The Hunt

35

One thing had surprised Jaeger. No one had seemed to bother to check either that the coca paste being unloaded from the aircraft was genuine coca, or that the cocaine being loaded aboard was genuine cocaine. But then why would they? If whoever supplied El Padre had tricked him, they wouldn’t get to live for long.

That was how the system worked. Billionaire narco barons had a long reach. It was a system based not upon mutual trust, but upon mutual fear. If you messed up, you died. And probably most of your loved ones as well. Men like El Padre had been known to wipe out entire families – infants and babies included – to drive their message home.

Dodge City was a Class A narco operation, that was for sure. But as to Kammler and his IND team being here? Jaeger hadn’t seen the slightest sign that this was the place where his arch-enemy was going to mastermind his dark machinations.

There was only one way to know for sure, and that was to get closer. Jaeger’s eyes met Narov’s across the surface of the stinking water.

‘We need a close-up look at the warehouse,’ he whispered. ‘To be certain.’

Narov nodded. ‘I will go.’

Jaeger was about to object, but her look silenced him. They’d found themselves in a similar position a while ago in Africa. They’d needed to get inside an elephant poachers’ camp. Not easy. Narov had argued that she should go because she could move more stealthily. The same argument held true now.

She handed him her assault rifle. ‘Cover me.’

With that, she grabbed some of the stinking gunk from the edge of the ditch, smeared it over her face and hands as an extra layer of camouflage, wormed her way over the lip and was gone. Swallowed into the darkness.

As best he could, Jaeger traced her movements with his weapon. She was far from easy to follow. Repeatedly he lost track of her as she flitted to and fro, silent as a wraith. Finally he glimpsed a darker patch of shadow flattened against the wall of the nearest warehouse, a hundred yards away.

For the briefest of moments Narov’s head was silhouetted against the oblong of light that bled out of the building. Jaeger could envisage her eyes making a rapid sweep of the warehouse’s interior. Just as quickly, she ducked down again.

He lost sight of her completely now. She was moving almost due west, sticking to the thick scrub that fringed the dirt airstrip. That would take her to the second warehouse, a couple of hundred yards away.

For a moment he wondered what he would do if he saw her surrounded or captured.

Go in solo, all guns blazing?

What other choice was there?

Either way, it would be a suicide mission.

He kept his eyes glued to that distant building, squat and dark against the moonlit sky. He figured he saw movement: a silhouette working its way along the nearside wall. Narov – had to be. He saw the flash of a head at the window. Good girl: almost done.

But then his grip on his weapon tightened. Narov had levered open the window, and moments later, she’d slipped inside. As Jaeger waited with bated breath for her to emerge, he spotted a figure heading around to her side of the building. The guy was moving with the bored gait of someone coming to the end of yet another long night’s watch.

Jaeger tracked him with his gun sights. If he were forced to open fire, their cover would be blown. He had to hold off doing so until all other options were exhausted. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Narov slip back out through the window. Maybe the guard would fail to spot her.

She melted into the shadows and Jaeger lost track of her.

Suddenly a lithe form rose behind the sentry and an arm whipped around his neck, choking off all possibility of a cry. The other arm came around, driving a blade downwards behind the sentry’s clavicle and clean into his heart.

Jaeger knew the move well. The victim would be dead within seconds. He watched as Narov lowered the body to the ground, before dragging it into the undergrowth.

A couple of minutes later she was back, slipping into the ditch like a bloodied eel. The sentry had bled profusely, that much was clear.

‘We need to go,’ she mouthed.

Jaeger nodded. Time was running out. Plus there was that dead sentry now to factor into the equation. If his body was discovered before Narov and Jaeger made the cover of the jungle, all hell would break loose.

Narov eyed him for an instant, then reached into her backpack. ‘There was this,’ she volunteered, holding up a brown leather-backed ledger. On the front cover was scribbled in Spanish: Registro de Vuelo. It was Los Niños’s flight log.

Jaeger shook his head in amazement. ‘Bloody brilliant. Right, let’s get the hell out of here.’

He turned to go back the way they’d come, lowering his head down to the stinking water and pushing off, Diemaco held at the ready.

Most CTRs went wrong when those executing them rushed the withdrawal.

As he began his slow and steady crawl, Jaeger wondered for an instant if Narov felt anything for the man she’d just killed. There was little sign if she did. It was typical: when she had to kill, she did so seemingly without hesitation or remorse.

Another thought struck him. He’d realised with a shock what all of them had perhaps been missing. The best way to bust Kammler’s network was staring them right in the face, here in Dodge.

In a sense, it had been all along, but it had taken this crawl through this hellish shithole for him to realise it. He’d share his thoughts with Narov and the others, but only once they’d got the hell out of Dodge.

And much as he hated it, they still had a good twenty minutes of crawling ahead of them.

Shit happens, he thought to himself wryly. But he would have his moment.

And this mission – it was only just beginning.