Crisis (Luke Carlton 1) (51 page)

‘Then I have a suggestion,’ said Luke.

‘I’m listening.’

Luke checked around him to see that he was alone, then began to speak. By the time he had finished, Mayne was almost lost for words. ‘That’s dark, Carlton. Oh, that is dark. I like it. Where the hell did you think that up from? OK, I don’t want to know. Fine, well we’ve got the software for that, we’ll make it happen at our end.’

THERE WERE NO
lights to illuminate the helipad, and there was no noise other than the low thrum of the muffled rotors as they waited for the off. In the darkness, the Sikorsky UH-60 Blackhawks looked exactly like any other Blackhawk helicopter in a dozen countries around the world. But these were stealth variants, their Special Forces pilots part of the Night Stalkers Unit out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Using advanced composite materials and unusual angles on the airframe, they were designed to be almost invisible to radar.

At one minute past midnight they lifted off in a pair, fully laden, carrying twenty-one troops, Colombian and American. And Luke. This was the advance screen, the cut-off group to be dropped into the jungle two kilometres behind García’s ranch. They flew low, as Todd Miller had said they would, so low their fuselages were almost brushing the tops of the trees, but there was a good reason for this. The Ecuadorean Airforce had an air-defence unit at Nueva Loja, less than a hundred kilometres away from García’s place. They flew west, following the line of Colombia’s jungle border with Peru, then south, heading deeper into the Amazon rainforest. At 0020 hours they crossed the border into Ecuador, entering Colombia’s neighbour without permission, and flew on over the mostly uninhabited Cuyabeno National Park.

They approached from the south, a few kilometres short of the Rio San Miguel and far enough away from García’s ranch not to be heard. In the cockpits the US pilots had switched to infrared, using all their concentration as they held their craft at the hover just above the jungle canopy. One wrong move now and their rotors might collide with the foliage, bringing the whole craft crashing down in a fireball. There would probably be no survivors. At forty metres above the ground the two Blackhawks disgorged their passengers over the side. In quick succession they fast-roped down through the open hatches, dropping silently through gaps in the trees to land on the damp jungle floor with a soft thud. Adjusting their eyes and senses to the trees around them, the patrol regrouped. Captain Dietermeyer did a quick head count and they set off, heading due north for the river.

Even in the darkness Luke could feel they were making faster progress than expected. This was primary jungle, pristine in some ways, because where they now walked the towering hardwoods had never been cut down. In secondary jungle you had to contend with all the smaller plants, the shrubs and the twisting, tangled foliage that grew up and blocked your path. But here they were able to move swiftly between the soaring trees, their night-vision goggles locked into place beneath the rim of their helmets, their canvas-sided boots picking their way across the leaf litter, alert to the threat of tripwires and Claymore mines.

By 0145 hours they were in position, spaced out at intervals in a wide arc, three hundred metres south of La Machana, García’s refuge on the riverbank. Luke was right in the centre of the arc, within whispering distance of Captain Dietermeyer and his signals guy. They had a good clear signal back to Todd Miller on the base at Puerto Leguízamo but they were keeping comms to a minimum. Squatting close to the ground, Luke peered intently through his goggles, looking for movement ahead. Nothing. Here I am again, he thought, back in this sodding jungle, and for a moment his mind flashed back to that day in his childhood. A ten-year-old boy straying way out of his comfort zone, exploring a dark, dank and dripping world that held mysteries beyond his
imagination. A day that had ended in tragedy. A day that, quite possibly, had shaped him into the person he was today. And there was another memory, equally unwelcome, of a Colombian patrol of police commandos, the elite Jungla, perched above García’s lair in the hills. They were all gone now, those ten men, all murdered in cold blood that morning outside the farm, betrayed by the bent Tumaco police chief and his treacherous insiders. There were certainly scores to settle here.

0340 hours. Another twenty minutes to go before the Griffon assault hovercraft were due to go in. Luke massaged the space where his middle finger should have been. Sleep had been out of the question in the jungle. He felt wired, tuned to every croak of a tree frog, every rustle of the leaf litter as men adjusted their firing positions, watching and waiting. Then he heard it. A low, distant drone, just audible above the cacophony of natural sounds around him, along with the persistent whine of mosquitoes. But there it was, the Ghostrider, the ‘Death Angel’, as some people called it, the US Airforce’s gunship flying top cover just across the border inside Colombia. Onboard, there was a massive 105mm howitzer and enough high-explosive shells to obliterate a small village. He just hoped they had been fed the right coordinates.

Luke and the others in the cut-off group were not the only ones to hear that sound. Standing in the shadows on a wooden jetty above the banks of the Rio San Miguel, three hundred metres away, a pair of García’s bodyguards on night watch heard it too. They exchanged a few nervous words and strained their eyes in the darkness to try to spot the unseen aircraft. Few planes came straying over this empty part of the Amazon so anything that close had to be suspicious. Should they wake Suarez? Probably a good idea. The security chief would expect to be told, even if it turned out to be nothing. They might even get rewarded for their vigilance.

But now there was another sound, a deeper throbbing roar that seemed to be building. The two guards looked towards the
east: it was definitely coming from downstream. Both men unshouldered their assault rifles. Nothing good could possibly be coming up the river at this time of night.

They had left it too late to alert Suarez. Because just then a burst of white light seemed to explode in their faces as a high-powered beam swept over the water and up onto the wooden jetty where they stood, frozen with indecision, their assault rifles dangling uselessly in their hands, their night vision temporarily blinded. The roar was deafening as two giant hovercraft came powering up the river. From behind the guards on the jetty, a door to the ranch flew open and Suarez appeared, a ghostly apparition caught in the searchlight in his white T-shirt and surf shorts, a gold crucifix round his neck glinting in the reflected light. ‘
Hijos de puta!
’ he yelled at the guards. ‘What’s wrong with you two? Shoot the fucking lights out!’ He ducked back inside to look for García and get him out. If this was an Ecuadorean police raid, then someone would be held accountable. Suarez had seen to it weeks ago that the right people had been paid off, and handsomely. García’s cartel did not take kindly to being double-crossed. Later someone would lose their balls but right now he needed to get his boss to safety.

From where the cut-off group lay concealed, Luke was hearing all of this and feeling like a racehorse in a starting stall. The action was kicking off and he wanted a part of it, but his time was yet to come. Now another noise was erupting from down on the river. It was the .50-calibre machine-gun mounted on the hovercraft. Luke recognized its heavy, rhythmic thump from his time in Helmand and he could envisage the massive bullets tearing into the wooden jetty and splintering it like a balsawood toy. The gunners had orders to hit the riverbank, not the house, but Luke could hear long, uncontrolled bursts splitting the night air. This was getting out of hand.

In his bedroom Nelson García knew they had come for him. Was it the Ecuadorean police? The DEA? MI6? A rival cartel? It didn’t matter. Someone had betrayed him and now his only thought
was of self-preservation. His heart pounding, he rolled off the sagging mattress and slithered awkwardly under the bed. It sounded like World War Three had erupted outside.

‘Suarez!’ he called, as he groped around for a weapon to defend himself when they came through the door. ‘Suarez!’ he called again, louder this time, an unfamiliar tone creeping into his voice. The sound of fear. Had his loyal lieutenant abandoned him? García’s scrabbling fingers closed around a familiar object. It was the metal grip of a MAC-10 machine pistol. And – thank you, God – there was a thirty-two-round magazine already inserted into it.

Nelson García rolled onto his side, brought the gun up into a firing position and cocked it. The safety was off. With the animal cunning that had propelled him to the top of his dangerous trade, he was working out his next move. He remembered that there was a door at the back of his room that opened onto a wooden staircase at the rear of the building. From there, it was only one floor down into the forest and they wouldn’t look for him there. All he had to do was fire a holding burst when they came through the door, which should give him time to get away. Nelson,
amigo
, you’ve got through tighter jams than this.

When the bedroom door crashed open García was ready. From his floor-level firing position he squeezed off a long burst at the first man through, tightening his index finger on the trigger of the MAC-10 as it bucked in his hand, spewing out a stream of 9mm bullets at almost point-blank range. But only one man had come in: there was no one behind him. In the split second before the man fell, sent reeling backwards by the force of the bullets as they tore into his intestines, García caught the look of surprise on Alfonso Suarez’s face. In his panic, El Pobrecito had just ended the life of his most trusted partner.

REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY, AND
Major General Rupert Milton (retired) was up early. He believed a chap needed no more than six hours’ sleep at the most. When commanding his regiment on an emergency tour in Northern Ireland in the 1980s, he had frequently had to make do with a good deal less than half of that. It was a fact about which he frequently reminded his wife. ‘I know, dear. So you’ve told me,’ she had said, more times than she cared to remember. Now he was completing his rounds of what he liked to think of as his ‘Whitehall Area of Responsibility’, his final tour of inspection ahead of the VIP arrivals.

As the man in overall charge of today’s solemn ceremonials, he expected everything to be in place. And it was. The serried ranks of Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines were already arrayed three deep, flanking the broad strip of tarmac that was Whitehall. The crowd barriers were up on either side of the Cenotaph, the white stone monolith to The Glorious Dead in the centre of Whitehall, midway between the black gates of Downing Street and the Department of Health across the road. The police cordons were in place, officers checking passes as the crowds of military families and well-wishers filtered in to take their places behind the barriers. The royal reviewing stand was there too, protected by an extra cordon of armed police this year. For the third time that morning, Milton looked at his watch. Not long now until the
Queen and the royal party would appear, flanked by their protection officers, ready to lay their own wreaths at the foot of the Cenotaph, as they did every year. Milton glanced up into the skies above the capital, where a small black-and-yellow police helicopter hovered on station. It was, perhaps, one of the few indicators that Britain was still at threat level Critical, the highest on the national scale. Milton knew it to be a Eurocopter EC-145 from the Met’s Air Support Unit. He knew this because the Home Secretary had told him so, part of his not-to-worry-it’s-all-in-hand speech ahead of the ceremony. Apparently the Eurocopter possessed something called an electro-optical turret that could beam back images in real time to Gold Command on the ground at Lambeth police station. Well, it could play Beethoven’s Fifth for all he cared, as long as it didn’t interfere with his parade.

The weather was playing a blinder this morning – he certainly had no complaints there. The second Sunday in November had dawned bright and clear and looked like staying that way. It was as if London had been given a lick of fresh paint. As General Milton walked briskly past the mounted ceremonial guard and through the arched tunnel beneath Horse Guards he was pleased to note his breath frosting in the chill morning air. It reminded him of his first hunt with the Avon Vale Foxhounds and of damp morning manoeuvres on the North German Plain, digging trenches on Luneberg Heath against the great Warsaw Pact invasion that never came. That, reflected Milton, was when we had a proper-sized army, not like today. He quite missed the Cold War.

Ah, that was more like it. He paused at the eastern entrance to Horse Guards Parade, surveying the myriad cap badges as veterans of several regiments, some long disbanded or merged, gathered under the banner of the Royal British Legion. There was the Suffolk Regiment. Ha! And there were the Royal Green Jackets, now part of the Rifles, the largest regiment in the British Army and fast marchers. Clever chaps those – the Black Mafia, they called them, with their black buttons and their uncanny ability to get their people into the top slots of the Army. But Rupert Milton
was a Guardsman and he had never regretted for one minute being anything else.

There were thousands of veterans and reservists too, men in suits, berets and bowlers, women as well, he was pleased to note. General Milton liked to think of himself as something of a progressive: there was nothing wrong in his book with a few fillies showing up on the parade ground, if that was what it took to move with the times. But he could see now that so many reservists and veterans had volunteered to march down Whitehall this morning that their ranks were spreading right out to the limits of the parade ground, as far as the Gallipoli Memorial where all those unsightly orange cones were. He still hadn’t had a satisfactory answer as to what that had been about. Nobody seemed to know who had authorized it. Still, he had more important things on his mind today.

General Milton’s ruddy features creased into a smile as he watched the King’s Troop, Royal Horse Artillery, arrive with their ceremonial field gun, all polished brass gleaming in the pale November sun. It would be their job, when the chimes of eleven o’clock struck, to fire the single cannon shot to announce the start of the two-minute silence. Royal Marines buglers would follow it up by sounding the Last Post. Everything was falling into place nicely, he concluded. They would remember this, he told himself, as the best organized Remembrance Parade for many years.