Frederic Forsyth - The Cobra

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.

At six a.m. the detritus of the night was examined at police HQ. Of the other three deaths, no one had been burned. One pile of residue still stank of petrol and fire. It included a melted cell phone, a signet ring, a saint's medallion, a watch whose bracelet strap still had fragments of tissue attached and a wallet. The last named must have been sheltered from the flames by the fact that the dead driver was sitting on it. Inside it were papers, some still readable. The driver's license was clearly that of one Juan Cortez. And the frantic lady calling in from Las Flores was Senora Cortez.

At ten a.m., a police officer and a sergeant came to her door. Both were grim-faced. The officer began:

"Senora Cortez, lo siento muchissimo…"-I am deeply sorry. Senora Cortez then fainted clean away.

Formal identification was out of the question. The next day, escorted and sustained by two neighbors, Senora Irina Cortez attended the morgue. What had been her husband was but a charred, blackened husk of bone and melted flesh, lumps of carbon, insanely grinning teeth. The examiner, with the agreement of the silent policemen present, excused her even seeing what was left.

But she tearfully identified the watch, signet ring, medallion, melted cell phone and driver's license. The pathologist would sign an affidavit that these items had been removed from the corpse, and the traffic division would confirm that the body had indeed been the one retrieved from the gutted car that was provably the one owned by and being driven by Juan Cortez that evening. It was enough; bureaucracy was satisfied.

Three days later, the unknown American backwoodsman was buried in the Cartagena grave of Juan Cortez, welder, husband and father. Irina was inconsolable, Pedro sniffing quietly. Fr. Isidro officiated. He was going through his own private Calvary.

Had it been his phone call, he endlessly asked himself? Had the Americans let on? Betrayed the confidence? Had the cartel become aware? Presumed Cortez was going to betray them instead of himself being betrayed? How could the Yanquis have been so stupid?

Or was it just coincidence? A true, terrible coincidence. He knew what the cartel did to anyone they suspected, however feeble the evidence. But how could they have suspected Juan Cortez of not being their loyal craftsman, which in fact he had been to the end? So he conducted the service, saw the earth tumbling on top of the coffin, sought to comfort the widow and orphan by explaining the true love God had for them, even though it was hard to understand. Then he went back to his spartan lodgings to pray and pray and pray for forgiveness. LETIZIA ARENAL was walking on clouds. A dull April day in the city of Madrid could not touch her. She had never felt so happy or so warm. The only way she could be warmer was in his arms.