After years of practice, this had become instinctive. Second nature. Something that Jaeger didn’t need to consciously think about. Which was fortunate, because right now he was struggling with some particularly nasty undergrowth, plus a mind plagued by dark worries about his loved ones.
When his counter reached 240, Jaeger called a halt. The others drew in close, down on one knee and heads practically touching. Jaeger pulled out a map as they averaged out the distance they had covered. They were some two kilometres in, with four to go before they reached the ridge overlooking Dodge City, their intended destination.
Jaeger gulped some water. He felt a dark foreboding about the jungle here, a palpable sense of unwelcome.
His nerves were on edge; his eyes seeing enemies in every patch of shadow.
29
‘We hit the LZ at 0800,’ Jaeger whispered. ‘We’re three hours in, averaging seven hundred metres per hour. Last light’s at – what – 1900 hours?’
‘Under this depth of canopy, 1800, at a push,’ Raff volunteered.
Jaeger had learnt to trust Raff on most things when it came to the jungle. He scrutinised the map for any signs of serious obstacles, such as ravines or rivers.
‘We should make the ridge before dark, but only if we keep up the pace. All good?’
Three sets of eyes stared back at him, white in the darkness, faces streaked with dirt and grime and rotting leaf matter. None of them were wearing camouflage cream. Years of experience had proved it to be more of a liability than a blessing on a mission such as this.
Over days spent on covert ops in the jungle, no washing was possible. Camo cream would dry thick and stiff on face and neck. It became unbearably itchy, and it was movement – always – which drew an aggressor’s eye. Raff had long ago taught Jaeger that nature was the best camouflage: ‘Go dirty early.’
Jaeger stood, his sodden combat fatigues clinging to his skin. They were all dressed the same, in the unmarked jungle uniforms provided by Colonel Evandro. Jaeger’s shirt and trousers were dark with sweat.
‘Keep drinking. Keep rehydrating,’ he whispered. ‘The humidity’s off the scale.’
He pulled out a compact Katadyn filter from his bergen. He dropped the end of the intake tube into a patch of stagnant-looking water and began to pump, refilling each of their water bottles. The Katadyn employed a series of ceramic filters impregnated with silver to remove dirt, bacteria and protozoa – the kind of nasty single-celled parasites that abounded in the Amazon. Unless the water source was contaminated with man-made chemicals – which was highly unlikely here – it could render just about anything drinkable.
Water bottles replenished, they pushed onwards, Raff now taking point, a sense of urgency driving them.
By the time they reached the base of the ridge, Narov was leading. Jaeger joined her as she studied the slope that reared before them. He eyed her for a second. She seemed to be in bad shape, even considering what they’d just been through. She was limping, and Jaeger figured she’d yet to fully recover from her Dubai injuries. Typically, she’d said not a word, despite carrying the same load as the others.
The heat and humidity had been building through the day, and now they faced a stiff climb with little light remaining. In truth, Jaeger felt like death himself. He was light-headed, soaked to the skin with sweat, and had a pounding headache. First signs of a lack of fluids. Exhaustion and a rapid deterioration in his mental capacity would quickly follow if he let the dehydration really set in.
They’d done their best to keep the fluids going down, replenishing their bottles every two hours, then filter, drink, repeat. But even so, Jaeger had just sweated the liquid out again. It was the same for all of them, sweat running off like water in a shower.
He glanced to the west, where beams of sunlight were filtering low through the canopy. Last light was maybe forty minutes off, and with sundown it would grow dark as the grave. Only ten per cent of the light filtered through the jungle canopy, so even with a full moon and stars, visibility would be zero.
Every second was precious now.
Jaeger glanced at Raff. ‘You good for the recce ascent?’
Raff nodded. Without a word, they dropped their packs. Jaeger turned to Narov and Alonzo. ‘Keep drinking, and get some food down you too.’
Narov glanced at Alonzo. ‘Typical Jaeger,’ she grated. ‘Treats us like children.’
Jaeger grimaced. Typical Irina Narov, more like.
He and Raff started the climb with only the bare necessities – weapons, compass, plus a couple of water bottles – to hand. They fought their way upwards, mouthing silent curses as rotten vegetation and dirt gave way underfoot. The temptation was always to use your assault rifle as some kind of walking stick, which would free up one hand to grab at branches.
But tradecraft forbade it. You needed your weapon always at the ready, and free from dirt and vegetation.
Digging in with his tough Salewa boots, and clambering over the last of the fallen tree trunks, Jaeger approached the high point. They needed to move with extreme caution. Here the vegetation thinned and it was rocky underfoot. Sunlight broke through, bathing the terrain in fine evening light. The last thing they needed was to be silhouetted on the skyline.
Jaeger dropped to his hands and knees, Raff doing likewise. They crawled ahead, waiting for the terrain to fall away on the far side. There should be nothing between them and the narco base but half a kilometre of open air. They found an opening in the low tree cover and inched forward, lifting their heads slowly.
Before them, the ridge plunged away. Smack-bang ahead lay a clearing hacked out of the thick jungle – the base of Los Niños. Two things struck Jaeger: one, it was simply massive; and two, there was a well-used dirt airstrip that ran along the southern edge of the clearing.
Burnt stumps marked where the forest had been stripped away, the underlying soil laid bare to form the landing strip, like an angry red scar. To the north lay the base, resembling some kind of a frontier town – all galvanised-iron roofs and rough dirt streets. Two of the buildings were huge, as though a pair of giant warehouses had been parachuted into the jungle.
Those, Jaeger figured, were the drugs processing and storage facilities, where the raw coca paste was refined into pure cocaine. From there it would be loaded aboard aircraft and flown north at low level en route to the USA.
Some would doubtless be routed east, on an island-hopping journey across the Atlantic, bound for some of the less law-abiding states in Africa. There, the narcos had set up transit points for shipping the deadly white powder north into Europe.
Everyone at all levels was paid off, and no one tended to ask too many questions. Those who did invariably ended up dead.
As Jaeger gazed down upon Dodge, he just hoped their fate wouldn’t be the same.
30
Several roads bisected Dodge, each a rust-red highway that terminated in a dark wall of trees. At the far end of one lay a rectangular expanse of flat ground, with a sagging set of football posts at either end. Like kids anywhere, El Padre’s child soldiers needed to boot a ball around after a hard day’s graft.
Jaeger could see 4x4s buzzing along the dirt roads. Stick-like figures were crammed into the vehicles. He didn’t doubt that most of them were armed. All in all, he reckoned the base was a good kilometre square. This was a serious operation; they had to be running industrial-scale quantities out of here.