Chapter 15
CHAPTER 15
THE BIG MOMENT finally arrived.
For the past few days, Team Blackwood had run, jumped, shot, and fought with Seb’s men. With Eduardo’s blessing, we’d taken over his guesthouse and practised clearing it, room by room, until we could anticipate each other’s reactions. Finally, after one last drill, I felt we were ready.
The atmosphere hummed with tension as we checked our gear and loaded it onto the helicopters, but there were no raised voices, no short tempers. My guys were professionals.
The two boats were already stowed in pods underneath for transport to the drop-off point. We’d inflate them on-site and carry them into the water. I went over the schedule one more time with the pilots then made them repeat it back to me to check they were clear on what they needed to do.
Yesterday evening, we’d eaten our last meal as a team. No matter what happened, it would be our final night together at Eduardo’s, and as I watched the guys bonding over non-alcoholic drinks, I knew those ties would carry over to the battlefield. As the evening wore on, a nervous energy permeated the air. I’d known that same feeling a hundred times over, except this mission meant more to me than any other.
This time, I wanted revenge, plain and simple.
I woke an hour earlier than I needed to, but I didn’t stand a chance of getting back to sleep. Instead, I kept myself busy by checking my kit again, even though I’d already unpacked and re-packed it half a dozen times.
Camouflage-clad men showed up at the appointed time, lounging around on the dainty gilt furniture in Eduardo’s family room while we waited to depart. The man himself strode past every so often, tapping his cane, making sure his men were doing everything as instructed.
The launch site for the boats lay a hundred and thirty miles away, and from there, we’d have a ten-mile ride before the trek to the compound. While we wreaked havoc, the helicopters would wait at an abandoned airstrip five miles from our pick-up point. Evan and Nick had scouted it out with a couple of Eduardo’s men, and it was the safest place we could find.
Flying conservatively, the tanks on the helicopters gave us a range of three hundred miles—with the flight out, the shuttle to the airfield, and the flight back, there wouldn’t be any spare fuel for them to spend time circling. Our timing on this operation had to be perfect. Everything had to be perfect. Diego, Carlos, and Hector’s deaths depended on it.
“Ready to go?” Nate asked.
“In a minute.”
Before leaving, I stopped to speak to Eduardo. He’d come through in my darkest hour and done more than I could ever have asked. I took his hands in mine.
“I need to thank you for everything you’ve done for us.”
“Angel, I’ve known you for ten years now, and you brought a light I thought had been extinguished forever into the life of an old man. Anything that is in my power to give you is yours.”
I wasn’t going to cry. No way. I resisted the sniffle that threatened to escape. “Eduardo, I don’t know what to say, other than I’ll try to help you in any way I can as well.”
“You already are, angel, by removing Ramos from the scene. I cannot claim my motives are entirely selfless.”
I hugged him, and he leaned back to look at my neck. Fair enough—it wasn’t every day I accessorised for combat with diamonds.
“You’re wearing my gift?”
“I know it seems silly, but it makes me think of you, and of Black, and reminds me why I’m about to put myself through this nightmare instead of taking a nice holiday to Bora Bora.”
“It also symbolises that you will get through this, and you will come back. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
With that, Eduardo turned and walked away, leaving me to board the helicopter.
The journey to the drop point went smoothly, and we motored down the murky but calm waters without any problems. The crocodiles sunning themselves on the bank paid us no heed, and nothing leaked. Good start. We tied the boats up at our landing point, transferred all our gear onto dry land, then camouflaged the hulls. Oddly, the lack of issues concerned me. According to Murphy’s Law, something would always go wrong, and I preferred to get the inevitable over with at the beginning of a job rather than later on.
Just as I’d had that thought, Felipe, one of Seb’s men, fell into the river. I breathed a sigh of relief, then felt bad about that, then relaxed when Seb fished him out before he got nibbled by any piranhas.
Our schlep through the jungle was a little easier than the previous week because Nate and I had already cut through some of the undergrowth. Easier but not faster, since we needed to travel quietly. Moving twenty-one people through dense foliage in silence wasn’t straightforward, especially when they were carrying enough equipment to stage a coup in a small country.
As we neared the compound, the time came to split up into five teams of four. Carmen would be on her own, doing what she did best.
“Stay safe, hotshot,” Nate whispered, giving her a kiss goodbye.
“You too.”
As their fingertips parted, she melted into the greenery beside us, and after a few seconds, she’d disappeared from sight.
Our plan called for her to climb a nearby hill to give her an elevated position. We’d selected the location to give her line-of-sight over most of the compound while still having excellent cover. Not that she was easy to spot. When she’d tried out her ghillie suit the day before yesterday, I’d almost tripped over her.
Next, we split into our sub-teams. A week ago when Nate asked who I wanted with me, I hadn’t hesitated in my answer. Dan and I had been finishing each other’s sentences for a decade, and Nick had proven countless times over the years that he’d got my back. Jed made up the fourth corner of our group, and I was glad to have the son of a biscuit on my side. His leg seemed to be holding up, or at least if he was in pain, he refused to admit it.
Slowly, slowly, we got closer to our target, the only sound around us the incessant buzz of mosquitos and the occasional cry of something louder. Bradley, ever the helpful one, had taken great delight in telling me about the spectacled bears and jaguars that lived in the area.
“And the golden poison frogs, don’t forget those,” he’d said, looking up from his iPad. “They’re quite rare, though.”
“Enough, Bradley.”
Although the frogs were cute—I had an old friend who used to keep a couple as pets.
Once we got within fifty metres of the compound, we found a hidden hollow between two trees and hunkered down for the night under ponchos. We’d attack as dawn broke. Why dawn? Firstly, because we’d have enough light to see by, and secondly, it meant the people inside the compound would be sleepy and at their most vulnerable.
One by one, the other four teams confirmed they were in position, and while we’d been fighting through the jungle, the pilots had radioed to say they’d landed safely. The last person to call through was Carmen.
“Good to go,” she said.
“How’s the view?”
“Could be better. One of the guards took a leak, and let me tell you, Mickey Mouse boxer shorts are not a good look on any man.”
“With you there.”
Nate had designed an excellent communications system, which allowed us to talk with Mack and Luke as clearly as if they were standing next to us. They’d be keeping an eye on things electronically throughout the operation, monitoring internet and phone traffic and checking on our eye in the sky from the safety of the control room at Riverley Hall.
“Everything was quiet on the latest satellite pass,” Mack told us. “No noticeable activity on the road in.”
Apparently, I was now providing the staff in the CIA communications department with corporate hospitality at the Superbowl as well as just seats.
As daylight faded into dusk, we took it in turns to rest, with one pair getting some shut-eye while the other two watched the shadows.
“I’m taking the opposite shift to you,” Nick told me. “At least if I’m awake while you’re asleep, I stand a fighting chance.”
I got where he was coming from, but for all Nick’s worries, I had no trouble sleeping soundly in the middle of the jungle. Even with water dripping onto me and the noises of wild animals in close proximity, my subconscious understood I needed to recharge so I could function in the required manner. It was a question of some deeply buried survival instinct kicking in.
I took the final watch with Jed, and we huddled together to keep warm, sharing our ponchos. Tick, tick, tick . I itched to get started, because the sooner we did our thing, the sooner the Ramos family would be shaking hands with Lucifer and complaining about the temperature.
Seb’s men, the ones watching the movements in and out of the compound, had reported Diego’s return early yesterday afternoon while we were floating down the river. They’d got a good look at him as he slowed his Ferrari to a snail’s pace to navigate the potholes. Hector had ploughed through in a Land Rover the day before that, smoking a suspicious-looking cigarette with his comb-over flapping in the breeze that came through the open window. Those photos had arrived by email before we left, so at least I knew who I had to kill.
Neither of them had driven back out, so unless they’d gone by air, they were still inside.
The big unknown was Carlos. In all our surveillance, all our digging, we hadn’t seen any sign of him. Where was he? Eduardo’s sources agreed he was reclusive, but the lack of confirmation left me twitchy. The only person we’d been able to find who’d seen him in recent months was his lawyer. And Diego, of course. Thanks to him, we knew his brother was home on the night of the fundraiser. I just hoped Carlos hadn’t got a sudden urge to take a skiing holiday or something equally irritating.
But as I sat on the spongy floor of the rainforest, listening to the chatter of the monkeys above, I vowed he’d die no matter what. If I didn’t get the man today, I’d hunt him to the ends of the earth until I pushed him right off it.
When the moon punched out and the first shards of sunlight filtered through the jungle canopy overhead, we assembled our equipment.
“Very Lara Croft,” Jed whispered, patting me on the bottom.
Hey, so I liked my thigh holsters. They were comfortable, okay?
“Fancy going treasure hunting when this is over?”
This time, his hand lingered on my backside. “I already know where the treasure is.”
“Pig.”
Okay, time for a radio check. Each team was designated a colour to keep things anonymous in case anybody managed to cut in on our communications.
“Team Black, ready,” I whispered, trying to smooth out the catch in my voice.
Nate’s voice came from his position to the north, his tone businesslike. “Team Red, ready.”
He was mirrored by Seb in the south. “Team Green, ready.”
“Team Blue, ready.” Jack’s guys in the west were good to go. They’d be checking the aircraft hangar first.
Marco’s grey team checked in, then the pilots waiting five miles out confirmed, “Orange, ready.”
Finally, Carmen let us know she was with us. “Pink, ready.” Of course she was pink. Carmen was always pink.
Like wraiths circling the underworld, we crept forward, stopping just short of the tree line. Our first task was to take out the roving patrols, silently if possible. According to the schedule they stupidly kept to, they were due any minute now.
Right on time, a pair of them strolled past. Their guns were safely in their holsters as they chattered away in Spanish, comparing the quality of the output on two pay-per-view adult channels. They didn’t notice when Nick and I fell into step behind them.
“No, those ones, they are too artificial,” the shorter of the two guards said. “The ones on 308, yes they are smaller, but also more bouncy.”
He put his hands to his chest to emphasise his point just as I snapped his neck. I winced at the pop as he crumpled to the ground.
Beside me, Nick had done the same with his target. We grabbed their arms, and Dan and Jed gave us a hand with the feet as we hid them in the undergrowth. The creatures that inhabited it would be spoiled for choice tonight. I planned to provide them with a veritable buffet.
So far, so good.
“Red, clear. Does anyone know how to get bloodstains out of nylon?” came Nate’s dulcet tones.
“Blue, clear. Proceeding to the first objective.”
It was at that moment Mr. Murphy made his second appearance, and I heard the unmistakable pew-pew-pew of an automatic weapon from the south.
Oh, Jiminy Crickets.
It didn’t last long, but the damage had been done. As Seb announced, “Green, clear,” my team was already on its way to the villa.
We moved from cover to cover, zig-zagging stealthily across the compound. Twenty seconds passed, then Nick and I shrank back behind a storage tank as the front door burst open and four men shot out, waving guns.
In the way we’d practised, Nick and I took two each, then Dan and Jed ran forward and we stacked up outside the door. We’d rehearsed this so many times it was instinctive—we had a building at Blackwood built especially for the purpose. The first person would go through the door and break left, the second person broke right, the third went left, the fourth right. We hugged the walls, forcing our targets into the centre of the room so we didn’t take each other out with friendly fire. We kept moving. If we stopped moving, we were dead. We trained until our movements flowed like water down the Amazon, a deadly dance, choreographed to perfection.
And now it was time for our main performance.