Somewhere in the bush behind him, the ton of cocaine would be stored in a secret depot and carefully split into smaller consignments. Most would head north by any one of twenty different methods and fifty carriers. It was this diffusion into small packets that had convinced the Cobra the trade could not be stopped once the drug had made landfall.
But right across West Africa, the local help, up to President level, were not paid off in money but in cocaine. Converting this into wealth was their problem. They set up a secondary and parallel traffic, also heading north but in the hands of and under the control of black Africans exclusively. That was where the Nigerians came in. They dominated the in-Africa trade and merchandised their share almost exclusively through the hundreds of Nigerian communities spread over Europe.
Even by 2009 there had been a problem developing locally that would one day cause the Don to experience a red-haze rage. Some of the African allies did not want to remain mere commission takers. They wanted to graduate to being major players, buying direct from the source and turning their slim pickings into the white man’s massive markup. But the Don had his European clients to service. He had refused to elevate the Africans’ role from servant to equal partner. It was a sleeping feud that the Cobra intended to exploit.
FR. ISIDRO had wrestled with his conscience and prayed for many hours. He would have turned to the Father Provincial, but that dignitary had already given his advice. The decision was a personal one, and each parish priest was a free agent. But Fr. Isidro did not feel a free agent. He felt trapped. He had a small encrypted cell phone. It would transmit to only one number. On that number would be a recorded voice; American accented but in fluent Spanish. Or he could text. Or he could stay silent. It was the teenager in the Cartagena Hospital who finally caused his decision.
He had baptized the boy and later confirmed him, one of the many youths of the priest’s deeply poor and working-class dockside parish. When he was called to give the last rites, he sat by the bed and ran his beads through his hands and wept.
“Ego te absolvo ab omnibus peccatis tuis,” he whispered. “In nomine Patris, et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.” He made the sign of the cross in the air, and the youth died, shriven. The sister nearby quietly raised the white sheet to cover the dead face. Fourteen years old, and an overdose of cocaine had taken him away.
“But what sins had he committed?” he asked his silent God as he recalled the absolution while he walked home through the darkened dockyard streets. That night, he made the call.
He did not believe he was betraying the confidence of Señora Cortez. She was still one of his parishioners, born and raised in the slums, though now moved to a fine bungalow on a private housing estate in the shadow of Cerro de La Popa Mountain. Her husband, Juan, was a freethinker who did not attend Mass. But his wife came, and brought the child, a pleasant boy, high-spirited and mischievous as boys should be, but good-hearted and devout. What the señora had told him was not in the confessional, and she had begged for his help. That was why he was not betraying the seal of confession. So he rang and left a short message.
Cal Dexter listened to the message twenty-four hours later. Then he saw Paul Devereaux.
“There is a man in Cartagena, a welder. Described as ‘a craftsman of genius.’ He works for the cartel. He creates hiding places inside steel hulls that are so skillfully made as to be virtually undetectable. I think I should visit this Juan Cortez.”
“I agree,” said the Cobra.
CHAPTER 6
IT WAS A NICE LITTLE HOUSE, NEAT AND SPRUCE, THE sort that makes the statement that people who live there are proud of having risen from the working class to the level of skilled craftsman.
It was the local representative of the British SOCA who had traced the welder. The secret agent was in fact a New Zealander whose years in Central and South America had made him bilingual in Spanish. He had a good deep-cover job as a lecturer in mathematics at the Naval Cadet Academy. The post gave him access to all of officialdom in the city of Cartagena. It was a friend in City Hall who had traced the house from the land-tax records.
His reply to Cal Dexter’s inquiry was commendably brief. Juan Cortez, self-employed dockyard artisan, and then the address. He added the assurance that there was no other such Juan Cortez anywhere near the private housing estates that clothe the slopes of Cerro de La Popa.
Cal Dexter was in the city three days later, a modestly monied tourist staying at a budget hotel. He rented a scooter, one of tens of thousands in the city. With a road map, he found the suburban street in the district of Las Flores, memorized the directions and cruised past.
The next morning he was down the street in the dark before dawn, crouching beside his stationary machine whose innards were on the pavement beside him as he worked. All around him, lights came on as people rose for the day. That included Number 17. Cartagena was a South Caribbean resort, and the weather is balmy all year round. Early on this March morning it was mild. Later it would be hot. The first commuters left for work. From where he crouched, Dexter could see the Ford Pinto parked on the hard pad in front of the target house and the lights through the blinds as the family took its breakfast. The welder opened his front door at ten minutes before seven.
Dexter did not move. In any case, he could not, his scooter was immobile. Besides, this was not the morning for following; simply for noting time of departure. He hoped Juan Cortez would be as regular the next day. He noted the Ford cruising past and the turn it took to head for the main road. He would be on that corner at half past six the next day, but helmeted, jacketed, straddling the scooter. The Ford turned the corner and disappeared. Dexter reassembled his machine and returned to his hotel.
He had seen the Colombian close enough to know him again. He knew the car and its number.
The next morning was like the first. The lights came on, the family breakfasted, kisses were exchanged. Dexter was on his corner at half past six, engine idling, pretending to call on his mobile phone to explain to the one or two pedestrians why he was stationary. No one took any notice. The Ford, with Juan Cortez at the wheel, cruised by at quarter to seven. He gave it a hundred yards and followed.
The welder passed through the La Quinta district and picked up the highway south, the coast road, the Carretera Troncal West. Of course, almost all the docks lay down there at the ocean’s edge. The traffic thickened, but in case the man he followed was sharp-eyed Dexter twice swerved in behind a truck when red lights held them up.
Once he came out with his windbreaker reversed. It had been bright red before; now it was sky blue. On another stop he switched to his white shirt. He was, in any case, one of a throng of scooterists on their way to work.
The road went on and on. The traffic thinned. Those left were heading for the docks on the Carretera de Mamonal. Dexter switched disguise again, stowing his crash helmet between his knees and donning a white woolen beanie. The man ahead of him seemed to take no notice, but with thinner traffic he had to drop back to a hundred yards. Finally, the welder turned off. He was fifteen miles south of town, past the tanker and petrochemical docks, to where the general-purpose freighters were serviced. Dexter noted the big promotional sign at the entrance to the lane leading down to the Sandoval shipyard. He would know it again.
The rest of the day he spent cruising back toward the city looking for a snatch site. He found it by noon, a lonely stretch where the road had only one lane each way and unpaved tracks leading down into thick mangrove. The road was straight for five hundred yards with a curve at each end.
That evening he waited at the junction where the lane to Sandoval shipyard came out to the highway. The Ford appeared just after six p.m., in deep, gathering dusk, with darkness only minutes away. The Ford was one of dozens of cars and scooters headed back into town.
On the third day, he motored into the shipyard. There seemed to be no security. He parked and strolled. A cheerful “¡Hola!” was exchanged with a group of ship workers strolling past. He found the emp
loyees’ parking lot, and there was the Ford, waiting for its owner, as he toiled deep inside a dry-docked ship with his oxyacetylene torch. The next morning, Cal Dexter flew back to Miami to recruit and plan. He was back a week later, but much less legally.
He flew into the Colombia Army base at Malambo where the U.S. forces had a joint Army/Navy/Air Force presence. He came by C-130 Hercules out of Eglin Air Force Base on the Florida panhandle. So many black ops have been run out of Eglin that it is simply known as “Spook Central.”
The equipment he needed was in the Hercules, along with six Green Berets. Even though they came from Fort Lewis, Washington, they were men he had worked with before, and his wish had been granted. Fort Lewis is the home of the First Special Forces Group known as Operational Detachment (OD) Alpha 143. These were mountain specialists, even though there are no mountains in Cartagena.
He was lucky to find them at base, home from Afghanistan, on their quite short threshold of boredom. When they were offered a short black op, they all volunteered, but he needed only six. Two of them, at his insistence, were Hispanic and fluent in Spanish. None knew what it was all about, and, outside of the immediate details, they had no need to know. But they all knew the rules. They would be told what they needed for the mission. No more.
Given the short time line, Dexter was pleased with what Project Cobra’s supply team had achieved. The black panel van was U.S. built, but so were half the vehicles on the roads of Colombia. Its papers were in order and its registration plates normal for Cartagena. The decals pasted on each side read “Lavandería de Cartagena.” Laundry vans seldom raise suspicion.
He checked out the three Cartagena police uniforms, the two wicker hampers, the freestanding red traffic lights and the frozen body, packed in dry ice in a refrigerated casket. That stayed on board the Hercules until needed.
The Colombian Army was being very hospitable, but there was no need to abuse their capacity for favors.
Cal Dexter checked the cadaver briefly. Right height, right build, approximate age. A poor John Doe, trying to live rough in the Washington forests, found dead of hypothermia, brought in to the morgue at Kelso by the Mount St. Helens wardens two days earlier.
Dexter gave his team two dry runs. They studied the five-hundred-yard stretch of narrow highway Dexter had chosen by day and by night. On the third night, they went operational. They all knew simplicity and speed were the essence. On the third afternoon, Dexter parked the van at the midsection of the long straight strip of highway. There was a track leading into the mangrove, and he put the van fifty yards down it.
He used the moped that came with his equipment to motor at four p.m. into the employees’ parking lot at the Sandoval yard and, crouching low, let the air out of two of the Ford’s tires; one at the back and the spare in the trunk. He was back with his team by four-fifteen.
In the Sandoval parking lot, Juan Cortez approached his car, saw the flat tire, cursed and went for the spare in the trunk. When he found this, too, was airless, he swore even more, went to the stores and borrowed a pump. When he was finally able to roll, the delay had cost him an hour, and it was pitch-dark. All his workmates were long gone.
Three miles from the yard, a man stood silently and invisible in the foliage by the road with a set of night-vision goggles. Because all Cortez’s colleagues had left ahead of him, traffic was very light. The man in the undergrowth was American, spoke fluent Spanish and wore the uniform of a Cartagena traffic cop. He had memorized the Ford Pinto from the pictures provided by Dexter. It passed him at five minutes past seven. He took a torch and flashed up the road. Three short blips.
At the midsection, Dexter took his red warning light, walked to the center of the road and waved it from side to side toward the approaching headlights. Cortez, seeing the warning ahead of him, began to slow.
Behind him, the man who had waited in the bushes set a freestanding red light beside him, switched it on and, over the next two minutes, detained two other cars coming toward the city. One of the drivers leaned out and called, “¿Que pasa?” “Dos momentos, nada más,” replied the policeman. Two seconds, no more.
Five hundred yards up the strip toward the city, the second Green Beret in policeman’s uniform had mounted his red light, and over two minutes flagged down three cars. At the center section, there would be no interruptions, and the possible eyewitnesses were just out of sight around curves.
Juan Cortez slowed and stopped. A police officer, smiling in a friendly manner, approached the driver’s-side window. Due to the balmy night, it was already wound down.
“Could I ask you to step out of the car, señor?” Dexter asked, and opened the door. Cortez protested but stepped out. After that, it was all too fast. He recalled two men coming out of the darkness; strong arms; a pad of chloroform; the brief struggle; fading awareness; darkness.
The two snatchers had the limp body of the welder down the track and into their van in thirty seconds. Dexter took the wheel of the Ford and drove it out of sight down the same track. Then he jogged back to the road.
The fifth Green Beret was at the wheel of the van and the sixth came with him. At the roadside, Dexter muttered an instruction into his communicator, and the first two men heard it. They hauled their red lamps off the tarmac and waved the halted cars forward.
Two came at Dexter from the dockyard direction, three from the city side. Their curious drivers saw a police officer at the road edge standing next to a moped on its side and a man sitting dazed and holding his head beside it—the sixth soldier, in jeans, sneakers and bomber jacket. The policeman waved them impatiently on. It’s only a spill; don’t gawp.
When they were gone, normal traffic resumed, but the succeeding drivers saw nothing. All six men, two sets of red lights and a moped were down the track, being packed in the van. The unconscious Cortez went into a wicker basket. From the other came a form in a body bag, now limp and beginning to emit an odor.
Van and car changed places. Both backed up to the road. The limp Cortez had been relieved of his wallet, cell phone, signet ring, watch and the medallion of his patron saint from around his neck. The cadaver, out of its bag, was already in the gray cotton overalls of the exact type Cortez wore.
The body was “dressed” with all Cortez’s personal identifying accessories. The wallet was placed under the rump when the corpse went into the driver’s seat of the Ford. Four strong men, pushing from behind, rammed it hard into a tree just off the road.
The other two Green Berets took jerrycans from the rear of their van and doused the Ford with several gallons. The car’s own gas tank would explode and complete the fireball.
When they were ready, all six soldiers piled into the van. They would wait for Dexter two miles up the road. Two cars went past. After that, nothing. The black laundry van surged out of the entrance to the track and set off. Dexter waited beside his moped until the road was empty, took a petrol-soaked rag wrapped around a pebble from his pocket, lit it with a Zippo and, from ten yards, tossed it. There was a dull whump, and the Ford torched. Dexter rode away fast.
Two hours later, un-intercepted, the laundry van rolled through the gates of Malambo air base. It went straight to the open rear loading doors of the Hercules and up the ramp. The aircrew, alerted by a mobile phone call, had completed all the formalities and had their Allison engines ready to roll. As the rear doors closed, the engines increased power, taxied to takeoff point and lifted away, destination Florida.
Inside the fuselage, the tension evaporated in grins, handshakes and high fives. The groggy Juan Cortez was lifted out of the laundry basket, laid gently on a mattress, and one of the Green Berets, qualified as a corpsman, gave Cortez an injection. It was harmless, but would ensure several hours of dreamless sleep.
By ten, Señora Cortez was frantic. There was a recorded call on her answering machine from her husband while she was out. It was just before six. Juan said he had a flat tire and would be late, maybe up to an hour. Their son was long back from school, hom
ework completed. He had played with his Game Boy for a while, then he, too, started to worry and tried to comfort his mother. She made repeated calls to her husband’s cell phone, but there was no reply. Later, as the flames consumed it, the machine ceased to ring at all. At half past ten, she called the police.
It was at two in the morning when someone in Cartagena Police HQ connected a blazing car that had crashed and exploded on the highway to Mamonal and a woman in Las Flores frantic that her husband had not returned from his work in the docks. Mamonal, thought the young policeman on the graveyard shift, was where the docks were. He called the city mortuary.
There had been four fatalities that night: a murder between two gangs in the red-light district, two bad car crashes and a heart attack in a cinema. The medical examiner was still cutting at three a.m.
He confirmed a badly burned body from one of the car wrecks, far beyond recognition facially, but some items had been recovered in still recognizable form. They would be bagged and sent to HQ in the morning.
At six a.m. the detritus of the night was examined at police HQ. Of the other three deaths, no one had been burned. One pile of residue still stank of petrol and fire. It included a melted cell phone, a signet ring, a saint’s medallion, a watch whose bracelet strap still had fragments of tissue attached and a wallet. The last named must have been sheltered from the flames by the fact that the dead driver was sitting on it. Inside it were papers, some still readable. The driver’s license was clearly that of one Juan Cortez. And the frantic lady calling in from Las Flores was Señora Cortez.
At ten a.m., a police officer and a sergeant came to her door. Both were grim-faced. The officer began:
“Señora Cortez, lo siento muchissimo . . .”—I am deeply sorry. Señora Cortez then fainted clean away.
Formal identification was out of the question. The next day, escorted and sustained by two neighbors, Señora Irina Cortez attended the morgue. What had been her husband was but a charred, blackened husk of bone and melted flesh, lumps of carbon, insanely grinning teeth. The examiner, with the agreement of the silent policemen present, excused her even seeing what was left.