A few questions, and everything was wrapped up. By 1720 we were hot to trot. We took one G3, two 203s and three pistols, plus ammunition and a box of PE. Luckily I’d thrown an ops waistcoat into my Lacon box before leaving the UK, so that accommodated a lot of my personal kit, including the Magellan.
The pilot, Pedro, and his navigator were both young fellows with short, spiky black hair. Neither spoke more than a few words of English, so I went through everything several times, making certain they’d got the right bearing — zero-eight-seven — firmly in their heads. I also impressed on the pilot that it was essential he memorize the spot at which he put us down, so that he could find it again next day. Also, after he’d dropped us, he had to swing out to the north and return to base in a wide arc, as though he was searching the jungle for lost persons.
He started up and took off without fuss, and in a few seconds we were over the forest-sea, skimming through the hot dusk just clear of the highest trees. I caught an occasional flash of emerald, red or yellow as some brilliantly coloured bird took off in fright, but otherwise our whole world was drab grey-green. Looking forward over the pilot’s shoulder, I watched the needle of the compass sitting steadily on the correct heading.
Apprehension crept up on me. Why were we going in on this crazy operation? Because my first loyalty was to the Regiment, I’d far rather have been in on the plan to rescue Peter Black. Maybe we should have devoted all our resources to that. Then again, I thought, even if we’d turned around at Santa Rosa and headed back north, so that we could go in to storm the boat in harbour at Cartagena, the narcos would probably have topped their captive before we could reach him. Better leave things there to the SEALs or the Boat Troop. Meanwhile, down here in the jungle… I had no strong feelings about the DA. I didn’t care too much about what happened to him. But Luisa was a different matter. The idea of a beautiful, intelligent woman getting roughly handled, maybe raped or killed, through no fault of her own, was difficult to live with. Maybe it sounds sexist, but for me at any rate she was the main reason for going in.
The navigator and I had calculated that, cruising at 120 knots, we would reach the Cuemani in twenty-three minutes. Twenty-one minutes into the flight, the pilot began to lift up to gain a wider view of our surroundings. Already the light was going, and the forest beneath us had turned from grey-green to nearly black. Then suddenly ahead was the gleam of the river, across our line of approach.
In seconds we were over the near bank. I motioned to Pedro to slow down and turn right, over the water. I was prepared to fly about two ks downstream, towards the airstrip, but no nearer. Within that distance we’d have to find a landing zone of some sort.
As he hovered, we searched in vain for an opening in the cover. The forest grew right to the bank of the river, the trees overhanging the stream. I’d started to think we would have to fast-rope through the canopy when suddenly I spotted a slight rise in the ground, an outcrop of rock, which formed a little cliff. The chopper could have landed on it, but for a single tree growing out of a cleft.
I gave a shout and pointed down. Pedro went straight in and hovered at a good height. We lowered the pack containing the dinghy, and then our three bergens in a single bundle. Finally we ourselves slid down individual ropes and signalled we were clear. Up went the Huey with our lines trailing from its belly. It swung off to the north as instructed, and in a minute the noise of its engine had died away.
The occasional bird was still calling, perhaps stirred up by the aircraft, and frogs were croaking; but apart from those natural noises, there wasn’t a sound. In the last of the light we took stock of our surroundings. On three sides the jungle stretched away unbroken. On the fourth, right below us, ran the river. We were on top of the small cliff, maybe thirty feet high, but the face of it was not verticaclass="underline" it had enough of a slope and enough hand-holds for us to scramble down. I pulled out the strip of pale-coloured cloth which I’d borrowed from the Colombians, spread it over the rock and weighted it down with three or four loose stones.
I took out my Magellan, set it up, and waited for it to lock on to a passing satellite. When I got an accurate reading, I wrote it in my notebook, so that we could pass back the precise location of the landing zone when Sparky got his 319 going. Then we broke out the rubber dinghy from its pack, inflated it with the hand-pump and lowered it over the cliff, followed by the outboard on a separate tether. Within ten minutes of landing, we were drifting downriver, steering with the paddles and letting our eyes become accustomed to the gathering dusk.
Except where there was a rock-face similar to the one we had come down, the jungle pressed in to the very edge of the banks, overhanging the water. The river was at least two hundred yards wide, and I could see from the bare face of the banks that it was below its highest level. Because we were out in mid-stream, and the forest was so uniform, with few landmarks, we found it hard to tell what speed we were making; but when we augmented the current by paddling, we reckoned we were doing at least three knots, or about five k.p.h. At that rate, we’d be at the airstrip within two hours.
Occasionally a loud slap and a splash would sound from the stream. In fact I think most of the disturbances came from fish, but several times I felt the hair come up on my neck just from the thought of crocodiles. The pilot of the Herc had told me that the Caquetá was over two thousand kilometres long. Even though we were only on a tributary, our own river was big enough — and here we were, going down it in a tiny rubber boat to an unknown destination in the heart of the biggest rainforest on earth.
We must have been travelling faster than we thought, because after only one hour forty I suddenly realized that there was no longer a wall of jungle on the right bank. We had come to a place where the trees had been cut away. Further downstream I made out a long, grey shape which could only be the landing jetty.
‘Look out!’ I whispered. ‘Back up! Paddle for the bank.’
Murdo and Sparky spun the dinghy and headed across the current for the shore. A few trees still clung to the edge of the water, and we came in under them among a mass of roots. Standing up in the back of the little rubber boat, I got hold of an overhanging branch and pulled us in.
The roots, over which we had to scramble ashore, were treacherous in the extreme: invisible, uneven, and slippery as ice. Getting wet up to mid-thigh hardly mattered, though as the night was so warm; more serious was the noise we made floundering about. We tethered the boat temporarily to a branch and scrabbled up the steep earth bank, to find ourselves on the edge of a flat, clear space: the new airstrip. Away to our left, glimmering like a big, white moth, was a twin-engined plane, a square-bodied Islander.
Immediately we had a problem: what to do with the boat? To drag it ashore, through the mat of roots and branches, would be impossible. An alternative was to climb back on board and let it drift downstream, bringing it ashore on the new wharf. The trouble with that one was that the jetty might be guarded — and if we got the dinghy on land, what would we do with it then? A third alternative was to head back upstream and cache the boat on the edge of the virgin jungle; but, given the strength of the current, I doubted we’d make any headway with paddles alone, and I didn’t want to risk starting up the outboard. In the end, after a rapid Chinese parliament, we decided to leave the dinghy where it was. It was well hidden from boats passing on the river by overhanging branches, and the chances of anyone searching the bank along the perimeter of the airstrip seemed infinitesimal. Once on the airfield, we took a note of the boat’s position by reference to a single tree that stood taller than the rest.