Last Light (18 page)

Lying on my stomach, I rested my chin on my hands, looked up and listened, trying to take in every detail. As soon as I'd stopped moving, the mozzies formed into stacks above me, like 747s waiting to land at Heathrow.

I found myself looking through a four-inch chain-link fence, designed more to keep out wildlife than humans. The house was obviously very new, and by the look of things Charlie Chan had been so keen to move in he hadn't waited for proper security.

The open space in front of me was a gently undulating plateau covering maybe twenty acres. Tree stumps stuck out here and there like rotten teeth, waiting to be dragged out or blasted before a lawn was laid. I couldn't see any oceans from where I lay, just trees and sky. Caterpillar-tracked plant was scattered about the area, lying idle, but business at Choi and Co. was obviously booming in every other respect, now that the US had gone. The house looked more like a luxury hotel than a family hideaway. The main building was sited no more than three hundred metres to my left. I wasn't face-on to the target, along the line of the gate and wall;

I must have clipped a corner because I'd come on to the right-hand perimeter. I had a clear view of the front and right-hand elevation. It was a massive, three floor Spanish-style villa with brilliant whitewashed walls, wrought-iron balconies and a pristine terra cotta roof. Standing proud of this was a belvedere tower, constructed completely of glass. That was where you'd see the oceans from.

Other pitched roofs at different heights radiated out in all directions from the main building, covering a network of verandas and archways. A swimming pool sparkled to the right of the main house, surrounded by a raised patio;

distressed, Roman-style stone pillars were dotted about, to give it that Gladiator look. The only things missing were a few statues of sixteenth-century Spaniards with swords and baggy trousers.

A set of four tennis courts stood behind a line of fencing. Nearby, three large satellite dishes were set into the ground. Maybe Charlie liked to watch American football, or check the Nasdaq to see how his money-laundering activities were shaping up.

Including the Lexus, there were six shiny SUVs and pickups parked outside a large turning circle that bordered a very ornate stone fountain, then led down to the front gates, maybe three hundred metres to my left. I looked back at the vehicles. One in particular had caught my eye. A dark blue CMC with blacked-out windows.

Most impressively, there was a white and yellow Jet Ranger helicopter using some of the driveway in front of the house as a pad. Just the thing to beat the morning commute.

I lay still and watched, but there was no movement, nothing going on. I opened my jaw a little to close off my swallowing sounds, trying to pick up any noise from the house, but I. was too far away and they were too sensible: they kept indoors in the conditioned air.

My head was getting covered with lumps as I watched thousands of large dark red ants start to trundle past just inches from my nose, carrying scraps of leaf sometimes twice their own size. The leading few hundred were blazing the path maybe thirty abreast, the rest behind so closely packed I could hear them rustling.

I got back to looking at the target and became aware of a pretty unpleasant smell. It didn't take long to work out that it was me. I was wet, covered in mud, bits of twig and brush, itching all over and desperate to rub at the mozzie bites. I was sure I could feel something new munching at the small of my exposed back. I just had to let it munch: the only things I could risk moving were my eyes. Maybe I'd get back to loving the jungle tomorrow, but at the moment I wanted a divorce. After nearly twenty years of this stuff I really did need to get a life.

There was certainly no need to become an electric toy and do a 360-degree tour of the target: I could see everything I needed from here. Getting close to the house in daylight would be impossible there was far too much open ground to cover. It might be just as difficult at night; I didn't yet know if they had any night-viewing facility, or closed-circuit TV with white light or an IR capability covering the area, so I had to assume they did.

My problems didn't end there. Even if I did get to the house, where would I find Michael? Only Errol Flynn can walk into the front hall and pop behind a big curtain while squads of armed guards march past.

Swapping my hands over and adjusting the position of my chin, I started to take in the scene in front of me. I had to squeeze my gritty eyes shut constantly, then refocus. The ant columns were doing just fine as an enormous black butterfly landed an inch or two from my nose. Again I was back in Colombia.

Anything that was colourful and flew, we caught for Bernard. He was over six foot four, weighed nineteen stone, and looked as if he ate babies for breakfast.

He sort of let everyone down by collecting butterflies and moths for his mother instead. We would come back into base camp from a patrol and the fridge would be filled with sealed jars full of things with wings instead of cold drinks and Marmite. But no one was ever going to say anything to his face in case he decided to pin us to the wall instead.

In the distance there was the slow, low rumble of thunder as the heat haze shimmered over the open ground in front of me, and steam rose gently from the mud.

It would have been wonderful to get out there and stretch out in the sun, away from this world of gloom and mozzies. The shrill buzzing as they attacked the side of my head sounded like a demonic dentist's drill and I had definitely been bitten by something psychopathic on my lower back.

There was movement from the house.

Two white, short-sleeved shirts and ties came out of the main door with a man in a shocking pink Hawaiian shirt who climbed into the CMC. My friend the Pizza Man. The other two got into one of the pickups and a fourth, running from the main door, jumped on to the back. Standing up, leaning forward against the cab, he looked like he was leading a wagon train as the pickup rounded the fountain and headed for the gates with the CMC following. He wasn't dressed as smartly as the other two: he was in black wellies and carried a wide-brimmed straw hat and a bundle of something or other under his arm.

Both wagons stopped for maybe thirty seconds as the gates swung open, then drove out of sight as they closed again behind them.

A gust of wind made the trees sway at the edge of the canopy. It wouldn't be long before the next batch of rain was heading this way. I'd have to get going if I wanted to be out of the jungle by last light. I started to shift backwards on my elbows and toes, got on to my hands and knees for a while, and finally to my feet once I was safely behind the wall of green. I gave myself a frenzied scratch and shake, tucked everything back in, ran my fingers through my hair and rubbed my back against a tree. A rash of some sort was developing at the base of my spine and the temptation to scratch it more was unbearable. My face probably looked like Darth Maul's by now. My left eyelid had swollen up big-time, and was starting to close.

Baby-G told me it was just after five: maybe an hour and a bit before last light, as it gets dark under the canopy before it does outside. I was gagging for a drink but I'd have to wait until it rained again.

My plan now was to move south towards the road, turn right and parallel it under the canopy until I hit the edge of the cleared area again nearer the gate, then sit and watch the target under cover of darkness. That way, as soon as I'd finished, I could jump on to the tarmac to meet Aaron down at the loop at three a.m. instead of being stuck in here for the night.

I headed off through the thick wall of humidity. Wet tarmac and a dark, moody sky soon came into sight through the foliage, just as the BUBs has ha-up beetles) started to go for it all around me with their high-pitched screams.

They sounded like crickets with megaphones. They were telling me that God was about to switch off the light in here and go to bed.

A distant rumble of thunder resonated across the treetops, and then there was silence, as if the jungle was holding its breath. Thirty seconds later, I felt the first splashes of rain. The noise of it hitting the leaves even drowned out the BUBs, then the thunder roared directly overhead. Another thirty seconds and the water had worked its way down from the canopy and back on to my head and shoulders.

I turned right and picked my way towards the fence line, paralleling the road about seven or eight metres in. Mentally I was preparing myself for a miserable few hours in the dark. However, it was better to kill time watching the target while I waited for Aaron than doing nothing down at the loop. Time in reconnaissance is seldom wasted. And at least I knew there was no need to crawl into position: the house was too far away for them to spot me.

I moved forward, trying to make a record in my head of everything I'd seen so far at the target. Every twenty paces or so I stopped to check the compass as thunder detonated high above the canopy and rain beat a tattoo on the leaves and the top of my head. I was displaying a builder's crack where my jeans should have been, but it didn't matter, I'd sort myself out again later on. I started to slip and slide on the mud beneath the leaf litter. I just wanted to get up to the fence before it got dark.

I fell on to my knees at one stage and discovered some rocks concealed beneath the mud. I sat there for a while in the dirt, rain running into my eyes and ears and down my neck, waiting for the pain to ease. At least it was warm.

I got up, still resisting the temptation to scratch my back rash to death. A few more metres and a large rotted tree trunk blocked my way. I couldn't be bothered working around it then back on to my compass bearing, so I just lay across it on my stomach and twisted myself over. The bark came away from the rotting wood like the skin on a blister and my chest throbbed from the beasting Sundance and his mate had treated me to in the garage.

As I got to my feet, looking down, brushing off bark, I caught a glimpse to my right of something unnatural, something that shouldn't have been there.

In the jungle there are no straight lines and nothing is perfectly flat;

everything's random. Everything except this.

The man was looking straight at me, rooted to the spot five or six metres away.

FOURTEEN

He was wearing a green US Army poncho with the hood over his head. Rain dripped from the wide-brimmed straw hat perched on top of that.

He was a small guy, about five five, his body perfectly still, and if I could have seen his eyes they would probably have been wide and dancing around, full of indecision. Fight or flight? He must have been flapping. I knew I was.

My eyes shot towards the first six inches or so of a gollock (machete) that his right hand was resting on and which protruded from the green nylon of his poncho. I could hear the rain pounding on the taut nylon, like a drum roll, before it dripped down to his black wellies.

I kept my eyes fixed on the exposed part of what was probably two feet of gollock blade. When he moved, so would that thing.

Nothing was happening, no talking, no movement, but I knew that one of us was going to get hurt.

We stood there. Fifteen seconds felt like fifteen minutes. Something had to be done to break the stand-off. I didn't know what he was going to do I didn't think he did yet but I certainly wasn't going to be this close to a gollock and not do something to protect myself, even if it was with just a pair of pointed pliers. The knife on my Leatherman would take too long to find and pull out.

I reached round with my right hand, and felt for the soaking, slimy leather pouch. My fingers fumbled to undo the retaining stud then closed around the hard steel of the Leatherman. And all the time, my eyes never left that still static gollock.

He made his decision, screaming at the top of his voice as he ran at me.

I made mine, turning and bolting in the direction of the road. He probably thought my hand was going for a pistol. I wished it had been.

I was still fumbling to get the Leatherman out of its pouch as I ran, folding the two handles back on themselves, exposing the pliers as he followed in my wake.

He was shouting stuff. What? Shouting for help? Telling me to stop? It didn't matter, the jungle swallowed it.

I got caught on wait-a-while, but it might have been tissue paper to me right then. I could hear the nylon poncho flapping behind me and the adrenaline pumped big-time.

I could see tarmac ... once on that he wouldn't be able to catch me in those wellies. I lost my footing, falling on to my arse but gripping the Leatherman as if my life depended on it. It did.

I looked up at him. He dinked left and stopped, eyes wide as saucers as the gollock rose into the air. My hands went down into the mud and I slipped and slithered, moving backwards, trying to get back on to my feet. His screams got higher in pitch as the blade flashed through the air.

It must have been a cheap buy: the blade hit a sapling and made a thin tinny sound. He spun round, exposing his back to me in his frenzy, still screaming and shouting as he, too, slipped on the mud and on to his arse.

As he fell, the rear of the poncho caught on some wait-a-while and was yanked vertically. With the Leatherman still in my right hand I grabbed the flailing material with my left and pulled back on it as hard as I could, not knowing what I was going to do next. All I knew was that the gollock had to be stopped. This was one of Chan's men, those boys who crucified and killed their victims. I wasn't going to join the queue.

I pulled again as he landed on his knees, yanking him completely backwards on to the ground. I grabbed another handful of cape and pulled, constricting his neck by bunching the nylon of the hood as I got up. I could hear the rain hitting the tarmac outside as he kicked out and I dragged him and our noise back into the jungle, still not too sure what I was doing.

He had his left hand around the hood of his poncho, trying to protect his neck as the nylon squeezed against it. The gollock was in his right. He couldn't see me behind him, but still he hit out, swirling around in desperation. The blade slashed the poncho.