Eye of the Cobra (55 page)

Estelle leaned forward as a photograph of her dead brother- in-law appeared on the BBC evening news.

‘Since the brutal slaying six months ago of David Ramirez, the controversial Argentinian-born Minister of Justice,’ the newscaster said, ‘Colombia has been in a state of agitation. Now rebels have seized command of the Houses of Parliament and have imprisoned the ruling party. The Colombian army is reported to have suffered heavy losses in the fighting that has broken out across the country. General Miguel Santos, the rebel leader, has announced that he will form a new government that will co-operate with the United States to stamp out Colombia’s huge trade in cocaine.

‘Rumours that the revolution was engineered by the CIA have been vehemently denied by the US President, but speculation continues.’

Estelle grimaced. She knew Santos, and that was why she could believe the rumours. She knew that he was no knight in shining armour. He was an opportunist who had worked for the Ortega Cartel as a hit-man, reportedly dumped when his employers discovered he had been taking charge of large shipments for his own personal benefit.

Perhaps the CIA was using Santos to establish a puppet regime under their own control. It was possible.

It had always been a relief to her that Carlos had never wanted to get involved in politics like his brother. He concentrated on his first love, the game of polo. But she knew that Carlos would not rest now until he found David’s killer.

And where had Wyatt and Carlos got to now?

Having worked out the layout of the buildings, they had waited until nightfall before launching their assault.

Carlos handed Wyatt the knife with the blackened blade.

‘These men will stop at nothing, believe me. There will be no second chances when they realise we have discovered their factory.’

But Wyatt handed the knife back.

‘I don’t need it,’ he said.

‘You are crazy.’ Carlos slid the knife into its scabbard, slung the Uzi over his shoulder and pushed the pistol into its webbing holster.

They approached a side-entrance in the moonlight. A guard stood casually against the light, smoking a cigarette and staring into the darkness.

Wyatt crept through the foliage. The hours and hours of karate training, the years of hardening, condensed into a single fluid moment. He moved without noise, modulating his breathing, a coldness creeping through his body; he came up the side of the building, a leopard stalking his prey. Then he was behind the guard. His left arm pulled the guard back off balance whilst his right clamped over the guard’s mouth. He twisted the guard’s neck in a rapid movement and heard his spinal column snap.

The guard slumped forward, and Wyatt dropped him into the foliage.

Carlos was up next to him in a second.

‘Jesus, that was quick.’

Wyatt gestured for him to be quiet. Then they opened the door and stepped into a clinical white corridor . . . and looked up to find themselves staring at a TV camera.

A second later the alarm sounded.

‘Choto!’
muttered Carlos.

Wyatt moved on the balls of his feet down the glass-walled corridor, and a burly man came towards him, smiling. Wyatt stood back, dropping his weight onto his left foot. A deft movement with his right foot sent the man reeling forward, and Wyatt’s right hand chopped hard against his neck. There was a sickening crack as the man slumped across the floor. Carlos sucked in his breath.

They moved quickly down the passage - and another guard came up without warning, pointing a gun at Wyatt’s torso.

Before the guard realised what was happening, his right hand was yanked forward and a blow came up from beneath the elbow, breaking his arm. As he gave a cry of pain, Wyatt twisted him round, applying pressure behind the left elbow.

‘Where is the German woman?’ he asked quietly in fluent Portuguese.

‘I don’t understand . . .’

Carlos heard the other elbow snap and watched the man’s face explode with pain.

Wyatt twisted the man round again, placing his knee in his back and holding up his face by his hair.

‘Where is she?’

‘Down the corridor, second on the left.’

He lifted the man up, slammed his face hard into the wall and let him fall. As Wyatt moved down the corridor, two more men appeared. Carlos drew his gun, but waited as Wyatt appeared to dance between his two adversaries, slamming his fists and then elbows into them before they had a chance to react.

Wyatt opened a door. He caught sight of a big woman lifting a machine-gun. He dived under the burst of fire and rolled towards her, gripping her ankles with his hands and toppling her over. His main finger and little finger extended, he rammed his right hand into her eyes. Just within his field of vision he saw a man coming at him with a gun. His left foot shot out, took the man in the stomach and sent him flying hard against the glass window. The man’s skull smashed against the glass and left a bloody patch as he sank down unconscious.

The woman was writhing on the floor, clutching at her eye- sockets.

‘Jesus, oh Jesus!’

He turned to see Suzie lying on the bed, expressionless, wearing just a T-shirt and a pair of panties. The inside of her left arm was a mass of ugly red pin-pricks, and on the table next to her lay an empty syringe. Wyatt noticed her skin was a patina of bruises.

She looked up at him, no reaction in her eyes.

‘Please, don’t let her,’ she pleaded in Portuguese, her eyes resting on the woman writhing on the floor. Wyatt pivoted round and his right heel came down hard on the woman’s skull.

He lifted Suzie up gently. Behind him Carlos said, ‘Wyatt, we must get her to a doctor.’

There was the noise of voices in the passage, and the sound of weapons being armed. Carlos unslung the Uzi in a single movement, rested his left hand on the barrel and moved towards the doorway. He opened fire as a man appeared in the passage and Wyatt heard the screams as he followed behind his stepfather. He was scarcely aware of Suzie in his arms, she was so light. The bullets coursed out of Carlos’s gun as the trio made their way out of the front of the building, towards the landing-strip.

Then an ominous sound came from the air above - it must be a helicopter, closing in under cover of darkness. Then Wyatt heard a voice screaming in Portuguese: ‘Lay down your weapons! We are coming in to attack!’

Carlos looked across at Wyatt, his eyes asking the same questions. Gunfire erupted, then bullets pumped into the concrete floor around them. There were screams in the distance.

They moved back into the building and ran down the passage, heading for the door through which they’d first entered. Every instinct told them to get out of the place.

Wyatt shifted Suzie to the other shoulder, and suddenly he and Carlos were out of the door and plunging headlong into the greenness.

Wyatt lay safely at a distance from the buildings, hidden beneath the green canopy of thick vegetation. He held Suzie tight, looking across to the factory.

The noise of the helicopter blades above sounded like distant thunder. At first he could see nothing, but then the Hughes Apache helicopter burst out of the darkness and into the range of the factory’s lights. From its belly a machine-gun spat out bullets against retaliatory fire from the ground.

High above, another helicopter angled its spotlights around the factory complex, leading the Hughes Apache. Two more Apaches came in from the darkness and landed on the airstrip, their guns trained on the buildings. Then a Sikorsky H-53 Stallion dropped from the darkness like a vulture and touched down on the landing-strip, disgorging thirty-eight combat troops, who dashed into the factory.

Gunfire erupted, and there were screams as men died.

A tall, fair man in combat fatigues stepped down from the cockpit of the Sikorsky and surveyed the scene. His men regrouped and stood to attention in front of him, and he ordered them to conduct an intensive search of the area and to take up defensive positions.

Wyatt stared at the man in horror. It couldn’t be. No, it couldn’t be . . .

The years of training together, the competitiveness. And they had both been chosen, Wyatt to head the
dojo
in Japan and Rod to head the one in the United States.

Talbot. Rod Talbot.

He had disappeared, Aito had said - disgraced the
dojo
, just as Wyatt had done.

What was Talbot doing here?

Wyatt sank back down into the foliage. He had not been prepared for the change in Suzie. One moment she was as docile as a young puppy, the next her body was rigid. Now her eyes darted round anxiously.

‘Please, I need a fix,’ she cried out in Portuguese.

He held his hand over her mouth and she bit it.

‘Suzie, it’s me. It’s Wyatt.’

Carlos laid his hand on Wyatt’s shoulder.

‘She won’t recognise you.’

Wyatt stared at him for a moment, then nodded.

‘We have to get out,’ he said, ‘and there is only one way.’

They started cutting their way through the undergrowth towards the airstrip.

Jules Ortega felt the pain creeping up from his stomach. He could hardly breathe and he wondered if he might be dying. In his mind the pieces of the jigsaw-puzzle refused to go together. There had been one attack and then another. The men who had taken Suzie were not the same as those who were now storming the factory. He remembered the face of one from somewhere, but he could not place it.

Every movement brought fresh pain, but he knew that he must remain silent. These men who were taking over the plant would not hesitate to kill him if they found him.

Ortega tried to put himself into the minds of the two men who had taken Suzie - and it didn’t take him long to calculate their course of action. Without a fix, they’d have a hard time trying to cope with her.

He grabbed the intercom with his good hand and tapped in the number. His brother answered instantly.

‘Jules, what is going on? I hear gunfire.’

‘Some men came and took Suzie. Talbot has landed with Yankee soldiers. He has betrayed us.’

‘Ah,’ Emerson said. ‘But he does not know about the bunker or my own bodyguard?’

‘No. Emerson, help me. I am wounded.’

‘Pretend you are dead. First, we must find Suzie and shut her up for good.’

Jules put down the phone and lay on the floor, feigning death.

Wyatt lay in the darkness, holding Suzie’s body’s close to his. Rod Talbot - so many memories and so much bitterness. They had been groomed to continue the teaching of their style of karate.

After nine years at the
dojo,
the
Shihan
had told them that there were no Japanese pupils who matched them in ability. Now they were to travel to the island of Okinawa, to meet the originator of their style. Only he was sufficiently experienced to teach them at the highest level.

On Okinawa, Wyatt had guessed he was to be given the highest honour - to become the
Shihan
in Japan when his master retired. Talbot had realised this as well. He could not accept that Wyatt had been chosen - he could not come to terms with not being first in line.

So Rod had left. He had sold out.

Wyatt felt a nagging sense of doubt. Could he just walk away from this?

He whispered a few words to Carlos. Carlos look
ed at him.

‘Wyatt,’ he said, ‘she will die.’

‘There is something I must do -1 can’t explain it to you . . .’

‘I can fly the helicopter. Just help me get to a helicopter with her.’

‘We must get back to the runway, then.’

Half an hour later, Wyatt was edging his way towards the side of the runway. It was an all-or-nothing situation. The pilot of the Sikorsky was standing next to his machine, calmly smoking a cigarette. His helmet lay in the cockpit and he was not expecting an attack.

In the distance came the sound of another helicopter. The pilot put out his cigarette and moved back towards the cockpit.

Out in the darkness, Wyatt cursed softly. What in God’s name was happening now? They would have to wait till the new chopper landed before they could make their next move. Behind him, Suzie moaned softly in Carlos’s arms.

The chopper circled several times, and to Wyatt’s immense relief, landed close to the front
of the factory, nearly eighty-five yards away from the Sikorsky. Combat soldiers filed out of the building and stood to attention as a man in a suit stepped down from the helicopter. For the second time that day, Wyatt did a double-take.

It was Jack Phelps.

Deep inside his bunker, Emerson Ortega felt the rage building up inside him. First the revolution in Colombia, now this attack. Phelps was destroying his life’s work. In one lightning manoeuvre he had ousted the Colombians, and now he was about to take control of the trade.