Pepperpotting was the order of the night. By luck we’d come ashore near the northern end of the landing strip. The plane was parked at the south end, about six hundred metres away. While one of us went forward to check our immediate surroundings, the other two covered him from a distance. Then, at a low whistle, they moved up, and one of them took over the lead. We stalked the aircraft with extreme care, moving silently over the raw, scraped earth of the runway. We expected to find at least one guard stationed by it, or in it, and we were surprised to find the Islander deserted. The temptation to booby-trap it was almost overwhelming: we had the explosive and detonators. But I had to keep reminding myself that our mission was one of covert approach and extraction, not one of sabotage.
In the dark it was difficult to tell whether or not we were leaving any tracks; but as we moved round the plane in single file, Murdo, at the back, was swishing a branch of big leaves back and forth across our trail.
Leaving the plane, we headed for the wall of forest to the west, aiming for the corner of the field. Sure enough, there was the road, leading off into the jungle, a pale strip just visible. Dark as the night was out in the open, it was still blacker under the trees, and I paused before entering the tunnel.
‘Give us your branch, Murdo,’ I said quietly. ‘It looks to me as though security’s very lax. They’re so far from civilization that they don’t reckon there’s any threat. They’re relying on the isolation to protect them. But I’m not taking any chances.’
I stripped the leaves and side-shoots off the branch, until I was left with a springy stick about four feet long, and I moved down the road with this held out at an angle in front of me, in case we came on a trip wire connected to an alarm. But the track was clear.
As Tony had described, the track wound in curves between the trees. It could have been made like that for reasons of camouflage — to preserve as much tree-cover as possible — or for reasons of economy, to save shifting obstructions unnecessarily. Probably the engineers had chosen the easiest route, which involved the minimum of clearing.
We moved in bursts. I’d go on a hundred steps, then stop in the middle of the road. The other two waited a couple of minutes, then closed on me. The darkness was such that twice they went past me, only a few feet away, without seeing me, and I had to hiss at them to stop.
At that erratic pace it took us half an hour to cover a kilometre. Several times I froze, hearing movements on the edge of the jungle to right or left, but after a while I realized that the disturbances were caused by animals, possibly jaguars, more likely snakes.
By about 10.30 the moon was rising. The sky was growing lighter, and we could see the tree canopy silhouetted in black against it. Then we began to hear the hum of a machine — probably a generator — in the distance ahead. Finally we made out lights showing through the trees.
It was after 11 p.m. when we reached the edge of the clearing, and from the lack of movement we reckoned the place had settled down for the night. Hanging back under the trees, we scanned the new settlement. The approach road opened out into a clearing perhaps seventy metres wide and two hundred long. On the left-hand side, as we looked, two long, low buildings were laid out end to end, running away from us and continuing the line of the road. Beyond them, at right-angles across the far end of the clearing, a third building was still under construction, the skeleton of its roof showing up white in the moonlight. In front of it several vehicles were parked: a couple of bulldozer diggers, two or three dump-trucks, and two jeeps.
The nearest building looked like the accommodation block. It had doors and windows, and the walls went right up to the eaves of the corrugated iron roof. The second building was not much more than a roof on pillars — part of the side we could see had a wall about head-high, but the rest of it was open. That, I guessed, was the laboratory. Somewhere at the back of that a generator was drumming, and a couple of bare electric bulbs flickered erratically.
‘How the fuck did they get the stuff here to build all this?’ whispered Sparky.
‘By water,’ I told him. ‘A boat comes upriver. An army of guys with power-saws goes ashore. Next they land a bulldozer to clear the road, and the site. Then some trucks to carry concrete blocks, cement and so on. In about a week, it’s cocaine city.’
Skirting the open ground, we moved forward and to our right to get a closer view. I wished to hell we had PNGs or kite-sights. As it was, we had to make do with one pair of binoculars, which gathered light well but was no substitute for real night-vision equipment.
On the right-hand side of the clearing we found a high rampart of logs, roots and earth. Everything bulldozed off the site had been pushed up into a heap about twenty feet tall and over a hundred yards long. Immediately behind it was a tangle of virgin forest. In fact, all the debris had been pushed back and piled up into and around the first of the standing trees, so that when we tried to creep round the back of it, we found it impossible to make progress. But when we scrambled up the back of the long mound, we discovered that we had a view of the whole clearing; a naturally commanding position.
‘This is the place for the OP,’ I whispered.
‘It’s bloody close to the buildings,’ said Sparky. ‘We’re right on top of them. It can’t be more than sixty or seventy metres straight across. If we’re caught here, we’re fucking history.’
‘I know. But if we get any farther away, we’ll be in the trees, and able to see fuck-all. Listen: I’m going to recce round the back of the buildings. You guys stay here and cover me. Sparky, rig an aerial and see if you can get a sitrep through to base. Report that we’re on Green Four, and find out if they’ve got any news of the Boat Troop. If it goes noisy, RV back at the dinghy. I just hope to hell these bastards haven’t got any dogs.’
I scrambled along the back of the heap, working my way left-handed to the airstrip end. Back on the side of the road I paused, listening, then crossed to the rear corner of the accommodation block. Behind it I found a strip of cleared ground maybe ten metres wide, so that walking up it was easy. There were no windows in the back of the building, which was made of bare concrete blocks, only narrow ventilation slits high in the walls. As I crept along I was thinking, If Luisa and the DA are here, they could be right beside me, the other side of that wall. At the far end of the block I again stood still for two or three minutes, but I heard nothing except the cicadas at a distance, the drumming of the generator close at hand, and the mosquitoes aiming for my neck.
As we had guessed, the second building was the laboratory. It was fifty metres long, and above a shoulder-high wall of blocks it was open to the outside air. Looking over the wall I could see long working surfaces, or possibly vats, and there was a chemical smell in the air. At the far end, a collection of 55-gallon drums stood in one corner, stacked two-high. These would be the ether.
Beyond the laboratory I came to the end of the new building, and beyond that I found myself on the bank of a small river, which ran past the end of the site.
I’d started along the back of the unfinished structure when suddenly I smelled woodsmoke. Somewhere ahead of me there was a fire. Maybe people were camping in the open. Then, within a few feet, I heard a noise that made me freeze: a man snoring. The sound came from head level. There was somebody in a hammock almost within arm’s length. Inching backwards, a quarter-step at a time, I retraced my route to the corner of the lab. Earlier, I’d been considering the idea of making my way back along the front of the buildings and getting a look at the doors. Now I decided that any such manoeuvre was out of the question; there were too many people on the site.