Stand By, Stand By

TWELVE

Egerton announced that he was going to stay over, and called his wife to tell her. Then he revealed that there were a couple of bedrooms behind the offices, and offered me one of them. As this seemed a better option than returning to the hotel, I took it. Before I turned in, I phoned Tony again and brought him up to date. I said he should get his head down.

I tried to do the same, but couldn’t. I was half-listening through the open door for the phone, half-cursing the way things had gone to ratshit. In a way it was my fault. If I hadn’t recognized Farrell and reported his presence, nothing would have happened. On the other hand, I couldn’t have ignored him and left him to carry on with whatever villainy he was engaged in. If the PIRA were into drug-running to the extent of sending him to Bogotá, it was really bad news for the Province, and something that ought to be tackled right away.

I think I lay awake most of the night, imagining various scenarios; but in fact I must have gone to sleep, because suddenly I became aware of Egerton standing over me with a brew of tea. It was 6 o’clock in the morning.

‘Things are moving,’ he said. ‘We’ve had a police report of a disturbance outside your restaurant, so I guess that was it. Also, I made a couple of calls. They should produce results within an hour.’

‘Brilliant. Is there a back way out of the building?’

‘Certainly. If you carry on down to the lower garage level in the lift, you can walk out of the pedestrian exit.’

‘Great. I want to nip back to the hotel to square things away. Now that this has happened, there’s bound to be someone watching the embassy, and I don’t want to be seen.’

‘Fair enough.’

By then it was mid-morning in England. I called Hereford again, and was put straight on to the CO.

‘No positive news yet?’ he asked.

‘No, but things are on the move. What do you advise about our location? I could send the team back to camp, but that’s more than four hours out of town. I’d rather have them on hand in case we have to head off somewhere quickly.’

‘I understand. Are they in a secure place?’

‘Reasonably. The hotel think we’re hydro engineers.’

‘Keep them there for the moment, then. If you find out where the hostages have been taken, you’ll need to set up a forward mounting base in the area, and get your people into it.’

‘Fine.’

‘We’ve been looking at ways of getting a squadron out to back you up. It’s been to Defence Minister and Foreign Minister level. We’re just waiting for clearance from the FO.’

‘Good. We’re OK for the moment. I’m getting first-class support in the embassy.’ As Bill was temporarily out of earshot I asked, ‘Do you know of a guy in the Regiment called Egerton?’

‘Donald? Don Egerton. Of course. He was a star. Killed on an exercise in Africa four or five years ago.’

‘Oh — right. I thought the name was familiar. It’s his brother in charge here.’

‘Glad to hear it.’

I hung up and glanced at my watch. I knew that, whatever might be said officially, ways would be found to get reinforcements out to us. Once the Regiment’s involved in an operation of this kind, obstructions tend to fall away.

Then… there was a good chance that on this Saturday morning Tracy would be at home. Worth a try, anyway.

I dialled — and there she was.

‘Geordie! What’s happening?’

‘Nothing. Everything’s cool. I just got a chance to call.’

‘Well, great. Where are you?’

‘In Bogotá.’

‘How’s the weather?’

‘All right. Not as hot as in camp. We’re 9,000 feet above sea-level. What about there?’

‘Typical March — cold and wet.’

‘How’s Tim?’

‘On top form. He’s got a friend here for the day — Alex Kirkby, from the village.’

‘Oh, great. Everything all right, then?’

‘Yes. Well… it was funny. A man rang last night.’

‘What did he want?’

‘He just asked how you were enjoying yourself in the sun.’

‘Nothing else?’

‘No. I asked what he meant, but he rang off.’

I felt a stab of anxiety. ‘What sort of a voice did he have?’

‘Nothing special. I couldn’t place it.’

‘Not Irish?’

‘I wouldn’t say so.’

‘Listen. If it happens again, call the police. OK?’

‘OK.’

‘And don’t worry. It was probably just some nutter.’

I said goodbye and rang off. Although I’d pretended to be nonchalant, I was disturbed. Outside the Regiment, nobody was supposed to know where we were. Who’d passed word around that I was in Colombia?

Before I had time to start worrying, Bill Egerton returned and showed me the way out via the fire-stairs, lending me a key so that I could come back in the same way.

I ran down to the lower garage floor and came out of the door cautiously. The car-park was three-quarters empty, and there was nobody in sight. The rear of the block was deserted, too. I turned to the right and set off, noticing for the first time that the building was flanked by a garden full of spectacularly bright flowers.

I walked the short leg to the hotel without picking up a tail. Tony had dragged everyone out of bed, and I got them all into the room he and I had been sharing. Most of them were looking rough. As I predicted, Mel had lost his money. He still had his wallet, but he’d got so smashed that someone had nicked all his cash from it without him noticing. The only things he had left were some emeralds he’d bought from a guy in the street and stashed in a pocket of his jeans. At least, he thought they were emeralds. The others reckoned they were bits of green glass.

‘Listen,’ I said. ‘The shit’s hit the fan.’

I told them the score, then said, ‘We’re to stay put for the moment. Then, if we find out where the hostages are, we’ll go in and get them out. Meanwhile, I’m going to phone Captain Jaime and tell him the course is suspended for a couple of days. I’m heading back to the embassy now. Tony’ll follow me, to man the secure phone. The rest of you are going to have to stick it out here in the hotel. OK?’

At the sniff of an operation their hangovers fell away, and everyone gladly ditched their plans to buy leather jackets. Those could wait. I had a shave and a shower and got some breakfast down me, then grabbed a taxi to the back of the embassy. Egerton was certainly well organized. His wife had come in, bringing his shaving kit and some weekend clothes.

‘Progress,’ he began. ‘We’ve got a lead. Word is that the party’s flown out to a brand-new refinery in the jungle on the Rio Caquetá.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Way down south, in the Amazonas, near the border with Peru.’

‘How do you get there?’

‘Not easy. There are no roads. The only way’s to fly.’

‘In that case we’re definitely going to need help from your friends in DAS. Will your friend fix things for us?’

‘I think so.’ He picked up a telephone, dialled and began speaking rapidly in Spanish. He glanced at me a couple of times as he was talking, and ended with, ‘Si, si. Muchas gracias.’

He turned to me. ‘He wants to see you.’

‘When?’

‘Now. A car will collect you in a few minutes.’

‘Does he speak English?’

‘Perfectly. He went to Harvard.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘General Felipe Nariño.’

At that moment the door-buzzer sounded and Tony arrived. ‘The guys are standing by to move,’ he announced. ‘I’ve called Captain Jaime at the camp and told him the course is suspended for the time being. Also, I spoke to Sparky and put him in the picture.’

‘We’d better get our arses back down there,’ I said.

Egerton cleared his throat. ‘I think you’ll find you’ve got air transport at your disposal. You’ll need to go back to get your kit and presumably the camp you’ve been at has a landing strip?’

‘Sure.’

‘Then it might pay you not to send anyone off by road. Hang on until you’ve seen the general.’

Five minutes later I was in the back of an air-conditioned Mercedes 500 with smoked-out windows, sweeping through the outskirts of the city towards the palatial establishments perched on the slopes of the mountain. I didn’t feel by any means secure. It wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that I was being lifted. But no — surely DAS were on our side? Not only were we training the bodyguard for them; we’d now got caught up in the fight against the narcos, and so were in a position to give them help.

This was not a peaceful environment. Outside the big condos, all protected by high wire fences, bodyguards openly flaunted sub-machine-guns. My driver — young, swarthy, grey-uniformed — handled the car well but with amazing arrogance. Twice he went straight over red lights, and at every opportunity he blasted pedestrians out of the way with his horn. No doubt he was immune from prosecution.

Soon we arrived at a pair of high wire gates, set in a twelve-foot wall of concrete blocks topped with broken glass. Except that I couldn’t see any closed-circuit TV cameras, the compound was unpleasantly similar to the RUC stations in Belfast. The gates were opened mechanically by some unseen person, and we drew up outside a brand-new office block. The Merc had hardly come to rest before a man stepped forward, opened the door beside me and ushered me into the building.

In the passage he muttered, ‘Disculpe,’ and ran his hands over me in a swift, skilled frisk, which instantly brought to light my Sig, which I was carrying in a pancake holster on my waist. ‘Disculpe,’ he repeated as he removed the weapon. Then he led the way up a shallow flight of stairs and knocked on a door.

General Nariño was short and stocky, with a broad forehead, greying hair swept across it, and slightly hooded eyes. His appearance immediately made me think of Marlon Brando — a dangerously sleek version of the actor, but a look-alike all the same. He was wearing an expensive-looking sky-blue suit and a black tie with a lightning strike down the centre. As I came in he got up from behind his desk and came forward to greet me. His hand was soft and gentle.

‘Sergeant Sharp? Pleased to meet you,’ he said. ‘Take a seat.’

‘Thanks.’

As Egerton had said, the General’s English — or rather, American — was perfect. But in spite of his superficial geniality I felt he was hard and cold.

Whatever else, he had a magnificent office. Because the building was perched high on the side of the mountain, the windows commanded a panoramic view of the city. His king-sized desk and long, oval conference table were both made from some fine, rich-coloured wood like mahogany, but not so dark. The floor was made of wood as well, with a couple of bright rugs to give colour. No linoleum or chrome or glasstopped tables here. As I sat down, a tray with a cup of coffee on it appeared at my elbow. Again it crossed my mind that the coffee could be laced with the drug we’d heard about in Hereford — burundanga — which removes your will to resist; but again I thought, No, this is all above board.

‘You have a problem, I think,’ the General began.

‘That’s right. These three people have been lifted.’

‘And you think the IRA is involved?’

‘I know it is.’ I gave him a short run-down on Farrell, without explaining my personal connection. I simply said that I’d worked in Belfast and seen him there.

‘Well, it sounds as if your group has been flown to a site on the Rio Caquetá.’

‘I gather that’s very remote.’

‘It sure is. Look.’ He stood up and went over to the end wall, where he switched on a spotlight to illuminate a huge map of the country. Using a billiard cue, he began to point out details.

‘We’re here, in Bogotá, nearly in the centre of Colombia. Away down south is this vast area known as Los Amazonas. It’s part of the Amazon basin. As you can see, it’s one hell of a size. Eight hundred kilometres from here to here. No roads, just thousands of square kilometres of rainforest.

‘Now, for some weeks past we’ve been getting rumours of a new laboratory on the bank of the Rio Caquetá — here.’ He ran the tip of the billiard cue along a river flowing in a big curve towards the Amazon itself. ‘It’s here —’ he drew a circle — ‘downstream of a settlement called Puerto Pizarro. A few days ago, American satellites picked up a new construction site.’

He came back and sat down again. ‘The reasons the narcos set up in places like that are simple. First, it gives them protection — we don’t have the resources to find them. Second, they can bring in their raw supplies by boat upriver from the Amazon. Third, they’re close to the Peruvian border, and in a few minutes they can flip across by light plane.

‘In the past they built the labs right beside airstrips, but lately they’ve gotten more sophisticated. Now they put the buildings some distance from the strip, which makes them harder to find. Communication between the two may be by road, but it could also be by water. Say by a tributary of the main waterway.

‘We expect Caquetá to conform to this new pattern. There’s an army airstrip at Puerto Pizarro, fairly close by, and a military outpost. But we’re not too struck on low-level air reconnaissance. First, the distances are very big. Second, if the facility’s a few kilometres off the river, you’re probably going to miss it on a single pass. Third, the narcos are more than capable of shooting down a low-flying aircraft. They have all modern weapons, including surface-to-air missiles.’

I nodded. An awkward silence followed. I wanted to propose a plan of action, but at the same time I didn’t want this guy to think I was teaching him to suck eggs. In the end I said, ‘Do you mind if I make a suggestion?’

‘Go right ahead.’

‘If a major assault went in on the facility — say by helicopter gunships — the narcos would top the hostages and throw them in the river before any incoming troops could get on the ground. Now in a way this problem is of our own making. If possible we’d like to crack it ourselves. I have a team of ten men, all highly trained. We’re used to working together. We operate best as a self-contained unit, and our speciality is covert approach. We’d aim to infiltrate the area without being detected, find out the camp routine, and strike at whatever moment seemed most advantageous. We’re most effective in that covert kind of role. If we can be sure the hostages have been taken to this place, and you can lift us to within a reasonable distance of it, we’ll recover them on our own.’

The General looked at me steadily, as if he was sizing up my fighting potential. Then he said, ‘Your men have won a lot of respect down at Santa Rosa.’

‘We’re jungle trained,’ I said.

‘We have helicopters — Hueys.’

‘Where are they?’

‘All over.’

‘Could you get a couple down to Puerto… Puerto Pizarro today?’

‘I expect so, yes.’

‘We’ll need some logistics back-up, too.’

‘Such as?’

‘Mosquito nets, hammocks, DPMs, medical packs. Ropes, in case we have to rope down out of a chopper. Inflatable boats, too, by the sound of it. Normally, we’d have all this as a matter of routine. But we didn’t come equipped for an operation of this kind. Rations, also. We brought a small amount of food with us, for emergencies, but not enough to deploy with.’

‘All that can be arranged.’ Nariño had been making some notes, and now looked coolly at me.

‘I’m sorry to break the training course. That’s going well.’

‘Too bad. Maybe you can pick it up again when this is over.’

Once more I nodded. Then I said, ‘The immediate problem is, we left most of our stuff in the camp at Santa Rosa. We need to get back there fast to pick up our kit and weapons.’

‘Of course. One moment.’ He picked up a telephone, pressed a single button and began to speak, quietly but firmly. I could pick up the gist of it; he was giving orders for an aircraft to be made available. I sat looking at the big map, and the ocean of green, denoting jungle, that lay in the far south.

The General put his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and asked, ‘Where are your men now?’

‘At the Hostal Bonavento.’

He spoke into the receiver again, then turned back to me and said, ‘A truck will collect them at eleven o’clock and lift them out to the military airfield. The flight down will take less than an hour. The aircraft can refuel at Santa Rosa, and then fly you on to Puerto Pizarro.’

‘Thank you,’ I replied. ‘I appreciate your quick response.’ As soon as I’d said that, I thought it sounded phoney — but I didn’t want to seem too effusive. To appear a bit warmer I added, ‘Bill Egerton at the embassy asked me to give you his best wishes.’

For the first time a slight smile lit up the broad, impassive face. With his right elbow on the desk he held out his hand, palm down and fingers extended, and in a curious gesture rocked it slightly to right and left, as if to express that a certain amount of give-and-take went on between the DAS and the embassy. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Bill is a good friend of ours.’

As I got up to go, he brought out a card, scribbled a number on the back, and handed it to me. ‘This is my direct line, here or at home. You can call me any time,’ he said. ‘I’m glad to help.’

Back at the embassy I found Tony talking on the satcom telephone. He was giving, or checking, some coordinates. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘that’s seventy-three fifty west, zero degrees fifty south. OK.’

Seeing me come in, he turned and raised a thumb, then said into the mouthpiece, ‘Call back when you’ve seen the next one. Fine. Thanks.’

He hung up and said, ‘We got it!’

‘What?’

‘The hostage location.’

‘How?’

‘Satellites. I called my guys in Fort Worth, and they went right through to Langley, Virginia. One satellite or another is passing over here every twenty minutes. They checked their records and found that a new construction site’s been growing during the past few weeks on a big bend of the Rio Caquetá —’

I held up a hand. ‘Don’t think I’m trying to take the piss, Tony, but I know all that already.’

I told what I’d heard from the general.

‘OK,’ he said equably. ‘Anyway, the controllers are going for a high-resolution shot of it on one of the next passes.’

‘Brilliant!’

Our only map was too small-scale to be much use, but Tony had marked a dot in the green area just north of the river, about eighty ks east of the settlement. No road of any kind approached the township, or whatever it was.

Already it was after 10.30. Time was zipping past. I phoned the hotel to warn the guys to be ready for the off at eleven. Then I called Hereford to update the boss on the situation. I said we were planning to set up a forward mounting base at Puerto Pizarro, and play it from there. I told him I’d leave Tony Lopez as anchorman in the embassy, and report in on our portable satcom phone as soon as I got back to it.

I was on the point of leaving when Tony’s mate in Langley came through again to say that the close-up satellite shot showed details of the new workings at the Caquetá site. There were now three buildings, as opposed to two a week ago, and the snap-shot, taken twenty minutes earlier, showed a twin-engined aircraft sitting on a strip carved out of the jungle alongside the river about one k away.

‘That’s got to be the aircraft which took our party in,’ I said. ‘That clinches it.’

Getting up to go, I tried to thank Bill Egerton for all he’d done. ‘I’m sorry. This has wrecked your weekend.’

‘Not a bit. If I wasn’t here, I’d only be sitting in the garden reading The Times weekly edition. This is much more entertaining!’

Tony came down in the lift with me. ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘I’m really sorry to be leaving you here.’

‘No sweat, Geordie. I’m having a ball. Playing ambassadors is great.’

‘Yep, but if there’s some action, you’ll want to be part of it.’

‘Sure. But who knows where the action’s gonna be? Take care, anyway.’

A battered army three-ton truck clattered up to the hotel a couple of minutes before eleven. I checked that all bills were paid and all rooms clear, then we bundled into the back and rode out to the airfield, a short run of less than fifteen minutes.

The military field proved to be one side of the El Dorado civilian airport. A Herc, painted drab olive green, without markings, stood on the pan. A military truck was parked beside the tail-ramp, and guys were loading stores into it like ants. Our driver drew up alongside it and we piled out. Inside the back of the plane there was already a fair stack of kit, and as we arrived some of the loadies were starting to lash it down.

The Colombian head-loadie came down from the flight-deck for a rapid conference with the boss of the logistic party, ticking items off a list. Then he turned to me with a cheerful grin and said, ‘Por favor’, waving us to go aboard. He followed us in, checking that we’d all belted up into the canvas sling-seats along the sides. He said, ‘Fly one hour.’ Then he spoke to the pilot on the intercom, and hit the button to raise the tail ramp. The engines began to turn, and that dreaded whine built up to full strength as the big aircraft lumbered forward.

The flight lasted no more than fifty minutes, but it gave me time to think. If we did manage to launch an operation against the new drugs complex, everything would depend on surprise. If the narcos got wind of a rescue attempt, or thought an attack was coming in, they’d top the hostages for sure. This meant that we had to get in covertly, establish an OP, discover the routine of the place, and take the defenders by surprise.

The pilot never bothered to gain any great altitude, and air currents coming off the mountains made the flight pretty rough. I was glad when the plane banged down hard on the dirt runway at Santa Rosa, and there was Sparky, waving like a lunatic from the edge of the strip. I thought he was taking the piss out of us for coming back early, and spending all our money while he’d been hoarding his. Not at all. He was frantic for me to get on the satcom link to Tony in Bogotá.

‘But I’ve only just left the bugger,’ I protested.

‘I know, but there’s been a development. He says you’re to call immediately.’

‘OK, guys.’ I looked round. ‘Leave the Colombian stores on board. Everyone get their personal kit packed up and ready for the off. We need to load all our ammunition and PE, as well. Make sure we don’t leave anything behind.’

‘Aren’t we coming back?’ somebody asked.

‘Might be. Might not. It depends how things go. Anyway, we’re off in a few minutes.’

Sparky had the spike of the little dish aerial stuck into the ground outside our accommodation block, but the satellite had wandered out of range, and for a couple of minutes we couldn’t make any contact. Then, having checked with his compass and reset the elevation, he suddenly hit it spot-on. The call went through, the line clear as clear.

‘Tony — hi. What’s on?’

‘The bastards have split the party. We got two separate reports from the toads within a few minutes of your leaving. One party’s gone to the Caquetá, all right. But the other’s in Cartagena.’

‘Jesus! Where’s that?’

‘It’s a port on the north coast.’

‘Fucking hell. Who’s where?’

‘One toad said that the gringa and four gringos, one old and three young, have been taken to the Rio Caquetá.’

‘That sounds like our party, with a couple of PIRA in tow.’

‘Yeah — but listen to this. The other toad said that a gringo con cabellos rubios had been put on board a ship at Cartagena.’

‘Jesus Christ! Fair hair — that must mean Peter, the Rupert.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Do we know what ship it is?’

‘Yep. It’s a cargo vessel called the Santa Maria de la Mar. Nine thousand tons. Panamanian registered. It’s making ready to sail for Amsterdam.’

‘God almighty. They’re trying to get him out of the country. The PIRA must have found out he’s from the Regiment.’

‘Right. They’ll beat the shit out of him to make him talk.’

‘Maybe they’re aiming to get him back to Northern Ireland. Tony, we need to hit that ship. Maybe we’d better turn round and come back.’ I thought for a moment. Then I realized that what we needed were the special skills of the Boat Troop. We could undertake more or less any operation on land, and a couple of us had trained for short periods with the boat guys. But if it came to a ship assault we were neither fully trained nor properly equipped.

I said as much to Tony, then added, ‘We’ll carry on with our own operation. But I’m going to call Hereford and get the Boat Troop put on standby.’

‘Wait a bit. It’s not that easy. If we’re going to hit the ship we’ve got to hit the lab at the same time. And vice versa. We need two operations, co-ordinated down to the last few seconds. Otherwise the narcos will top the other half of the equation.’

‘OK. Two operations. But, Christ — when’s the ship due to sail?’

‘Some time tomorrow. Our information is that she’s heading for an offshore island, to trans-ship drugs. Our best tactic will be to hit her there, when the crew’s not expecting anything. But we need to know where she’s going. The toad said Amsterdam. That could be right, in the end, but it could be disinformation. She could head in any goddamn direction. What we’ve got to do is get a tracking device on board her before she sails.’

Even as he talked, in my mind I was seeing the guys in the Boat Troop. I knew several of them well: Steve, Roger, Merv — all first-class operators. This looked like an ideal task for them.

‘The trouble is,’ I said, ‘our lot will never get here in time. They have to go round about four stops on the way, like we did, spread over several days.’

‘No,’ replied Tony. ‘But mine will. The SEALs’ll get there. There’s a team on standby in Florida all the time. Your government will have to clear it from England, but I’m going to call my guys right away and give them advance warning that they’re gonna go stick a device on the ship while she’s still in port. A hit out at sea or at an island would be another matter. That would stir the diplomatic shit, and it might need clearance from the Pentagon. But we can get a bleeper in place without anyone knowing.’

‘Great! Go ahead with that. I’ll speak to the headshed in Hereford and tell them the score.’

‘Listen,’ Tony said. ‘You got a pencil and paper? I did a couple of calculations, based on the satellite information. On your jungle location, you need to chopper in towards the target without getting close enough to alert anybody. The best thing will be to cut straight across from the base at Puerto Pizarro to the north of the target. Aim for the tributary and come down that. That way, you won’t fly closer to the laboratory than eight or nine ks, and nobody’s going to hear you. If you head out from the base on zero-eight-seven degrees, you’ll hit the Rio Cuemani ten ks north of the new airstrip.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘I got a note of that.’

‘South of the big river,’ he went on, ‘there’s a solitary mountain. I guess it’ll stand right out of the flat jungle. Looks like it’s got a conical peak. You’re never going to be closer to it than fifty ks, but you’ll see it away to your right. When you get level with it, you’ll be coming to your tributary.’

He went on to describe the precise layout of the landing-strip, the link road (which didn’t run straight, but wound through the forest) and the buildings of the laboratory itself. As he talked I wrote and sketched details in my note-book.

‘Thanks, Tony. Zero-eight-seven will be our heading. I’ll get on to Hereford now.’

I was about to line up the call when I saw Captain Jaime heading towards us. Pretending I felt happy, I said, ‘¡Hola, Capitán! Embarrada.’ A big problem.

He seemed a bit disgruntled, and wanted some explanation. I gave it, itching to be on the move. ‘How many days will you be away?’ he asked.

‘One or two,’ I said casually. ‘That should do it.’

Of course I hadn’t a clue. But I could see that he was getting the shits worrying how to keep forty-odd men occupied.

Sparky tuned his dish again, and we got through to Hereford. Again they put me on to the CO. I briefed him on the situation, then said, ‘Boss, this has the makings of a first-class international fuck-up.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said the Colonel. ‘We’ve got the diplomatic side well under control. I don’t think there’s going to be any attempt to stop you. We’ve already cleared the SEALs’ involvement with the US government. It’s great that Tony Lopez is there to liaise.’

‘A big stroke of luck, I know.’

‘Wait one,’ said the CO. ‘Straighten me out on the different locations. I’ve got a map in front of me.’

‘OK. We’re calling them Green One, Two, Three and Four. Green One’s Tony, in Bogotá. I’m now on Green Two, at the training camp at Santa Rosa, about 250 ks south of Bogotá. But it’s only a camp and a village, so probably it won’t be on your map. The ship that we think Peter Black’s been put on is at Cartagena, on the north coast, about eleven o’clock from Bogotá. We’re calling the ship Blue One.’

‘Right,’ went the boss. ‘I have that.’

‘Green Three is an army outpost at Puerto Pizarro, on the Rio Caquetá, about seven o’clock from Bogotá, 400 ks further south from my present location, and right out in the Amazon basin. Again, you probably haven’t got that marked — it’s pretty small. Green Four is the other hostage location, fifty ks east of Pizarro, on the north side of the river, where it swings round in a big bend.’

‘Pizarro. Can’t see that either. What’s your plan, anyway?’

‘There’s a landing strip at the army outpost. DAS have put a Herc at our disposal, and we’re off down there in a few minutes. We’ll be there in a couple of hours. We’ll make the camp our forward mounting base. Then we’ll chopper out, establish an FOB, and put in an OP on the laboratory, to work out a recovery.’

‘You’re definitely going to need back-up.’

‘That’s right. We’re short of all assets, weapons particularly. Apart from pistols, we’ve only got two G3s and two 203s. The trouble is, it’ll take you bloody days to get here. It took us three days just to reach Colombia.’

‘Don’t worry. There’s a mountain of war stores sitting in Belize. We can organize some of that down to you in a matter of hours. So — more 203s. More grenades. What else?’

‘Basically, jungle gear for ten. Ponchos, mozzie nets, boots, hats. I think DAS have sorted some stuff out for us, but I don’t know how good it is.’

‘What about rations?’

‘We’ve got a few with us, and DAS have given us some more. Christ knows what they are, but they’re on board.’

‘Boats?’

‘Yep. They’ve lent us a few rubber dinghies. We haven’t unpacked them yet.’

‘OK, then. We’ll try to line up a couple more. Happy landings. Report when you’re on your new location.’

‘Roger. We’ll speak soon.’

Inside the accommodation block I threw my stuff into kit-bag and bergen. By the time I went out again, Captain Jaime had already organized the loading of our ammunition. In less than half an hour we had everything squared away on board the Herc. As I looked round the camp, with its pool and dusty football field, I felt sorry to be leaving so soon.

‘Adios, Capitán.’ Although I was hatless, I gave him a stylish salute. ‘I hope we’ll be back in a couple of days.’

Aboard the Herc, I went up on to the flight-deck to make sure we all agreed about where we were heading. There was no problem, but I stayed in the upper cabin to soak up a bit of Colombian geography. From down in the back you could see practically nothing, unless you stood up with your eye at one of the portholes; from up front there was a great view, as the ridges and spurs of the Cordillera Oriental fell away behind us and an endless vista of dark green spread out ahead, with bright silver veins of rivers running through it towards the east. The vast emptiness of the land was enough to scare the shit out of you. I felt for my little silver medallion, on its chain, and thought of home.

Compared with most hostage rescues, this one looked extremely dicey. For one thing, we were short of assets — we were certain to be out-numbered and out-gunned. On the SP team and in Northern Ireland we’d trained daily for house assault and hostage release but normally we had superior firepower, and major reinforcements at our disposal. Besides, the hostages were almost always close at hand. Here the opposite was true. Distances were immense, chances of reinforcement minimal. Our own firepower was strictly limited. We had no casevac facilities. We were going into the unknown, to a destination we hadn’t even identified precisely. Basically, ten guys were attempting to do a job that would have taxed a squadron. Further, we knew from our various briefs how ruthless the enemy were — if any of us got captured, we could expect no mercy.

My mind kept returning to Black. Was he still alive? And if he was, how much had he already given away? We’d been trained, in the event of capture, to try to hold out for twenty-four hours, and then, if possible, to fall back on controlled release, giving away only low-grade information. But everybody knew that this was easier said than done. What had Black told Farrell? What about the aminosity between Black, me and Tracy? Had he said anything about me? Had he revealed that I had been lifted from above Farrell’s farm? I was speculating wildly, I knew, but it was impossible not to.

The pilot, a friendly guy, occasionally called out a name and pointed, but I wasn’t concentrating too much on the scenery; all I could think about was how stretched we were going to be, how dependent we were on our satcom. If that freaked out, we’d have real problems. Then I became aware that the pilot was repeating some word insistently, and when I focused on him I realized he was saying, ‘Caquetá, Caquetá.’

There below us a vast river was snaking through the jungle, winding on for ever in coils through that terrific expanse of trees. For a whole half-hour we followed its course, and nothing below us changed. Occasionally, on the bank of a tributary, I saw a tiny cleared area of lighter green, with what looked like wooden huts along the edge. Obviously people were living there, and I wondered whether they were Indians. What a life! The isolation was something I could hardly imagine. The surface of the rainforest was never smooth and uniform, like that of a cultivated plantation; rather, it was rough and ragged, with trees of all different heights. There was something alien about the colour of it, too: the green wasn’t anything like an English green, but darker and heavier.

At last, right on the nose, the outline of the mountain Tony had mentioned began to show through the haze ahead, and soon afterwards the pilot began his descent. As we came down, the river grew until it seemed as wide as the English Channel. From a high altitude it had shone dully like pewter, but at low level it turned muddy brown, with occasional swirls that showed the strength of the current. In the last couple of minutes we saw a huddle of shacks on the north bank, with a few more substantial buildings behind them, and a couple of boats moored alongside a jetty.

Then we were over the perimeter of the camp, which looked much the same as the one we’d just left: a dirt strip, a high boundary fence, two lines of single-storey white buildings, one small warehouse, and goalposts with sagging crossbars at either end of a dusty football field. The best thing about it was the sight of a Huey helicopter parked on the pan outside the warehouse.

As we debussed, the heat hit us. Down at this level the air was ten times hotter and stickier. We were greeted by an army lieutenant, with circles of sweat spreading out from under the arms of his khaki fatigues, and wearing big shades. His English was even sketchier than my Spanish, so I had to make a real effort to communicate. After struggling for a while, and establishing that the chopper was out of action with a gearbox defect, I had an inspiration: call Tony and get him to interpret. I needed to speak to him anyway.

‘We made it to Puerto Pizarro,’ I told him.

‘What’s it like?’

‘Hot as hell. Just a little camp surrounded by jungle. There’s one Huey here, but it’s gone US. Spare parts are supposed to be on the way. What news your end?’

‘The SEALs are deploying. They’re going in tonight to stick a tracking device on the Santa Maria. Then it doesn’t matter where she sails — we can go get her to coincide with your operation.’

‘Great!’

‘Your Boat Troop guys are on their way, too. I don’t know how he hacked it, but the CO’s got an RAF TriStar held back, and they’re flying direct to Belize tonight. One hop only. They’ll be there at 0100 local time.’ He paused, then said, ‘Hey — I got you some pretty good detail from the satellite station. You have a pencil and paper?’

‘Wait one.’ I brought out the little notebook I always carry in the breast-pocket of my shirt, with a miniature pencil down the spine. ‘OK. Fire away.’

‘The new lab complex is near that big bend of the river, like we said. But it’s four ks north of the Caquetá. The airstrip’s confirmed along the bank of the tributary, and some kind of jetty’s been built there, on the west bank. The buildings are grouped round a small compound one k west of the airstrip. There’s a road of sorts connecting the two, probably earth. It snakes around through the trees.’

As he talked, I was drawing a sketch. ‘D’you have the layout of the building?’

‘Sure. There’s two rectangular structures that look finished, each about fifty metres long. They’re set out in a line, running east-west. The third building, across the end of the compound, is still under construction.’

‘Tony,’ I said, ‘I’ve been thinking the best way to make a covert approach would be to come down the tributary at night in a rubber dinghy, then slide in for a CTR. What about that?’

‘Sounds good. I confirm. Chopper out of your present location on zero-eight-seven, dead straight for sixty ks. Then you hit the Cuemani, coming down from your left across your front. The alignment of the tributary’s very nearly north-south. It’s coming from three-five-zero and heading to one-seven-zero. Famous last words, but you really can’t miss it. OK, Geordie? But for Pete’s sake don’t try swimming. Those rivers are full of crocs.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘I’m calling this Operation Crocodile. Op Croc. Listen, the lieutenant here doesn’t speak much English. Could you run through the plan with him? Thanks.’

I handed the receiver over. Suddenly I began to feel rather good. We were within spitting distance of some action. Things were about to become interesting.

The lieutenant listened to Tony for a while, asked a few questions, and said, ‘Si,’ a great many times. When he seemed to have finished, I beckoned for him to hand the receiver back. ‘Tony,’ I said, ‘tell him for Christ’s sake to get the Huey airworthy. I don’t know what’s wrong with it — I think it’s a gearbox problem. He’s supposed to be flying parts in, but I’m not too sure.’

The guys were humping the stores out of the Herc and loading them on to a trailer pulled by a Willys jeep, vintage about 1942. ‘As you value your bollocks,’ I told them, ‘no swimming in the river. It’s heaving with crocodiles.’ I turned to the beshaded lieutenant and made extravagant jaw-snapping motions with my arms. ‘¡Si, si!’ he confirmed. ‘¡Cocodrilos — muchísimos!’

‘Fucking great!’ said Murdo. ‘That’s all we want. If the Amazon’s the arsehole of the world, I reckon we’re about 5,000 ks up it.’

Murdo had a point. The facilities the Colombians offered us were as crappy as could be. They themselves looked to be fairly well set up in the better of the two barrack-blocks, with a generator, mozzie screens and fridges — and I didn’t grudge them whatever comforts they’d been able to devise. If you had to spend any length of time in that hell-hole, you’d need everything you could get to stay sane. The block they gave us was another matter: no electricity, bare concrete rooms without doors, the iron bedsteads all rusted, no water in the showers, the bog an open hole in the floor.

When we unpacked the stores, things looked up a bit, because the General had done us well: there were four dinghy packs, two outboards, hammocks, mozzie nets, waterbottles, machetes and twenty sets of jungle DPMs. Once we’d sorted them out, everyone got a size that more or less fitted him, with another set in reserve. There were also four big boxes of MREs — US forces’ standard-issue Meals Ready to Eat, or, as they’d been known in the Gulf, Meals Rejected by Ethiopians. In fact they were pretty good, especially the things like corned-beef hash and chilli con carne. The guys soon got brews going with their hexi cookers, and after some sort of a meal, spirits picked up.

In the usual way, we planned our tactics at an O-group that took the form of a Chinese parliament, with everyone sitting round in a circle on the ground. Obviously we weren’t going anywhere that night, but there was no harm in having a plan ready. The sun was already sinking towards the jungle in a thick haze, and the temperature was dropping slightly. Even so, we were all still sweating like pigs.

Even if the Huey became airworthy, its maximum load, besides the pilot and navigator, would be three guys plus kit, one dinghy kit plus engine, and skeleton equipment and stores.

I offered to stay back, but everyone agreed I should lead from the front. That made me one of the three to fly. The second had to be Sparky Springer, as he was our radio specialist. For the third, I nominated Murdo McFarlane. Provided he left his blasted pipes behind, he’d be as good as anyone in the jungle.

The next wave — which would follow us in the next evening by the same route, provided the Huey was serviceable — would consist of Johnny Ellis, Stew McQuarrie and Mel Scott.