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  I couldn’t blame them: there were life-changing amounts of money on offer. The bad guys had bags of the stuff stashed along every escape route so they could instantly pay their way out of any drama. Even the low-tech drug-manufacturing plants in the rainforests had cash close to hand for the runners. They’d already cut tracks or tunnels to the riverbank where fast boats were hidden. The key was always to keep things simple – as they need to be when you’re under pressure.

  But that didn’t mean I enjoyed being at the shitty end of the stick, getting pounded by the rain, while a bunch of Centra Spike geeks sat in cosy ground-listening stations all around Medellín or aboard Beechcraft at 30,000 feet as the USAF U2 spy planes buzzed about at twice that height in search of the other fat man, Pablo.

  The Americans wanted Escobar’s head on their wall more than that of any other member of the cartel – which left me aiming for second prize, alongside a DEA newbie whose mind was per petually elsewhere, with a strong chance of getting banged up for murder.

  As I lay there with the rain drumming through my hair, I thought, Why the fuck did I leave the Regiment? I was a K, a deniable operator, working for the SIS. I didn’t pay tax, everything was cash in hand, but even that wasn’t a perk – if I got caught, it meant they could deny I existed.

  I kept my eyes on the Mauser’s back lens, hoping the Wolf was just waiting for the rain to stop. I wanted to get this thing over and done with. As Dino kept reminding me, the time it would take him to get the three or four metres from the veranda to his wagon would allow me one shot.

  If I didn’t drop him with the first round, that was it, game over. He could have an M60 machine-gun in that shack for all I knew. And if he disappeared beneath the canopy instead, he’d be gone for good. We couldn’t chase him: we couldn’t risk our faces being seen. This was supposed to be a revenge killing by a rival cartel, not an assassination by a government-sponsored gringo and the grandson of a couple of Mexican wetbacks.

  5

  We’d pinged the target two days ago outside the grocery store in Jaco, loading bottled water and provisions into the back of the pick-up. And once I found the shack I knew why. He wasn’t in Costa Rica alone. I recognized them all – the three small children, two girls and a boy, and the much younger wife – from the Vauxhall photos. She had shoulder-length jet-black hair, high cheekbones and dark-brown eyes, the classic South American beauty queen. I reckoned Jesús would die a happy man.

  If you take the knock-on-the-door option, there’s a decision to be made: do you wait until it’s fully open so you can ID the target before firing? That’s high risk. You’ll be in the killing area longer than is healthy, and whoever answers the door may take the trouble to check who’s delivering the good news.

  So why not start blasting as soon as you hear someone approaching, then barge inside to check who you’ve hit? I didn’t want any of that. The Wolf was a player; he practically invented the game. But drop the family as well? That was the Wolf’s favourite trick, not mine.

  Another option had been to wait until he went back into town for food and water. But drop him on the move or close up and in an urban environment? There’s always a third party with eyes-on. At least we had a concealed fire position in the jungle, a clear arc of fire, and the capacity to exfiltrate unnoticed.

  I’d opted for a distance shoot and picked up the Mauser from an embassy-sponsored dead letterbox. The weapon was used by hundreds of thousands of hunters around the world. The German Army still used them for ceremonial duties. Best of all, it wasn’t only quick for the spooks to acquire covertly when the Wolf was in-country, it was untraceable. And that’s harder to manage than you might think.

  6

  ‘Still four hundred and forty-seven metres, is it, Dino? It hasn’t been scared off by that fucking haircut of yours and legged it down the valley?’

  Dino turned to me and grinned. Flecks of the Spam he’d been munching speckled his teeth and its unmistakable aroma wafted towards me.

  We were on hard routine. On the way in and all the time we were in the fire position, there was no cooking, no flames, no smoking – not that either of us did. Even our shit travelled with us in plastic bags. If the target didn’t show because we’d fucked up and missed him, or if for any reason I couldn’t take the shot, we might have to come back again. Nothing could be left to give away our presence, even after he’d been dropped.

  Which was a pity, because right now I was quite tempted to stake Dino out on the ground and leave him to the insects that still hadn’t finished with me.

  ‘Mate, do you always dye your hair?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The chicks love it, hombre.’

  ‘Platinum blond? They obviously can’t see that what’s inside your nut is dark brown.’

  He looked puzzled for a moment. Then his face collapsed into an enormous grin. His chin headed east and his nose headed west.

  He’d been in a lot of fights, he said, and most of them were over women. He loved them all: any shape, age or vocabulary. His basic philosophy was that everything in life boils down to getting laid. And why not? He was in his late twenties with a cock instead of a brain: how else was he to think? Certainly not about this job. He didn’t seem to give a fuck if it was a success. He was wasting time here in the jungle, without an eligible woman in sight. ‘You take the shot, hombre. Then we bug out to Miami, right, and I show you some things.’

  I knew what was going through his head as he got busy with the range finder again, and it had nothing to do with the target.

  ‘Not Toronto?’

  He’d met a couple of Canadian tour-company reps in one of the Gulf-coast bars a couple of months back, taken them both to dinner, then back to his king-size bed. Or so he claimed.

  ‘My head might be full of shit, man, but those babes will be full of me as soon as you finish this job, you know what I’m saying?’ His shoulders shook with laughter. ‘Four-four-seven, man. No pressure.’

  I wasn’t going to bite. ‘No, mate. No pressure.’

  7

  Your bones are your weapon platform. Your muscles are the cushioning. I made a tripod of my elbows and the left side of my ribcage. The Mauser didn’t have a stand so I had to use the conventional method of support: left hand forward on the wooden stock with my forearm resting on a log. A bipod would have allowed me to bring it across my body and into the butt, but you have to work with what you’ve got.

  I peered through the sight, making sure there was no shadowing around the edges of the optic. I took aim at the centre of the door, emptied my lungs, stopped breathing, and closed my eyes. I relaxed my muscles slightly, started to breathe normally, and looked through the sight again. My point of aim had shifted to the left-hand edge of the door.

  While Dino delved deeper into his can of luncheon meat and store of fantasies, I swivelled to the right to correct, then repeated the whole procedure until I was comfortably aligned to the target. It’s pointless trying to force your body into a position that it doesn’t want to adopt. The weapon has to point naturally towards the target.

  Dino hadn’t given up trying to get a rise out of me. ‘That wife of his, hombre, she’s … hot … Hot – and loaded. She’ll be a vulnerable widow soon …’

  My eye never left the optic. ‘Any wind out there?’

  The spotter is like the co-driver in a rally car. All the heroic stuff is done by the guy behind the wheel – changing gears and sliding round corners, waving to the girls; all that shit. But without the co-driver telling him what’s ahead, when to turn into the next bend, what sort of bend it is, they’d both be history. Under the canopy, there was no wind. But out there, on the edge of the village, there might be. And that would affect my round at this distance. I needed my co-driver. Even if he was the world’s biggest dickhead.

  ‘None out there, hombre. Only what’s leaving your ass.’

  I glanced up as a shiny black thing with far too many legs for its size made its wa
y along a leaf just above my arm in search of breakfast. It could smell me and was getting very excited. A raindrop knocked it onto my hand. It was probably still feeling pretty pleased with itself – right up to the point when I squeezed tight around its middle and broke it in two.

  ‘Hey, hombre … We got movement.’

  8

  My eye shot back to the optic as Dino began his running commentary. ‘I’ve got the door open – you copy? It’s on, hombre, it’s fucking on.’

  The lens steamed up. I rubbed it with my thumb. ‘Yep.’

  ‘I’ve still got no wind. And I’ve got movement inside.’

  I watched through the curtain of rain as the Wolf’s two little girls tumbled out onto the veranda. They had their hair in pigtails. Both wore shorts and Disneyland T-shirts and were barefoot. They ran straight to the rail and stuck their hands out into the torrent cascading from the roof, playfully flicking water at each other.

  ‘Nick, I got the target. It’s fucking on …’

  A pair of adult sandals appeared at the threshold. The Wolf had rolled up his baggy jeans above the knee. A very hairy gut hanging out between his waistband and a blue T-shirt completed the look.

  ‘Yep.’

  I eased the aiming post up to where his collarbones met, a centimetre or so higher in my sight picture than the two little heads bobbing up and down in front of him. The Wolf took a cigarette from his mouth and flicked it past them into the mud.

  My finger took first pressure.

  Holding the post level on the centre of his chest I let out my breath and held it. Then his wife entered my sight picture. The Wolf scooped her up in his arms and they kissed. Her loosely tied hair brushed her shoulders, and the hem of her plain blue dress rode up her thigh. I began to see what Dino was so excited about.

  Arms still full, the Wolf turned back towards the door. I took a gentle breath and kept first pressure – but knew that if I put a round into the target there was a good chance it would also drop her. That wouldn’t be good: someone would have to look after those fatherless kids.

  The couple disappeared back into the shack with the two girls in tow, but the door stayed open. At least the kids were out of the killing area. To hear a gunshot and then discover that your dad is dead is bad enough; to be standing next to him as he goes down would not be the best day out.

  I knew Dino was pissed off. Maybe he thought taking a shot at this range was as easy as Arnie made it look. ‘Fuck, hombre, maybe a change of angle …?’

  ‘No.’ I gripped his arm. ‘The rain’s easing. He could be out again any minute. We stay where we are.’

  He slumped back into the mud, muttering to himself like a down-and-out.

  We were well concealed, with a great arc of fire. No one was going anywhere. I breathed slowly and deeply, keeping a nice, easy rhythm so I could control the weapon at any moment.

  Dino shook his head to clear his ears and wiped them with the back of a muddy hand.

  ‘Dino, we got movement.’

  The Wolf and his wife appeared on the veranda again. He was now carrying a furled red-and-white golfing umbrella.

  Dino resumed his commentary. ‘Still no wind …’

  I had him at the same point of aim as he called back into the shack, probably yelling goodbye to the kids. Only one problem: Mrs Orjuela’s very attractive head was at the centre of my target. All I could see of the Wolf was his gut ballooning either side of her small frame, like the human version of a solar eclipse. I waited for her to move. I wasn’t sure if Dino was waffling or not. My brain had shrunk and pushed itself into the optic.

  I breathed out; held it; took first pressure. All she had to do was move one step left or right and I’d take second pressure.

  ‘Stop, stop!’ Dino’s hand fell onto my right shoulder.

  I couldn’t see what was wrong. The couple were still on the veranda. She was still obstructing the shot.

  ‘Fuck … They—’

  I didn’t need to know the reason. ‘Shut up. Just tell me when.’

  I waited on the target, top of the aiming post still where it needed to be, rising up gently as I breathed in. I’d also have him if he moved towards the pick-up, as long as she got the fuck out of the way.

  Still nothing existed in my head but the sight picture, the water pounding on my back, and the wait for Dino’s OK.

  I held the weapon firmly but gently, not wanting to grip it so tightly that my muscles started to shake. I just wanted to keep the weapon as it should be: a natural extension to my body. I took slow, deep breaths to keep myself oxygenated, ready for when I stopped breathing and squeezed the trigger.

  9

  It didn’t take long to see what the closedown was about. Just beyond the target, inside the shack, the kids were criss-crossing the doorway in some sort of game. There were three of them now. The boy was a lot bigger than his sisters.

  ‘Here we go.’

  ‘What?’

  I realized I’d spoken aloud.

  I wiped as much rain as I could off the optic without shifting my elbows from their anchor points and returned to the firing position. The Wolf took his wife’s arm.

  ‘Nick, she’s going with him. She’s in the fucking way … The shot, she’s in the way …’

  The target held the umbrella at an angle to protect them as they emerged from cover. They moved down the steps together. The pick-up was only three or four paces. It was parked nose-out from the shack, which meant if I couldn’t take the shot before he reached the cab, she’d still be in the way.

  I crawled out of my position.

  ‘Nick … What you doing, man?’

  There was no time to explain. I started legging it to the right, but the mud tugged heavily at my Rohan tourist-on-safari shirt and trousers. Maybe I could put a round through the windscreen. Hugging the high ground, I tried to protect the weapon as I tore through the foliage. I didn’t want to damage the optic or dislodge it and fuck up the zero.

  I was starting to breathe heavily, and that could jeopardize the shoot as badly. But I didn’t have a choice. I had to keep running to get ahead of the target.

  I reached the treeline again, overlooking the valley. With luck, I’d be in front of them, or at least at a better angle to take the shot. My lungs burned; my throat was dry.

  I was in time to see them dodging puddles beside the pick-up. She had the umbrella now. The Wolf was between her and the driver’s door. The height of the vehicle meant that he was completely obscured, but I had an angle on the windscreen.

  I fell into the mud, trying to slow my heart rate, trying to stop my chest heaving, then realized I didn’t have enough muzzle clearance. The slope wasn’t steep enough. All I could see through the optic was a haze of green.

  I got to my feet again as the driver’s door opened. I couldn’t see the Wolf. The umbrella was still up and static.

  I ran to the nearest tree, jammed myself between two of its buttresses, arse in the mud, back firmly against the trunk. Heels dug in, elbows inside my knees, I tried to make a quick but stable platform for the weapon.

  Dino crashed down the other side of the buttress, his breathing noisier than the water still pouring from the canopy. He pressed the range-finder button. ‘I got four—’

  ‘Dino, shut up.’

  Eighteen years in the military gave me enough experience to know that this was a bit further than 447, but no way was it 500. I’d still aim a fraction higher. There was no time to mince about, bring the weapon out of the aim and adjust the sights. I kept the aiming post slightly above the steering wheel as the Wolf fell into his seat.

  I waited. My chest heaves slowed as I took control of my breathing. The wife closed her door.

  ‘Nick, take the shot! He’ll be gone …’

  I waited. Two seconds later, the massive V8 engine roared into life. Smoke belched from the exhaust.

  ‘Nick – fuck …’

  I breathed out, moved the centre of the top pad of my right index finger gently agai
nst the trigger. The windscreen wipers began their sweep and cleared my sight picture for me. The post was slightly lower than it needed to be. I adjusted up a millimetre so it rested dead centre of his collar.

  I took three deep breaths. If you’re not oxygenated you can’t see correctly and your muscles start to tremble. I squeezed until I felt resistance; second pressure. I emptied my lungs and stopped breathing in order to steady the weapon.

  And then I took the shot.

  10

  I didn’t even hear the crack. I was too busy maintaining concentration while the firing pin struck the round and the expanding gases forced the bullet up the barrel and out towards the target. But the parakeets heard it. They screeched and catapulted from their perches high in the canopy as the weapon jumped up and back into my shoulder.

  The aiming post fell back to the neat hole at the centre of the spider-webbed screen. The parakeets regrouped and flew in bomber formation, metres above the F150, as they escaped down the valley.

  No one emerged from the cab.

  I’d kept my right eye open throughout, followed through the shot, watched as the point of aim settled once more on the centre of the target.

  Dino mumbled unintelligibly. I couldn’t work out if he was excited or terrified. Then he blurted, ‘Did you get him, Nick? Is he dead?’

  He probably thought the shot had been loud enough to get the whole village pouring out of their shacks. But it was nothing compared to Mrs Orjuela shrieking at her children to stay inside the shack. She slipped over in the mud, dropped the umbrella, then struggled to her feet.