‘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?’