Crisis (Luke Carlton 1) (2 page)

Benton walked briskly away from the hotel security guard on the gate, turned a corner and dropped to his knees behind a wall, pretending to do up his shoelaces while glancing up and around him to see if anyone was following. Old-fashioned tradecraft, tried and tested. He breathed out slowly: yes, he was alone. He moved on, down a potholed back lane, past a row of street stalls where smoke rose from a dozen sizzling barbecues, and onto a string of straw-roofed drinking dens. The soft lilt of salsa played from somewhere behind a bar, reminding him of how much he loved this continent. A boy ran up to him and tugged at his trousers. ‘
Señor! Señor!
Give me a present!’ Benton patted his pockets without breaking his step, produced an old pen and handed it to the child, whose face betrayed his disappointment. Benton smiled and walked on.

As arranged, Fuentes was waiting for him, one hand curled round a perspiring beer, the other drumming nervously on the Formica table. They spoke quietly in Spanish, Fuentes swigging his beer and looking periodically over his shoulder, Benton sipping a lukewarm Sprite.

‘You’re absolutely sure it’s going down tonight?’ asked the MI6 officer.

‘
Seguro.
You brought the equipment?’ said Fuentes.

‘
Por supuesto
.’ Benton nodded. ‘Of course.’ He patted the day sack between his knees, feeling through the material for the angular contours of the night-vision goggles and the infrared camera. Fuentes was every bit as jumpy as he was – he could see that, even in the dim light of the solitary bulb that dangled above the bar. In two years of working together they had never undertaken anything quite as risky as this.

‘You know what they will do to me and my family,’ said Fuentes, ‘what they will do to you too, if they catch us?’

Benton didn’t reply. He put a handful of damp, curled peso notes on the bar for their drinks and motioned for them to leave. They had been over this before. No one was forcing him to take the risk, Benton reminded him. They had planned the operation together. The two men had built up trust between them, agent and case officer, and mutual respect. Both of them wanted to see it through. Privately, though, Benton drew some reassurance from the knowledge that the agent, Giraldo Fuentes, had been regularly polygraphed, hooked up by wires to several electronic monitors, while a dour security man with thin lips and unblinking eyes had thrown questions at him. He had passed each time with flying colours; his loyalty was not in doubt.

Not far south of Tumaco the track gave out and the jungle took over. Fuentes parked the pickup truck, backing it deep into the undergrowth as Benton had shown him. ‘No nosy parking,’ the MI6 officer had told him, when they had started to train him. ‘You never know when you’ll need to get out in a hurry.’ He switched off the engine and for a minute the two men sat in silence, adjusting their senses to the tropical night. A whining in their ears announced the first of the mosquitoes and Benton slapped irritably at his neck. ‘Bloody mozzies,’ he grumbled. ‘We don’t get them up in Bogotá.’

Fuentes put a hand on his arm, his finger to his lips, and shook his head emphatically. It would be an uncomfortable night for both of them. ‘
Tranquilo
,’ he whispered. ‘It is only the ones that bite in the daytime that carry the dengue fever.’ He didn’t mention the virulent strain of jungle malaria carried by the night-biting variety.

The mission was simple: get in close, get the photos, and get out. It was what the military would call ‘a close target recce’. Fuentes had a good idea where the sentries would be posted – after all, he knew most of them by name. At his last meeting with his MI6 case officer he had drawn him a sketch map of the location and they had rehearsed what to do if they were compromised: disperse in opposite directions, then zigzag back through the jungle to the pickup. The practice run had not been
a stunning success: Benton had tripped over a root almost immediately and had had to be helped back to his feet.

Twenty minutes after they’d set off they squatted, lathered in sweat. Benton was being driven half insane by the persistent whine of the mosquitoes. Fuentes poked him gently in the ribs and pointed. Down the track ahead and to the right, they could just make out through the foliage a yellow light. Benton reached into his sack, took out the NV goggles and fiddled with the focus. In the humid night air the lenses steamed up immediately and he had to wipe them twice on his shirt. On the third attempt the scene swam into focus.

He was looking at an open-sided thatched hut and a group of men sitting at a table, lit by a hurricane lamp that hung from a hook. He recognized the man in the middle from the files: El Gato. The Cat. A middle-ranking player. Why did these narco types always have to give themselves such stupid names? Benton panned right to the other men at the table and held his breath. Fuentes had been right. They were Asians, not Colombians. Chinese Triads? Japanese Yakuza? Christ knows, he couldn’t tell, but some kind of international deal was definitely going down. This would have to go in his next report and he would need the images to send back to London. And tonight was quite possibly the only chance he would get. Less than three months to go before his Colombia posting was up and he was not going to pass up this chance. For the briefest of moments he saw himself being ushered into the Chief’s office back at Vauxhall Cross and congratulated. Perhaps even a knighthood on retirement.

He gestured to Fuentes that he needed to move closer, but the agent shook his head and drew his finger across his throat. Benton considered him in the darkness, so close they could hear each other’s breathing even above the incessant chorus of frogs and cicadas; the jungle at night is far from quiet. For Benton, this was a fork-in-the-road moment and he knew it.

He rose to his feet, gently shaking off Fuentes’ restraining hand. Reaching down, he removed the Browning from its holster,
slid back the mechanism and chambered a round. There was a loud metallic click as the gun was cocked and Fuentes winced.

Benton took tentative steps forward through the undergrowth, pausing every few yards. His heart was racing and his throat felt like sandpaper. He wished he had brought the bottle of water from the truck. He looked through the viewfinder and reckoned he was almost in range to get a good enough picture. He let the camera dangle round his neck and felt the comforting weight of the pistol. He took another step forward.

Without warning, a sentry reared up behind him and struck him hard between the shoulder blades with the metal butt of an assault rifle. Benton’s pistol fell uselessly from his grasp. He groaned and slumped.

‘
Oye! Venga!
’ the sentry called out to the men in the hut, and suddenly there was pandemonium, shadowy figures spilling towards them. Fuentes, unseen, hugged the ground, watching in silent horror as they dragged Benton backwards by his armpits to the hut. Guards were fanning out with torches in all directions.

Fuentes got up and ran, faster than he had ever run in his life, thrashing blindly through the lush foliage that tore at his face and shirt, stumbling like a drunk the last few yards to the truck. He jumped into the cab, dropping the keys at his feet. Scrabbling with his fingers amid the detritus he’d been meaning to clear out, he found them too late to start the engine. Crouched behind the dashboard, half hidden by the surrounding bushes, he could see figures silhouetted on the same dirt track they had driven down only an hour ago. They were calling to each other, their torchbeams probing the night. And then Fuentes heard something that nearly made his heart stop. The distant sound of a man screaming, in intense drawn-out terror and pain.

‘
GOD, IT’S RAMMED
in here tonight.’

‘Sorry, babes?’

‘It’s a bloody crush!’ shouted Luke, cupping his hand to her ear above the thumping music. ‘And stop calling me “babes”!’

‘But you know I only do it to wind you up!’ She slid her hand around his waist and pulled him closer. He caught her scent. Nearly a year together and still it did something for him. Slender and self-assured, Elise was nearly as tall as he was.

They had met at the art gallery where she worked, on the opening night of an exhibition of brightly coloured gouache paintings. His immediate thought had been: This girl is out of my league.

It was true that Elise had no shortage of admirers, but the man who had strolled in intrigued her. He had the loose, easy movements of someone capable of immense speed and power. His face was angular, lightly tanned, beneath short, sandy hair. Grey eyes. Was he a model? God, she hoped not – she wasn’t going to make that mistake again. No, the broken nose and weathered look told her otherwise. This was not a man who spent a lot of time in front of the mirror. There was something paradoxical about him: a blend of danger, adventure . . . and security. She felt safe in his presence.

A week later, on their first date, he had nearly blown it. ‘Tell me
about yourself,’ she had said, appraising him watchfully as she sipped her peach Bellini in a bar off Piccadilly.

He’d wondered what he should say. Born in London, brought up in South America, orphaned at ten. Most of his adult life in the Royal Marines and Special Forces. On operations he had killed at least four people and didn’t lose any sleep over it. Too much information for a first date? Yes, probably.

‘Well,’ he had begun, with a half-raised eyebrow, ‘I suppose you could say I’m from everywhere.’ It was his International Man of Mystery line and had worked wonders on nights out in Plymouth and Poole. Elise had said nothing, just got up and walked away to the bar. You twat, Luke, he thought, you’ve lost her already.

But Elise had waved him over to join her, a frosty mojito lined up for him on the bar. ‘Drink this,’ she’d ordered, with a smile. ‘It might improve your conversation.’ Things had moved quickly: six months on from that night they were sharing a flat. Now they were spending their Thursday evening on a small, sweaty dance floor in a members-only nightclub in Mayfair, waiting for friends who hadn’t shown up, surrounded by rich boys in blazers and tasselled loafers, their girlfriends in pearls. You could almost touch the money in the air here, thought Luke, but what on earth made all those people want to dress like their parents when they weren’t even out of their twenties? A boy in a canary-yellow cashmere cardigan was dancing backwards and collided with Luke, too busy mouthing the words to ‘Get Lucky’. Luke regarded him with pity: he was wearing Ray-Bans in a nightclub.

‘OK,’ he said to Elise, ‘let’s get out of here.’ She offered no resistance: it was not her kind of place either.

Together they side-slipped through the crowd, emerging into the cool drizzle of the London night. Elise paused to light a cigarette, smiling coyly at him as he cupped his hands around hers to shield her lighter from the breeze, the gap left by his missing middle finger standing out next to her own perfect, shapely hands. Luke had never understood the smoking thing and vowed
to have another go at her to stop. Maybe next year. They turned into Curzon Street, almost empty now at past one in the morning, then crossed the road near the palatial Saudi Embassy, nodding at the two armed and bored policemen guarding the gates, then walked up a dimly lit side-street to where they had left the car.

‘Excuse, please. You have light?’ The man stepped out of the shadow of a parked van.

Seriously? thought Luke. That was such a cliché – it belonged in some dated vigilante film. A Charles Bronson classic, the ones his uncle used to watch. But Luke was instinctively on his guard. He didn’t like the look of the man, who had the air of organized crime about him. What was he? Albanian, perhaps. Hard to tell in this light. Elise had caught it too, but her manners got the better of her and she fished in her bag for a lighter.

At that moment Luke felt a pair of huge arms lock tight around him from behind and immediately his training kicked in. As the first attacker made a lunge for Elise’s handbag, Luke dropped his weight to his knees and pitched himself forward, jack-knifing his assailant over his shoulders. The man landed with a smack on the wet pavement, knocking the wind from his lungs and cracking his head on the concrete. ‘You fugger!’ he wheezed, in pain and surprise.

He was not the only one. What the hell d’you think you’re playing at? Luke asked himself, as he straightened up. You think this is a punch-up in Union Street in Plymouth on a Saturday night? Remember who you work for now. It’s supposed to be all about discretion, subtlety and hugging the shadows, not crash-banging across the city like Daniel Craig. Next time just give them the bloody money and walk on.

But the action wasn’t over. Elise’s slim frame was deceptive: she had her own training, honed over long, painful hours in the
dojo
. As the second man lunged for her handbag she stepped back, putting her weight onto her right leg, bending it slightly, then pistoning out a side-thrust kick with her left leg towards the man’s jaw. It would have been a technically perfect move, if only the heel of her shoe hadn’t snapped. Elise lost her balance and fell
sideways onto the pavement. In an instant the man was on top of her, grappling for her handbag. And then he was rising clear, as if pulled by some hidden hand. Luke’s fingers were clamped on the man’s oily hair as he lifted him up, then slammed him face down onto the ground, where he stayed.

Elise winced, rose quickly to her feet, forgetting the broken heel, and lost her balance again. Luke caught her and, for a moment, they clung to each other, recovering their breath. One assailant lay face down but breathing, the other had already abandoned his friend, slinking off into the night. Before she had time to protest, Luke scooped her up and carried her to the car. Inside, doors locked, seatbelts on, she kissed him forcefully on the lips. ‘Thanks, babes,’ she whispered.

‘No drama,’ he replied. ‘Lucky only one of us was wearing heels.’

IN THE DAMP,
humid air of the tropical night, the torchbeam reached out like an accusing finger. ‘Turn him over,’ said the captain. ‘Do it now.’ Gingerly, with uncharacteristic delicacy, the Colombian police conscripts approached the motionless body. In their confusion they tried to turn it over in opposite directions, pulling against each other, then collapsing backwards into giggles, like over-excited schoolchildren.