In fact the Endeavor had been listening to their engines for the past half-hour, and had been shadowing them. By the time they began to signal, she was almost underneath them. A couple of minutes later they saw her periscope break the surface a hundred metres to their east; next the conning tower hove into view, and finally the long, gleaming whale-like upper body. Within quarter of an hour they, together with all their kit, were safe in the belly of the leviathan.
It can’t have been long after that we at last managed to separate the DA’s handcuffs. All we had to sever a link of the chain between them was a hacksaw blade I’d been carrying in my ops waistcoat. Taking turns, concentrating so as not to break the blade by exerting too much pressure, we gradually cut through the link.
At the time that seemed a bit of an achievement. Certainly it was better that he could use his hands independently. Apart from having chewed-up wrists, he didn’t seem much the worse, but he was exhausted and in shock. At any rate, he was very quiet, and it was only when I asked how he’d been lifted that he at last became articulate.
‘My fault entirely,’ he said. ‘We’d had a few drinks, you remember. I was driving. I stopped outside the door of the restaurant, and we stared in. Then we drove off, came back, and did the same again. The next thing we knew, we were cut out by two cars full of armed men — and that was it.’
‘And they brought you and Luisa here?’
‘Yes, but we got separated as soon as we arrived.’
‘Then what?’
‘I’m afraid they gave her a bad time. I could hear her screaming…’ His voice faltered and stopped.
‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘You needn’t go on.’
‘I can,’ said Murdo. ‘Her body was lying on the floor in another room. She was naked, and it looked like she’d been badly beaten.’
I didn’t answer, but I was thinking one name only: Farrell. That was his hallmark: rape and torture. Probably he’d been trying to make her divulge what SAS forces there were in the country. Once again my resolution to avoid personal vendettas had been blown to the winds, and I bitterly regretted my failure to take the bastard out while I’d had the chance.
We’d withdrawn into a small open area just inside the jungle at the north end of the airstrip. The rain had held off, but the mosquitoes were a major pain. The DA was still wearing the DPMs that the Colombians had given him, so that at least his arms were covered; but he had no hat, and the only way to protect his head was to drape himself in a little tent of netting.
We sat around miserably in the dark, debating our options. One faction, led by Murdo, was in favour of going back for a second hit on the compound. He argued that surprise would be on our side once again. The narcos and the PIRA — however many were left of them — must think that we’d somehow slipped away downriver, and they wouldn’t be expecting a repeat performance.
‘Listen,’ I said. ‘We came to lift the hostages. Now we’ve got one, and the other’s dead, we want to get the hell out. We’ve lost one guy already. We don’t want to risk any more. If any PIRA have survived, they’ll be well into the jungle by now.’
‘In that case,’ said Murdo, ‘for fuck’s sake let’s get back to the LZ, so that the chopper can pick us up.’
That made good sense — and I didn’t think we’d have much difficulty navigating. Our basic need would be to head due north. Obviously we’d have to weave about, taking the easiest route through the jungle, probably along animal tracks. But if ever we seemed in danger of getting lost, we could make our way back to the river and steer by that. The trouble was the physical difficulty of making progress. As I knew from past exercises, the jungle grows thickest along river banks, and our best hope would probably be to keep in the thinner areas, further inland.
Bitter experience, on training and previous operations, had taught us that it was impossible to move through the jungle in the dark. All the same, Murdo insisted on having a try, and he set off in company with Mel, announcing that they would move on a northerly heading. They never made more than a couple of hundred metres. For the next twenty minutes we could hear them cursing quite close to us as they tried to push their way through the undergrowth, and in half an hour they were back, with skin and DPMs ripped into shreds by the wait-a-while thorns. We agreed that we’d start trying to blaze a trail north as soon as it was light. In the meantime, at 0500, we pulled out the pin from one of our TACBE beacons, hoping that the international distress call it put out would be picked up at Puerto Pizarro and alert our rear-party to the fact that we were in the shit.
Thereafter, all we could do was sit and wait for the light. As we were in thick cover, we got a brew on, and that cheered things a bit, but time seemed to be moving at the pace of a constipated snail. I kept looking at the wretched bundle in the hammocks, all that was left of Sparky. You poor bugger, I was thinking. All your money-saving didn’t do you much good in the end. Also on my mind was Luisa’s naked body, lying on the floor, with flies and ants getting at it.
‘Let’s hope the Boat Troop have had better luck,’ I said, and everyone grunted assent.
Eventually dawn broke, retarded by the fact that the sky was still overcast. Grey light filtered down through the tree canopy, and we were just sorting ourselves out for the off when, to our consternation, we heard an engine splutter and start up out on the strip.
‘Jesus!’ I cried. ‘The plane!’
In twenty seconds we were out on the edge of the cleared ground. The Islander was some 600 metres off, at the other end of the strip and facing away from us, but even in the half-light we could see that both its props were turning.
‘They’re nuts!’ I shouted. ‘I fixed the tyres. They’ll never get off.’
‘If they do, we can drop them,’ said Murdo. ‘They’ll have to take off this way. They’ll be right over our heads. Just go on automatic and give the plane plenty of lead.’
I watched, half-hypnotized, as the Islander started to move. Was it possible that someone had come down to the field and changed the wheels during the past couple of hours? Or was the pilot in such a panic that he hadn’t checked the tyres before he went aboard?
Slowly the plane turned right-handed and straightened. We heard the pilot winding up his engines. But then we heard something else.
My TACBE, which had been beeping quietly for the past hour, sending out the emergency beacon, suddenly came to life. An English voice was saying, ‘Green Four, this is the QRF. Do you read me? Over.’
I seized the set and switched to the voice channel. ‘Authenticate!’ I shouted. ‘Authenticate!’
‘Operation Crocodile,’ came the answer. ‘Op Croc.’
‘Green Four, roger. You’re loud and clear. Where are you?’
‘Estimate zero eight ks from your location. We’re airborne towards you.’
‘Roger. We’re on the north end, repeat north end, of the new airstrip beside the river. There’s an Islander trying to take off at this moment. It’s the narcos’ transport. If it gets airborne, shoot it down.’
‘Roger. We have eyes on the river. Turning downstream now. There’s smoke rising from the jungle to the west. Is that you?’
‘Negative. That’s the laboratory. We hit it during the night. We’re one k east of the smoke, right by the river. Repeat. One k east of smoke.’
‘Roger. We’ll be with you in two minutes. Wait out.’
I put the set down, hardly able to believe my ears.