Frederic Forsyth - The Cobra

As the Colombian crew were hooded, the SEALs had taken their own masks off. Cdr. Chadwick looked at Dexter and raised an eyebrow. Dexter nodded and climbed back over the edge into the RHIB, pulling his mask back on. The SEALs did the same. The hoods and shackles were taken off the crew.

Cdr. Chadwick spoke no Spanish, but SEAL Fontana did. Through his officer, the SEAL leader apologized profusely to the Maria Linda's captain.

"We have obviously been misinformed, Capitan. Please accept the apologies of the United States Navy. You are free to proceed. Good journey!"

When he heard the "?Buen viaje!," the Colombian smuggler could hardly believe his luck. He did not even pretend outrage at what had been done to him. After all, the Yanquis might start again and find something at the second attempt. He was still beaming hospitably when the sixteen masked men and their dog went back into their inflatables and roared away.

He waited until they were well over the horizon and the Maria Linda was chugging north again before he handed the helm to his mate and went below. The screws seemed intact, but, to be on the safe side, he undid them and pulled his bunk to one side.

The steel hull seemed untouched, but to make sure he opened the trap and checked the bales inside. They, too, had not been touched. He quietly thanked the craftsman, whoever he was, who had made a cache of such amazing ingenuity. It had probably saved his life, and certainly his freedom. Three nights later, the Maria Linda made landfall.

There are three giant cocaine cartels in Mexico and a few smaller ones. The giants are La Familia, the Gulf cartel operating mainly in the east on the Gulf of Mexico, and the Sinaloa, which works the Pacific Coast. The Maria Linda's offshore rendezvous with a smelly old shrimper was off Mazatlan in the heart of Sinaloa country.

The captain and his crew received their enormous (by their standards) fee and a bonus for their success, as one of the extra lures the Don had instituted to refresh the supply of volunteers. The captain saw no point in mentioning the interlude off the coast of Panama. Why make trouble over a lucky escape? His crew agreed with him. A WEEK LATER, something very similar happened in the Atlantic. The CIA jet flew quietly into the airport on Sal Island, the most northeasterly of the Cape Verdes. Its only passenger had diplomatic status, so he was waved through passport and customs formalities. His heavy haversack was not examined.

Leaving the airport concourse, he did not take the regular bus south to the island's only tourist resort at Santa Maria but took a cab, and asked where he might hire a car.

The driver did not seem to know, so they proceeded the two miles to Espargos and asked again. Finally, they ended up at the ferry port of Palmeira, and a local garage owner rented a small Renault. Dexter overpaid the man for his trouble and drove away.

Sal is called "Salt" for a reason. It is flat and featureless save for miles of salt pans, which had once been the source of its very passing prosperity. It now possesses two roads and a track. One road goes east-west from Pedra Luame via the airport to Palmeira. The other runs south to Santa Maria. Dexter took the track.

It runs north over bleak, empty country to the lighthouse at Fiura Point. Dexter abandoned the car, pinned a note to the windshield to inform any curious finder that he intended to return, hefted his haversack and walked to the beach beside the lighthouse. It was dusk, and the automatic light was starting to turn. He made a cell phone call.

It was almost dark when the Little Bird came at him across the inky sea. He flashed the recognition code, and the small craft settled gently on the sand beside him. The passenger door was just an open oval. He climbed in, tucked his haversack between his legs and buckled up. The figure in the helmet beside him offered him a duplicate with headphones.

He pulled it on, and the voice in his ears was very British.

"Good trip, sir?"

Why do they always assume you are a senior officer? thought Dexter. The insignia next to him said sublieutenant. He had once made sergeant. It must be the gray hair. He liked the young and eager anyway.

"No problems," he called back.

"Good show. Twenty minutes to base. The lads will have a nice cup of tea on the brew."

Good show, he thought. I could do with a nice cup of tea.

This time, he actually landed on the deck without need of ladders. The Little Bird, so much smaller than the Black Hawk, was lifted gently by the derrick and lowered into her hold, whose hatch then closed over her. The pilot went forward, through a steel door, to the Special Forces mess hall. Dexter was led the other way; into the sterncastle and up to meet the vessel's skipper and Major Pickering, the SBS team commander. At dinner that night, he also met his two fellow Americans, the comms team who kept the MV Balmoral in touch with Washington and Nevada, and thus the UAV Sam, somewhere above their heads in the darkness.

They had to wait three days south of the Cape Verdes until Sam spotted the target. She was another fishing boat, like the Belleza del Mar, and her name was Bonita. She did not announce it, but she was heading for an offshore rendezvous in the mangrove swamps of Guinea-Conakry, another failed state and brutal dictatorship. And, like the Belleza, she smelled, using the odor to mask any possible aroma of cocaine.

But she had made seven trips from South America to West Africa, and although twice spotted by Tim Manhire and his MAOC-Narcotics team in Lisbon there had never been a NATO warship handy. This time there was, although she did not look the part, and even MAOC had not been told about the grain carrier Balmoral.

Juan Cortez had also worked on the Bonita, one of his first, and he had placed the hiding place at the far stern, abaft the engine room, itself reeking in the heat of engine oil and fish.

The procedure was almost exactly as it had been in the Pacific. When the commandos left the Bonita, a bewildered and extremely grateful captain received a full apology on behalf of Her Majesty personally for any trouble and delay. When the two arctic RIBs and the Little Bird had disappeared over the horizon, the captain unscrewed the planking behind his engine, eased away the false hull and checked the contents of the hidey-hole. They were absolutely intact. There was absolutely no trick. The gringos with all their probing and sniffing dogs had not found the secret cargo.

The Bonita made her rendezvous, passed on her cargo, and other fishing smacks took it up past the African coast, past the Pillars of Hercules, past Portugal, and delivered it to the Galicians. As promised by the Don. Three tons of it. But slightly different.

The Little Bird took Cal Dexter to his bleak strand by the Fiura Lighthouse, where he was pleased to see his battered Renault still untouched. He drove it back to the airport, left a message for the garage owner to come and retrieve it and a bonus and took a coffee in the restaurant. The CIA jet, alerted by the comms men on the Balmoral, picked him up an hour later.

At dinner that night aboard the Balmoral, the captain was curious.

"Are you sure," he asked Major Pickering, "that there was nothing at all on that fisherman?"

"That's what the American said. He was down in that engine room with the hatch closed for an hour. Came up covered in oil and stinking to high heaven. Said he had examined every possible hiding place, and she was clean. Must have been misinformed. Terribly sorry."

"Then why has he left us?"

"No idea."

"Do you believe him?"

"Not a chance," said the major.

"Then what is going on? I thought we were supposed to abduct the crew, sink the trash can and confiscate the coke. What was he up to?"

"No idea. We must rely again on Tennyson. 'Ours is not to reason why…' "