Crisis (Luke Carlton 1) (16 page)

‘Exercise caution?’ said Khan. ‘What does that mean, exactly?’

‘It means an email’s gone round to all the mainstream media reminding them of their responsibility not to publish the names or photographs of any intelligence officers, past or present.’

There was a loud grunt from the far end of the table. It came from a thick-set man in a pin-striped suit, his hair grey at the temples, his fingertips yellow with nicotine.

‘Gary? You have a question?’ said Khan, addressing the head of Security Section, MI6’s own internal security cadre that looked after everything from online digital footprints to safe routes into a war zone. Gary had been in the business most of his life.

‘Well, come on,’ said Gary, ‘who are we kidding here? This is the twenty-first century. Do we really think they’re going to abide by those rules? If they want to publish, they can get a US subsidiary to do it. It’s happened before. Remember Edward Snowden?’

‘Well, it hasn’t happened this time,’ said Sharma, rather testily. ‘Jerry’s name has been kept out of it. We’ve got a close eye on what pops up online.’

‘OK,’ said Khan, calling the meeting to order. ‘So here’s where we are now. The media will obviously get the narco connection – it’s a bit of a no-brainer, given where it is on the map. But there’s no reason to suppose they’ll dig any deeper than that, is there? FCO are putting together a press release as we speak. With any luck, that will draw a line under it and they can move on. Plenty of other news for them to get their teeth into and Colombia’s a long way off. There’s the new SARS outbreak, the Baghdad bombings and now that backbench bloke sexting pictures of himself to an undercover reporter.’

‘Sorry, am I missing something here?’ asked Greg Sanderson, head of Latin America. ‘If the media know about Jerry’s murder that’s pretty big news. Surely it’s only a matter of time before they send people down to Tumaco to start poking around. The next thing we hear they’ve run into our guy down there, Carson or whatever he’s called, and this whole op is blown wide open.’

‘It’s Carlton, Luke Carlton,’ Khan corrected him. ‘And he’s being recalled.’

‘Is he?’ said another voice at the table. The head of HR. He put
down his pen and took off his glasses. ‘I don’t think I was told about that. When’s he back? Because with what happened in that hotel room a few nights ago we may need to arrange some counselling when he gets here.’

‘He’s flying home this weekend,’ replied Khan. ‘I’ve asked John Friend from Legal to escort him onto the plane in Bogotá. We can’t have him rattling around South America racking up dead bodies. And his comms are appalling. He switched off his phone for two hours after he messaged us about the weapon.’

‘But he did produce that notebook,’ pointed out another figure at the table. It was Craig Dalziel, head of Agent Handling. ‘And he’s tracked down Jerry’s principal agent, Synapse. I think we should give him some credit.’

‘I take it,’ said Sanderson, ‘that he’s now in contact with Tradewind. I don’t mean to sound disrespectful to Jerry Benton, but it’s obviously important Carlton’s able to pick up where Jerry left off. Wouldn’t everyone agree?’

Khan and Dalziel exchanged meaningful glances and there was a brief, awkward silence, before Khan replied: ‘No. To answer your question, Carlton does not know about Tradewind.’

‘Hold on a minute!’ exclaimed Sanderson. ‘You mean we sent him out there without telling him? Any good reason? Aren’t we effectively making him fight this battle with one arm tied behind his back?’

‘Absolutely not,’ retorted Khan. ‘We took a decision—’

‘You mean
you
took a decision.’

‘No. Craig and I took a combined decision based on the grounds of operational security. Tradewind is in deep cover, and when the time is right we’ll let Carlton know. But right now,’ continued Khan, ‘he’s safely on the police commando base. Under orders not to move off it without referring back to me. I don’t think we’ll be having any more shoot-ups like last week’s shenanigans.’

LUKE LOOKED DOWN
at his thumb and winced. Blood blister. That was careless. He was loading so much ammunition into so many magazines that he had accidentally jammed his thumb between a cartridge and the metal lip of the M4 clip. One of the Jungla police commandos had noticed his missing middle finger and offered to help him load his rounds.

‘Thanks, but I can manage just fine,’ Luke had said, with a grin, which was when he’d messed up his thumb. No more mistakes from now on, he told himself. He and Captain Martínez had worked hard on the plan, anticipating the questions that Commander Rojas would ask, putting in last-minute bids for extra resources and firepower, all granted.

Now they were on final prep for the mission to take down El Pobrecito, and Luke felt a familiar knot of tension deep in his abdomen. He was about to go seriously off-piste. The Colombians might have approved this mission but Vauxhall Cross had not. Technically, this would put him in breach of duty to the Service – and quite possibly put the Service in breach of its duty to its political masters in Whitehall. This was already a sensitive mission that had needed sign-off from several people on both sides of the river. Now he was about to take it to a whole different level. Yet Luke had an unerring sense that what he was doing was right, given the opportunity he now had.

He smiled to think of the look on Friend’s face if the lawyer could have seen him now – in body armour, with two personal weapons strapped to his sides, his face streaked with green-and-black camouflage paint. Friend had checked up on him by phone a short while back and Luke had been somewhat economical with the truth. ‘I’m using my last two days in-country to follow up a possible lead in Antioquia with the Jungla,’ Luke had told him. ‘Can’t promise mobile reception will be that great up there but I’ll do my best to ring in.’

Luke knew full well he had only to switch on his mobile and the NSA would have his location triangulated and pinpointed on a map. He would not be switching it on and he had no intention of ‘checking in’. He was going out on a limb. This mission had to work because if it didn’t he would be looking for another job, another career.

The Colombians had been gratifyingly enthusiastic about his plan. They had had the rehearsals: the ‘actions-on-contact’, the back-up plans, the comms checks and the last-ditch mission-aborts. The HUMINT reports provided by the Colombians on the ground had confirmed that García was ‘in residence’ at the fortified farm, though no one could ever tell for how long.

He glanced around the briefing room, where men in full combat gear, like himself, were quietly going over their kit, checking and rechecking the M4 carbines slung across their chests, spare magazines taped on. Faces he had been getting to know were almost unrecognizable beneath tiger-stripe paint. Radio call-signs were being run through, ration boxes broken open and distributed. From outside came the familiar whine of the helicopter rotors starting up. The sound took Luke back to another time, another war, on a different continent: the Blackhawks preparing to carry him and his team into the dangerous badlands of Afghanistan. Here we go again, he thought.

‘
Listo, Señor Carlton?
You ready?’ It was Captain Martínez, technically the mission commander, though it was agreed Luke would be driving it. At twenty-nine, Emilio Martínez had a deep mahogany tan from a life spent almost entirely outdoors. A
curved scar ran halfway down his cheek towards a thick moustache, and Luke noted that his gravelly voice seemed to carry instant authority with his men.

‘I’m good to go,’ he replied.

‘
Vamanos.
Let’s go
.
’ They filed out to the helipad, Luke the lone Englishman among twelve of Colombia’s most highly trained police special forces, each weighed down with equipment, rations and the sheer enormity of what they were about to undertake. It was 2000 hours and starting to rain again.

CRAMPED, IRRITABLE AND
thirsty, the two submariners could agree on only one thing. This would definitely be their last voyage in one of these metal coffins. At three metres below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, conversation in the tiny craft had all but dried up. Four days of chugging along at minimal depth, breathing bottled oxygen and diesel fumes, eating freeze-dried food, then urinating and defecating into plastic bags, had left them craving fresh air and sunlight. Undetected from the air, from the surface, or even from up in space, their six-metre miniature submarine had inched its way northwards up Colombia’s Pacific coast from the swamps just south of Buenaventura. The vessel’s confined cabin had few creature comforts, just two hard aluminium bucket seats, a periscope, a basic navigation panel and an empty cargo compartment. It had been left up to the pilots, in the final days before they had slipped their moorings in the muddy jungle berth, to source a pair of makeshift cushions, fashioned from jungle hemp by the local indigenous Indians. The cushions had now started to unravel and rot, leaving their backsides sore and aching. But the money was good. Oh, yes. Fifty thousand dollars each in cash and a bonus when they reached their destination.

Their instructions were simple: steer the vessel to a point exactly 7.50 degrees north and 79.14 degrees west, then rendezvous with the mother ship. Out in the maritime no man’s land of
the eastern Pacific, this would be well outside the territorial waters of either Colombia or Panama and far from the prying eyes of their nosy government coastguards.

But the mini-sub was making painfully slow progress, battling a swell that held it back to just eight knots while the pilots fought constant nausea. One had thrown up three times, the vomit slopping around the metal floor at their feet before drying into an acrid, foul-smelling crust. It had turned the unpleasant into the intolerable and now the space between them crackled with silent tension.

On the fifth day at sea, the submariners brought the vessel slowly up to the surface on a steamy equatorial morning. They unwound the airtight hatch to the deck, pushed open the lid and took in great lungfuls of fresh air. In the grey light of dawn they scanned the waters around them. Nothing. As the temperature rose the horizon began to wobble in the haze, the sea blending almost indistinguishably into sky.

‘
Oyé! Mira!
Look!’ shouted one, pointing at a distant silhouette. ‘Quick, fetch the helix.’ Together they stood on the crudely welded iron deck and signalled the approaching ship. Nothing. ‘
Mierda.
Maybe it’s the wrong ship.’

‘Or maybe you’ve brought us to the wrong place,’ muttered his co-pilot.

But then came an answering signal, flashing clear and bright across the narrowing gap between them. The ship’s silhouette matched the image on the print-out they had been handed before leaving Colombia, wrapped in waterproof cellophane. It certainly resembled the hulking rust-bucket of the 9,000-ton bulk cargo ship they were expecting. Lit by the slanting rays of the rising sun, it was close enough now for them to make out the chestnut-brown streaks that poured down its side from a socket where the anchor was secured. The superstructure had been painted white, an unfortunate choice for so filthy a ship, but down towards the waterline the hull was a dingy grey. A man in overalls and a white hard hat peered over the side at them, then disappeared. On the side of the ship, outlined in peeling grey letters, they read ‘
Maria Esposito
. Manila.’ They had made the rendezvous.

FOR CLOSE TO
three hours they flew north-eastwards through the night, their camouflaged faces lit dimly by the eerie green light of the Blackhawks’ cockpit instrument panel. Only the door gunners moved, constantly shifting left and right as they scanned the vegetation below with their helmet-mounted night-vision goggles. Their gloved hands were clenched around the grip handles of the chain guns mounted in the helicopters’ open doorways, ready to spit out a stream of bullets if they took fire from the ground. Nariño, Valle del Cauca and Chocó provinces slipped past beneath them as the helicopters powered on unseen, bolstered by external fuel tanks.

So much for putting this shit behind him, thought Luke, but it certainly beats a day in the office. He shuddered briefly to think what Elise would say if she could see what he was up to. What would she be doing right now? It would be about four in the morning in London and he liked to think of her in their bed, her perfect face turned to one side on the pillow, with maybe a dab of lavender oil to help her sleep. Tonight was that exhibition opening she’d worked so hard for, and where was he? Helicoptering into a hostile landing zone in South America. He felt a twinge of remorse at not being with her – he knew how much the show mattered to her. But, if he was honest with himself, he often felt like a fifth wheel at those things. People were always coming up
and asking him questions about the artist that he couldn’t answer. This was the world he knew and he was glad to be back in it.

A sudden jab in the ribs from Martínez brought him back to the moment. It was time to ‘switch on’, as the military were so fond of saying. They had crossed into Antioquia province and were circling for the landing, the pitch of the rotors changing as the pilots steadied their craft for the touch-down, the blades slicing through the rain they could see through the window, now falling in sheets. Luke spared a brief thought for the reconnaissance team, who would have gone in at last light to stake out the landing site, a disused field close to the forest, now calling in the Blackhawks on a prearranged frequency. They must be soaked. He glanced one last time around the interior of the helicopter – the canvas seats, the silvery metal floor, the boldly marked fire-fighting equipment – then scanned the men’s faces. He searched for any signs of fear but he could see only determination beneath the helmets and face paint. Only one man, the medic, crossed himself.

The loadmaster was on his feet now, his harness attached by wire to the Blackhawk’s ceiling. Next thing the door was fully open and in rushed the noise, the rain, the roar of the rotors and the wind whipped up by the downdraught. It was like opening a door to a miniature tempest. Luke was second out of the helicopter, putting his feet on the wheels then jumping out in almost pitch darkness, trusting that the pilot had judged it right and had them at the hover no more than a couple of metres above the ground. He landed, rolled clear and hugged the sodden vegetation, protecting his head from the small branches and leaves that whipped around him in the downdraught. In one continuous stream the Jungla commandos followed, throwing themselves out of the open door, then fanning out to form a defensive perimeter, a protective circle around the Blackhawk, while the second aircraft remained above them, door gunners at the ready. In less than a minute the team were all on the ground and then the Blackhawks were gone, lifting clear and tilting to one side as they clattered off into the night.