"We'd been there about an hour when it happened. One minute we were standing there... just one happy group... the next we had five guys surrounding us. They were going off their nuts at one of the guys in Spanish. I was still learning the language at that stage and I could barely keep up but the general take of it was that Luna's friend owed these guys for some coke he'd bought. A lot of coke... a lot of money. That's when the trips to the toilet and their attitude made sense. All of a sudden there was a knife and Luna's friend was down, blood pumping from a gaping wound in his throat and Luna was reeling back into me. I shoved her onto the deck and went for my gun... I actually got it out and was bringing it up to bear when the lights went out. When I came too Luna was dead. So were two of her friends and the bad guys had got away clean. The knife man had got her with his follow through when he slashed the first guy. She never had a chance."
I stopped and just sat there for a while. This was the first time I had ever told this story and I hadn't realised how hard it was going to be. Stevie, Becky and Matt just sat and waited.
"I was in the hospital for a few days with a cracked skull. The five bad guys had actually been six... the extra dude got me from behind with some sort of club. While I was in the hospital Luna's family came to visit. There were no recriminations of any sort. In the middle of their grieving for their daughter they were concerned for me. From what the cops had put together, Luna's group were small time recreational users only. None of them were dealing but the group only had one buyer... the initial target. The cops told me when they interviewed me that the chance of catching these guys was next to zero. During the interview the head cop kept on talking about the drugs flooding in from Colombia and how the drug pipeline needed to be plugged or deaths like Luna's would become commonplace. That's when I knew what I had to do."
I got up and started pacing. My whole relationship with these people depended on how they took my explanation of my previous life. To say I was nervous was the understatement of the year. They just sat and listened, faces impassive which was encouraging.
"As soon as I was out of the hospital I requested a new assignment. I explained my reasoning to the family I had failed and to my boss. Luna's family tried to talk me out of it saying it would be too dangerous, while my boss jumped at the chance of getting me situated in Colombia. We had teams down there working with the government as well as British S.A.S. 'advisors' who were there to offer training in search and destroy missions. The C.I.A. was also down there but initially I had next to no contact with them."
"I was immediately given command of a platoon of 30 men plus support staff... medics, signalmen and a couple of locals who would be my guides. All of my intel was to be sourced straight from either 'head office' in Bogotá, or from the Colombian Army. I was given targets to start with... just grid locations on a map. I would go in with a force of fully trained mercenaries and wipe them out, killing the personnel and destroying the labs and the coke. It was a slaughter... and I didn't care. All of my men were ex-Special Op's from one army or another. They were all highly skilled, well armed, and highly motivated. The men we killed were nothing more than peasants who had been given a weapon and shown how to fire it. They knew nothing of small unit tactics. They had no idea. We mowed them down brutally and efficiently. How did I feel about it personally? I felt nothing... no satisfaction and definitely no remorse. I felt nothing. I slept like a baby at night... no bad dreams at all... they came later. We started to get a reputation for getting the hard jobs done. That attracted the CIA. Simmons walked into my compound one day, walked up my steps and into my hut. I hated him on sight. What I
did
like was his offer of more up to date intelligence. I took him up on his offer. All I had to do in return was run the occasional operation for him using my team. In hindsight I should have put a warning shot through his head and walked away, but I was so eager to make a difference in the drug war."
I stopped and poured myself another coffee from the flask. I was scared of what effect this was going to have on my relationship with the three people in front of me. The worst was still to come. I didn't know if their silence was a good sign or a bad one. I guessed there was only one way to find out. I carried on.
"Simmons didn't ask for much in the beginning and the intelligence he gave us was first rate. We were able to hit bigger targets including airstrips and planes used for ferrying the coke out of the country. The labs we were hitting were more sophisticated but the level of opposition we encountered wasn't any better... to start with. What you have to understand is the bosses of the Cartels didn't get to be rich by being stupid... just by being immoral. They have access to mega bucks probably comparable to the economies of some Third World countries. They started hiring mercenaries. Guys with the same sort of training as me and my guys. We used to have a huge advantage in the fact that we had the skills the opposition didn't have. That was wiped out almost overnight. Now the only advantage we had was the surprise factor and mobility. We started taking casualties. That's when Hemi and Sam joined us. They worked in nicely with the rest of the team and soon I was able to give them missions to run themselves. Then Simmons popped up again. He wanted to up the ante by targeting Cartel members in Bogotá and Cali. I couldn't see a problem especially since the quality of the intelligence he was giving us was allowing us to get bigger and better results. Also I wanted to make a bigger impact and what better way to do it than target the bastards directly responsible for all the death and misery we were dishing out and taking. So we became hitmen."
I paused and looked around the faces of my three new friends. To my surprise they looked back with faces totally devoid of the disgust and revulsion I had expected to see there. Instead they looked fascinated. Still it was too early to believe that this discussion would go without adverse consequence... or was it?
"For maximum impact we had to make the hits spectacular. We had to hit them where they typically would have felt safe. We had to show them that they had no safe haven. My teams operated solely from intelligence courtesy of Simmons. He fed us the names, details, locations and everything we would need to whack these guys."
"The hits went well. We had bad guy's dropping left, right and centre, and they were getting the message. We found that they were beefing their protection up with mercenaries brought in from the States. In a couple of cases we found ourselves up against guys we knew. That wasn't wonderful but if they had chosen the wrong side that was their problem. We hit them hard." I stopped and took a big breath, readying myself for the next part. This would be the make or break chapter of my tale.
"Nine months ago we hit a small camp in the highlands. The baddest of the bad, Pablo Montoya was supposed to be in residence. He'd been very vocal all along about how he was never going to take a backward step in the face of our hit campaign. He'd publicly dared us on many occasions to come after him and he was the jewel in the crown. We were going to make this one a very spectacular hit."
"It took us two days to move into position around his camp and set up. We were going to hit the camp at dawn on the third day. We were all in contact by headset radio and maintained a complete watch on the camp. Comings and goings were recorded and sentry routines were mapped. Then at about 4am on the third day I lost contact with a whole section of my team. Four men just went off the net. They just disappeared from radio contact. They were covering the southern end of the large clearing that Montoya had set up in. It was my call as to whether we would keep to our schedule or withdraw until we knew more about our guys. I made the call to hit Montoya at dawn. The guys who were missing were the covering element... they would have mopped up any surviving bad guys that tried to make a break to the south. Guys I know this sounds cold, but I couldn't afford to worry about my missing men. This was the best shot we had at putting Montoya down, and my men all knew the risks going into the job. If the situation had been reversed I know they'd have done the same as I did."
