Page 336 of The Black Trilogy

“Are you sure?”

“Hermano, nobody’s worried about anything being smuggled into Colombia.”

So the preliminaries were sorted, right?

Wrong.

The day after the briefing, Nate called while I was in the gym. “Carmen and I had a discussion last night.”

For “discussion” I heard “argument.”

“And?”

“I’m coming instead of Mack. I’ve got more experience at this type of operation in that type of terrain.”

A minor setback but not an entirely unexpected one. Nobody could shoot like Carmen, but if I had Nate, he’d be able to fight dirty at the compound as well as just sorting out the electronics.

“I’ll find another sniper to replace Carmen. You know it was a decision I agonised over in the first place. What do you think of Slater?”

“Well, here’s the thing. Carmen’s also coming. She refuses to stay behind and, quote, let me have all the fun.”

“What about Josh?”

“Bradley’s going to look after him while we’re away. I understand your thinking but, Emmy, neither of us plans on dying.”

“Is there anything I can do to change your mind?”

“No.”

“In that case, I hold no responsibility when Josh comes back from Bradley wearing a pair of pink skinny jeans and a faux-hawk.”

Despite my worries, I was secretly happy to have both of them coming. I loosened up inside a little knowing that Nate would be next to me when we went into the compound. Out of everyone at Blackwood, I’d known him the longest, and I trusted him to get the job done.

The team arrived two days later, and we spent the next fortnight researching, planning, rehearsing, and training. Or in more normal language, cursing, sweating, suffering, and aching.

Mid way through the first week, Nate and I took a trip out to the Ramos compound, trekking through the dense rainforest from the next valley. Just going a couple of miles took most of the day.

“I hate the freaking jungle,” I muttered as I clambered over a slippery log.

Ahead of me, Nate hacked at a clump of tough, leathery vines with a machete. “We’re on the same page.”

It wasn’t like in the movies where the hero and heroine skipped down a mossy path while birds chattered happily in the trees. Here, it was an impenetrable wall of green. Everything had to be either skirted around, climbed over, or chopped through, which in thirty-degree heat and high humidity wasn’t fun, let me tell you.

Add in assorted wild animals to watch out for and nasty flying things that bit any piece of exposed skin they could get their jaws into, and you get the picture. After slipping off an algae-covered rock into a pool of fetid water, I found myself wondering what in the world I was doing there. And, darn it, I’d just trodden in monkey poop.

Why didn’t I just retire? I could sit at a country club sipping drinks with the occasional game of tennis thrown in for fun, instead of crawling through rotting vegetation on my way to dance with death while getting dive-bombed by a squadron of angry mosquitos.

Because I owed it to Black. That was why.

I slapped another of the little bloodsuckers away and got on with it.

At least perimeter security at the compound wasn’t up to much, just a flimsy chain-link fence and a few pairs of armed guards on patrol. I threw a handful of dirt at the fence and waited. Nothing. No alarms went off, no troops came running.

“Much easier than Syria,” I muttered, recalling the trip I’d made out there not so long ago.

We hunkered down in a tangle of bushes and waited. And waited. And waited. Nate glanced at his watch as the guards sauntered past again. “It’s been an hour since the last pair.”

They didn’t even look alert. The two of them smoked and laughed, guns slung over their backs rather than at the ready, clearly not expecting anybody to be stupid enough to come through the jungle.

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