Black Coke (2 page)

‘Manuel, what the hell is this monster?’

Manuel was too far ahead to hear. Nathan scowled. The beetle had somehow twisted round and nipped his finger. He dropped it. It scurried off into the bushes.

He caught up with Manuel, who was stooping over a three-foot plant with straight branches and small flowers in little clusters. Its shiny green leaves had pointed tips and two curved lines on each side of the midrib. Nathan had seen enough of these during his time here, but these leaves seemed particularly dark and plentiful.

As though reading his thoughts, Manuel said: ‘Darker means stronger.’

Manuel ran his calloused fingers up and down the whitish stem of the bushy plant. He snapped off a branch and handed it to Nathan, who studied it, wondering how a plant could be at the centre of some of the worst conflicts on earth. Then a thought struck him.

Could these be the ones?

He turned to Manuel. ‘I’ve never seen this kind before.’

‘Nor have I.’

Nathan broke the branch into several pieces and tucked them into his shirt pocket. He’d get them tested back home.

Manuel pointed to their right. ‘Look.’

Surrounded by luxuriant jungle, a field of dead corn and withered yucca plants stretched out before them. What had caused such devastation? Nathan waded into it. He touched a stalk. It was brittle and disintegrated in his hand. The ground was dusty, brown and parched as though no amount of water could bring it back to life.

‘Now you see?’ Manuel said.

‘Sure, but how?’ Nathan went further into the field and took some pictures.

‘They pollute,’ Manuel shouted. ‘They kill our livelihoods.’

‘Who?’

‘The government. The DEA.’

Nathan shook his head. This wasn’t the result of a fumigation campaign by the US Drug Enforcement Administration. It was too localised and too powerful. This was something much worse.

He was putting the camera back in his rucksack when something caught his eye. A dozen or so metres away, amid the dead plants, the ground was going black and undulating, like a wave. The plants were turning black too, as though someone was dripping oil on them.

‘Nathan, run!’

Nathan stumbled backwards, his gaze transfixed. The stalks were dissolving before his eyes as if acid was being poured onto them by an invisible hand. A faint humming, like electricity through a high tension pylon, rapidly turned into a loud rustle as the black wave swept closer.

‘Nathan, come. Now!’

He’d never heard such fear in Manuel’s voice.

Stalks crackled and ruptured. Thousands of black beetles, each the size of a fist, swarmed past Nathan, razing everything in their path. He raced through the field. Beetles crunched under his heavy boots. Some scaled his combats. He brushed them away, nearly tripping over in his desperation.

Manuel was standing on a mound of high green grass twenty metres away. He was shouting and waving his arms. Nathan felt sharp bites on his legs. He leapt forward, driven by a surge of terror unlike any he’d experienced before. The beetles were all over him, snapping their jaws, digging their claws, scraping his skin.

He reached the mound. He threw himself to the ground, rolled, thrashed around, crushing the beetles under him. He jumped to his feet, sweeping off the remaining ones that had their teeth embedded in his clothes. Manuel whacked them with a big stick as they fell. The rustling turned into a roar as the field exploded into a mass of ravenous insects. Within minutes, all the dead plant stalks were gone. Then the beetles disappeared, like dark blood seeping into sand. Not a dried leaf remained. Just the barren, wounded, suffering earth. Silence descended, as though the wilderness was too shocked to react.

Nathan was breathing heavily, his eyes wide. What had turned these beetles into such vicious creatures?

‘Look at this,’ Manuel said. He was prodding a dead beetle with the tip of his boot.

‘What the hell are they?’

Manuel flipped the beetle over. Its black back glistened in the afternoon sunlight.

‘Manuel, what the hell’s going on?’

Manuel stood up and crushed the beetle under his boot, driving and twisting his heel into the earth.

‘Let’s go,’ he said.

Manuel marched off. Nathan shook his head in disbelief and ran after him.

They kept trudging through the hills for hours, their tattered clothes drenched with sweat, until exhaustion set in. They entered more dense forest. Nathan hoped Manuel knew where they were going. Otherwise, they were in deep trouble.

Chop. Chop. Chop.

He froze.

The gunships were back.

Putumayo, Colombia
30 March 2011

T
he gunships hovered above them like raptor eagles seeking out their prey. Nathan huddled close to Manuel in the thick underbrush, praying to a God he didn’t believe in that the death squads wouldn’t spot them with their high-powered binoculars.

One of the gunships dropped to within metres. The wind from its blades whipped up clusters of leaves, which swirled in the air. The trees trembled as though they were about to snap. Nathan held his breath. Manuel was staring emptily ahead with his good eye. The eyebrow on the other one twitched above the black patch. Nathan tensed, dreading the chug of chaingun fire.

A black beetle crawled up his leg. Nathan wanted to scream. He bit his tongue so hard it bled. He swept the beetle off with the back of his hand. It scurried away into a heap of rotting leaves with an outraged snap of its pincers.

The gunship drifted away and joined the others. They flew north. Within seconds, the clamour of the rainforest had taken over again, monkeys chattering overhead.

Nathan turned to Manuel. ‘You have to let me know what’s going on here.’

‘They’re hunting for survivors,’ Manuel said as they rose to their feet.

‘So far from the attack zone?’

‘It’s possible.’

‘Seems odd.’

A shadow shifted. Nathan grabbed Manuel’s arm. They crouched. Something was making its way through the foliage roughly twenty metres away. It stopped. Nathan lifted his rifle. For a moment, he lost sight of the shadow amid the myriad shades of the undergrowth. Then it stirred again. It was the silhouette of a person.

Had someone been following them?

Nathan’s index curled round the trigger.

The shadow moved away. There was the regular thud of a machete chopping its way through branches and vines.

They waited in silence.

‘I’m guessing that was who attracted the choppers,’ Nathan said eventually.

‘The forest is full of people.’

‘Too much like coincidence.’

Manuel shrugged.

‘Manuel, you need to tell me about Front 154.’

Manuel wiped his machete clean of mud and leaves against a tree trunk.

‘Manuel?’

‘I know nothing.’

‘Oh, come on. You know you can trust me. You said yourself the other day that it’s all about trust and loyalty.’

‘That’s beside the point.’

‘I need to know for my report. Otherwise, it’s not even worth me writing it.’

‘No.’

‘Why not, for God’s sake? I’ve just spent six weeks in this hellhole and I’m not an inch closer to finding out what’s going on.’

Manuel stood up. Nathan’s shoulders sagged. This was getting nowhere.

‘Okay,’ Manuel said, peering ahead into the rainforest.

‘Okay what?’

‘They’re a new paramilitary cartel. They kill people and steal cocaine, then sell it in America and Europe. They’re making big money.’

‘How do you know this?’

‘The campesinos tell me,’ Manuel said over his shoulder as he hacked his way forward.

‘But they don’t tell me.’

‘No.’

Nathan caught up with him. ‘Why not?’

‘Because they fear you’re with the Front. Why else?’

‘What the hell?’ Nathan said. ‘That’s crazy.’

‘Listen to me.’ Manuel twisted round. ‘Colombia’s not the UK. There’s been war here for fifty years. Politicians, narcotraffickers, Pablo Escobar, death squads, the FARC, the CIA, the DEA, the ASI. Everyone fucks this country. Front 154 is just one more bunch of bad guys.’

‘So why doesn’t anyone want to talk about them?’

‘Mala suerte.’

‘Speaking about them will bring bad luck?’

Manuel nodded.

‘Who’s the head of Front 154?’ Nathan said.

Manuel resumed his march.

‘Manuel?’

‘Nobody knows.’

‘Any idea?’

‘No.’

They trudged on in silence, Nathan swallowing his frustration at Manuel’s lack of communication.

‘Where we going?’ Nathan said after a while.

‘A village. My cousins live there.’

‘Further north?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s where the choppers were—’

‘I know.’

They slogged through another two miles of mud and forest. Hundreds of frogs erupted into a chorus of croaks as they waded through a swamp. Red and blue flashed to their left. Nathan raised his rifle. He relaxed as a macaw fluttered away.

They found a spot for the night. Nathan hacked down some branches and built himself a makeshift tent with large leaves as overhead canvas and thick sticks as tent poles. He lit a cigarette and burnt off the leeches that clung to his legs. Darkness descended as soon as the sun went down. They took turns to sleep, but Nathan found it hard to drift off. His mind kept going over the day’s events.

The attackers had been highly trained and well-equipped professionals. Whatever Manuel said, Front 154 was more than just another group of bad guys. It was an organised criminal network. But who was behind them? Who was funding them? Who was supplying them with such firepower?

He shook his head. He’d been fighting the war on drugs for years now, yet it wasn’t getting any better. Quite the opposite. Many believed that the heyday of the drug barons had been in the eighties and nineties, when Pablo Escobar became one of the richest men in the world because of his global cocaine trafficking empire. They were wrong. So wrong. Some modern-day cartels were turning into full-scale military outfits, employing ex-special forces soldiers as attack forces, buying the latest in high-tech weaponry, their influence reaching to the summits of power. The more the anti-drugs agencies clamped down, the more violently the cartels retaliated.

But none, so far, with the intensity of violence and sophistication of weaponry of the elusive Front 154.

Nathan opened his eyes. Manuel was crouching to his left, like some kind of ninja. The outline of his silhouette was barely visible against the shapes of the trees in the darkness.

‘No sleep?’ Manuel said.

Nathan shook his head.

‘You’re a good man,’ Manuel said. ‘I’m sorry about earlier.’

‘That’s okay.’ Nathan sat up. ‘I understand. How about you?’

‘My eye. It hurts.’

Nathan’s legs itched again. He lit another cigarette and rolled up his trousers.

‘What happened?’

‘Nine years ago,’ Manuel said quietly. ‘A death squad attacked my village. They raped my mother and sisters. Beat them to death. A sicario shot my father in the head.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Nathan said.

The leeches dropped off his shins as he sizzled them. He’d heard so many stories like Manuel’s since he’d been here. Sicarios were assassins who carried out hits for a few dollars. Many of them were just young teenagers, desperate for cash to feed their drug habit.

‘I hid under a pile of bodies,’ Manuel said. ‘Nobody else survived. I got shrapnel in my eye. I walked in the jungle until I found a village doctor. The paramilitaries have hunted for me ever since. They don’t want witnesses alive.’

‘That’s why you hate them so much.’

‘I hate everyone who invades my land. Paramilitaries, the Front, the DEA. All of them.’ He paused, as though reflecting on what he’d just said. ‘And you? What’s your story? Why did you join this NGO?’

‘To investigate human rights abuses. We write reports and publicise them.’

‘You think that makes a difference?’

‘I hope so.’

‘Believe me, Nathan, it doesn’t. Nothing makes any difference in Colombia. Only guns and money. How old are you?’

‘Thirty-four.’

‘You have a family?’