Last Light (36 page)

I took out the strapping that was going to be my seat, got the bergen on my back, slung the weapon over my shoulder, and started to clamber up as engines revved and people shouted out in the open ground.

When I was about twenty feet up I tried the Nokia again, and this time I got four bars.

Fastening the straps between two strong branches, I hooked the bergen over another next to them, settled into the seat facing the house, then spread one of the mozzie nets over me before closing down the bergen in case I had to buy out.

I was going to be here for a while, until things had quietened down, so the net had to be hung out on to branches so it wasn't clinging to me, and tucked under to cover the straps. I needed to hide my shape, shine, shadow, silhouette and movement; that wouldn't happen if I didn't spread it out a bit to prevent myself looking like a man in a tree with a mozzie net over him. Finally, cradling the weapon across my legs, I calmed myself down as I hit the keypad.

Not giving him time to think or talk, I got to him in a loud whisper.

"It's me Nick. Don't talk, just listen ..."

THIRTY-ONE

"Josh, just listen. Get her to safety, do it now. I've fucked up big-time. Get her away somewhere safe, she needs to be where no one can get at her. I'll call in a few days, got it? Got it?"

There was a pause.

"Josh?"

"Fuck you! Fuck you! When does this stop? You're playing with a kid's life again. Fuck you!"

The line went dead. He'd hung. But I knew he'd take this seriously. The last time I'd fucked up and put kids in danger, they'd been his own.

I felt a flood of relief as I removed the battery before the mobile went back in my pocket. I didn't want to be traced from the signal.

Tasting the bitter Deet as sweat ran into my mouth, I watched the commotion outside the house. I wondered if the police would be up here soon, being given my description, but doubted it. Charlie would want to keep something like this under wraps and, anyway, it wasn't as if the explosion would have disturbed the neighbourhood; big bangs would have been a daily occurrence as they cleared the jungle to make way for his house.

I leant over to the bergen, got out the water and took a few swigs, feeling better about Kelly now. No matter what Josh thought of me, he'd do the right thing for her. It wasn't the answer, just the best short-term solution I had available.

She and I were still in deep shit. I knew I should have called the Yes Man, explained to him what I thought I knew, and waited out. That was what I should have done, so why hadn't I? Because a voice in my head was telling me something different.

Charlie had said Sunburn. The Yes Man had sent me here to deal with a missile system that was a threat to US helicopters in Colombia. A ground-to-air missile system. That wasn't Sunburn Sunburn was surface-to-surface. I remembered reading about the US Navy flapping because their anti-missile de fences couldn't defeat it. Sunburn was their number-one threat.

I tried to recall details. It had been in Time or Newsweek, something like that, last year on the tube to Hampstead ... it was about ten metres long because I'd visualized being able to fit two end to end in a tube carriage.

What else? I wiped the sweat from my forehead.

Think, think ... The Pizza Man ... He had been at the locks on Tuesday. The locks webcam was part of the relay com ms from the house. The Pizza Man's team were monitoring drug movements by PARC. He'd also been at Charlie's house and maybe, if Charlie had told me the truth, he had Sunburn.

I suddenly saw what was happening. George was carrying the fight to the enemy:

they'd been monitoring drug shipments through the canal, and now it looked as though they were getting proactive, maybe using Sunburn as a threat to PARC that if they used the canal to ship drugs they'd get taken out.

That still didn't answer why I'd been sent here to stop Charlie delivering a ground-to-air system ... The noise of rotor blades clattered over the canopy. I recognized at once the heavy bass wap wap wap wap the unique signature of American Hueys, coming in low. The two helicopters shot past, immediately above me. The massive downwash made my tree sway as they flared into the clearing, then, just feet off the ground, crept towards the front of the house. Mud puddles were blown away, and jungle debris was blasted in all directions. The house was now behind a wall of down draught and heat haze blasting out from the Hueys' exhausts. A yellow and white Jet

Ranger followed behind, like a child trying to keep up with its parents.

The scene before me could have come straight from a Vietnam newsreel. Armed men jumped from the skids and doubled towards the house. It could have been the 101st "Air Assault' screaming down for an attack, except these guys were in jeans.

The Jet Ranger swooped down so close to the front of the house it looked as if it was actually going to ring the doorbell, then it backed away and settled on the tarmac near the fountain.

The heat haze from its exhaust blurred my view, but I could see Charlie's family begin to stream towards it from the front door.

I sat and watched through the optic as my former target comforted an older Latino woman, still in her nightgown. On her other side was a bloodstained Charlie, his suit ripped, his arms around her. All three were surrounded by anxious, shouting men with weapons, shepherding them forward. As I followed them with the optic, the post was on Michael's chest for what felt like an age.

I looked at his young, bloody face, which showed only concern for the woman. He belonged to a different world from his father, George, the Pizza Man and me. I hoped he'd stay that way.

The air was filled with the roar of churning blades as they were bustled inside the aircraft. The two Hueys were already making height. They dipped their noses, and headed towards the city.

The Jet Ranger lifted from the tarmac, and headed in the same direction. There was relative quiet for a few seconds, then somebody barked a series of orders at the men on the ground. They started to sort themselves out. Their mission, I guessed, was to look for me. And this time I had the feeling they'd be better organized.

I sat in my perch, wondering what to do next as wagon after wagon left the house packed with men and M-16 assault rifles, and returned empty. Checking Baby-G, I knew I'd have to start moving out of here soon if I was to make maximum use of daylight.

Last light, Friday. That had been my deadline. Why? And why were the Firm involved in all this? They obviously needed Sunburn in place for tomorrow. I had been bullshit ted with the ground-to-air story. I didn't need to know what it was really about because, after the London fuck-up, sending me was their last desperate attempt to get their hands on the complete system.

Last light. Sunset.

Oh, fuck. The Ocaso ... They were going to hit the cruise liner, real people, thousands of them. It wasn't a drug thing at all... why?

Fuck it, why didn't matter. What mattered was that it didn't happen.

But where was I going? What was I going to do with what I thought I knew?

Contact the Panamanians? What would they do? Cancel the ship? So what? That would be just another short-term solution. If they couldn't find Sunburn in time, the Pizza Man could just fire the fucking thing at the next ship that came along. Not good enough. I needed an answer.

Go to the US embassy, any embassy? What would they do -report it? Who to? How long would it be before someone picked up the phone to George? And however important he was, there'd be some even more powerful people behind him. There had to be. Even C and the Yes Man were dancing to their tune.

I had to get back to Carrie and Aaron. They were the only two who could help.

Movement outside the house was dwindling: no more vehicles, just one or two bodies walking around, and to the left and out of sight, the sound of a bulldozer shunting the damaged Lexus off the road.

It was 8.43 time to leave the tree. I unpinned the trouser-leg pocket and pulled out the map. I bent my head down so my nose was just six inches from it and the compass on its short cord could rest on its faded surface. It took me thirty seconds to take a bearing, across green, then the white line of the loop road, more green, to the middle of Clayton and the main drag into the city. As to how I got back to the house from there, I'd just busk it -anything, just as long as I got back.

Having checked that my map was securely pinned in my pocket, I clambered down with the bergen and weapon, leaving the hide to the birds. Once the bergen was on and the string back round the weapon, I headed east towards the loop and Clayton, taking my time, focusing my mind and my vision on the wall of green, butt in the shoulder, safety off, finger straight along the trigger guard, ready to react.

I could have been back in Colombia, looking for DMPs, carefully moving foliage out of the way instead of fighting it, avoiding cobwebs, watching where I stepped to cut noise and sign, stopping, listening, observing before moving into dead ground, checking my bearing, looking in front of me, to my left, to my right, and, just as important, above.

I wanted to travel faster than I was going, desperate to get back to Aaron and Carrie's, but I knew this was the best and safest way to make that happen.

They'd no longer be thrashing about or firing blindly, they'd be waiting, spread out, static, for me to bumble into them. Tactical movement in the jungle is so hard. You can never use the easier high ground, never use tracks, never use water features for navigation. The enemy expects you to use them. You've got to stay in the shit, follow a compass bearing, and move slowly. It's worth it: it means you survive.

Sweat laced with Deet dripped into my eyes, not just due to the humidity inside this pressure cooker but because of the stress of slow, controlled movement, constantly straining my eyes and ears, and all the time I was thinking: What if they appear to my front? What if they come from the left? What if they fire first and I don't know where the fire is coming from? Contacts in the jungle are so close you can smell their breath.

THIRTY-TWO

It had taken me two hours to reach the loop, which was a lot quicker than I'd expected.

I dumped the bergen, and unstuck my T-shirt from my back in an attempt to relieve the chigger bites. Then I fingered my wet, greasy hair off my forehead and started moving slowly forward, butt in the shoulder. As I neared the road it was time to apply Safe and get down on the jungle floor. Using elbows and the toes of my Timberlands, I dragged myself to the edge of the canopy. The weapon lay along the right side of my body; I moved it with me, knowing that with the safety firmly on, there was no chance of a negligent discharge.

Last night's rain filled the dips and pot-holes in the tarmac, and the sky was still dull. A motley collection of black, light and dark grey clouds brooded above me as I looked and listened. If the boys had any sense, they'd have triggers out along the roads, doing a bit of channelling of their own, waiting to see what emerged from the canopy. Even if they did, I had a bearing I had to stick to.

Edging my way forward a little more so that my head was sticking out from the foliage, I couldn't see anything up the road to the right, apart from the road itself disappearing as it gradually bent left. I turned my head the other way.

No more than forty metres away was one of the wagons from the house, a gleaming black Land Cruiser, facing me and parked up on my side of the road. Leaning against the bonnet was a body with an M-16 in his hands, watching both sides of the bend. He was maybe in his twenties, in jeans, yellow T-shirt and trainers, and looking very hot and bored.

My heart pumped. A vehicle was my fast-track out of here -but did the body have mates? Were they spaced up and down the road at intervals, or was he on stag, ready to whistle up the rest of the group if he saw anything as they enjoyed a quiet smoke behind the wagon?

There was only one way to find out. I inched slowly backwards into the treeline, finally getting up on to my hands and knees before crawling to the bergen.

Shouldering it, I removed Safe and slowly closed on the wagon by paralleling the road, butt in the shoulder, eyes and ears on full power. Each time my foot touched the jungle floor and my weight crushed the leaves, the sound seemed a hundred times louder to me than it really was. Each time a bird took flight I froze in mid-stride, like a statue.

Twenty painstaking minutes had passed when I was brought to a halt once more.

From just the other side of the wall of green came the sound of his weapon banging against the side of the Land Cruiser. It seemed to be just a little forward and to my half right, but no more than about eight metres away.

For a minute or two I stood still and listened. There was no talking, no radio traffic, just the sound of him coughing and gob bing on to the tarmac. Then came the noise of metal panels buckling. He was standing on the roof or bonnet.

I wanted to be in a direct line with the wagon, so I moved on a little further.

Then, like a DVD in extreme slo-mo, I lowered myself to my knees and applied Safe, the barely audible metallic click sounding in my head as if I'd banged two hammers together. Finally I laid down the weapon and took off my bergen one strap at a time, continually looking in the direction of the wagon, knowing that if I moved forward just two metres I would be in plain sight of my new best mate and his M-16.

Once the bergen was on the ground I rested the rifle against it with the barrel sticking up in the air to make it easier to find. Fuck the zero, I didn't need it now. Then, very slowly and deliberately,

I extracted my gollock. The blade sounded as if it was running along a grinding stone instead of just gliding past the alloy lip of the canvas sheath.

Down on to my stomach once more and with the gollock in my right hand, I edged carefully forward on my toes and elbows, trying to control my erratic breathing as I wiped the Deet very slowly out of my eyes.

I neared the edge of the treeline at a point about five metres short of the wagon. I could see the nearest front wheel, its chromed alloys stained with mud at the centre of a lot of wet, shiny tyre.