W hen I left Stallings, it was a little after 2 A.M. Amelia would be asleep, and I was feeling restless, so I stopped at a little hole-in-the-wall place called La Habinita, bought a beer to go, looking at all the photos of Che and Fidel on the wall as I waited. Then I took the long way back to the hotel.
I walked along the narrow street that follows the northern-most wall of the city, walked past lovers kissing on cannon parapets, passed vendors selling from munitions ramps-all the antiquated architecture of war now obsolete, nothing more than public furniture for modern life.
The great novelist, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, has a fortress-sized hacienda across the street from the Hotel Santa Clara. There’s always a lone guard outside the little door, predictably holding a 12-gauge shotgun. As I passed, I said hello and asked him how his evening was going.
I was surprised to hear him answer, “It’s not been a good night, friend. It’s not been a good night for anyone in our little quarter.”
I stopped to face him. What did that mean?
When I hear something that truly shocks or frightens me, I feel an ether-like sensation move through the frontal area of my brain to my spine. I felt it now as the guard said, “There was an incident in the hotel. A man was shot, and a woman was kidnapped. I saw them turn the corner, a man on each side of her, moving as if she were very drunk.” He slapped the barrel of his shotgun. “The cabrones! I wish I had known. I could have rescued her! One of them, I’ll be able to recognize again.”
I was already running toward the hotel as he added, “As I told the police: He was a tall albino man, but strange-looking. Not American, not Colombian. Colorless. He was white. ”
Carlos Quasada, one of Colombia’s best heavyweight boxers, had fought his last fight.
His body was sprawled in the open air stairwell between the second and third floors of the hotel, surrounded by police and hotel employees. The police tried to stop me from entering what was now a crime scene, but I forced my way through the perimeter, shouting that I had information that could be helpful to them and demanding to visit my own room.
Or maybe they let me through because they saw the look in my eye.
I’d left Carlos standing guard in the third floor’s open corridor. From where he was stationed, he had a clear view of the stairs, the elevator, and of San Felipe castle, built high on a hill outside the old walled city. Amelia didn’t know that I’d asked him to stand guard there until I returned. I didn’t want to frighten her.
Another stupid mistake on my part.
Whoever had killed him wasn’t a very good shot. It’d taken them three rounds. One in the back, another just above his butt, and a third in the back of the head.
I knew the head shot was last, because Carlos was a bull of a man, and he’d done some crawling-probably toward his attackers.
He’d been well loved in Cartagena. I didn’t realize how much, but I now knew. Standing in the little circle around the body, most of the hotel employees, in their neat beige uniforms, were weeping, as was one of the cops.
A woman who seemed to be the detective in charge said, “You knew the victim?”
I said to her as I pushed past, “Wait. I need to check my room,” and ran toward the stairs.
I took the steps two at a time and threw open the door to our suite.
I didn’t expect Amelia to be there, and she wasn’t. But she had not gone quietly into the night with her abductors. There’s a difference between a room that’s been the scene of a fight and a room that’s been purposefully ransacked.
There’d been a fight here. There were broken lamps, a shattered mirror, an overturned chair that she may have clung to rather than be dragged from the room. She had found weapons where she could. The most touching of them was a small, lignum vitae box, beautifully carved, very dense and heavy, that I’d bought for her that afternoon in the market. I stooped, picked it up, noticing that a corner of the box was moist and slightly darker than the rest of the wood.
Maybe she’d gotten a good blow in. I found myself hoping desperately that she had.
Something else I noticed was that the room had a strange, medicinal stink. It made my eyes burn, caused me to feel slightly dizzy. Probably some variation of chloroform.
I remember the guard telling me that, because of the way the two men were pulling the woman along, he thought she was drunk.
Behind me, a woman’s voice said, “Is there anything missing?”
I turned to see the detective. She wore a dark blue skirt, light white blouse, and a badly cut navy-blue jacket. She had short, frosted blond hair, silver fingernails, and she was nearly as wide as she was tall.
Feeling sick, close to panic, I said, “Yes. I’m missing my girlfriend.”
The detective said, “I’m aware of that. The redheaded American woman. Witnesses in the lobby already told us. Are you missing anything else? Did they steal anything, that’s what I’m asking you.”
The question was so asinine that I didn’t reply. I was searching around the room and finally found what I hoped would be there. Murderers don’t leave notes. Kidnappers do.
On the night stand, under the telephone, I found a folded sheet of hotel stationery. Behind me, the detective demanded, “Sir! Please don’t touch anything. My people haven’t been through her yet. That could be evidence.” I opened the paper and read words written there: “Bring the money. Come alone, or she’s dead.”
I stood there, my brain scanning for a quick, fail-safe solution. There was none.
I allowed the detective to take the note from my hand and read it. She folded the note and said, “I think this is very encouraging. In Colombia, kidnappers are also businesspeople. They keep their word. They keep their victims alive until they get paid, or they’re out of business. I’m sure these men will be in touch with you soon. They’ll provide you with a price and a deadline.” She paused to look at me. “Unless you’ve somehow already been in touch with them?”
I answered, “No. Of course not,” thinking of no reason why I should tell her the truth.
“Unfortunately,” she added, “the note is now worthless for gathering fingerprints. This is a crime scene. I’m going to remind you one last time.”
I told her, “Lady, your country is a crime scene,” and walked out the door.
At the hotel’s front desk, I retrieved my heavy briefcase and told the clerk, “When Senor Carlos’s family arrives, if they need anything, anything at all, please charge it to our room. Perhaps you should call a physician as well. Tell him the situation, ask him to bring sedatives.”
I walked outside into the early morning darkness of the park across the street and sat on a bench there. As I unlocked the briefcase, I could hear the clip-clop of horses’ hooves on stone-wagons on their way to market. I heard roosters crowing, answering back and forth between the walls of the city. I took out the satellite telephone and dialed.
After a couple of rings, I listened to Harrington say, “Jesus Christ, Ford, do you know what time it is?”
I told him I knew exactly what time it was, adding, “I need your help. You need to sit up and pay attention to every little thing I’m about to tell you. Something terrible’s happened, and we need to get moving. Now. ”
When I’d finished telling him how they’d managed to kidnap Amelia, he sounded sincere when he said, “I’m sorry, Doc. I shouldn’t have been so abrupt. So the question is, what do you think we ought to do?”
I knew exactly what I wanted to do. We had only two options. I needed to go alone and meet Kazan, as his note demanded, and try to free Amelia and the others on my own. Or I had to find a way to hit them so fast and hard that they wouldn’t have a chance to react.
I’m not foolish enough or courageous enough to invest that much faith in myself. The latter option would be the best choice.
I said, “I want a SEAL team. I know SEAL Team Four operates in the area. Their hostage-rescue guys, that’s exactly who I want, and we need to get moving right away.” I checked my watch: 2:45 A.M. “We still have, what? about three hours of darkness left. You know Colombia better than I do. How far is it to Remanso, the southern border?”
“Remanso’s about four hundred miles. The southern border is way beyond.”
“Damn it! I didn’t think it was that far. Well… if we really hustle, we can locate their facility and take them down while they’re still having their morning coffee. And before the guys who snatched Amelia even arrive. The little airstrip near the village doesn’t have lights. Stallings warned me about that. Kazan is going to have to keep her somewhere near here, then fly her out in the morning.”
Harrington said, “So I need to have some of our people watch the local airports. I doubt if they’d be that stupid. There are plenty of private strips inland they can use. But you never know.”
“Good idea. But a SEAL team, that’s what you need to work on now. I want to be there waiting, in control of his facility, hideout, whatever it is when Kazan arrives. So make the call and scramble our guys. I’m going to throw some gear together. I’ll expect to hear from you in ten minutes or so. No more.”
He said, “I’ll call when I have something to tell you,” and hung up.
Half an hour later, now dressed in black T-shirt, camo field pants, and jungle boots, I answered the beeping satellite phone and heard Harrington say, “Okay, I’ve got a hostage-rescue team waiting for you. A chopper, too. Do you know where the Navy Amphib base is on the way to Boca Grande?”
Of course I knew where it was. Years ago, I’d been involved in an operation that had used the base as a staging area.
Harrington said, “Grab a cab, and you can be there in ten minutes. I’ll have one of our people at the gate waiting for you.”
There was something about his tone that made me uneasy. He wasn’t being evasive, but I got the impression that he hadn’t told me everything, either.
I said, “You said you have a hostage-rescue team. You mean a SEAL boat crew, correct? Snatch and bag. A squad of seven or eight studs, fully tactical, fully trained, ready to go.”
“Doc, SEAL Four is working way south and out of contact. I tried. Absolutely no way can they dump what they’re doing and redeploy out of here. So I got you the next best thing. I’ve got a Colombian Anfibio team waiting to go.”
I groaned loud enough for Harrington to hear me, so he raised his voice, continuing, “Now wait! Don’t get pissed off at me. They’re better than they used to be. Things have changed since you were in the business. What do you think SEAL Four spends half its time doing down here? Training their people, making them better so we don’t have to invest so much tactical time in their country. It’s not the same group that you used to deal with.”
I hoped not. Colombia’s Grupo de Commandos Anfibios or Amphibious Commando Group was a SEAL-type unit established back in the 1960s to work against drug trafficking, but it was also given other missions, such as naval counterterrorism.
I’d known some of their people and had worked with them once or twice over the years.
I was not impressed.
The Anfibios, or GCA as they are also known, are head-quartered at the Cartagena Naval Base and are approximately one hundred men strong. Soon after the unit’s inception, a Mobile Training Team from SEAL Team Two traveled to Cartagena to train them in basic swimming, demolitions, SCUBA, and land warfare. They were reportedly pretty good, but they lacked sound leadership-too often the case in Colombia.
I told Harrington, “You know what the last thing I heard about the Anfibios was? That their commanding officer got blown up testing a homemade limpet mine. Just a couple of years back. Is that true?”
I heard him sigh. “Yes, it’s true. You know it’s true. But they’ve gotten better.”
“I hope so. I hope to hell you’re right.”
“Look at it this way, Doc. They’re the only people we’ve got.”