Given the short time line, Dexter was pleased with what Project Cobra's supply team had achieved. The black panel van was U.S. built, but so were half the vehicles on the roads of Colombia. Its papers were in order and its registration plates normal for Cartagena. The decals pasted on each side read "Lavanderia de Cartagena." Laundry vans seldom raise suspicion.
He checked out the three Cartagena police uniforms, the two wicker hampers, the freestanding red traffic lights and the frozen body, packed in dry ice in a refrigerated casket. That stayed on board the Hercules until needed.
The Colombian Army was being very hospitable, but there was no need to abuse their capacity for favors.
Cal Dexter checked the cadaver briefly. Right height, right build, approximate age. A poor John Doe, trying to live rough in the Washington forests, found dead of hypothermia, brought in to the morgue at Kelso by the Mount St. Helens wardens two days earlier.
Dexter gave his team two dry runs. They studied the five-hundred-yard stretch of narrow highway Dexter had chosen by day and by night. On the third night, they went operational. They all knew simplicity and speed were the essence. On the third afternoon, Dexter parked the van at the midsection of the long straight strip of highway. There was a track leading into the mangrove, and he put the van fifty yards down it.
He used the moped that came with his equipment to motor at four p.m. into the employees' parking lot at the Sandoval yard and, crouching low, let the air out of two of the Ford's tires; one at the back and the spare in the trunk. He was back with his team by four-fifteen.
In the Sandoval parking lot, Juan Cortez approached his car, saw the flat tire, cursed and went for the spare in the trunk. When he found this, too, was airless, he swore even more, went to the stores and borrowed a pump. When he was finally able to roll, the delay had cost him an hour, and it was pitch-dark. All his workmates were long gone.
Three miles from the yard, a man stood silently and invisible in the foliage by the road with a set of night-vision goggles. Because all Cortez's colleagues had left ahead of him, traffic was very light. The man in the undergrowth was American, spoke fluent Spanish and wore the uniform of a Cartagena traffic cop. He had memorized the Ford Pinto from the pictures provided by Dexter. It passed him at five minutes past seven. He took a torch and flashed up the road. Three short blips.
At the midsection, Dexter took his red warning light, walked to the center of the road and waved it from side to side toward the approaching headlights. Cortez, seeing the warning ahead of him, began to slow.
Behind him, the man who had waited in the bushes set a freestanding red light beside him, switched it on and, over the next two minutes, detained two other cars coming toward the city. One of the drivers leaned out and called, "?Que pasa?" "Dos momentos, nada mas," replied the policeman. Two seconds, no more.
Five hundred yards up the strip toward the city, the second Green Beret in policeman's uniform had mounted his red light, and over two minutes flagged down three cars. At the center section, there would be no interruptions, and the possible eyewitnesses were just out of sight around curves.
Juan Cortez slowed and stopped. A police officer, smiling in a friendly manner, approached the driver's-side window. Due to the balmy night, it was already wound down.
"Could I ask you to step out of the car, senor?" Dexter asked, and opened the door. Cortez protested but stepped out. After that, it was all too fast. He recalled two men coming out of the darkness; strong arms; a pad of chloroform; the brief struggle; fading awareness; darkness.
The two snatchers had the limp body of the welder down the track and into their van in thirty seconds. Dexter took the wheel of the Ford and drove it out of sight down the same track. Then he jogged back to the road.
The fifth Green Beret was at the wheel of the van and the sixth came with him. At the roadside, Dexter muttered an instruction into his communicator, and the first two men heard it. They hauled their red lamps off the tarmac and waved the halted cars forward.
Two came at Dexter from the dockyard direction, three from the city side. Their curious drivers saw a police officer at the road edge standing next to a moped on its side and a man sitting dazed and holding his head beside it-the sixth soldier, in jeans, sneakers and bomber jacket. The policeman waved them impatiently on. It's only a spill; don't gawp.
When they were gone, normal traffic resumed, but the succeeding drivers saw nothing. All six men, two sets of red lights and a moped were down the track, being packed in the van. The unconscious Cortez went into a wicker basket. From the other came a form in a body bag, now limp and beginning to emit an odor.
Van and car changed places. Both backed up to the road. The limp Cortez had been relieved of his wallet, cell phone, signet ring, watch and the medallion of his patron saint from around his neck. The cadaver, out of its bag, was already in the gray cotton overalls of the exact type Cortez wore.
The body was "dressed" with all Cortez's personal identifying accessories. The wallet was placed under the rump when the corpse went into the driver's seat of the Ford. Four strong men, pushing from behind, rammed it hard into a tree just off the road.
The other two Green Berets took jerrycans from the rear of their van and doused the Ford with several gallons. The car's own gas tank would explode and complete the fireball.
When they were ready, all six soldiers piled into the van. They would wait for Dexter two miles up the road. Two cars went past. After that, nothing. The black laundry van surged out of the entrance to the track and set off. Dexter waited beside his moped until the road was empty, took a petrol-soaked rag wrapped around a pebble from his pocket, lit it with a Zippo and, from ten yards, tossed it. There was a dull whump, and the Ford torched. Dexter rode away fast.
Two hours later, un-intercepted, the laundry van rolled through the gates of Malambo air base. It went straight to the open rear loading doors of the Hercules and up the ramp. The aircrew, alerted by a mobile phone call, had completed all the formalities and had their Allison engines ready to roll. As the rear doors closed, the engines increased power, taxied to takeoff point and lifted away, destination Florida.
Inside the fuselage, the tension evaporated in grins, handshakes and high fives. The groggy Juan Cortez was lifted out of the laundry basket, laid gently on a mattress, and one of the Green Berets, qualified as a corpsman, gave Cortez an injection. It was harmless, but would ensure several hours of dreamless sleep.
By ten, Senora Cortez was frantic. There was a recorded call on her answering machine from her husband while she was out. It was just before six. Juan said he had a flat tire and would be late, maybe up to an hour. Their son was long back from school, homework completed. He had played with his Game Boy for a while, then he, too, started to worry and tried to comfort his mother. She made repeated calls to her husband's cell phone, but there was no reply. Later, as the flames consumed it, the machine ceased to ring at all. At half past ten, she called the police.
It was at two in the morning when someone in Cartagena Police HQ connected a blazing car that had crashed and exploded on the highway to Mamonal and a woman in Las Flores frantic that her husband had not returned from his work in the docks. Mamonal, thought the young policeman on the graveyard shift, was where the docks were. He called the city mortuary.
There had been four fatalities that night: a murder between two gangs in the red-light district, two bad car crashes and a heart attack in a cinema. The medical examiner was still cutting at three a.m.
He confirmed a badly burned body from one of the car wrecks, far beyond recognition facially, but some items had been recovered in still recognizable form. They would be bagged and sent to HQ in the morning.