Crisis (Luke Carlton 1) (52 page)

NELSON GARCÍA WAS
a proud man reduced to blind terror. There was no time to mourn the death of his closest confidant, Alfonso Suarez. Heavy, gut-shredding bullets were smashing into La Machana, the place that was supposed to have been his safe refuge while his petty act of revenge was meted out on a distant enemy. Thumb-sized projectiles were tearing into the flimsy woodwork above and beside him, showering him with vicious splinters. Designed to fire on targets up to two thousand metres distant, the Griffon hovercrafts’ Browning .50-calibre heavy machine-guns were bringing a hail of devastation raining down on the building from less than a hundred metres away. And as the gunners on the roofs of the assault craft switched their ammunition to armour-piercing incendiary, small fires were igniting all around him. He had to get out.

Shuffling and squirming across the floor of what had been, only minutes earlier, his bedroom, García wriggled to the door at the back of the ranch. The cacophony of incoming fire was deafening. Any second now he expected to be cut down by the bullet that would end his life. But El Pobrecito was a survivor. He had always known that one day something like this would come, and despite the fear that filled him he was utterly focused on saving himself.

Half rising from the floor, he punched open the door and rolled
onto the wooden landing at the back of the ranch. The bullets were still cutting through the night air all around him and there was no time now to take the steps. He launched himself over the side, falling the three metres through the air to land heavily on the grass. A sharp pain tore through his solar plexus. A broken rib? Probably. He didn’t care. He was the hunted quarry and he had to get away from the pack. Ducking low, he ran at a crouch towards the cover of the trees. The firing had stopped abruptly and he could see helmeted figures silhouetted against the flickering flames at the back of the ranch. They were swarming up the steps like rats, those pieces of
mierda
, seeking him out.

By nature, El Pobrecito was a man of the city slums. He had never felt comfortable in the wild – he distrusted it – but now, in the darkest hour before dawn, the jungle would be the blanket that masked his escape. He trod carefully, moving with surprising lightness for a man of his size, putting as much distance as possible between himself and the blazing ranch. The fools who came for him, they wouldn’t think to look behind them in the forest where he was, and when they did he would be long gone. Maybe he would go to ground in Ecuador for a few weeks. Let it all settle. Or maybe he would join his family –
La Colección –
in El Salvador. Spend a bit of time fishing on the Pacific, lie about in hammocks, eat some prawns, yes, that would be good.

García moved on, feeling his way through the darkened forest, then stopped dead in his tracks. Something had appeared on his right thigh, wobbling and wavering. Now it was creeping up his body to settle on the centre of his chest.

It was the bright red dot of a laser.

LUKE HAD BEEN
observing his prey through his night-vision goggles for a full minute before he lit him up with the laser sight. He wanted Nelson García to come close enough to realize there could be no way out, no possible escape. His guards were all dead – they had had word on the radio from the team going through the ruins of the ranch. Apparently the body of Suarez, the cartel’s head of security, had been found too. They said it was cut to ribbons.

As soon as Luke had got a visual on the man, watching him feel his way in the dark past the hanging vines and feathery ferns, he pulled out his encrypted phone and dialled Carl Mayne in London. Then he kept the line open, plugging an earpiece into his left ear and clipping a throat mike to his collar, leaving his hands free.

‘We’re all set at our end,’ said Mayne. ‘We’re listening in. Just give us the word when you’re ready and we’ll patch you through to San Salvador.’

Nelson García was fewer than fifty metres away from Luke and Captain Dietermeyer’s group when he spotted the red dot of the laser playing on his thigh. Silently, using well-practised hand signals, the US Special Ops officer had sent three of his men to encircle García from behind. As the Colombian drug-lord stood motionless,
considering his options, Dietermeyer clicked the pressel switch on his VHF radio, connecting to Todd Miller at the Puerto Leguízamo naval base. He kept his words to a minimum.

‘Bravo One is under our control,’ he told the mission commander. ‘I say again, Bravo One is under control. We’re extracting.’ The American peeled back the green Velcro covering on his waterproof watch and checked the time: 0455 hours. Already a rising chorus of birdsong was building in the canopy above their heads. Dawn was coming and they were still in Ecuador. Illegally.

‘Ten minutes, Carlton. That’s all I can give you,’ said Dietermeyer. ‘Then we need to haul ass double-quick back across the border. Miller wants us out ASAP. If the Ecuadorean military catches on to us being here, we’re in a whole world of pain. We’ll be extracting by hovercraft and taking García with us.’

Ten minutes. That was all the time he had to carry out one of the hardest tasks of his career. Luke was acutely aware of the enormity of what now rested on his shoulders. Finding a way to get García to call off the bombing and reveal the whereabouts of the weapon would be a massive task at the best of times. Perhaps with their prisoner safely under lock and key on a military base in Colombia, his resistance eroded by lack of sleep and days spent contemplating the next forty years in a rat-infested jail, Luke could work a persuasive case on him. But they were ten kilometres inside a hostile country with no authorization, far from the nearest safe base and time was against them. Luke was looking at a ruthless, unpredictable psychopath, a man more likely to go to his grave with a smile on his face than offer his enemies the means to head off the planned explosion. But he had one card up his sleeve and he intended to use it.

He lifted himself from his crouch and nodded to Dietermeyer.

‘Nine minutes fifty seconds,’ the American reminded him. ‘Then we’re out of here.’

Luke was already gone, moving quickly, closing the remaining distance between himself and García in seconds, keeping his Diemaco assault rifle trained on the Colombian’s chest as he strode through the trees.

When Luke got within spitting distance of him, he could see that Nelson García presented a pathetic sight. The now former drugs lord was on his knees on the jungle floor, both hands clasped behind his back while two US Special Ops men kept him covered with their weapons, one with the muzzle touching García’s shoulder blade. Lit by the grey light of dawn, his thinning hair was plastered with sweat across his brow, his clothes were torn and dishevelled and his hairy belly was sagging over the waistband of his trousers. Yet pity was the last thing on Luke’s mind. This was the man who had dispatched a dirty bomb to Britain, who had murdered ten police commandos in cold blood, who had sent Luke to the Chop House in Buenaventura to be slowly dismembered alive. It was time to go to work on him.

Luke squatted on his haunches and saw the spark of recognition in García’s face. The man remembered him. And now El Pobrecito was smiling, his lips curling upwards in a fleshy-lipped sneer that Luke found both repulsive and surprising.

‘So you lost, Carlton,’ he said. ‘Because my little Palomita is hidden in your city and your people can’t find it!’ He broke into a weak laugh, then clutched his side in pain from his broken rib.

Luke answered him calmly, despite the seconds ticking dangerously by.

‘Did I? So where’s your family today, Nelson? Where is
La Colección
now?’ García looked up sharply, cold eyes squinting at Luke’s face. The sneer had vanished. He seemed unused to anyone addressing him as Nelson.

‘If you touch one hair of their heads!’ he roared, flecks of his spittle landing on Luke’s cheek.

‘Oh, we’re going to do a lot more than that,’ replied Luke, without flinching. ‘Do you remember what your people did to my foot with that electric drill back in Colombia?’ He leaned forward as if about to share a great confidence with the man. ‘Let me tell you a secret,’ Luke whispered. ‘That drill? It really, really hurts.’

He shifted back so he could look García in the face. ‘But you know what? I’m going to let you choose which one gets the drill first. How about Luisa, your sister? Hmm? D’you think she could
take it? Or maybe your two fat cousins, Alejandro and Jaime? We could do them together. Maybe if they’re lucky they’ll pass out with the pain.’

He was speaking with an almost unnatural calm but in his head Luke was all too aware he was running out of time. How much did he have left? Six minutes at the most. Six minutes before they had to pile onto the hovercraft and hand García over to the Colombian government. Then his chance would be lost.

‘
Hijo de puta!
’ García swore at him. ‘I don’t believe a word of this shit. You don’t have my family. You don’t have anything. You think I’m falling for your stupid games?’

Luke shrugged then spoke a single phrase into his mobile phone, loud enough for García to hear. ‘Begin the treatment.’ He passed the Colombian his phone.

The sound that followed nearly made García drop the phone. First came the high-pitched whine of a handheld drill. That noise alone, screeching from Luke’s mobile, could be heard by almost everyone in the cut-off group as they packed up their kit and prepared to move down to the riverbank. But what followed was worse. It was a woman’s scream of terror and García recognized the voice.

‘Luisa!’ he shouted, clamping the phone to his ear. The sound of the drill went on for a further ten seconds and left García trembling with a rage he could barely control. One of the US operators had to dig the muzzle of his weapon hard into the man’s back to stop him launching himself at Luke.

‘I’m going to count to five,’ said Luke, very calmly. He reckoned he had about three minutes left. ‘If you don’t tell me exactly where the bomb is and when it’s timed to go off, we’ll move on to the rest of your family. One—’

‘I don’t know where it’s hidden, I swear! It’s in England, that’s all I know!’

‘Two—’

‘OK, OK, it’s in London. Near the palace,’ he hissed.

‘What palace?’

‘The Queen’s palace.’

‘Not good enough,’ replied Luke. ‘Three—’

‘
Chocha!
I don’t know the name of the place. White Hill or something. Suarez chose it.’

‘When? When’s it timed to go off?’ Luke was unable to keep the urgency out of his voice. Because that one frantic conversation, down there in the mulch of the Amazon jungle at dawn, was the culmination of everything he had been working on for weeks. ‘Nelson!’ he yelled, shaking him by the shoulders. ‘When’s it going off?’

But García was spent. His shoulders slumped and he turned his head away to one side, refusing to cooperate any further.

‘Four!’ shouted Luke grimly. ‘When I count five the drilling starts again. I’m not pissing about.’

Out of the corner of his eye, Luke could see Captain Dietermeyer trying to attract his attention. He was pointing frantically at his wrist and making a cutting motion with the flat of his palm. They were out of time.

‘Eleven,’ mumbled García. ‘It’s going off at eleven this morning in London. Now let my family go.’

‘Oh, Christ,’ said Luke. He had just worked out the time difference. If it was 0508 hours now in Colombia, it must be 1008 hours in London. That left fifty-two minutes. Fifty-two minutes to find the bomb and defuse it before a shower of radioactive debris erupted over the thousands of people packed into Whitehall. On Remembrance Sunday.

IN PARLIAMENT SQUARE
a light breeze swirled through the half-bare plane trees, then gusted along the wide boulevard leading to Trafalgar Square, the street known as Whitehall. Picking up strength, it ruffled the coats and hats of the families crowding behind the barriers and rippled through the ranks of servicemen and -women as they stood to attention, a crimson poppy pinned to every lapel or behind every cap badge. Guardsmen in their black bearskins and Athol grey greatcoats towered motionless over almost everyone else as the band of the Grenadier Guards played ‘O Valiant Hearts’, a hymn composed to commemorate the fallen of the First World War.

By 1008 hours Horse Guards Parade nearby had been packed solid with men and women in uniform. Exactly as the late Alfonso Suarez had known it would be. The reservists and former soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines were all waiting their turn to march down Whitehall in formation, to salute the Cenotaph, paying homage to the fallen. Young men barely into their twenties, some bloodied by combat in Afghanistan, mingled with veterans from long-gone campaigns in Aden, Malaya and Borneo. A reviewing stand had been erected opposite the Guards Division Memorial, where Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, would shortly take the salute.

Suarez had known the parade ground would be filled to capacity because the year before he had stood beside Ana María on the edge of St James’s Park, observing it all from a discreet distance. Together they had noted where the CCTV cameras were positioned, where the blind spots were, where the troops would concentrate. Together they had selected the spot where the device would be buried, and together they had devised the cover story.

Exactly one thousand metres away, SIS’s director of Operations looked as if he might be having a heart attack. Normally known for his crisp, military manner, his face had turned ashen and his forehead was covered with a light sheen of sweat. Those in the room with him that morning had noticed he was breathing in short, slightly laboured gasps. Carl Mayne was not having a heart attack, but what he had just heard over the phone from Ecuador had left him shaken. Fifty-two minutes. That was all the time they had to prevent Britain’s first ever dirty-bomb attack, somewhere in the streets beyond Thames House. The investigations team were gathered around the Polycom SoundStation, listening on speakerphone to Luke’s exchange with García as it had come in live from the Ecuadorean Amazon, with a two-second delay. They were in the operations room at Thames House, the central node of all the government’s efforts to locate and disarm the device.