I still couldn"t see how many people there were. Probably some of them were still in the huts. All I could see from this perspective was the processing hut; I couldn"t see the"living accommodation. I"d f.u.c.ked up; I should have stayed on the other side for longer so I could see people coming and going.
I was annoyed with myself. I didn"t want to stay there any longer than I had to, and I didn"t want to come back another day. I imagined what the people at the final RP were thinking. They"d be sitting here doing absolutely nothing, frustrated as h.e.l.l. I knew; I"d done it myself often enough. I hoped they felt confident enough to sit and wait.
At last there was movement. A boy came out to the trike and sat on it.
He lit up a cigarette and leaned back on the seat, soaking up a bit of sun. He had sungla.s.ses on and a pair of jeans that were rolled up to halfway up his calf muscles, and trainers but no socks. He had a light-colored denim shirt hanging out of his jeans. That was one more narco.
He shouted at somebody, went around the back, and disappeared. He then came back into view and started to walk toward me. He didn"t pick his weapon up, but I was flapping. One thing I didn"t want was eye-to-eye contact; I kept looking at his feet. I had my chin on my hands; I kept still, taking really slow, deep breaths. I thought: If he walks much closer, he"s going to see me.
What then? Am I going to drop him and run? Or am I going to draw the pistol and shoot him and run? Or do I just take him, get him down, tie him up, and keep him quiet? I wasn"t too sure. I decided to play it by ear; it certainly wasn"t a good day out at all.
I was sure he hadn"t seen me, or he would have picked his gun up.
He didn"t look inquisitive; he was just walking. But the closer somebody gets to you, the more chance there is of being seen. He got so close I was bracing myself for a shout. Suddenly he veered to the left-hand side of me. f.u.c.k, I thought, if he"s going to start mooching in the jungle, he"ll find.One-of-three-Joses. Was he going for a s.h.i.t?
They must have some facility, probably for s.h.i.tting into the river.
What the h.e.l.l was he doing?
He walked past, no more than two meters away from my face. At that stage I put my head down, closed my eyes, and kept as still as possible.
I heard his trainers kicking the ground; then he shouted back at somebody. I was looking on the jungle floor, trying to keep my breath as slow and controlled as possible. I wanted to start going slowly for my pistol.
But it was in a shoulder holster, and to get it, I"d have had to cross my hand over my chest and go down for the pistol grip, which was going to create movement and noise. If he came over, I"d just have to spin over and draw it. Mentally I was running through it. The safety catch was on; the hammer was back. All I had to do was drive it out, flick that safety catch off and I could shoot him. I"d turn over and push my foot up because if he started lunging at me, I could keep my foot up and keep him off my body and then drop him. And then I"d just run for it-and I hoped not get shot by One-of-Three-Joses.
He carried on moving to the left. About two minutes later he came back, carrying a small cardboard box.
There must be another part of the camp that I hadn"t seen, another storeroom or something. So could there be more people up there? Could it Just be a storeroom?
Why would they have a storeroom that far away?
He went back to the trike and dropped the box onto the floor. It split open, and cans fell out. He picked one of them up, stabbed it, and lifted it to his mouth. Yet it wasn"t a drinks can, it was small and flat, more like a can of tuna. Then it dawned on me: It was milk.
It was condensed milk.
After about another hour I decided to move. I wasn"t seeing that much, and it was starting to get really hot.
People weren"t moving around. I didn"t know how much activity it took to manufacture drugs. All I knew was that I"d seen people doing things in the processing hut.
I had a good idea of the layout of the camp but not what lay to the left-hand side.
My heart was pounding severely. I was pleased that we"d found a plant and revved up because now we had to do something about it.
I eased myself back and got back to One-of-three-Joses. We had eye to eye, and I gave him a thumbs-up before quietly putting my kit on. I pointed up to the area where the character had been walking and further to the left of the target. He didn"t seem too pleased, as he"d obviously a.s.sumed that the recce was over; time was pressing, and if we didn"t get back soon, it meant a night in the FRP. We mooched on very slowly. We started going up a gentle rise, and then we hit a track.
The trees and vegetation were very spa.r.s.e now, and we had beams of sunlight coming down on us. It was boiling. it was obvious to me at once that this must be the track the character had gone to. Up to the left was flat ground; we doubled back on ourselves and went up onto the high ground. We stopped. I took my kit off and went forward on my hands and knees, pistol in my hand.
It was a clear, flat area with a wooden platform-a helipad. There were odds and ends scattered around, including cardboard boxes. Some food must have come in by helicopter and been left there. A helipad was excellent news; it meant we could get helicopters in right on target.
By now I was sweating good style in the heat. Crickets were chirping away; the noise was different outside the canopy compared with the inside. I could feel the wind, and the light was hazy, shimmering.
It made me want to go and stretch out in the sun before I went back into the other world of doom and gloom.
I got back to One-of-three-Joses and sat there for a while. Back in the relative safety of the undergrowth, I allowed myself a few deep breaths. jose was grinning again, and this time it was pure relief.
He knew that we must have finished. In my mind I ran through whether we knew everything we needed to know. I came to the conclusion that it was pointless coming back in the next day; I knew as much as I was going to know, unless I sat there all day again and tried to count people. It wasn"t a ma.s.s of activity, which made it difficult to count. I knew there were at least two weapons, and I could only guess that the guards would use them to defend the plant.
There was a lot of money at stake. Some of these people would stay and defend the plants at any price; they knew there couldn"t be an unlimited supply of men coming in and attacking the place, so it might be worth their while just taking us on.
I was satisfied that we had all the first-phase information that we needed. I tapped One-of-three-Joses on the boot and nodded toward the FRP. He was happy now as we made our way carefully back to the others.
We met the bergen cache from exactly the same direction we had left. I pa.s.sed on all the information so that everybody would know exactly the same as we did. If One-of-three-Joses and I suddenly dropped dead, at least the information would have been pooled.
"We"re going to stay here for the night," I said. "I want to go forward again tomorrow morning."
Their faces fell, and it suddenly dawned on me that I"d forgotten who these guys were and had been treating them as members of the Regiment.
I changed my mind. "We"re going to leave from here in a minute and go back to the L.U.P."
The relief was evident; as far as they were concerned, they were being cut from the danger area. Rodriguez flashed me a brilliant smile.
We got back to the L.U.P-I was going to send a sitrep out that night, but it was getting too dark. I decided to prepare it and encrypt it and bang it out first thing in the morning. I"d tell them what I"d seen of the camp, the numbers, the grid of where we were going to sponsor the troop RP, which was where we were. Once the four recce patrols were a.s.sembled, we would become a fighting patrol. I"d also say that I was going to send an OP out the- same day to go and get more information. I decided not to use the video the next day as I didn"t want to put them under pressure to use it and then f.u.c.k up.
It felt good to know that the other patrols would be on their way, and all we had to do now was gather as much information as possible.
It was going to be difficult to decide who was going to go down on the OP the next day; it couldn"t be me because the priority was to stay put and sponsor the troop RP and prepare for the attack.
I decided one of them had to be One-of-three-Joses because he"d been down there anyway and knew the area; the other would be Rodriguez.
I didn"t want to send El Nino, purely because the strain would have been too much. I didn"t particularly want to send anyone down there, but we needed more information-the other patrols would expect it. In, any event these guys would have to do it themselves sooner or later, so they might as well crack on and do it now.
I got everybody together just before last light and said, "Well done, everybody, excellent. Tomorrow we"re going to send this information.
Everybody"s going to come to us, we"re going to show them where it is, and we"re going to hit it. It"s been a really good day-well done!
Tomorrow we need people to go down there. I want responsible people, and it was really difficult to decide who, but I want you, One-of-three-Joses, and you, Rodriguez, to get down there and get as much information as possible.
It"s your job; it"s your responsibility. Think of how good it will be to get down there and do it."
Their faces were a picture.
"I want to know how many people there are and what weapons," I said to them. "I want to know if any boats come in, if they use the trike, if a helicopter comes, what time everybody goes to dinner. I want to know everything you can see. But most of all, how many narcoguerrillas and how many weapons. If you think you can"t do it, don"t push yourselves.
Try to listen to what they"re saying, but only do enough to get the information-is that all right? Everybody is depending on you two to get that information."
We had rain in the early evening, and everyone lay there absorbed in his own thoughts. In the morning Rodriguez and One-of-three-Joses set off toward the camp. I stayed behind to sit on the radio because I was waiting for a reply about what was going on. Two hours later Gar came back on the net and said, "Let"s go for it.
I"m going to tell the other patrols to "start moving in toward you, and you sponsor the RP."
On day one, he said, which was the following day, the first patrol would be coming in between ten o"clock and midday, on a bearing of due south.
If they didn"t make that, the next window would be the next day at the same time. He then gave timings for the other two patrols to arrive in the afternoon. If they missed their,windows, they, too, would wait until the next day at the same times.
With Gonz and El Nino I began preparing for the other patrols to arrive.
We dug up an area the size of a dining-room table to make a sandbox model. I made model buildings in the soil, together with a river and helipad. When that was done, we sat around drinking water and eating biscuits.
I spoke with El Nino. He was very quiet and insecure.
He wasn"t happy about what was going on. He didn"t want to be there; it had probably all sounded like good fun in the beginning, but now the realities of it were living in the field, wet and stinking, and going in against a violent enemy. The only thing he was pleased about was being part of the final RP.
"Where do you come from?" I asked.
As we chatted on, he started to come out with some fasc" ating stuff about malaria. "The strain is very weak in in Latin America, compared with Southeast Asia, so it"sea I sier for scientists to work on. That"s what I really want to be. I want to go to university and study medicine. But I can"t afford to, so here I am."
I put my bergen next to a tree and sat against it. It was wonderful to relax and listen to the birds in the canopy.
The only drawback was that I could smell myself, and I stank like an old druggie.
About two hours before last light Rodriguez and One of-three-Joses came back. I was on stag, still sitting against the tree but watching the area of the plant.
"What did you see?" I asked.
They spoke quickly, saying a lot that I didn"t understand. I went back to basics. "Narcoguerrilla?"
"Ocho."
"Fusilos?"
"Ocho.
I asked what the narcoguerrillas had been doing.
Rodriguez grinned, tilted his hand, and said, "Cerveza." So there were eight men with weapons and three white-eyes. On the model they showed me that the people were just wandering around doing nothing in particular. Maybe they were waiting for a delivery or a pickup, but there didn"t seem to be much going on. It would be quite worrying if they were waiting for a pickup. Did that mean that boatloads of people would be turning up?
My concerns were suddenly put in the shade. The sound of gunshots echoed through the canopy, coming from the area of the camp. Birds screamed and lifted from the trees; the whole forest was alive. Single shots followed, then a quick burst, and another burst. Then silence, and another couple of single shots.
The boys looked at each other in alarm, then to me for rea.s.surance. We all had our belt kits on and weapons; we got down by our bergens and stood to, trying to listen.
I couldn"t work out what it was all about. There were no other patrols in the area; they weren"t arriving until the next day, so they wouldn"t have stumbled on it. So what the h.e.l.l were they firing at?
Five minutes later there were another two single shots, followed by another two. This went on for about twenty minutes. I thought, Do we go down there tomorrow and find out? Were they arguing among themselves? Was it another gang coming in to steal their supplies? It was quite worrying.
The only thing I could put it down to was that they were p.i.s.sed and doing target practice or firing into the river. Whatever, it confirmed that the weapons worked, which was a bit of a shame.
That night we got the ponchos and hammocks up. I didn"t get much sleepI was running through in my mind exactly what I had seen and hoping that the model was right. Everybody was, I hoped, going to start coming in tomorrow. The first patrol, Terry"s, wasn"t that far away. I knew he"d be cracking on, no longer concerned about being tactical, just making distance.
They"d be holding up for the night, then motoring on again at first light. I felt sorry for his patrol; I knew what it was like. I imagined the big, sweaty messes sorting themselves out after a hard tab through the jungle.
We were up at first light. I spent some tim at the model, trying to come up with some sort of plan so I could start talking as soon as the other patrols arrived.
At half past nine we covered all the arcs and waited for Terry"s patrol.
They arrived just over an hour later.
Looking down at the slightly lower ground, I could see Terry looking up with a big bone grin on his dark, sweaty face. It was obvious they"d been screaming along.
Terry was twenty-nine, tall, blond, had sticky-out ears, and was madly in love with his wife and two kids.
He had the sort of West Country accent that only bad actors put on. He"d come from the R.A.F regiment, having decided that he either wanted to be in the Regiment or become an accountant. Many a time he was told that he might have been better off as an accountant.
"How"s it going, mate?" I said.
"f.u.c.king good one."
"You"re looking a bit fatigued. A long distance for those old legs, was it?"
"f.u.c.king distance-tell me about it," he said, bent double, leaning on his weapon.
The rest of the patrol tabbed in, breathing heavily, their faces and hair soaking wet. As soon as they stopped, I saw steam rising from their heads.
I turned to Terry. "What I want you to do, mate, is get the patrol down where you see that big crooked tree.
There"s no big rush, so get some scoff and we"ll get together later on."
"I"ll get the boys sorted out..Then I"ll come up and see you."
His patrol were grinning at my lads and giving them the thumbs-up.
My group looked happy to have support; the other patrol were happy to have finished the tab.
I started preparing the sitrep I was going to send out that night.
I hoped it would say that everybody was in.
If not, we still had the window open the next day. It was important to stagger the arrivals, to prevent a blue-one blue.
The next two patrols arrived on time, between twelvethirty and two-thirty and three and five; they all looked knackered after the fast hike without stops.
I said, "I"m going to send the sitrep off now; then I"ll show you what we"ve got and see what you reckon."
An hour or so later we sat on our bergens around the sand model and did an appreciation. I explained the layout of the camp and said, "It"s obvious that the majority of the stuff comes up and down by river.
They"ve got the two Geminis down at the bottom there, and there"s the helipad. We"re looking at eight narcos with five fifty-sixes and seven sixty-twos. There"s three EuropeansGerman or Dutch, who knows? Do you reckon we"ve got enough people here? There"s twenty of us, against eight. They"re extremely casual; they"re walking around leaving their weapons all over the place, and it looks like they"ve even been on the p.i.s.s."
Terry muttered, "Lucky f.u.c.kers." He went on. "I reckon twenty is enough, no problems."
Rod had mixed us up some cold Camp coffee. As the mug was handed around he said, "Let"s bin it now.