First Strike (4 page)

O’Brien flexed his fingers.

“I won’t be able to move for a couple of weeks or more. I have to go south from here, up into the Cordilleras, hook up with three other Paddies. We’re negotiating with a team of people from the FARC. They want to buy some of our expertise.”

Ortega frowned. He didn’t like splitting resources with the FARC. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia had a whole different agenda, more akin to Al Qaeda’s than his own. Getting too close to the Marxist guerrillas could be bad for Ortega’s business. He had enough trouble with the CIA and the FBI. He didn’t need to attract the attention of the Pentagon as well.

“Would it speed things up if I helped with transportation?” said Pablo. “This is a big country, as big as France and Spain combined. You can borrow one of the jets if you like.”

“Thanks,” the Irishman smiled, “but there’s no way Tirofijo would let your pilot anywhere near the safe-haven, and besides, they don’t have a landing strip long enough to take a jet. The command centre is constantly on the move and they’d never have the time to build one. You could fly me into Bogotá if you like, but I’ll have to disappear from there. I’ll touch base with you on my way back to Miami.”

***

Declan O’Brien flew into Bogotá’s El Dorado International airport on one of Ortega’s executive jets. The Learjet taxied to the General Aviation terminal reserved for private flights. O’Brien paused at the top of the aircraft’s steps like a sporting hero responding to applause, raising an arm and acknowledging the crowd.

On the observation deck overlooking the runway two men stood apart from the crowd. One was short and stocky with olive skin and tightly curled black hair, dressed in a tailored business suit. This was Captain Raül Abono of the Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad, the Colombian Secret Service. The other was MI6’s Head of Station at the Embassy in Bogotá. He was tall and blond, in grey flannels and blazer and what looked like a club or regimental tie. He touched his companion on the elbow. Abono peered through the viewfinder of a compact camera, adjusted the zoom and took a couple of headshots of O’Brien. Then they went downstairs to the crowded concourse and watched the Irishman exit onto the pavement. 

O’Brien surveyed the line of parked cars, spotted the one he wanted and walked over to a two-tone Honda SUV. The driver wound down his window and exchanged a few words with the Irishman. O’Brien dumped his bag on the back seat and got in. The two observers watched the SUV disappear into traffic. The Brit tried to spot the tail pulling out to take up position behind it. There wasn’t one.

“You’re not having him followed?” The Englishman was stunned.

“Not much point,” said the Colombian, “he’ll be headed for the safe-haven. A tail’s not much use on the open road and anyway I have no jurisdiction there.”

“Then why not arrest him now? While we have him in our sights?”

“And charge him with what exactly? We’ll pick him up on his way back. After we find out what he’s up to.”

It took O’Brien one day and one night to get where he was going.  Dawn broke over the craggy peaks of Cauca province, the early morning heat lifting a dense haze through the triple canopy of jungle. The chorale of birds and insects was shrill.

One hundred and twenty miles south of Calí the road took a couple of sharp hairpin bends. The driver turned off the main road and joined an unmarked track, ascending steeply up into the rain forest. After a couple of hundred yards, out of sight from the highway, the driver parked the car and both men got out, stretched their limbs and peed copiously. Then the driver tied a black bandana over O’Brien’s eyes and resumed the upward

climb. After a few kilometres they came to the first of a series of checkpoints. The driver identified himself and his companion. One of the guards made a call on a WW2 field telephone, obtained approval from the next checkpoint and waved them through.

Two hours and five check points later they arrived at the FARC encampment. O’Brien was shown to a wooden hut equipped with a fold-up bed and little else. He slept for four hours fully clothed and was woken by a young woman in khaki fatigues, toting an Uzi sub-machine gun.

“Venga conmigo.”

The camp consisted of several dozen wooden huts of assorted sizes arranged around a central open space, in the middle of which the embers of an overnight fire still glowed. To one side was a bank of communal latrines. O’Brien estimated the place could accommodate two or three hundred guerrillas. The rain forest would provide all their needs; fruit, game, water, fuel. Men and women in camouflage gear busied themselves with assault drills and target practice. Somewhere in the far distance the staccato of machine gun fire shattered the silence. A flock of startled birds rose squawking from the trees. A cloying heat lay on the jungle like a sodden blanket.

The camp was littered with military equipment of all kinds from rifles to rocket launchers and ground to air missiles, mostly of eastern European or Israeli origin, most of it brand new. The FARC’s problem wasn’t acquiring arms; it was learning how to use them. How to calibrate and maintain them, keep them clean, even how to fire them.

“Holy Mother of God,” thought O’Brien. “If we could spend money like this, we’d have the British out of Ireland in a month.”

O’Brien followed the woman across the clearing to a cabin set apart from the rest at the top of a low rise. The roof of the squat building bristled with antennae. The woman un-slung the SMG and stood guard at the door as O’Brien entered. The walls of the hut were crammed with communications equipment. The system was entirely analogue, though to O’Brien’s well-trained eye it looked primitive but effective.

Tirofijo sat in a swivel chair behind his desk, blowing cigar smoke up into the whirring fan above his head. A hand rolled Cohiba, Castro’s gift, was clamped between his teeth. He shoved the humidor across the desk at Declan.

“Bienvenido, hombre.”

The two war hardened warriors had done business a couple of times before. They respected one another. O’Brien represented Europe’s most feared and most effective terrorist group. Tirofijo commanded the best-equipped and most lavishly financed guerrilleros in the western hemisphere. They thought of themselves as equals.

The Colombian got up, went to a cupboard and extracted the bottle of Bushmills he’d procured especially for his friend. They drank a Cuban toast. “Socialismo o Muerte” – Socialism or Death. Then Tirofijo resumed his seat, opened a draw, pulled out a battered dog-eared manual and slid it across the desk at the Irishman.

O’Brien picked up the document and flicked through its torn and fading pages. His evaluation took several minutes, during which he didn’t utter a single word. Then he put his lips together and let out a long low whistle.

Tirofijo noted the Irishman’s hesitation.

“If you’ll do it, Declan, I’ll let you choose the target and the date. Any place you like. Any day you like. Anything that suits you.”

O’Brien shook his head and placed the manual face down on the desk.

“I don’t think I can do it.”

It wasn’t a moral judgment. O’Brien was concerned about the logistical complexities of the operation.

“Soy viejo, Declan,” Tirofijo explained. “Y soy cansado de la lucha.” He refilled both their glasses. “I’m an old man and I’m tired of fighting. I’ve been fighting all my life. I need to do something big. Now. Before it’s too late.”

Tirofijo unlocked a metal cabinet, pulled out a suitcase, placed it on the desk and opened it. The case was packed with scores of see-through plastic envelopes, each stuffed with half a kilogram of fine white powder. Tirofijo grinned.

“Half a million dollars says you can.”

***

6

In the hills above San Vicente del Caguan, deep inside the FARC safe-haven, four Irishmen sat incongruously around a campfire. O’Brien had linked up with Gerry McGuire, the IRA’s chief engineer, Niall O’Rourke, Sinn Fein’s accredited representative in Cuba and interpreter for the group, and Kevin Kelly, the youngest of the team, who wrote the training manuals. Beneath the triple canopy of jungle the night sky was black. No moon. No stars. All they could see in the flickering flames was their own hands and faces. The dank night air was loud with the chatter of birds and insects. Twenty feet away, unseen, an anaconda slithered by. A group of armed guerrillas watched the four Irishmen from a distance. Declan O’Brien poured the last of the Bushmills.

“You’ve got to admit, Gerry old son, this is a sweetheart deal.”

Gerry McGuire swatted the mosquito on the back of his hand.

“The politicals sure as hell won’t like it.”

“Then we won’t tell them. They say our war is over. But what are we to do, old son? We have to make a living, or the end of the war will be the end of us, and our families. We have all this marketable know-how. The guerrilleros are keen to buy it. All they want from us is training for Christ sake, not direct involvement. They’re used to fighting in the mountains. They have to move on from there, learn to bomb cities and towns. That’s what we’re good at. We have years of experience. We have the ordnance and we have the expertise.”

“It doesn’t bother you?” said Gerry McGuire. “Getting paid in drugs?”

“This is the modern world, old son. Drugs is the new currency.” O’Brien emptied his glass. “And anyway, we’ve always been involved in drugs. You know that as well as I.”

“To finance the war. Not as an end in itself.”

“They say our war is over, Gerry. What do you want me to do? Retire? Not me. I’m in favour of a little private enterprise myself.”

He was thinking of Pablo Ortega and the job he wanted done.

“Sod the politicians. I have a reputation to maintain. And a crippled brother to support.”

“I suppose you’re right, Declan. We can’t live on love and fresh air alone.”

McGuire sat toying with his empty glass.

“Long as we can keep it quiet. If the Yanks get wind of what we’re up to there’ll be hell to pay. They’ll cut off our funding for sure.”

“I keep tellin’ ya, Gerry. Our war is over. We don’t need the Yanks anymore.”

Gerry McGuire gazed across the campfire at his friend. He had known Declan O’Brien all his life. They’d grown up together in the Bog side. Lived through Bloody Sunday. Bombed London and Belfast. Declan O’Brien wouldn’t turn his back on the Americans unless he had good reason. American funds had kept the movement going all these years. Without Noraid the IRA was nothing. McGuire picked up a smouldering stick and threw it on the fire.

“Declan old son, is there something you’re not telling me?”

O’Brien lowered his eyes.

“The guerrilleros want something we don’t have.”

“And what would that be, old son?”

“A Dirty Bomb.”

McGuire gaped at his friend as if he were a total stranger.

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am.”

“You can’t do that, Declan. It would ruin everything. Make outcasts of us all. What would be the point?”

“I’d be up there, Gerry.” O’Brien gazed into the flames. “Don’t you see? Up there with bin Laden. I’d be part of history. I’ll not be eclipsed by some fuckin’ up-start Arab.”

***

7

Morocco’s Holy City of Fez does not reveal its secrets easily; mysterious, shrouded, they must be uncovered with reverence and patience. The walled medieval capital lies at the eastern edge of the plain of Saïss, bordered to the south by the foothills of the Atlas Mountains. The Medina’s labyrinth of narrow winding alleyways is crammed with stalls and workshops. This is the famed Kissaria, the business and commercial district, where the craftsmen of El Atterine present a vivid spectacle. A dyer stirs his yarns, drenched in rainbow colours. A tanner tramples goatskins under foot, beneath a blistering sky. It is a biblical scene. Nothing much has changed in Fez for over a thousand years.

The Palais Jamaî, transformed from the Vizier’s residence into a luxury hotel in 1930, is an incomparably graceful edifice. Set into the city walls at Bab el Guissa it’s lush gardens and sweeping terraces overlook the teeming Medina. Alex Bowman sat in the warm February sun, savouring a gin and tonic. He watched the black man doing lengths in the pool, wishing it were him. Bowman hadn’t taken any exercise for months. The jagged exit wound in the middle of his chest was almost healed but he wasn’t back to full fitness yet, the movement in his right shoulder still restricted. Bowman had put on several pounds, bringing his prominent nose and jutting jaw into proportion. His thick brown hair was newly cropped, his blue eyes pale and empty of expression. Alex Bowman looked thoroughly drained.

The black man hauled himself out of the pool in the single fluent movement of an athlete and grabbed a towel. His breathing was light and easy. Ben Ambrose stood a little less than six feet tall and weighed about 160 pounds. He looked like a good middleweight boxer in the mould of the great Sugar Ray. A gold chain hung around his neck. Bowman smiled at him and said,

“How was school?”

“School was fine,” Ben Ambrose chuckled. “They say I have a talent.”

“Do you?”

Bowman spoke four languages fluently but had never had a shot at Arabic.

“Don’t think so. But I am having fun. And anyway I owe it to Willowby to give it my best shot.”

Ben Ambrose owed Frank Willowby a bundle and he knew it.

“You’ve heard from Willowby?”

Bowman rattled the ice around in his glass, picked out the slice of lemon and put it in his mouth.

“Not lately. He took off on an extended vacation, disappeared back to the States for a whole month, working on his golf swing.”

“I’d like to meet Willowby.”

Bowman beckoned to the barman and gestured for another round of drinks.

“Sounds like an impressive bloke.”

“Willowby? Willowby’s the best, he has an amazing record, worked his way up from nothing, not like some of the brass got parachuted in. But I told you already, Alex, Willowby doesn’t even know you exist. I’d like to keep it that way. It shouldn’t matter much to you old buddy, you’ve been well paid. For me it’s a career.”