pocket of my jacket.

I had another look round, but found nothing else that could be of any use to me on the recce. Slamming the tailgate, I went round to Aaron's door and put my face up against the gap in the window.

"Can you give me that compass, mate?" I had to shout to be heard.

He leant across, unstuck it from the windscreen, and passed it through.

"Sorry, I didn't think about it. I should have brought a proper one, and a map."

I couldn't be arsed to say it wasn't a problem. My head was banging big-time and I wanted to get on. Water cascaded down my face and off my nose and chin as I pressed the illumination button on Baby-G.

"When's last light?"

"Six thirty, or thereabouts."

"It's just gone three thirty. Drive well away from here, all the way back to the city, whatever. Then come back to this exact spot at three a.m."

He nodded without even thinking about it.

"OK, park here, and wait ten minutes. Keep the passenger door unlocked and just sit in the car with the engine running." On a job, the engine must always be kept running: if you switch it off, sod's law dictates that it's not going to start up again.

"You also need to think of a story in case you're stopped. Say you're looking for some rare plant or something."

He stared vacantly through the windscreen.

"Yes, that's a good idea. In fact the barrigon tree is common in disturbed areas and along roads and-' "That's good, mate, good, whatever works, but make sure the story's in your head by the time you pick me up, so it sounds convincing."

"OK." He nodded sharply, still looking out of the window and thinking trees.

"If I'm not here by ten past three, drive off. Then come back round again and do exactly the same every hour until it gets light, OK?"

His eyes were still fixed on the windscreen as he nodded sharply.

"OK."

Then, at first light, I want you to bin it. Stop doing the circuit. Come back for me at midday, but not here wait at the locks, by the trailer. Wait for an hour, OK?"

He nodded some more.

"Got any questions?"

He hadn't. I figured I'd given myself enough time, but if there was a cock-up and I didn't make this RV, all was not lost. I could get to a river, clean all the jungle shit off and, with luck, dry myself off if the sun was shining tomorrow morning. Then I wouldn't stand out too much once I got amongst the real people at the locks.

"Now, worst-case scenario, Aaron and this is very, very important." I was still shouting above the noise of the rain. Rivulets of water ran down my face and into my mouth. If I don't appear at the locks by midday tomorrow, then you'd better call your handler and explain exactly what I wanted you to do, all right?"

"Why's that?"

"Because I'll probably be dead."

There was a pause. He was obviously shaken: maybe he hadn't realized what game we were playing here; maybe he'd thought we really were here for the tree hugging.

"Have you got that?"

"Sure. I'll just tell them, word for word." He was still looking through the windscreen, frowning and nodding.

I tapped on his window and he turned his head.

"Hey, don't worry about it, mate.

I'm just planning for the worst. I'll see you here at three."

He smiled quite nervously. 'I'll tank up beforehand, yeah?"

I tapped once more on the glass.

"Good idea. See you later, mate."

Aaron drove off. The engine noise was drowned by the rain. I walked off the road into the murky, twilight world of the jungle. At once I was pushing against palm leaves and bushes. Rainwater that had been trapped on them sluiced all over me.

I moved in about five metres to get out of sight while I waited for Aaron to get well away from the area, and plonked down in the mud and leaf litter, resting my back against a tree-trunk as yet more thunder erupted across the sky. Water still found me as it cascaded from the canopy.

Pushing back my soaked hair with my hands I brought up my knees and rested my forehead against them as the rain found its way from the back of my neck and dripped away over my chin. Underneath my jacket, my left arm was being chewed. I gave the material a good rub and attempted to squeeze to death whatever had got up there, quietly welcoming myself to Aaron's 'cathedral of nature'. I should have looked out for some mozzie repellent in the Miami departures lounge instead of a guidebook.

My jeans were wet and heavy, hugging my legs as I stood up. I wasn't exactly dressed for crawling around in the jungle, but tough, I'd just have to get on with it. If I was going to hunt, I had to get my arse over to where the ducks were, so I headed back to the loop. For all I knew it might have stopped raining out there by now. Inside the canopy you'd never know because the water still falls for ages as it makes its way down leaf by leaf.

I turned right on to the single-track metal road: it was pointless moving through the jungle from this distance. The downpour had eased a little, now only bouncing an inch or two off the tarmac, but it was still enough to mean that a vehicle wouldn't see me until it was right on top of me.

As I started to walk up the road I checked the ball compass. I was heading uphill and west, as we had been all the way from Clayton in the Mazda. I kept to one side so I could make a quick entry into cover, and didn't move too fast so I'd be able to hear any approaching vehicles above the rasping of my soaked jeans.

I still had no idea how I was going to do this job, but at least I was in an environment I understood. I wished Dr. Hughes could see me now: then she'd know there was something I was good at.

I stopped and scratched the skin at the base of my spine to discourage whatever was munching at it, then moved on up the road.

THIRTEEN

For the best part of a mile of uphill slog I was deluged with rain and drenched in my own sweat, hair plastered to my face and clothes clinging to my body like long-lost friends.

At last, the rain subsided, and the sun emerged between the gaps in the clouds, burning on to my face and making me squint as it reflected off the mirror of wet tarmac. The Jackie Os went back on. I looked at the compass I was heading west with a touch of north in it and also checked my plastic bags. They'd done their job well: at least I had dry documents.

Humidity oozed from the jungle. Birds began to call once more from high up in the canopy. One in particular stood out, sounding like a slowed-down heart-rate monitor. Other forms of wildlife rustled in the foliage as I walked past and, as ever, there was the blanket noise of crickets, cicadas, whatever they were called. They seemed to be everywhere, in every jungle, though I'd never seen one.

I wasn't fooled by the sunshine or the animals rustling in the foliage. I knew there was more rain to come. The dark clouds hadn't completely dispersed, and thunder still rumbled in the distance.

I rounded a gentle bend and a pair of iron gates came into view, blocking the road about four hundred metres ahead. They were set into a high, whitewashed wall that disappeared into the jungle on each side. Once I'd confirmed that I was still heading westish, it was time to get back into cover. I eased my way in, moving branches and fronds aside carefully rather than just crashing through. I didn't want to mark my entry point with top sign sign that is made above ground level and which in this case might be seen from the road. A large rubber leaf or a fern, for example, doesn't naturally expose its lighter underside; that only happens if it's disturbed by someone or something brushing past. The leaf will eventually turn back to its darker side so it can gather light, but to the trained eye in the meantime it's as good as dropping your business card. I had no idea if these people would be switched-on enough to notice such things as they drove past, but I wasn't going to leave that to chance.

Once under the canopy, I felt like I was in a pressure cooker; the humidity has nowhere to go, and it gives your lungs a serious work-out. Rainwater still fell in bursts as unseen birds took flight from the branches above.

Having moved maybe thirty metres in a direct line away from the road, I stopped to check the compass. My aim now was to head west again and see if I hit the perimeter wall. If I encountered nothing after an hour I'd stop, move back, and try again. It would be very easy to become 'geographically embarrassed', as officers call it: in the jungle the golden rule is to trust your compass, no matter what your instincts are telling you. The wall of green was maybe seven metres away, and that was where I would focus my attention as I moved, to detect any hostiles and find the house.

As I moved off, I felt a tug on my sleeve and realized I'd encountered my first batch of wait-a-while. It's a thin, twine-like vine, studded with tiny barbs that dig into clothing and skin, much like a bramble. Every jungle I'd been in was infested with the stuff. Once it's caught you, the only way to get clear is to tear yourself free. If you try to extricate yourself barb by barb, you'll be there for ever.

I pushed on. I had to get to the house before last light so I could carry out a decent recce with some degree of visibility. Besides, I didn't want to be stuck in here once it was dark: I'd never make the morning RVs, and would then waste time waiting for midday, instead of preparing for the job I was here to do.

For the next half an hour or so I headed uphill and west, frequently untangling myself from batches of wait-a-while. At last I stopped and leant against a tree to catch my breath and check the compass. I didn't know what sort of tree it was; for some strange reason I could recognize a mahogany, and this wasn't one.

My hands were covered with small cuts and scratches now, which hurt like wasp stings.

I moved off once more, thinking about the CTR. Under ideal conditions, I'd take time to find out the target's routine, so that I could take him on in a killing ground of my choosing; that way, I had the advantage. But I didn't have time, and the only thing I'd learnt from Aaron about Michael's movements was that he would be going in to college at some point this week.

It's easy enough to kill someone; the hard bit is getting away with it. I needed to find the easiest way of dropping him so there was as little risk to me as possible. I could get all Rambo'd up and storm the place, but that wasn't part of my plan, not yet anyway.

I saw open space about six or seven metres ahead, just beyond the wall of green, flooded with brilliant sunlight and awash with mud. I moved slowly back into the jungle until it disappeared from sight, and stood against a tree.

Standing still and doing nothing but take deep breaths and wipe the sweat from my face, I started to hear the world above me once more.

I was hot, sticky, out of breath, and gagging for a drink, but I found myself captivated by the amazing sound of a howler monkey in the treetops, busy living up to its name. Then I slapped my face yet again to zap whatever it was that had landed to say hello.

Moisture seeped out of my leather belt as I squeezed it open, tucked in my sweatshirt and generally sorted myself out. I knew that my jeans would soon be hanging off my arse again, but it didn't matter, this just made me feel better.

I felt the first of what I knew was going to be a whole colony of itchy bumps on my neck, and quite a big one coming up on my left eyelid.

My basic plan for the recce was to simulate one of those electric toys that motor around the floor until they bump into a wall, then rebound, turn round, move off, turn round again and bounce back on to the wall somewhere else.

A lot of questions needed answering. Was there physical security, and if so, were they young or old? Did they look switched on and/or armed? If so, what with? If there was technical security, where were the devices, and were they powered up?

The best way of finding answers was just to observe the target for as long as possible. Some questions can be answered on site, but many only pop up once you're tucked up with a cup of cocoa and trying to come up with a plan. The longer I stayed there, the more information would sink into my unconscious for me to drag out later if I needed it.

The big question would I have to do a Rambo? remained, but I'd answer that on target. My mind drifted back to the Yes Man and Sundance, and I knew I might have to if there was no other way. But then I cut away from that stuff; what I needed to do now was get my arse up to that mud a few metres away and have a look at what was out there before I got lost inside my head.

Concentrating on the green wall, I moved carefully forward.

I saw the sunlight reflecting off the puddles maybe six metres in front of me and dropped slowly on to my stomach in the mud and rotting leaves. Stretching out my arms, I put pressure on my elbows and pushed myself forward on the tips of my toes, lifting my body just clear of the jungle floor, sliding about six inches at a time, trying to avoid crushing dead, pale yellow palm leaves as I moved. They always make a brittle, crunching noise, even when they're wet.

It felt like I was back in Colombia, closing in on the DMP to carry out a CTR so an attack could be planned with the information we brought back. I never thought that I'd still be doing this shit nearly ten years later.

I stopped every couple of bounds, lifted my head from the dirt, looked and listened, while slowly pulling out thorns from my hands and neck as the mozzies got busy again. I was starting to have second thoughts about my little love affair with the jungle. I realized I only liked it when I was standing up.

My alligator impression was hard work in this humidity, and I was starting to pant, with every sound magnified tenfold so close to the ground; even the leaves seemed to crackle more than they normally would. The sharp pain in my ribs didn't help much, but I knew all the discomfort would disappear once I was on top of the target house.

I inched closer to the wall of sunlight as leaf litter and other shit from the jungle floor worked its way inside my jacket sleeves and down the front of my sweatshirt. The plastic bag rustled gently inside my jacket. Now that my jeans had worked their way back down my arse, bits of twig and broken leaf were also finding their way on to my stomach. I was not having a good day out.

Another bound, then I stopped, looked and listened. Slowly wiping away the sweat that was running into my eyes and wishing that they weren't so tired, I squashed some airborne monster that was munching away at my cheek. I still couldn't see anything in front of me apart from sunlight and mud, and knew I was so low down that I'd have to wait until I was right up on the canopy's edge to get a good view of whatever was out there.

The first thing I spotted of any significance was wire fencing along the edge of the treeline. I moved carefully towards the most prickly and uninviting bush at the edge of the clearing and wormed my way into it, cutting my hands on the barbs that covered its branches. They were so sharp that the pain of being cut wasn't instant; it came a few seconds later, like getting sliced with a Stanley knife.

Lying on my stomach, I rested my chin on my hands, looked up and listened, trying to take in every detail. As soon as I'd stopped moving, the mozzies formed into stacks above me, like 747s waiting to land at Heathrow.

I found myself looking through a four-inch chain-link fence, designed more to keep out wildlife than humans. The house was obviously very new, and by the look of things Charlie Chan had been so keen to move in he hadn't waited for proper security.

The open space in front of me was a gently undulating plateau covering maybe twenty acres. Tree stumps stuck out here and there like rotten teeth, waiting to be dragged out or blasted before a lawn was laid. I couldn't see any oceans from where I lay, just trees and sky. Caterpillar-tracked plant was scattered about the area, lying idle, but business at Choi and Co. was obviously booming in every other respect, now that the US had gone. The house looked more like a luxury hotel than a family hideaway. The main building was sited no more than three hundred metres to my left. I wasn't face-on to the target, along the line of the gate and wall;

I must have clipped a corner because I'd come on to the right-hand perimeter. I had a clear view of the front and right-hand elevation. It was a massive, three floor Spanish-style villa with brilliant whitewashed walls, wrought-iron balconies and a pristine terra cotta roof. Standing proud of this was a belvedere tower, constructed completely of glass. That was where you'd see the oceans from.

Other pitched roofs at different heights radiated out in all directions from the main building, covering a network of verandas and archways. A swimming pool sparkled to the right of the main house, surrounded by a raised patio;

distressed, Roman-style stone pillars were dotted about, to give it that Gladiator look. The only things missing were a few statues of sixteenth-century Spaniards with swords and baggy trousers.

A set of four tennis courts stood behind a line of fencing. Nearby, three large satellite dishes were set into the ground. Maybe Charlie liked to watch American football, or check the Nasdaq to see how his money-laundering activities were shaping up.

Including the Lexus, there were six shiny SUVs and pickups parked outside a large turning circle that bordered a very ornate stone fountain, then led down to the front gates, maybe three hundred metres to my left. I looked back at the vehicles. One in particular had caught my eye. A dark blue CMC with blacked-out windows.

Most impressively, there was a white and yellow Jet Ranger helicopter using some of the driveway in front of the house as a pad. Just the thing to beat the morning commute.

I lay still and watched, but there was no movement, nothing going on. I opened my jaw a little to close off my swallowing sounds, trying to pick up any noise from the house, but I. was too far away and they were too sensible: they kept indoors in the conditioned air.

My head was getting covered with lumps as I watched thousands of large dark red ants start to trundle past just inches from my nose, carrying scraps of leaf sometimes twice their own size. The leading few hundred were blazing the path maybe thirty abreast, the rest behind so closely packed I could hear them rustling.

I got back to looking at the target and became aware of a pretty unpleasant smell. It didn't take long to work out that it was me. I was wet, covered in mud, bits of twig and brush, itching all over and desperate to rub at the mozzie bites. I was sure I could feel something new munching at the small of my exposed back. I just had to let it munch: the only things I could risk moving were my eyes. Maybe I'd get back to loving the jungle tomorrow, but at the moment I wanted a divorce. After nearly twenty years of this stuff I really did need to get a life.

There was certainly no need to become an electric toy and do a 360-degree tour of the target: I could see everything I needed from here. Getting close to the house in daylight would be impossible there was far too much open ground to cover. It might be just as difficult at night; I didn't yet know if they had any night-viewing facility, or closed-circuit TV with white light or an IR capability covering the area, so I had to assume they did.

My problems didn't end there. Even if I did get to the house, where would I find Michael? Only Errol Flynn can walk into the front hall and pop behind a big curtain while squads of armed guards march past.

Swapping my hands over and adjusting the position of my chin, I started to take in the scene in front of me. I had to squeeze my gritty eyes shut constantly, then refocus. The ant columns were doing just fine as an enormous black butterfly landed an inch or two from my nose. Again I was back in Colombia.

Anything that was colourful and flew, we caught for Bernard. He was over six foot four, weighed nineteen stone, and looked as if he ate babies for breakfast.

He sort of let everyone down by collecting butterflies and moths for his mother instead. We would come back into base camp from a patrol and the fridge would be filled with sealed jars full of things with wings instead of cold drinks and Marmite. But no one was ever going to say anything to his face in case he decided to pin us to the wall instead.

In the distance there was the slow, low rumble of thunder as the heat haze shimmered over the open ground in front of me, and steam rose gently from the mud.

It would have been wonderful to get out there and stretch out in the sun, away from this world of gloom and mozzies. The shrill buzzing as they attacked the side of my head sounded like a demonic dentist's drill and I had definitely been bitten by something psychopathic on my lower back.

There was movement from the house.

Two white, short-sleeved shirts and ties came out of the main door with a man in a shocking pink Hawaiian shirt who climbed into the CMC. My friend the Pizza Man. The other two got into one of the pickups and a fourth, running from the main door, jumped on to the back. Standing up, leaning forward against the cab, he looked like he was leading a wagon train as the pickup rounded the fountain and headed for the gates with the CMC following. He wasn't dressed as smartly as the other two: he was in black wellies and carried a wide-brimmed straw hat and a bundle of something or other under his arm.

Both wagons stopped for maybe thirty seconds as the gates swung open, then drove out of sight as they closed again behind them.

A gust of wind made the trees sway at the edge of the canopy. It wouldn't be long before the next batch of rain was heading this way. I'd have to get going if I wanted to be out of the jungle by last light. I started to shift backwards on my elbows and toes, got on to my hands and knees for a while, and finally to my feet once I was safely behind the wall of green. I gave myself a frenzied scratch and shake, tucked everything back in, ran my fingers through my hair and rubbed my back against a tree. A rash of some sort was developing at the base of my spine and the temptation to scratch it more was unbearable. My face probably looked like Darth Maul's by now. My left eyelid had swollen up big-time, and was starting to close.

Baby-G told me it was just after five: maybe an hour and a bit before last light, as it gets dark under the canopy before it does outside. I was gagging for a drink but I'd have to wait until it rained again.

My plan now was to move south towards the road, turn right and parallel it under the canopy until I hit the edge of the cleared area again nearer the gate, then sit and watch the target under cover of darkness. That way, as soon as I'd finished, I could jump on to the tarmac to meet Aaron down at the loop at three a.m. instead of being stuck in here for the night.

I headed off through the thick wall of humidity. Wet tarmac and a dark, moody sky soon came into sight through the foliage, just as the BUBs has ha-up beetles) started to go for it all around me with their high-pitched screams.

They sounded like crickets with megaphones. They were telling me that God was about to switch off the light in here and go to bed.

A distant rumble of thunder resonated across the treetops, and then there was silence, as if the jungle was holding its breath. Thirty seconds later, I felt the first splashes of rain. The noise of it hitting the leaves even drowned out the BUBs, then the thunder roared directly overhead. Another thirty seconds and the water had worked its way down from the canopy and back on to my head and shoulders.

I turned right and picked my way towards the fence line, paralleling the road about seven or eight metres in. Mentally I was preparing myself for a miserable few hours in the dark. However, it was better to kill time watching the target while I waited for Aaron than doing nothing down at the loop. Time in reconnaissance is seldom wasted. And at least I knew there was no need to crawl into position: the house was too far away for them to spot me.

I moved forward, trying to make a record in my head of everything I'd seen so far at the target. Every twenty paces or so I stopped to check the compass as thunder detonated high above the canopy and rain beat a tattoo on the leaves and the top of my head. I was displaying a builder's crack where my jeans should have been, but it didn't matter, I'd sort myself out again later on. I started to slip and slide on the mud beneath the leaf litter. I just wanted to get up to the fence before it got dark.

I fell on to my knees at one stage and discovered some rocks concealed beneath the mud. I sat there for a while in the dirt, rain running into my eyes and ears and down my neck, waiting for the pain to ease. At least it was warm.

I got up, still resisting the temptation to scratch my back rash to death. A few more metres and a large rotted tree trunk blocked my way. I couldn't be bothered working around it then back on to my compass bearing, so I just lay across it on my stomach and twisted myself over. The bark came away from the rotting wood like the skin on a blister and my chest throbbed from the beasting Sundance and his mate had treated me to in the garage.

As I got to my feet, looking down, brushing off bark, I caught a glimpse to my right of something unnatural, something that shouldn't have been there.

In the jungle there are no straight lines and nothing is perfectly flat;

everything's random. Everything except this.

The man was looking straight at me, rooted to the spot five or six metres away.

FOURTEEN

He was wearing a green US Army poncho with the hood over his head. Rain dripped from the wide-brimmed straw hat perched on top of that.

He was a small guy, about five five, his body perfectly still, and if I could have seen his eyes they would probably have been wide and dancing around, full of indecision. Fight or flight? He must have been flapping. I knew I was.

My eyes shot towards the first six inches or so of a gollock (machete) that his right hand was resting on and which protruded from the green nylon of his poncho. I could hear the rain pounding on the taut nylon, like a drum roll, before it dripped down to his black wellies.

I kept my eyes fixed on the exposed part of what was probably two feet of gollock blade. When he moved, so would that thing.

Nothing was happening, no talking, no movement, but I knew that one of us was going to get hurt.

We stood there. Fifteen seconds felt like fifteen minutes. Something had to be done to break the stand-off. I didn't know what he was going to do I didn't think he did yet but I certainly wasn't going to be this close to a gollock and not do something to protect myself, even if it was with just a pair of pointed pliers. The knife on my Leatherman would take too long to find and pull out.

I reached round with my right hand, and felt for the soaking, slimy leather pouch. My fingers fumbled to undo the retaining stud then closed around the hard steel of the Leatherman. And all the time, my eyes never left that still static gollock.

He made his decision, screaming at the top of his voice as he ran at me.

I made mine, turning and bolting in the direction of the road. He probably thought my hand was going for a pistol. I wished it had been.

I was still fumbling to get the Leatherman out of its pouch as I ran, folding the two handles back on themselves, exposing the pliers as he followed in my wake.

He was shouting stuff. What? Shouting for help? Telling me to stop? It didn't matter, the jungle swallowed it.

I got caught on wait-a-while, but it might have been tissue paper to me right then. I could hear the nylon poncho flapping behind me and the adrenaline pumped big-time.

I could see tarmac ... once on that he wouldn't be able to catch me in those wellies. I lost my footing, falling on to my arse but gripping the Leatherman as if my life depended on it. It did.

I looked up at him. He dinked left and stopped, eyes wide as saucers as the gollock rose into the air. My hands went down into the mud and I slipped and slithered, moving backwards, trying to get back on to my feet. His screams got higher in pitch as the blade flashed through the air.

It must have been a cheap buy: the blade hit a sapling and made a thin tinny sound. He spun round, exposing his back to me in his frenzy, still screaming and shouting as he, too, slipped on the mud and on to his arse.

As he fell, the rear of the poncho caught on some wait-a-while and was yanked vertically. With the Leatherman still in my right hand I grabbed the flailing material with my left and pulled back on it as hard as I could, not knowing what I was going to do next. All I knew was that the gollock had to be stopped. This was one of Chan's men, those boys who crucified and killed their victims. I wasn't going to join the queue.

I pulled again as he landed on his knees, yanking him completely backwards on to the ground. I grabbed another handful of cape and pulled, constricting his neck by bunching the nylon of the hood as I got up. I could hear the rain hitting the tarmac outside as he kicked out and I dragged him and our noise back into the jungle, still not too sure what I was doing.

He had his left hand around the hood of his poncho, trying to protect his neck as the nylon squeezed against it. The gollock was in his right. He couldn't see me behind him, but still he hit out, swirling around in desperation. The blade slashed the poncho.

Still screaming at the top of his lungs in fear and anger, he kicked out as if he was having an epileptic fit.

I bobbed and weaved like a boxer, not knowing why it just seemed a natural reaction to having sharp steel waved in my face. His arse bulldozed through leaves and palm branches. The struggle must have looked like a park ranger trying to drag a pissed-off crocodile out of the water by its tail. I was just concentrating on getting him back into the jungle and making sure the whirling blade didn't connect with me.

But then it did big-time sinking into my right calf.

I screamed with pain as I held on, still dragging him backwards. I had no choice: if I stopped moving he'd be able to get up. Fuck if anyone heard us, I was fighting for my life.

The crocodile thrashed and twisted around on the floor as there || was another almighty clap of thunder, a deep resonant rumbling that seemed to go on for ever. Forked lightning crackled high above, its noise drowning out his shouts and the clatter of rain.

The sharp pain of the cut spread out from my leg, but there was I nothing I could do but go on dragging him into the jungle.

I didn't see the log. My legs hit it and buckled and I fell backwards, keeping my grip on the poncho as I crashed into a palm. Rainwater came down in a torrent.

The pain in my leg was gone in an instant. It was more important to fill my head with other things, like living.

The guy felt the material round his neck relax, and instantly turned round. As he scrambled on to his knees, the gollock was up. I crabbed backwards on my hands and feet, trying to get myself upright again, trying to keep clear of his reach.

Cursing and screaming in Spanish, he lunged forward in a wild frenzy. I saw two wild dark eyes as the gollock blade swung at me. I thrashed backwards and managed to get myself on to my feet. It was time to run again.

I felt the gollock whoosh through the air behind me. This was getting Outrageous. 1 was going to die.

Fuck it, I had to take a chance.

I turned and charged straight at him, face down, bending forward so that only my back was exposed. My whole focus was on the area of the poncho where his stomach should have been.

I screamed at the top of my voice, more for my own benefit than his. If I wasn't quick enough, I'd soon know because I'd feel the blade slice down between my shoulders.

The Leatherman pliers were still in my right hand. I got into him and felt his body buckle with the impact as I wrapped my left arm around him and tried to pinion his gollock arm.

Then I rammed the pointed tips against his stomach.

Both of us moved backwards. The pliers hadn't penetrated his skin yet: they were held by the poncho and whatever was underneath. He screamed, too, probably feeling the steel trying to pierce him.

We hit a tree. His back was against it and I lifted my head and body, using my weight to force the pliers to penetrate his clothing and flesh.

He gave an agonized howl, and I felt his stomach tighten. It must have looked as if I was trying to have sex with him as I kept on pushing and bucking my body against him, using my weight against him with the pliers between us. At last I felt his stomach give way. It was like pushing into a sheet of rubber; and once they were in, there was no way they were coming out again.

I churned my hand up and down and round in circles, any way that I could to maximize the damage. My head was over his left shoulder and I was breathing through clenched teeth as he screamed just inches from the side of my face. I saw his bared teeth as they tried to bite me, and head butted him to keep him away. Then he screamed so loudly into my face I could feel the force of his breath.

By now I wasn't even sure if the gollock was still in his hands or not. I smelt cologne and felt his smooth skin against my neck as he thrashed his face around, his body bucking and writhing.

The stab wound must have enlarged, as he was leaking over me. Blood had got past the hole in the poncho and I could feel the warmth of it on my hands. I continued to push in, keeping my body up against his, using my legs to keep him trapped between me and the tree.

His noises were getting softer and I could feel his warm slobber on my neck. My hand was virtually inside his stomach now, taking the poncho with it. I could smell the contents of his intestinal tract.

He collapsed forward on to me and took me down with him on to my knees. Only then did I withdraw my hand. As the Leatherman emerged and I kicked him off, he fell into the foetal position. He might have been crying; I couldn't really tell.

I moved away quickly, picked up the gollock from where he'd dropped it, and went and sat against a tree, fighting for breath, unbelievably relieved it was all over. As my body calmed down, the pain came back to my leg and chest. I pulled up my slashed jeans on my right leg and inspected the damage. It was to the rear of the calf; the gash was only about four inches long and not very deep, but bad enough to be leaking quite badly.

My hand, clenched around the Leatherman, looked much worse than it was as the rain diluted his blood. I tried to fold out the knife blade but it was difficult; my hand was shaking, now that I'd released my tight grip, and probably through shock as well. In the end I had to use my teeth, and when the blade was finally open I used it to cut my sweatshirt sleeves into wet strips.

With these I improvised a bandage, wrapping it around my leg to apply pressure on the wound.

I sat there in the mud for a good five minutes, rainwater streaming down my face and into my eyes and mouth, dripping off my nose. I stared at the man, still lying in a foetal position, covered in mud and leaf litter.

The poncho was up around his chest like a pulled-up dress, and the rain still beat on it like a drums king Both his hands clutched his stomach; blood glistened as it seeped through the gaps between his fingers. His legs made small circular movements as if he was trying to run.

I felt sorry for him, but I'd had no choice. Once that length of razor-sharp steel started flying around it was either him or me.

I wasn't feeling too proud of myself, but placed that feeling in my mental bin with the lid back on when I began to see that this wasn't exactly the local woodcutter I'd stumbled across. His nails were clean and well manicured, and though his hair was a mess of mud and leaves, I could see it was well cut, with a square neck and neatly trimmed sideburns. He was maybe early thirties, Spanish, good-looking and clean-shaven. He had one unusual feature: instead of two distinct eyebrows, he had just one big one.

This guy wasn't a farmhand, he was a city boy, the one who'd been standing in the back of the pickup. As Aaron had said, these people didn't fuck about and he would have sliced me up without a second thought. But what had he been doing in here?

I sat and stared at him as it got darker and the rain and thunder did its thing above the canopy. This episode spelt the end of the recce, and both of us were going to have to disappear. For sure he was going to be missed. Maybe he had been already. They would come looking for him, and if they knew where he had been, it wouldn't take them long to find him if I left him here.

I folded down my bloodstained Leatherman and put it back in its pouch, wondering if Jim Leatherman had ever imagined his invention would be used like this.

I guessed that the fence must be closer than the road now: if I headed for that, at least I'd have something to guide me out of the jungle in the darkness.

Unibrow's breathing was shallow and quick, and he was still gripping his stomach with both hands, his face screwed up in pain as he mumbled weakly to himself. I forced his eyes open. Even in this low light there should have been a better reaction in his pupils; they should have closed a lot quicker. He was definitely on his way out.

I went in search of his hat, gollock in hand. It was a bottom-of-the-range thing, with a plastic handle riveted each side of very thin, rust-spotted steel.

What to do with him once we were out of here? If he was still alive I couldn't take him to a hospital because he'd talk about me, which would alert Charlie and compromise the job. I certainly couldn't take him back to Aaron and Carrie's place because that would compromise them. All I knew was that I had to get him away from the immediate vicinity. I'd think of something later.

Hat retrieved, I went back to Unibrow, got hold of his right arm, and hoisted him in a fireman's lift over my back and shoulder. There were moans and groans from him and he tried in a pathetic way to kick out at me.

I grabbed his right arm and leg and held them together, jumping gently up and down to get him comfy round my shoulders. The small amounts of oxygen that his injuries allowed him to take in were knocked out of him again, no doubt making him feel even worse, but I couldn't help that. The poncho flapped over my face and I had to push it away. I grabbed his hat, and then, gollock back in hand, I checked the compass and headed for the fence line

It was getting much darker; I could only just make out where my feet were going.

I felt something warm and wet on my neck, warmer than the rain, and guessed it was his blood.

Pushing myself hard I limped on, stopping occasionally to check the compass.

Nothing else mattered but getting to the road and making the RV. Within minutes I came on to the fence line The BUBs were reaching a crescendo. In another quarter of an hour it was going to be pitch black.

Ahead of me, in the open, semi-dark space, was a solid wall of rain, thumping into the mud with such force it was creating mini craters. Lights were already on in the house, and in one area, probably a hallway, an enormous chandelier shone through a high window. The fountain was illuminated but I couldn't see the statue. That was good, because it meant they couldn't see me.

I followed the fence for a few minutes, my passenger's head and poncho constantly snagging on branches of wait-a-while so that I had to stop and backtrack to free him. All the time I kept my eyes glued on the house. I came across what looked like a small mammal track, paralleling the fence and about two feet in. I followed it, past caring about leaving sign in the churned-up mud. The rain would sort that out.

I'd gone no more than a dozen steps when my limping right leg was whipped away from under me and both of us went crashing into the undergrowth.

I lashed out in a frenzy: it was as if an invisible hand had grabbed hold of my ankle and thrown me to one side. I tried to kick out but my right foot was stuck fast. I tried to crawl away but couldn't. Next to me on the ground, Unibrow gave a loud groan of pain.

I looked down and saw a faint glimmer of metal. It was wire: I was caught in a snare; the more I struggled, the more it was gripping me.

I turned round to make sure where Unibrow was. He was rolled up in his own little world, oblivious to the thunder and forked lightning rattling across the night sky.

It was simple enough to ease open the loop. I got to my feet and went over and heaved him back up on to my shoulders, then set off along the track.

Just another five minutes of stumbling brought us to the start of the whitewashed rough-stone wall and, ten metres or so later, the tall iron gates.

It was good to feel tarmac under my feet. I turned left and moved as quickly as I could to get away from the area. If a vehicle came I'd just have to plunge back into the undergrowth and hope for the best.

As I shuffled forward with the weight of the man over my shoulder, I became much more aware of the pain in my right calf. It hurt too much to raise my foot, so I kept my legs as straight as possible, pumping forward with my free arm. Rain ricocheted a good six inches off the tarmac, making a horrendous racket. I realized I'd never be able to hear a vehicle coming up behind us, so I had to keep stopping and turning round. Thunder and lightning roared and crackled behind me and I kept moving as though I was running away from it.

It took over an hour but I finally got us both into the canopy at the loop. The rain had eased off but Unibrow's pain hadn't, and neither had mine. The jungle was so dark now I couldn't see my hand in front of my face, only the small luminous specks on the jungle floor, maybe phosphorescent spores or night-time beasties on the move.

For an hour or so I sat, rubbed my leg, and waited for Aaron, listening to Unibrow's whimpers, and the sound of his legs moving about in the leaf litter.

His groans faded, and eventually disappeared. I crawled over to him on my hands and knees, feeling for his body.

Then, following his legs up to his face, all I could hear was weak, wheezy breath trying to force itself through his mucus-filled nostrils and mouth. I pulled out the Leatherman and jabbed his tongue with the blade. There was no reaction, it was just a matter of time.

Rolling him on to his back, I lay on top of him and jammed my right forearm into his throat, pushing down with all my weight, my left hand on my right wrist.

There was little resistance. His legs kicked out weakly, moving us about a bit, a hand floundered about my arm and another came up weakly to scratch at my face.

I simply moved my head out of the way and listened to the insects and his low whimpers as I cut off the blood supply to his head, and oxygen to his lungs.

FIFTEEN

Wednesday 6 September It's Kev, Kelly's dad. He's lying on the living-room floor, eyes glazed and vacant, his head battered, an aluminium baseball bat lying beside him.

There's blood on the glass coffee table and the thick shag-pile carpet, some even splattered on the patio windows.

I put my foot on the bottom stair. The shag pile helps keep the noise down, but still it's like treading on ice, testing each step gently for creaks, always placing my feet to the inside edge, slowly and precisely. Sweat pours off my face, I worry if anyone is hiding up there, ready to attack.

I get level with the landing, I point my pistol up above my head, using the wall as support, move up the stairs backwards, step by step ... The washing machine is on its final thundering spin downstairs, still the soft rock plays on the radio.

As I get nearer to Kev and Marsha's room I can see that the door is slightly ajar, there's a faint, metallic tang ... I can also smell shit, I feel sick, I know I have to go in.

Marsha: she's kneeling by the bed, her top half spreadeagled on the mattress, the bedspread covered with blood.

Forcing myself to ignore her I move to the bathroom. Aida is lying on the floor, her five-year-old head nearly severed from her shoulders; I can see the vertebrae just holding on.

Bang, I go back against the wall and slump on to the floor, blood is everywhere, I get it all over my shirt, my hands, I sit in a pool of it,

soaking the seat of my trousers. There is a loud creak of wood splitting above me ... I drop my weapon, curl up and cover my head with my hands. Where's Kelly?

Where the fuck is Kelly?

"Shit! shit! shit!"

There was the crash of branches, followed swiftly by the thud on the jungle floor, close enough that I felt the vibration in the ground as it does when two tonnes of dead tree have just given up the will to stay upright.

The crash spooked not only me but also the birds lazing on branches high above.

There was screeching and the heavy, slow flap of large wings getting their owners the hell out of there.

A few gallons of canopy-held rain had followed the deadfall. I wiped the water from my face and stood up. Shit, it's getting bad. I've never had them on a job and never had them about Kev and his gang. It must be because I'm so knackered, I just feel totally drained ... I pushed hair off my forehead and got a grip of myself. Knackered? So what? Just get on with it. Work is work; cut away from that shit. You know where she is, she's safe, just do the job and try to keep her that way.

Deadfall was a constant problem in the jungle, and checking to see if there were any dead trees or branches nearby or overhead when basha'ing up for the night was an SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) that was taken seriously. I marked time, trying to do something with my legs. I could feel pins and needles.

Please, not here, not now.

According to Baby-G it was 2.23, not long to pick-up.

The rain had held off while I'd been here, but now and again a bucketful still fell after being dislodged, bouncing off the foliage on its way down with the sound of a finger tapping on a side drum, as if to accompany my static marching.

I'd been here amongst the leaf litter for nearly six hours. It was like having a night out on belt-kit not having the comfort of being off the ground in a hammock and under a poncho, instead having to rough it with just the equipment that you have on your belt: ammunition, twenty-four hours of food, water and medical kit. Only I didn't even have that. Just guaranteed misery as I became part of the jungle floor.

I finished with marking time: the sensation had gone away. I'd fought off jet lag, but my body still wanted desperately to curl into a ball and sink into a deep sleep. I felt my way back down against the hard rough bark of a tree and was surrounded by invisible crickets. As I stretched out my legs to ease the cramp in the good one and the pain in the other, I felt around to make sure the sweatshirt dressing was still tight around the wound; it didn't feel as if it was bleeding any more, but it was painful and, I imagined, messy down there. I could feel the pulse throbbing against the edge of the wound.

As I moved to relieve the numbness in my arse once more, the soles of my Timber lands pushed against Unibrow. I'd searched him before we went into the treeline, and found a wallet and several metre lengths of copper wire tucked into a canvas pouch on his belt. He'd been setting traps. Maybe he was into that sort of stuff for fun: it wasn't as if the lot up at the house would be in need of the odd wild turkey.

I thought back over some of the stuff I'd done over the years, and right now I hated all the jobs I'd ever been on. I hated Unibrow for making me kill him. I hated me. I was sitting in shit, getting attacked by everything that moved, and I'd still had to kill someone else. One way or another that was the way it had always been.

Until midnight I'd heard only three vehicles moving along the road, and it was hard to tell if they were heading towards the house or away from it. After that, the only new sounds were the buzzing of insects. At one point a troop of howler monkeys passed us by, using the top of the canopy so they had some starlight to help them see what they were doing. Their booming barks and groans reverberated through the jungle, so loud they seemed to shake the trees. As they swung screeching and bellowing from tree to tree they disturbed the water caught in the giant leaves, and we were rained on again.

I sat gently rubbing around the cut on my leg as more buzzes circled my head, stopping just before I felt something bite into my skin. I slapped my face just as I heard movement high above me in the canopy, sending another downpour.

Whatever it was up there sounded like it was moving on rather than coming down to investigate, which was fine by me.

At 2.58 I heard the low rumble of a vehicle. This time the noise didn't fade.

The engine note took over gradually from the chirping of the crickets, passing my position until I could clearly hear the tyres splashing in puddled-up potholes. It stopped just past me, with a gentle squeak of not-too-good brakes. The engine ticked over erratically. It had to be the Mazda.

Leaning on the gollock to help me get to my feet, I stretched my legs and tried to get them warmed up as I checked to make sure I still had my docs. The wound felt even more tender now I was standing again, and my clothing was sodden and heavy. Having given in to temptation hours ago, I scratched my lumpy back.

I felt around for Unibrow, got hold of an arm and a leg, and heaved him over my shoulder. His body was slightly stiff, but far from rigid. The heat and humidity probably had something to do with that. His free arm and foot flopped around as I jiggled him into position.

With the gollock and hat in my right hand I made my way slowly towards the edge of the treeline, my head and eyes at an angle of about forty-five degrees to the ground and half closed to protect them from the unseen wait-a-while. I might as well have closed them completely: I couldn't see a thing.

The moment I emerged from the forest, I saw the silhouette of the Mazda, bathed in a glow of white and red reflecting off the wet tarmac. I laid Unibrow down with his hat in the mud and tall grass at the jungle's edge, and squelched towards the passenger side, gollock in hand, checking to make sure there was only one body shape in the cab.

Aaron was sitting with both hands gripping the wheel, and in the dull glow of the instruments I could see him staring rigidly ahead like some sort of robot.

Even with the window down, he didn't seem to register I was there.

I said quietly, "Seen any of those barry-whatever trees yet?"

He jumped forward in his seat as if he'd just seen a ghost.

Is the back unlocked, mate?"

'Yes." He nodded frantically, his voice shaking.

"Good, won't be long."

I walked to the rear, opened the tailgate, then went back to fetch Unibrow. Lifting him in my arms and leaning back to take f| the weight, I carried him across to the vehicle, not knowing || whether Aaron could see what was happening. The suspension || sank a little as I dumped the body on the crap-strewn floor. His ;

| hat followed, and in the dim glow from the tail-lights I covered " him with his own poncho, then lowered the tailgate before gently ;

clicking it shut. The back window was a small oval, covered in grime. Nobody would be able to see through.

;' I went round to the passenger door and jumped in. Water | oozed from my jeans and soaked into the blanket covering the ' seat. Aaron was still in the same position.

"Let's go then, mate.

Not too fast, just drive normally."

He pushed the selector into Drive and we moved off. A cool draught of air from the open window hit my lumpy face, and as ;

we splashed through pot-holes I leaned down and placed the gollock under my feet.

;

Aaron at last found the courage to speak.

"What's in the back?" L There was no point beating about the bush.

"A body."

"God forbid." His hands ran through his hair as he stared v through the windscreen, before attacking his beard once more. !

"God forbid ... What happened?" i I didn't answer, but listened to the rasping of stubble as his left ( hand wiped imaginary demons from his face.

What are we going to do, Nick?"

"I'll explain later it's OK, it isn't a drama." I tried to keep my voice slow and calm.

"All we need to worry about is getting away from the area, and then I'll sort the problem out, OK?"

Switching on the cab light, I fumbled for Unibrow's wallet in my jeans and pulled it apart. He had a few dollars, and a picture ID that called him Diego Paredes and said he had been born in November '76 two months after I'd joined the Army. There was a cropped photograph of him and what looked like his parents and maybe some brothers and sisters, all dressed up, sitting at a table, glasses raised at the camera.

Aaron had obviously seen it.

"Someone's son," he said.

Weren't they all? I put everything back in the leather compartments.

His head was obviously full of a million and one things he wanted to say.

"Can't we take him to hospital? We can't just keep him in the back, for God's sake."

I tried to sound relaxed.

"Basically, we have to but only for now." I looked across at him. He didn't return my glance, just stared at the headlights hitting the road. He was in a world of his own, and a frightening one it was.

I kept my gaze on the side of his face, but he couldn't bring himself to make eye contact.

"He belongs to Charlie. If they find his body, it could put all of us in danger all of us. Why take that risk?" I let that sink in for a bit. He knew what I was talking about. When a threat's extended to a man's wife and children, it invariably focuses his way of thinking.

I needed to inst il confidence in this character, not anxiety.

"I know what I'm doing and he's just got to come with us for now. Once we're out of the area we'll make sure we dump him so he's never found."

Or at least, as far as I was concerned, not before Saturday morning.

There was a long, awkward silence as we drove along the jungle-lined tarmac and eventually hit the ghost town of Clayton. The headlights picked out the shadows of empty houses, barracks, and deserted streets and children's play areas. It looked even more deserted at night, as if the last American soldier had turned off the lights before he went home for good.

We turned a corner and I could see the high-mounted floodlights of the locks a few kilometres in the distance, shimmering like a big island of white light. The superstructure of a heavily laden container ship was facing to the right, half hidden as it waited in the lock for the water to surge in and raise its massive bulk.

SIXTEEN

I was just too fucked to worry about anything, but Aaron was in deep flap mode.

His left hand couldn't stop touching or rubbing his face. His eyes kept checking through the rear window, trying to see the body in the back, even though it was in pitch darkness.

We were driving alongside a very wide, deep, U-shaped concrete storm trench. I got Aaron to stop and turn off his lights, and he faced me for the first time, probably hoping that we were going to do something about Unibrow.

I nodded towards the lights.

"I've got to clean myself up before we hit all that." I wanted to look at least a bit normal, in case we were seen or stopped as we went through the city. Being wet wasn't unusual here, it rained a lot. I could have told him it was time for my daily prayers and he would probably have replied the same way.

"Oh, OK."

Once I forced my aching body out of the Mazda I could see what was going on under the floodlights. The stumpy electric lo cos were moving up and down the tracks beside the ship, looking like little toys from this distance and too far away to be heard properly. Only a muffled version of the radio traffic from the speakers reached us. The glow from the powerful arc-lights got to us, though, giving just enough light to see what was going on about us, and cast a very weak shadow on the Mazda as I went to the rear and lifted the tailgate to check Unibrow. He had been sliding about and he was pushed hard against the side body work his nose and lips compressed, his arms thrown behind him as if they couldn't catch up. The stench of blood and guts was so strong I had to move my head away. It smelt like a freezer after a power-cut.

Leaving the tailgate up, I scrambled two or three metres down the side of the concrete ditch and into the surging storm water. Bits of tree and vegetation raced past my legs as I pulled the plastic bag from under my jacket and wedged it above the water-line in the gap between two of the concrete sections. Even if I had to run naked from this spot I would still be armed with my documents.

I squatted in the edge of the flow and washed off all the mud, blood and leaf litter that covered me, as if I was having a bath with my clothes on. I didn't bother to check the wound; I'd sort it out later, and in the meantime all I'd do was keep the cut-up sweatshirt wrapped around it and just sit in the water and rest for a second.

I hadn't really noticed it up till now, but the sky was very clear and full of stars, sparkling like the phosphorescence on the jungle floor as I slowly took off my jacket.

I heard Aaron's door creak open and looked up to see him silhouetted against the glow from the canal. By now I was nearly naked, rinsing my jeans in the trench before wringing them out and throwing them up on to the grass, then checking out my back rash and face.

I watched as he stuck his head slowly into the back of the wagon. He recoiled and turned away, vomit already exploding from his mouth. I heard it splatter against the side of the vehicle and tarmac above me, then the sounds of him retching up those last bits that stay in your throat and nose.

I scrambled up on to the grass and hurriedly dressed in my wet clothes. Aaron had his last cough and snort and walked back to the cab, wiping his beard with a handkerchief. Sidestepping the pool of vomit on the tarmac, I covered Unibrow again with the poncho, lowered the tailgate, and climbed in next to Aaron, ignoring what had just happened even though I could smell it on his breath. That's better, wet but clean-ish." I grinned, trying to lighten the tone.

Aaron didn't respond. He looked terrible, even in this low light. His eyes were glistening with tears and his breathing was sharp and quick as he swallowed hard, maybe to stop himself throwing up again. His large hairy Adam's apple bobbed up and down like a fishing float with a bite. He was having a moment with his thoughts, not even realizing I'd spoken as he rubbed his stubble with shaking hands.

"Back to your place, then how far is it again, mate?"

I patted him on the shoulder and he nodded, turning the ignition with another little cough. He gave a quiet, resigned, "Sure." His voice trembled as he added, "It's about four hours, maybe more. We've had some very heavy rain."

I made the effort and kept my happy voice on, not really knowing what else to do or say "We'd better get a move on, then, hadn't we?"

We got through Fort Clayton and hit the main drag; the Barrier was up, it seemed the old security guy didn't play at night. I'd been wrong, the street lighting wasn't used now that there wasn't much traffic on it any more.

We turned left, leaving the lock and Clayton behind us, travelling in silence. A distant arc of light in the night sky indicated the city, along with flashing red lights from the top of a profusion of communication towers. Aaron just stared straight ahead, swallowing hard.

Before long we approached the floodlit toll booths by the old Albrook air-force base. The noise of the bus terminal blasted all | around us as power hoses washed the buses. A surprisingly large number of workers were waiting for transport, most holding small iceboxes and smoking.

Aaron spent the best part of a minute fumbling in his pockets and the glove compartment at the toll booth. A bored, middle-aged woman just stared into space with her hand out, no doubt dreaming about getting on to one of those buses at the end of her shift.

I let my head bob about as we bounced along the pot-holed road and into the sleeping city via El Chorrillo. A few lights were on here and there in the apartment blocks, and the odd scabby mongrel skulked along a sidewalk, then a black BMW screamed past us at warp speed. Five or six heads with cigarettes glowing in their mouths jutted backwards and forwards to the beat of some loud Latin music as it roared down the street. The BM had violet-coloured headlights, and a powerful fluorescent glow beneath the body work made it look like it was hovering. My eyes followed it into the distance as it hung a right, tyres squealing like something out of NYPD Blue.

I looked over at Aaron. He probably wouldn't even have reacted if we'd been overtaken by the USS Enterprise. He screwed up his face and deep lines cut into his skin. He looked as if he was going to be sick again as we bounced along, turning right at the junction the BM had taken. Once more we drove past the Pepsi stand, barred up for the night, and into the market area.

I thought I needed to say something to fill the silence, but I didn't know what.

I just looked out at the rubbish overflowing from the piles of soaked cardboard boxes that fringed the square, and cats fighting over the scraps.

In the end it was Aaron who broke the deadlock, wiping his nose into his hand before he spoke.

"Nick ... ?"

"What's that, mate?" I was almost too tired to speak.

"Is that what you do kill people? I mean, I know it happens, it's just that-' I pointed down at the gollock in the foot well

"I nearly lost my leg with that thing, and if he'd had his way, it would have been my head. I'm sorry, mate, there was no other way. Once we're the other side of the city, I'll bin him."

He didn't reply, just stared intently through the windscreen, nodding slowly to himself.

We hit the bay once more, and I saw a line of ships' navigation lights flickering out at sea. Then I realized Aaron had started to shake. He'd spotted a police car at the roadside ahead, with two rather bored-looking officers smoking and reading the papers. I gave myself a mental slapping, but not enough for him to see.

I kept my voice calm.

"Don't worry, just drive normally, everything's OK."

It wasn't, of course: they might stop a beaten-up Mazda just to relieve the boredom.

As we passed, the driver glanced up from his newspaper, and turned to say something to his mate. I kept my eyes on the cracked wing mirror, watching the four police cars as I spoke.

"It's OK, mate, there's no movement from behind.

They're still static. Just keep to the limit and smile."

I didn't know if he responded. My eyes were glued to the vehicles in the mirror until they dropped out of sight. I caught sight of my face for the first time.

It was a pleasant surprise. My left eye was half closed but not as swollen as it felt.

I looked over again to see how Aaron was doing and the answer was, not good.

He wasn't enjoying his visit to my planet one little bit. I wondered why and how he'd got involved in this shit. Maybe he'd had no choice. Maybe he was just like me and Diego, in the wrong place at the wrong time.

We splashed our way through mini-Manhattan, where large neon signs flashed down from the top of buildings on to the wet tarmac below. It was a completely different world from El Chorrillo, and a whole galaxy away from what had just been happening in the old Zone.

Aaron gave a small cough. 'You know what you're going to do with that guy yet, Nick?"

"We need to hide him somewhere on the way to your place, once we're out of the city. Any ideas?"

Aaron shook his head slowly from side to side. I couldn't tell whether he was answering or if it had just come loose.

"We can't leave him to rot... God forbid. He's a human being, for God's sake."

There was resignation in his voice.

"Look, I'll bury him for you. There's an old tribal site near the house. No one will find him there. It's the right thing to do he's someone's son, Nick. Maybe even someone's father. The family in the picture, they don't deserve this."

"No one goes there?"

He shook his head.

"Not in a few hundred years."

I wasn't going to argue with that. If he wanted to dig a hole, that was fine by me.

I got back to looking at the neon as he drove, and hoped that someone like him found my body one day.

We came to the airport road toll booth the other side of the financial district, and this time I got out a dollar of my own money. I didn't want us standing still any longer than we had to. Diego would take quite a bit of explaining.

He paid the woman with a sad "Gracias' and a thanks to me for giving him the money. This wasn't a good night out for him at all.

The lights faded behind us as we hit the road out of town. I dug out the wallet again, hit the cab light and looked at Diego's family picture. I thought of Kelly, and the way her life would be if I died without sorting out the mess I'd created. I thought of all the things I'd wanted to say to her, and hadn't ever managed to.

I wondered if his mum had wanted to say those things to her son, to tell him how much she loved him, or to say sorry about the stupid argument they'd had. Maybe that had been the stuff that had flashed through Diego's head in the moments before he died, things he wanted to say to these people raising their glasses at the camera as I killed him.

The wind through my window got stronger as we gathered speed. I wound it up only half-way to keep me awake, and I tried to concentrate on what I'd seen on the CTR and get back to work. Instead, I found myself wanting to curl up like a seven-year-old, desperate to keep the night monster at bay.

"Nick! The police! Nick, what do we do? Wake up! Please!"

Before I'd even fully opened my eyes I was trying to calm him down. It's all right, don't worry, it'll be OK." I managed to focus on the VCP (vehicle checkpoint) ahead, set up in the middle of nowhere: two police vehicles, side on, blocking the road, both facing left. I could see silhouettes moving across the two sets of headlights that cut through the darkness. It felt as though we were heading straight into the Twilight Zone. Aaron's foot had frozen on the accelerator pedal.

"Slow down, for fuck's sake. Calm down."

He came out of his trance and hit the brakes.

We'd got close enough to the checkpoint for me to see the side windows of the four-wheel-drives reflecting our headlights back at us. Aaron dabbed at the brakes to bring us to a stop. There was a torrent of shouts in Spanish, and the muzzles of half a dozen M-16s came up. I placed my hands on the dash so they were in clear view.

Aaron killed the lights and turned off the engine as three torch-beams headed our way. The shouting had stopped, and all I could hear now was the thump of boots on tarmac.

SEVENTEEN

The three men who approached with M-16s at the ready were dressed in olive green fatigues. They split up, two going left, to Aaron, the other towards me. Aaron started to wind down the remaining half of his window. His breathing was becoming increasingly rapid.

There was an abrupt command in Spanish as the nearest man shouldered his assault rifle. Aaron lifted his arse from the seat and searched around in his back pocket. I saw the red glow of cigarettes beyond the 4x4's headlights as figures moved about in the shadows.

A green baseball cap and bushy black moustache shoved its way through Aaron's window and demanded something from me. I didn't respond. I didn't have a clue what he was asking and just couldn't dig deep enough for the energy to look interested. His M-16 swung round from his back and banged against the door. I saw sergeant's stripes and Tolicia' badges on his sleeve.

"He wants your ID, Nick."

Aaron presented his own. It was snatched away by the sergeant, who stopped shouting and stood back from the window, using his mini-Maglite to inspect the docs.

"Nick? Your ID, please don't vex these people."

I pulled out my plastic bag lethargically from under my jacket and rummaged in it like a schoolboy in his sandwich box, just wanting this to go away.

The other policeman on Aaron's side had been standing behind the sergeant, his assault rifle shouldered. I heard boots behind the wagon, but couldn't see anything in the mirror.

I gripped myself: What the fuck am I doing? Switch on! Switch on!

My heart-rate pumped up a few more revs per minute, and at the same time as I looked in my bag I made a mental note of where the door handle was, and checked that the door-lock knob was up. Lethargic or not, if I heard the squeak of rusty hinges from the tailgate I'd be out and running. Handing my passport over to Aaron for the sergeant, I knew I was reacting too slowly to all of this.

There's a body in the back, for fuck's sake!

The sergeant was gob bing off about me as he looked at my passport with his Maglite. I only understood the odd word of Aaron's replies.

"Britanico ... amigo vacaciones ..." He nodded away like a lunatic, as if he had some sort of nervous disease.

The sergeant now had both our IDs in his hands, which would be a problem if I needed to do a runner. Without a passport, my only option was west, or the embassy.

Straining my ears, I waited for the tailgate to open. I ran my hands through my hair, keeping my eyes on the door handle and visualizing my escape route, which wasn't exactly difficult: three steps into the darkness to my right. From there, I'd just have to take my chances.

I was brought back to the real world by the sergeant bending down once more and pointing at my clothes as he rattled off something to Aaron. He replied with a funny, and forced a laugh, as he turned to me.

"You're a friend and I picked you up from the airport. You wanted so much to see the rain forest so I took you in at the edge of the city. Now you never want to go in again. It was so funny, please just smile."

The sergeant had joined in the laughter and told the other guy behind him about the dickhead britanico as he handed back the IDs. Then he banged the roof of the Mazda and followed the others towards the blocking wagons. There was a lot of pointing and shouting, followed by the roar of wagons being revved and manoeuvred clear of the road.

Aaron was shaking like a leaf as he turned the ignition, but managed to appear relaxed and confident from the neck up for the police's benefit. He even waved as we passed. Our headlights caught four or five bodies lined up on their backs on the side of the road. Their clothes glistened with blood. One of the kids was still open-mouthed, arms flung out and eyes wide, staring up at the sky. I looked away and tried to focus on the darkness beyond the headlights.

Aaron said nothing for the next ten minutes as we bounced along the pot-holed road, headlights lurching. Then he braked suddenly, pushed the selector into Park, and jumped out as if a bomb was about to go off. I could hear him retching and straining as he leant against the Bac Pac, but not the sound of anything coming up. He'd left it all at Clayton.

I just let him get on with it. I'd done the same myself, when I first started:

sheer terror engulfs you and there's nothing you can do but fight it until the drama is over. It's later, when there's time to think, not only about what's happened but, worse, what the consequences might have been if things had gone wrong that's when you part company with your last meal. What he was doing was normal. The way I had behaved back there wasn't, not for me.

The suspension creaked as he closed the door, wiping his waterlogged eyes. He was plainly embarrassed, and couldn't bring himself to look at me. I'm sorry, Nick, you must think I'm a real pussy. Guys like you can handle this stuff, but me, I'm just not made for it."

I knew that wasn't exactly true, but I didn't know how to say so. I never did at times like this.

"I saw a couple of guys blown away a few years ago. I had nightmares about it.

Then, seeing Diego's body and those kids back there hacked to death, it just..."

"Did he tell you what had happened?"

"It was a robbery. PARC. They cut them up with those things." He pointed down at the gollock.

"It doesn't really make sense -they normally don't bother folks here. No money." He sighed, both hands on the steering-wheel, and leant forward a bit.

"You see what they'd done to those kids? Oh, God, how can people behave like that?"

I wanted to change the subject.

"Look, mate, I think we'd better get rid of Diego. As soon as there's a bit of light we'll find somewhere to hide him. We can't go through that shit again."

He lowered his head on to the wheel and nodded slowly.

"Sure, sure, you're right."

"It'll be OK, he'll be found sooner or later and buried properly..."

We drove on. Neither of us wanted to talk about Diego or bodies any more.

"What road are we on?"

"The Pan-American Highway."

It didn't feel like one. We were bouncing around in ruts and pot-holes.

"Runs all the way from Alaska to Chile, apart from a ninety-three-mile break in the Darien Gap. There's been talk about joining it up, but with all the trouble in Colombia and the destruction of the forest, I guess we prefer it how it is."

I knew about the southern part of the highway; I'd been on it enough times. But I wanted us to keep talking. It stopped me having to think. I leant down and rubbed the sweatshirt wrapped round my now very painful leg.

"Oh, why's that?"

It's one of the most important stretches of rain forest still left in the Americas. If there are no roads, that means no loggers and farmers, and it's kind of like a buffer zone with Colombia. Folks call it Bosnia West down there"

The headlights were sweeping across each side of the road, illuminating nothing.

"Is that where we're going, to the Gap?"

He shook his head.

"Even if we were, this eventually becomes not much more than a track, and with this rain it's just darned impassable. We're heading off the road at Chepo, maybe another ten minutes or so."

First light was starring to edge its way past the corners of the sky. We bounced along for a while in silence. My headache was killing me. The headlights exposed nothing but tufts of grass and pools of mud and water. This place was as barren as a moonscape. Not much good for hiding a body.

"There's not a whole lot of forest here, mate, is there?"

"Hey, what can I say? Where there's a road, there's loggers.

They keep on going until everything's levelled. And it's not just about money:

the folk round here believe it's manly to cut down trees. I reckon less than twenty per cent of Panama's forest will survive the next five years. That's including the Zone."

I thought of Charlie and his new estate. It wasn't just the loggers who were tearing chunks out of Aaron's jungle.

We drove on as daylight spread its way gloomily across the sky. A primeval mist blanketed the ground. A flock of maybe a hundred big black birds with long necks took off ahead of us; they looked suspiciously like pterodactyls.

Ahead and to our left I could see the dark shadows of trees, and I pointed.

"What about there?"

Aaron thought for a few seconds as we got closer, clearly disturbed again, as if he'd managed for a moment to forget what we had in the boot.

"I guess so, but it's not that far to where I could do it properly."

"No, mate, no. Let's do it now." I tried to keep my voice level.

We pulled into the side of the road and under the trees. There wasn't going to be time for ceremony.

"Want to help?" I asked, as I retrieved the gollock from under my feet.

He thought hard.

"I just don't want the picture of him in there, you know, in my head. Can you understand that?"

I could: there were a whole lot of pictures in my own head I wished weren't there. The most recent was a blood-soaked child staring open-mouthed at the sky.

As I climbed out the birds were in full song: daylight was nearly here. I held my breath, opened the back, and pulled Diego out by his armpits, dragging him into the treeline. I concentrated on not looking at his face and keeping his blood off me.

About ten metres inside the gloom of the canopy I rolled both him and the wiped clean gollock under a rotted deadfall, covering the gaps with leaves and debris.

I only needed to hide him until Saturday. When I'd gone, maybe Aaron would come back and do what he'd wanted to in the first place. It shouldn't be hard to find him; by then there'd be so many flies they'd sound like a radio signal.

Having closed down the tailgate I got back into the cab and slammed the door. I waited for him to move off, but instead he turned.

"You know what? I think maybe Carrie shouldn't know about this, Nick. Don't you think? I mean-' "Mate," I said, 'you took the words right out of my mouth." I tried to give him a smile, but the muscles in my cheek weren't working.

He nodded and steered back on to the road as I tried to curl up once more, closing my eyes, trying to kill the headache, but not daring to sleep.

Maybe fifteen minutes later we hit a cluster of huts. An oil lamp swung in one of them, splashing light across a roomful of faded, multicoloured clothes hung up to dry. The huts were made of breeze block with doors of rough planks nailed to a frame and wriggly tin thrown over the top. There was no glass in the windows, nothing to hold back the smoke from small fires that smouldered near the entrances. Scrawny chickens ran for cover as the Mazda approached. It wasn't at all the sort of thing I'd been shown in the inflight magazine.

Aaron jerked his thumb over his shoulder as we drove past.

"When the loggers leave, these guys turn up subsistence farmers, thousands of them, just poor people trying to grow themselves something to eat. The only problem is, with the trees gone, the topsoil gets washed away, and inside two years they can't grow anything except grass. So guess who comes in next -the ranchers."

I could see a few minging-looking cows with their heads down, grazing. He jerked his thumb again.

"Next week's burger."

Without warning, Aaron spun the wheel to the right, and that was us quitting the Pan-American Highway. There were no signs on the gravel slip-road, just like in the city. Maybe they liked to keep the population confused.

I saw a huddle of corrugated roofs.

"Chepo?"

"Yep, the bad and sad side."

The compacted-gravel road took us past a scattering of more basic farmers' huts on stilts. Beneath them, chickens and a few old cats mooched around rusty lumps of metal and piles of old tin cans. Some of the shacks had smoke spilling from a clay or rusty metal chimney-pot. One was made out of six or seven catering-size cans, opened both ends and knocked together. Apart from that there was no sign of human life. The bad and sad side of Chepo was in no hurry to greet the dawn. I couldn't say I blamed them.

The odd rooster did its early-morning bit as the huts gradually gave way to larger one-storey buildings, which also seemed to have been plonked randomly on any available patch of ground. Duckboards, instead of pavements, led here and there, supported on rocks that were half submerged in mud. Rubbish had been collected in piles that had then collapsed, the contents strewn. A terrible stink wafted through the Mazda's cab. This place made the doss house in Camden look like Claridge's.

Eventually we passed a gas station, which was closed. The pumps were old and rusty, 1970s vintage, with an oval top. So much diesel had been spilled on the ground over the years that it looked like a layer of slippery tar. Water lay in dark, oil-stained puddles. The Pepsi logo and some faded bunting hung from the roof of the gas station itself, along with a sign advertising Firestones.

We passed a rectangular building made from more unpainted breeze blocks. The mortar that oozed between the blocks hadn't been pointed, and the builder certainly hadn't believed in plumb-lines. A sinewy old Indian guy wearing green football shorts, a string vest and rubber flip-flops was crouched down by the door, with a roll-up the size of a Rastafarian Old Holborn hanging from his mouth. Through the windows I could see shelves of tinned food.

Further up the road was a large wooden shack, up on stilts like some of the huts. It had been painted blue at one stage in its life, and a sign said that it was a restaurant. As we drew level I saw four leopard skins stretched out and nailed to the wall of the veranda. Below them, chained up in a cage, was the scrawniest big cat I'd ever seen. There was only enough space for it to turn round, and it just stood, looking incredibly pissed off as I would be, if I had to stare at my best mates pinned to the wall all day. I'd never felt so sorry for an animal in all my life.

Aaron shook his head. There was obviously some history to this.

"Shit, they're still got her in there!" For the first time I was hearing anger in his voice.

"I know for a fact that they sell turtle too, and r?s protected. They can't do that. You're not even allowed to have a parrot in a cage, man, it's the law ... But the police? Shit, they just spend their whole time worrying about narcos."

He pointed a little ahead of us and up to the left. We were driving towards what reminded me of an army security base in Northern Ireland. High, corrugated-iron fencing protected whatever buildings were inside. Sandbags were piled on top of each other to make bunkers, and the barrel and high-profile sight of an American M-60 machine-gun jutted from the one covering the large double gates. A big sign with a military motif declared this was the police station.

Four enormous trucks were parked up on the other side of the station with equally massive trailers filled with stripped tree trunks. Aaron's voice was now thick with anger.

"Just look at that first they cut down every tree they can get their hands on. Then, before they float the logs downstream for these guys to pick up, they saturate them in chemicals. It kills the aquatic life. There's no subsistence farming, no fishing, nothing, just cattle."

We left the depression of Chepo behind us and drove through rough grassland cratered with pools of rusty-coloured water. My clothes were still damp in places, quite wet in others where my body heat wasn't doing a good enough job.

My leg had started to feel OK until I stretched it out and broke the delicate scabbing. At least Aaron getting sparked up about what was happening in Chepo had diverted his mind from Diego.

The road got progressively worse, until finally we turned off it and hit a rutted track that worked its way to some high ground about three or four kilometres away. No wonder the Mazda was in a shit state.

Aaron pointed ahead as the wagon bucked and yawed and the suspension groaned.

"We're just over that hill."

All I wanted to do was get to the house and sort myself out -though from the way Aaron had rattled on in his eco-warrior Billy Graham voice, I half expected them to live in a wigwam.

EIGHTEEN

The Mazda rolled from side to side, the suspension creaking like an old brigantine as the engine revs rose and fell. To my surprise, Aaron was actually driving the thing with considerable skill. It seemed we had at least another hour and a half of this still to go so much for 'just over that hill'.

We ploughed on through the mist, finally cresting the steep, rugged hill. The scene confronting us was a total contrast to the rough grassland we'd been travelling through. A valley lay below us, with high, rolling hills left and right, and as far as the eye could see the landscape was strewn with felled, decaying wood. The trunks nearest us were almost grey with age. It was as if somebody had tipped an enormous box of matchsticks all over a desert of rust coloured mud. The low mist within the valley made it eerier still. Then, at the far end of the valley, where the ground flattened out, maybe five or six Ks away, was lush green jungle. I couldn't work it out.

We started our descent and Aaron must have sensed my confusion.

"They just got fed up with this side of the hills!" he shouted above the wagon's creaks and groans.

"There wasn't enough hardwood to take, and it wasn't macho enough for the hombres to take these little things away. But hey, at least there are no farmers, they can't clear all this on their own. Besides, there's not enough water down here not that they could drink it if there was."

We reached the valley floor, following the track through the downed trees. It looked as if a tornado had torn through the valley then left it for dead. The morning sun was, trying its hardest to penetrate a thin layer of cloud. Somehow it seemed much worse than if the sun had been properly out; at least then it would have come from one direction. As it was, the sun's rays had hit the clouds and scattered. It was definitely time for the Jackie O look again. Aaron followed my lead and threw his on too.

We carried on through the tree graveyard until we were rescued by the lush canopy at the far end of the valley.

"Won't be long now," Aaron declared.

"Maybe forty-five, fifty minutes."

Twenty would have been better; I didn't think the wagon could take much more, and neither could my head. I thought it was going to explode.

We were back in secondary jungle. The trees were engulfed in vines reaching up into the canopy. All sorts of stuff was growing between them and above the track. It felt like we were driving through a long grey tunnel. I took off my Jackie Os and everything became a dazzling green.

Baby-G told me it was 7.37, which meant we'd been on the road for over four hours. My eyes were stinging and my head still pounding, but there wouldn't be any time for relaxing just yet. I could do all that on Sunday maybe, or whenever it was that I finally got to the safety of Maryland. First, I needed to concentrate on how I was going to carry out the hit. I needed to grip myself and get on with the job. But try as I might to think about what I'd seen during the CTR, I just couldn't concentrate.

Aaron had been spot on. Forty-five minutes later we emerged into a large clearing, most of it lying behind a building that was side on and directly in front of us, maybe two hundred metres away. It looked like the house that Jack built.

The clouds had evaporated, to reveal sun and blue sky.

"This is us." Aaron didn't sound too enthusiastic. He put his glasses back on, but there was no way I was wearing the Jackie Os again not if I was about to see their owner.

To my left, and facing the front of the house, was a hill with a steep gradient covered with more fallen trees and rotten stumps, with tufty grass growing between them. The rest of the clearing was rough, but fairly flat.

We followed the track towards the large building, which was more or less on one level. The main section was a one-storey, terra cotta-roofed villa, with dirty green plastered walls. There was a covered veranda out front, facing the high ground. Behind the main building, and attached to it, was a corrugated-iron extension maybe twice as big as the house itself and with a much higher roof.

On my right were row upon row of white plastic five-gallon tubs, hundreds of them, about two feet high and the same in diameter. Their lids were sealed, but sprays of different coloured plants of all shapes and sizes shot from a circular hole cut out of the middle of each. It looked like Aaron and Carrie were running the area's first garden-centre mega store I'd stepped on to the set of The Good Life, Panama-style.

Dotted around us were corrugated-iron outhouses, with piles of wooden barrels and boxes, and the occasional rotting wooden wheelbarrow. To my right, past the tubs, was a generator under a corrugated-iron roof with no side walls, and at least ten forty-five-gallon oil drums.

As we got closer I could make out down pipes leading from the gutters into green plastic water butts that ran at intervals the length of the building. Above the roof, supported on scaffolding, was a large blue plastic water tank; beneath it was an old metallic one, with all sorts of pipes coming out of it. A pair of satellite dishes were mounted nearby, one pointing west, one east. Maybe they liked to watch both Colombian and Panamanian TV. Despite the technology, this was definitely Planet Tree-hug; all I needed to complete the picture was a couple of milking cows named Yin and Yang.

Now that we were nearer the house, I could see the other pickup truck, parked the far side of the veranda. Aaron hit the Mazda's horn a few times, and looked worried as Carrie emerged from the veranda, putting on her wraparounds. She was dressed the same as when I'd met her, but had gelled her hair.

"Please, Nick not a word."

The wagon stopped and he jumped out as she stepped down from the veranda.

"Hi."

I got out, ready to greet, squinting to fight both the glare and my headache.

I took a few steps towards them, then stopped to give them some space. But there weren't any greetings, kisses or touches, just a strained exchange.

Not thinking much, just feeling hot and bothered, I moved towards them.

I put on my nice-and-cheery-to-the-host voice.

"Hello."

It wasn't gel that was holding back her hair; she'd just had a shower.

She noticed my hobble and ripped jeans.

"What happened? You OK?"

I didn't look at Aaron. Eyes give so much away.

"I walked into some sort of animal trap or something. I'm-' "You'd better come and get cleaned up. I've some porridge fixed."

That sounds wonderful." It sounded shit.

She turned to walk back to the house, but Aaron had other ideas.

"You know what?

I'm going to clean the truck out there's been a fuel spillage in the back and, well, you know, I'd better clean it out."

Carrie turned.

"Oh, OK."

I followed her towards the house as Aaron's sun glassed eyes gave me one last look and nod before going back to the wagon.

We were just short of the veranda when she stopped and turned once more. As Aaron moved the Mazda over towards the tubs, I could see my bitten, lumpy face and scary sticking-up hair reflecting back at me in her slightly mirrored glasses. The lenses were too opaque for me to see anything of her eyes.

"Luce, our daughter, thinks you're part of aUK study group, and you're here for a few days to see how we work. OK?"

"Sure, that's not a problem." I was going to have to do my best to look like a tree-hugging academic. I wished I could see her eyes. I hated talking to mirrored glass.

"She knows nothing about why you're really here. Nor do we, come to that. She's asleep, you'll see her soon." She tapped her left lens and pointed at my swollen eye.

"Don't worry about that. It'll be fine in a few days."

NINETEEN

I was so tired I could hardly keep my eyes open as we stepped across cracked, faded terra cotta tiles, past two dark wood Victorian rocking-chairs and an old rope hammock scattered with coffee- and dribble-stained pillows. The front door was open, and Carrie pulled open a mesh mozzie door with a creak of hinges. To the left, and set above a meshed window, was a wall light, its bowl full of dried insects, fatally attracted to its glow. I caught the screen before it sprang back, and followed her inside.

We were in near darkness after the blinding brilliance outside, and there was a strong smell of wood. It was like being in a garden shed. I stifled a yawn; my eyes were trying to close, but I had to fight them. This was virgin territory and I had to take note of every detail.

The room was large, with a high ceiling. Hefty tree trunks supporting the building were set into plastered walls, which had once been painted cream but were now scuffed and discoloured. It was furnished like a holiday let, basic stuff, a bit rough, and not a lot of it.

Carrie was heading straight to another door, painted a faded yellow, about ten metres dead ahead. I followed as she took off her glasses and let them fall around her neck. To our left were four armchairs built out of logs, covered with dirty cushions with flowery patterns that didn't match. The chairs were evenly arranged around a circular coffee table, which was made from a slice of dark wood more than a metre in diameter. Trained over the coffee table and chairs were two 1950s-style, free-standing electric fans with protective wire covers.

The chrome had seen better days, and it was a shame there was no ribbon hanging from the mesh to given them that authentic look.

The wall to the left had two more doors, also painted yellow and set into flaking brown frames. The furthest one was partly open and led into what I presumed was their bedroom. A large natural wood headboard held one end of a once-white mosquito net; the other was suspended from the ceiling. The bed was unmade and I saw purple sheets. Men's and women's clothes were thrown over a chair. The wooden butt of a rifle hung on the wall to the right of the bed. I thought I'd keep it a little closer, living out here.

Further along, in the corner, was the kitchen area, with a small table and chairs. An array of different-patterned mugs hung from hooks in the wall.

On my right, the whole wall, as far as the door we were heading for, was covered by bookshelves. The only break was another window, also covered with protective mesh, which seemed to be the only other source of natural light.

I began to smell porridge. Steam rose from a large pot sitting on one of the kitchen units to the side of the cooker. Next to it lay a big bunch of bananas and a bowl of oranges.

Carrie disappeared through the door, and I followed her into the larger, corrugated-iron extension. The walls were lined with plyboard, and there was a rough concrete floor. Hanging down from the high ceiling on the end of steel rods were two old and very dirty days-of-the-Raj overhead fans, both stationary.

The room was a lot hotter than the one we'd just left, but lighter, with large sheets of clear corrugated plastic high up in the walls serving as windows.

The extension might be cheap and low-tech, but what it housed wasn't. Running the length of the wall in front of me and continuing after a right angle down the left-hand side was one continuous desk unit, formed out of trestle tables.

On it, and facing me, were two PCs with webcams attached to the top of the monitors; in front of each was a canvas director's chair, the green backrests well sagged with use. The screen of the PC on the right was displaying an image of the Miraflores lock. It must have been a webcam online, because the screen was just at the point of refreshing itself to show a cargo ship half-way out of one of the locks. Going by the bright reflection in the puddles on the grass, we weren't the only part of Panama with sun.

The PC to the left was closed down, and had a set of headphones with the mike attached hanging over the camera. Both machines were surrounded by paper and general office clutter, as was the underneath, with wires running everywhere and packs of office supplies. The desk against the wall to the left, facing me, housed a third PC, also with a webcam with headphones hanging, and was surrounded by schoolbooks. This had to be Luce's Land.

Carrie turned immediately to the right through the only other door and I followed. We entered what looked like a quartermaster's store, a lot smaller than the other two areas and a lot hotter. It smelt like the local deli. Rows of grey angle-iron shelving lined the walls left and right of me, turning the middle into a corridor. Stacked each side of us were all sorts, cartons of tinned food, hurricane lamps, torches, packs of batteries. On pallets on the floor were bags of rice, porridge oats and milk powder the size of coal sacks.

Enough supplies, in fact, to keep the Good Life going for a year. Laid out in the corridor was a US Army cot bed and a blanket, a dark green US Army lightweight still in its thin, clear plastic wrapping. That's for you."

She nodded towards a corrugated-iron door facing us as she quickly closed the one to the computer room behind us, plunging this area into near darkness.

"That'll take you outside. You'll be able to see better out there. I'll bring out the first-aid kit."

I walked past her, dropped my jacket on the cot, then turned back to see her climbing up the shelves.

"Could I see the imagery, please?"

She didn't look down at me.

"Sure."

I went outside. The sun was casting a shadow on this side of the building, which was good as my head was thumping big-time and being in the full glare wouldn't help at all. The crickets were still out doing their stuff; they're not great for headaches, either.

In front of me, two hundred metres away, lay the massed ranks of white tubs with their greenery sticking out of the top and the sunlight bouncing off puddles around them as the generator chugged rhythmically. Aaron was in the distance, where the tubs met the track, a hose in his hands, flushing out the back of the wagon. A flock of large black and white birds lifted from the tree-line beyond the tubs and whooshed overhead just above the rooftop.

I slumped down on the concrete foundation that protruded along the wall, my back against one of the green water butts, and closed my eyes for a second, trying to relieve the pain. It wasn't happening so I opened the hole in my jeans to inspect the wound. The sweatshirt was still wet and muddy in the creases and knots, even after the clean-up in the drainage ditch. It had done the job of stopping the blood flow pretty well, though I couldn't be sure about infection.

I'd had tetanus boosters, but probably only Aaron knew what kind of weird and wonderful microbes lurked in the Panama jungle.

I checked out the clotting between the material and flesh: the two had been trying their hardest to dry together and become one, and the swollen bruising around the wound felt kind of numb. I knew from experience that this sort of injury would be a major drama if you were stuck out in the jungle for any length of time, becoming a pus-filled mound within days, but at least here I could sort it out.

Carrie appeared from the storeroom with an old-fashioned, brown-cheque red suitcase and a sheet of A4 paper. She placed both on the concrete and lifted the suitcase lid to reveal what looked like quite a good basic medical pack. She came close in to look at the sweatshirt around my leg, and for the first time I caught a glimpse of her eyes. They were big, and very green. Her wet hair had fallen from behind her ears, and I was close enough to smell apple shampoo.

She didn't look up at me, just carried on digging around in the case. Her voice was clear, concise.

"So, what is it you're here for?"

She started to pull stuff out; I wasn't too sure if she was going to dress the wound herself or just show me what was available.

She didn't look up at me as she continued.

"I was told nothing except that you'd be coming and we were to help."

By now there were rolls of bandages in crunchy Cellophane, packs of pills and half-used bottles of medicine on the concrete as she continued to rummage.

There's something we need Charlie to do. I'm here to give him a reminder."

She didn't look up or otherwise acknowledge my answer. I looked at her hands as she bent over the suitcase and laid out different-coloured tubes of cream. They were working hands, not those of a lady who lunched. There were a few little scars here and there, but her fingernails weren't ingrained with dirt like Aaron's. They were short and functional, no hint of polish, but all the same they looked cared for.

"Don't you know what you're here to remind him about? I mean, don't they tell you these things when you're sent out, or whatever the word is?"

I shrugged.

"I thought maybe you might know."

"No, I know nothing." She sounded almost sad about it.

There was another pause. I certainly didn't know what else to say, so pointed to the bits and pieces spread about on the concrete.

"I need to clean myself up before I dress the wound. I'm afraid I don't have any other clothes."

She stood up slowly, looking over at the wagon.

"You can use some of Aaron's.

The shower is out in back." She pointed behind her. I'll get a towel."

Before reaching the door she half turned to me, "We have a two-minute rule here.

First minute for soaking, then turn off the hose and soap yourself down. The second minute is to rinse. We get a lot of rain but seem to have trouble capturing it." She gripped on the handle.

"Oh, and in case you're tempted, don't drink from the shower. Only drink from the hoses marked with a D that's the only treated water." There was a smile as she disappeared.

"Otherwise it'll be giving you a pretty big reminder of why it needs to be treated."

I took a look at the printout of the satellite imagery. Its grainy reproduction covered the whole page and was zoomed right into the target, giving me a plan view of the house, the more or less rectangular treeline and the broccoli patch surrounding it. I tried to get to work, but I couldn't do it even knowing how important this was to me, I just couldn't get my head to work.

Instead, my eye caught one of the dark brown bottles of pills. The label said dihydrocodeine, an excellent painkiller, especially when taken with aspirin, which boosts its effect big-time. I shook one out and dry swallowed as I sorted in the case for an aspirin. Eventually, pushing one out of its foil, I got that down my neck as well.

I placed one of the crepe bandages on top of the paper to hold it down, got up and started limping round the back in the direction of the shower. Maybe it was the light, or just that I was knackered, but I was feeling very woozy.

Hobbling past the storeroom entrance, I looked in and saw that the computer-room door was still closed. I stopped and looked at the cot. It was old-style, canvas rather than nylon, on a collapsible alloy frame. I had good memories of these things: they were easy to put up, comfortable, and kept you about two feet off the ground not like the Brit ones, where you needed a physics degree to assemble them, and ended up only about six inches off the ground. If you got a saggy one, you could spend your night lying on cold concrete or with your arse in the mud.

Some bird or other warbled and chirped in the distance, and the humid air was heavy with pungent aromas. I sat down on the cot, dragged Diego's wallet from my jeans and looked at the picture once more. Another nightmare for later, I supposed. It'd just have to join the queue.

Aaron had finished and was driving back to the house. I got up and closed out the daylight, then stumbled back to the cot, still in my damp clothes, and lay down on my back, my heart pumping faster as my head filled with Kelly, bodies, Diego, more bodies, the Yes Man, even Josh. And fuck it, why had I told Carrie I was here to give Charlie a reminder? Why had I told her anything about the job at all?

Shit, shit, shit... The pins and needles returned. I had no control as they moved up my legs and my skin tingled. I turned over and curled up, my arms holding my shins, not wanting to think any more, not wanting to see any more.

TWENTY

Thursday 7 September I walk into the bedroom, Buffy and Britney posters, bunk beds and the smell of sleep. The top bunk is empty as I move towards them in the dark, kicking into shoes and teen-girl magazines. She is asleep, half in, half out of her duvet, stretched out on her back, stretched out like a starfish, her hair spread in a mess over the pillow. I put her dangling leg and arm gently back under the duvet.

Something is wrong ... my hands are wet ... she is limp ... she isn't sucking her bottom lip, she isn't dreaming of being a pop star. The lights go on and I see the blood dripping from my hands on to her mutilated face. Her mouth is wide open, her eyes staring at the ceiling.

Sundance is lying on the top bunk, the bloodstained baseball bat in his hands, his eyes black and nose broken, looking down at me, smiling. 'I wouldn't mind a trip to Maryland ... we could go to Washington and do the sights first... I wouldn't mind a trip to Maryland ... we could go to Washington and do the sights first..."

I cry, fall to my knees, pins and needles.

I pull her from the bed, trying to take her with me.

"It's OK, Nick, it's OK. It's just a dream ..."

I opened my eyes. I was kneeling on the concrete, pulling Carrie towards me.

"It's OK," she said again.

"Relax, you're in my house, relax."

I focused on what was happening, and quickly released my grip, jumping back on to the cot.

She stayed down on the floor. The half-light from the living room illuminated a concerned face.

"Here, have some."

I took the half-empty bottle of water from her and started to unscrew the top, feeling embarrassed, my legs stinging with pins and needles.

I cleared my throat.

"Thanks, thank you."

"Maybe you have a fever picked up something in the forest yesterday. See what it's like in the morning and we'll take you to the clinic in Chepo."

I nodded as I drank, pushing back my soaked hair before stopping to take breath.

There's some medication in the kit if you need it."

"No, that's fine, thanks. How long have you been here?"

"You just woke us, we were worried." She reached out and put the back of her hand to my forehead.

"These fevers out here can make you maniacal."

T was having a nightmare? I can't even remember what it was about."

She started to get up as I pulled the wet sweatshirt away from my skin.

"It happens. You OK now?"

I shook my head to try to clear it.

"I'm fine, thanks."

"I'll see you in the morning, then. Goodnight."

"Yeah, um ... thanks for the drink."

She walked back into the dark computer room, closing the door behind her.

"You're welcome."

I checked my watch. 12.46 a.m. I had been out for over fourteen hours. Getting slowly to my feet, I squatted up and down, trying to get my legs back to normal while I had some more water. Then I ripped the plastic from the blanket, lay down and covered myself, blaming the drug cocktail for my doziness.

Dihydrocodeine does that to you.

I tossed and turned, eventually rolling up my jacket as a replacement pillow, but it didn't work. My body was telling me I still needed sleep, but I really didn't want to close my eyes again.

Half an hour later I checked Baby-G and it was 03.18 a.m. So much for not closing my eyes. I lay there, rubbing my legs. The pain had gone, and I didn't feel as groggy as before. I felt around below the cot for the water-bottle.

Blinking my eyes open, I drank to the noise of the crickets.

I didn't want to lie and think too much, so decided to have a walkabout to keep my head busy. Besides, I was nosy.

Pushing myself upright, I sat on the edge of the cot for a while, rubbing my face back to life before standing up and reaching for the light switch. I couldn't find it, so felt for the door handle instead and bumbled into the computer room, water in hand. The switch in here was easy to find. As the strip lighting flickered I saw that the living-room door was closed. I checked the darkness on the other side.

The plyboard behind the two blank screens nearest me was covered with pinned-up printouts in Spanish, and handwritten messages on university letterhead, alongside Post-its with everyday stuff like 'need more glue'. This was how modern tree-hugging must be: out shovelling shit all day, then back to the PC to work out leaf tonnages or whatever.

To the left of that was a cork board with a montage of photographs. All of them seemed to be of the extension being built, and of the clearing behind. A few showed Aaron up a ladder hammering nails into sheets of wriggly tin, some of him with what looked like a local, standing next to craters in the ground with half blown-up trees around them.

Taking a swig of the water I walked over to what I assumed was Luce's PC. The school textbooks were American, with titles like Math Is Cool, and there was a Tower of Pisa of music CDs ready to play in the drive. The plyboard behind was covered with world maps, best-effort drawings, and pictures of Ricky Martin torn from magazines, along with a Latin band with permed hair and frilly shirts. I looked down at the desk and noticed her name scribbled on exercise books as kids do when they are bored -mine were always covered. Her name was spelt Luz. I remembered from my Colombia days that their Z is pronounced as S. So her name was the Spanish for 'light' it wasn't short for Lucy at all.

I could feel the layer of greasy sweat over me as I headed for the living room, checking their bedroom once more before hitting the brass light switch the other side of the door.

The room was lit by three bare bulbs, hanging on thin white flex that was taped to the supports. The cooker was a chipped white enamel thing with an eye-level grill and gas-ring hob. There was an old-style steel coffee percolator on the cooker, and various family-hug photos fixed to the fridge with magnets. Near it was a white veneer chip board dining-room set, with four chairs, that could have come straight out of a 1960s household and looked out of place in a world of dark hardwoods.

I pulled two or three bananas from a bunch lying next to the oranges, and looked idly at the photographs while my back reminded me I'd been bitten big-time. The pictures were of the family having fun about the house, and some of an older guy in a white polo shirt, holding hands with Luz on the veranda.

I peeled the skin off the second as my eye fell on a faded black and white picture of five men. One of them was most certainly the older guy with Luz. All five were in trunks on the beach, holding up babies in saggy nappies and sunhats for the camera. The one on the far left had a badly scarred stomach.

I leant forward to get a closer look. His hair had been darker then, but there was no doubt about it. The long features and wiry body belonged to Pizza Man.

Taking another couple of bananas off the bunch, I wandered over to the coffee table and sat down, resisting the temptation to give my back a good hard scratch, and trying not to make a noise.

I put down the water and munched away. The slab of dark wood looked a good six inches thick, and though the top was polished, the bark around the edge had been left untouched. Strewn across it were tired-looking copies of Time magazine and the Miami Herald amongst glossy Spanish titles I didn't recognize, and a teen mag with some boy band posing on the cover.

I sat, finishing off the bananas, while I ran my eye along the shelves. There was a selection of hardbacks, paperbacks, large coffee-table books and carefully folded maps. The well-worn spines covered everything from natural history to Mark Twain, quite a lot of American political history, and even a Harry Potter.

But most seemed to be stern-looking textbooks on rainforests, global warming, and flora and fauna. I looked closer. Two were by Aaron.

One of the shelves was given over to four hurricane lamps with already blackened wicks, and as many boxes of matches, lined up like soldiers on standby for the next power cut. Below that, two silver candlesticks and a silver goblet sat alongside a selection of leather bound books with Hebrew script on the spine.

Finishing off the water, I got up and dumped the banana skins in the plastic bag under the sink and headed for the cot. I'd had a long rest but I still felt like more.

I opened my eyes to the sound of the generator and a vehicle engine. I stumbled over the medical case as I made my way to the outside door.

Blinding sunlight hit me, and I was just in time to see the Mazda heading into the treeline. As I held up my hand to shield my eyes, I saw Carrie at the front of the house. She turned to me, and I couldn't tell from her expression if she was smiling, embarrassed or what.

"Morning."

I nodded a reply as I watched the wagon disappear.

"Aaron's gone to Chepo. There's a jaguar that's been caged up for months. I'll get you those clothes and a towel. You OK?"

"Yes, thanks. I don't think I need to go to Chepo. The fever's gone, I think."

"I'm fixing breakfast. You want some?"

"Thanks, I'll have a shower first if that's OK.

She moved back towards the veranda.

"Sure."

The hard standing at the rear of the extension was covered by an open-walled lean-to. It was obviously the washing area. In front of me was the shower, three sides formed out of wriggly tin, and an old plastic curtain across the front. A black rubber hose snaked down from a hole in the roof. Beyond it was an old stainless-steel double sink unit supported by angle-iron, fed by two other hoses, with the waste pipes disappearing into the ground. Further back was the toilet cubicle.

Above the sinks were three toothbrushes, each in a glass, with paste and hairbrushes alongside a huge box of soap powder. An empty rope washing line was also suspended under the corrugated-iron awning, with wooden pegs clamped all along it, ready and waiting. A few of the white tubs were stacked up in the corner, one of them full of soaking clothes.

The ground to the rear of the house sloped gently away so that I could just see the treetops maybe three hundred metres in the distance. Birds flew over the trees and a few puffy white clouds were scattered across the bright blue sky.

I pulled back the plastic shower curtain, took off all my kit and dropped it on the hard standing, but left the sweatshirt bandage in place around my leg. I stepped into the cubicle, a rough concrete platform with a drainage hole in the middle, and a shelf holding a bottle of shampoo, a half-worn bar of soap streaked with hairs, and a blue disposable razor not Aaron's, that was for sure. Soap suds were still dripping down the tin walls.

I twisted myself to inspect the rash on my lower back, which was now incredibly sore. It was livid and lumpy, and about the size of my outspread hand. I'd probably got the good news from a family of chiggers while lying in the leaf litter. The tiny mites would have burrowed into my skin as I lay there watching the house, and there wasn't a thing I could do about it except play host for the next few days until they got bored with me and died. I scratched gently around the edge of the rash, knowing I shouldn't but I couldn't stop myself.

The bruising on the left side of my chest had come on nicely since Sunday afternoon, and my ribs burned even when I reached out to undo the hose sprinkler.

I soaked the sweatshirt material with lukewarm water to try to soften up the clotting, then, holding the hose over my head, I counted off my sixty seconds.

Closing off the flow, I lathered myself down with the flowery-smelling soap and rubbed shampoo into my hair. When the water had had enough time to do its stuff with the dressing, I bent down and untied the sweatshirt, trying to peel it away gently.

My vision blurred. I was feeling dizzy again. What the fuck was happening to me?

I sat down on the rough concrete and rested my back against the cool metal. I'd been making excuses by telling myself that all this shit was because I was knackered. But I had been knackered all my life. No, this was going on in my head. I'd been so busy feeling sorry for myself, I hadn't even given serious thought to how I was going to get the job done yet, and had lost a whole day of preparation. I could have been on the ground by now.

I gave myself a good talking to: Get a grip ... The mission, the mission, nothing matters except the mission, I must get mission-orientated, nothing else matters.

TWENTY-ONE

The flesh refused point blank to unstick itself from the material. They'd been mates for too many hours now and just didn't want to be parted. I ripped it away like a sticking plaster, and immediately wished that I hadn't: the pain was outrageous, and that was before the soapy lather started running into the raw, red, messy wound.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" I couldn't help myself.

As I gritted my teeth and rubbed soap into the gash to clear out the crap, there was a noise from the sink area. I poked my newly switched-on head out to say thanks `<49' to Carrie for the clothes and towel, but it wasn't her, it was Luz at least, I presumed it was. She was dressed in a blue, rather worn-looking long Tshirt style nightgown, and had the wildest black curly hair I'd ever seen, like Scary Spice plugged into the mains. Near her on the drainer was a pile of khaki coloured clothes and a blue striped towel. She stood there, staring at me with big dark eyes above high, pronounced Latin cheekbones and not a teenage zit in sight. She was going to be a very beautiful woman one day, but not just yet.

Sticking out of her nightgown was a pair of lanky legs, skinny as shaved pencils, the shins covered with tomboy bruises.

She looked at me, not scared or embarrassed, just interested at the

sight of a soapy version of Darth Maul sticking out from behind the shower curtain.

"Hold."

That sort of Spanish I understood.

"Oh, hola. You're Luz?"

She nodded, trying to work me out, or maybe she just found the accent strange.

"My mom told me to bring you these." She spoke American, tinged with a hint of Spanish.

Thank you very much. I'm Nick nice to meet you, Luz."

She nodded "See you' and left, going the long way round so as not to pass the shower.

I got back to business. The wound was about four inches long and maybe an inch deep, but at least it was a clean cut.

The soap and shampoo were starting to cake on me now as I stood and got to grips with the mission, and myself. Letting loose with the hose, I rinsed off for my allotted sixty seconds, having a piss at the same time, and the smell was bad.

My urine was a horrible dark yellow, which meant I was very dehydrated. I supposed that might account for the dizziness.

I towelled myself dry in the open air, then got dressed in Aaron's clothes, khaki cotton trousers with two map pockets either side, and a very old, full sleeved faded grey T-shirt, telling the world, "Just do it." The trousers were a few inches too big around the waist, but a couple of twists of the waistband tightened them up. The trouser pockets had good Velcro seals, so I put my wallet, passport and air ticket, still in their plastic bags, in the right-hand one.

After slicking back my hair I attacked the D hose, sucking at the bitter-tasting water, then stopped for a while to catch my breath as I felt my stomach swell with the much-needed warm fluid.

The next thing I did was take my Leatherman out of its case to wash off Diego's blood, then put it into my pocket. After another big water-sucking session, I hung the wet towel on the line like a good boy. With my old clothes rolled in a ball in my left hand and my Timberlands in the right, I walked back round to the storeroom, picked up the medical kit and satellite picture, then, after crawling about under the cot, Diego's wallet, and sat outside on the foundations again.

Looking at the sat image I could clearly see the road from Charlie's house down to the gate, wagons parked, diesel fumes belching from a JCB as it dragged a tree stump out of the ground, bodies lazing by the pool. This was good stuff, but told me nothing I didn't already know. I'd been hoping for maybe a covered approach route from the rear or something that would spark off an idea.

I found antibiotic powder in a little puff bottle and gave my wound a good dousing, then applied a gauze dressing and secured it with a crepe bandage, realizing, as I saw the dihy-drocodeine bottle, that my headache had gone.

Carrie hadn't provided any socks or underpants, so I just had to let my boys hang free and put my own socks back on. They were the consistency of cardboard, but at least they were dry now. I pulled on my boots, rubbed antihistamine cream over the small of my back and the lumps on my face, then packed everything back into the case. I found two safety-pins to secure the map pocket, and took the suitcase back to the storeroom. I dumped all my old kit under the cot and rummaged about for matches, then gouged a hole in the earth with the heel of my Timberland, and emptied the contents of Diego's wallet into it, less the $38.1 watched his picture ID and family photo curl and turn black as I thought about what I was going to do with Michael.

I didn't have that many options to consider. It was going to have to be a shoot.

Nothing else would work with such little time, information and kit: at three hundred-ish metres, and with even a half-decent weapon, I should be able to drop him. No fancy tip-of-an-ear stuff, just going for the centre mass of his trunk.

Once he was down and static I could get another few rounds into him to make sure. If my only chance at dropping him presented itself as he got into a vehicle leaving for or returning from college, then I was going to have to take the shot pretty sharpish.

Afterwards, I'd stay in the jungle until Sunday, keeping out of the way before popping out and getting myself to the airport. Even if I didn't find an opportunity until last light tomorrow, I could still be at Josh's by Tuesday. As for the possibility of not seeing the target at all, I didn't want to go there.

After pushing mud over the little pile of ash, I headed for the kitchen, keeping the antihistamine with me. I threw the wallet on to the back of a shelf as I passed through the storeroom.

The fans in the living area were turning noisily, whipping up a bit of a breeze.

Carrie was at the cooker with her back turned; Luz was sitting at the table, eating porridge and peeling an orange. She was dressed like her mother now, in green cargos and T-shirt.

I put on my cheerful voice again and gave a general, "Hello, hello."

Carrie turned and smiled.

"Oh, hello." She didn't look at all embarrassed about last night as she pointed at me with a porridge-covered spoon, but said to Luz, This is Nick."

Luz's voice was confident and polite: "Hi, Nick."

Thanks again for bringing me the clothes' was answered with a routine 'You're welcome."

Carrie ladled porridge into a white bowl and I hoped it was for me.

"Sit down.

Coffee?"

I did as I was told.

"Please." By the time I'd pulled up my chair, the porridge and a spoon were on the table in front of me. A bunch of four bananas was next, and she tapped the top of a green jug in the centre of the table. Milk.

Powdered, but you get used to it."

Carrie turned her back to me and made coffee. Luz and I sat facing each other, eating.

"Luz, why don't you tell Nick how we do things? After all, that's what he's here to find out. Tell him about the new power system."

Her face lit up with a smile that revealed a row of crooked white teeth in a brace.

"We have a generator, of course," she said earnestly, looking me in the one and a half eyes she could see.

"It gives power to the house, and also charges two new banks of batteries linked together in parallel. That's for emergencies and to keep the generator noise down at night." She giggled.

"Mom goes totally postal if the generator is left on late."

I laughed, though not as much as Luz as she tried to drink some milk. Carrie joined us with two steaming mugs of coffee.

"It's not that funny."

"Then why has milk come through my nose?"

"Luz! We have a guest!" As she poured milk into her mug and passed the jug over to me, her eyes were fixed on Luz with a look of such love and indulgence that it made me feel uncomfortable.

I nodded at the cooker.

"So you have gas as well?"

"For sure." Luz carried on with her lecture.

"It's bottled. It comes by helicopter with the other stuff, every fifth Thursday." She looked at her mother for confirmation. Carrie nodded.

"The university hires a helicopter for deliveries to the six research stations in-country."

I looked as interested as I could, given that what I really wanted to discuss was how to get my hands on the rifle I'd seen on the wall, and to see if it was any good for what I had in mind. I peeled a banana, wishing that I'd had a resupply every fifth week during my stays in the jungle over the years.

Luz was just finishing her food as Carrie checked the clock by the sink.

"You know what? Just leave your plate on the side and go and log on. You don't want to keep Grandpa waiting." Luz nodded with delight, got up with her plate, and put it down next to the sink before disappearing into the computer room.

Carrie took another sip of coffee, then called out, Tell Grandpa I'll say hello in a minute."

A voice drifted back from inside the computer room.

"Sure."

Carrie pointed at the hug pictures on the fridge door and one in particular, the guy in a polo shirt with grey-sided black hair, holding hands with Luz on the veranda.

"My father, George he teaches her math."

"Who are the ones holding the babies?"

She turned back and looked at the fading picture.

"Oh, that's also my father, he's holding me we're on the far right. It's my favourite."

"Who are the ones with you?"

Luz stuck her head round the corner, looking and sounding worried.

"Mom, the locks picture has closed down."

That's OK, darling, I know."

"But, Mom, you said it must always be-' Carrie was sharp with her.

"I know, baby, I've just changed my mind, OK?"

"Oh, OK." Luz retreated, looking confused.

"We home-school everything else here. This keeps her in contact with her grandfather, they're real close."

I shrugged.

"Sounds good," I said, really not that fussed she hadn't answered my question. There were more important things on my mind. It was time to cut to the last page. Is that rifle in the bedroom in working order?"

'You don't miss much, do you, fever man? Of course ... why?"

"For protection. We can call your handler for one, it's not a problem. It's just that I haven't got much time and I want to get going as soon as I can."

She rested her arms on the table.

"Do you people never feel secure without a weapon?"

Those intense green eyes burnt into me, demanding an answer. Problem was, I reckoned her question was more complicated than it seemed.

"It's always better to be safe than sorry that's why you have it, isn't it?

Besides, Charlie's no Mr. Nice."

She stood up and walked towards her bedroom, "For sure, like death but if he catches you doing whatever it is you're going to do, you'll need more than an old rifle."

She disappeared behind the door. From this side of the room I could see the foot of the bed and the opposite wall. It was covered with photographs, both old and new, smiling adults and children doing more family love-fest stuff. I could hear working parts moving back and forth, and the chink of brass rounds as they fell on to each other. I supposed you'd have it loaded and ready to go, otherwise why have it on the bedroom wall?

She reappeared with a bolt-action rifle in one hand, and a tin box with webbing handles in the other. It didn't have a lid, and I could see cardboard boxes of ammunition.

My eyes were drawn to the weapon. It was a very old-style piece of kit indeed, with the wooden furniture stretching from the butt all the way along the quite lengthy barrel to just short of the muzzle.

She put it down on the table. It's a Mosin Nagant. My father took it from the body of a North Vietnamese sniper during the war."

I knew about this weapon: it was a classic.

Before passing it across, she turned it to present the opened bolt and show me that the chamber and magazine were clear. I was impressed, which must have been plain to see.

"My father -what's the use of having one if you don't know how to use it?"

I checked chamber clear and took the weapon from her.

"What service was he in?"

She sat down and picked up her coffee cup.

"Army. He made general before retiring." She nodded over at the fridge pictures. The beach? Those are his Army buddies."

"What did he do?"

Technical stuff, intelligence. At least there's one good thing that can be said about George he's got smarts. He's at the Defense Intelligence Agency now."

She allowed herself a smile of pride as she gazed at the picture. There's a senior White House adviser and two other generals, one still serving, in that photograph."

That's some bad-looking scar on the end. Is he one of the generals?"

"No, he left the service in the eighties, just before the Iran-Contra hearings.

They were all involved in one way or the other, though Ollie North took all the heat. I never did know what happened to him."

If he was part of the Iran-Contra affair, George would know all about jobs like this one. Black-ops jobs that no one wanted to know about, and people like him wouldn't tell anyway.

The connection between these two, George and the Pizza Man, was starting to make me feel uncomfortable. But I was a small player and didn't want to get myself involved with whatever was going on down here. I just had to be careful not to bump into it, that was all. I needed to get to Maryland next week.

Luz called from the other room, "Mom, Grandpa needs to talk with you."

Carrie got up with a polite "Won't be long," and disappeared into the next room.

I took the opportunity to have a double-take at the tall, square-jawed, muscular George smiling with Luz on the veranda. It was easy to see where she got her big green eyes from. I checked out the digital display on the bottom right of the picture. It was taken in 04-99, only eighteen months ago. He still looked like the all-American boy with his short hair and side parting, and, what was weird, he looked younger than Aaron. The Pizza Man, on the other hand, looked like death warmed up compared with his black-and-white former life. He was skinnier, greyer and probably had lungs like an oil slick, going by the way I'd seen him take down that nicotine.

TWENTY-TWO

I got back to the real world and examined the weapon, which looked basic and unsophisticated compared with the sort of thing around nowadays. Not that the basics had changed for centuries: trigger, on and off switch, sights and barrel.

I wasn't a weapons anorak, but I was familiar enough with the Russian weapon's history to know that, regardless of how it looked, these things had sent thousands of Germans to their graves on the eastern front in the forties. The arsenal marks stamped into the steel of the chamber showed it had been made in 1938. Maybe this was one of them. It had probably quite a history, including zapping American targets in Vietnam.

The one I had in my hands had been beautifully maintained. The wooden furniture was varnished, and the bolt action had been lightly oiled and was rust-free. I got it into the aim and looked through the quite unconventional optic sight, unsure if it was the original. It was a straight black and worn tube about eight inches long and about an inch in diameter mounted on top of the weapon.

It had to be a fixed power sight as there was no zoom ring to adjust the magnification, just two dials half-way along the sight the top one to adjust for elevation (up and down), and the one on the right-hand side for windage (left and right). The dials had no graduation marks any more the top discs were missing just some scratch marks where it had been zeroed.

Looking into the sight and aiming at a fuzzy book spine at this short distance, I could see I had a post sight to aim with. A thick black bar came up from the bottom of the sight and finished in a point in the centre of the sight picture.

Just below the point was a horizontal line that crossed the whole width of the sight.

I'd never liked post sights: the post itself blocked out the target below the point of aim, and the further away the target was, the smaller it became and the more the post blocked it out. But beggars can't be choosers, and as long as it went bang when I pulled the trigger, I'd be half-way happy. There were also conventional iron sights on the weapon a rear sight that was set just forward of the bolt, about where my left hand would go on the stock. The sight could be set between 400 and 1200 metres. It was set at the all-round 'battle sight' setting of 400. The foresight was protected by a cylindrical guard on the muzzle.

I placed the weapon on the table and went and helped myself to more coffee from the cooker. Thinking about this rifle's possible history reminded me that, years earlier, in the early eighties, when I was an infantry squaddie in BAOR (British Army of the Rhine), I'd owned a Second World War bayonet that an old German had given me. He told me he'd killed over thirty Russians with it on the eastern front, and I wondered whether he was bullshitting me, since most Germans of that generation said they fought the Russians during the war, not the Allies. I'd put it away in a cupboard at the house in Norfolk and forgotten about it; then, along with everything else, it had been sold to pay for Kelly7 s treatment. A skinhead with a stall in Camden Market gave me twenty quid for it.

I'd nearly finished pouring when Carrie returned.

"Do you know how to adjust the sights?"

"No." It would save me a lot of time if I didn't have to experiment.

"It's got a PBZ at three hundred and fifty yards," she said, walking to the table.

"Do you know what that is?" I nodded as she picked up the weapon and turned the dials.

"Stupid, I'm sure you do."

I could hear the clicks even above the noise of the fans before she handed it to me. There, the notches are in line." She showed me the score marks levelled off against the sight on both dials to indicate the correct position for the sight to be zeroed.

I put down my coffee, took it off her and checked out the dull score marks.

"Anywhere I can go to check zero?"

She waved her arms. Take your pick. There's nothing but space out there."

I picked up the ammunition tin.