Stephen Leather - Breakout

‘You’re a star, Sass, much appreciated.’

‘So when do you think you’ll head to Bolivia?’

‘First thing tomorrow,’ said Harper. ‘The trail’s cold enough already, and the longer I leave it the colder it gets.’

‘But time for a few more beers,’ said Standish.

Harper grinned. ‘Hell, yeah.’

CHAPTER 6

After he and Standish had drunk the best part of a dozen beers between them, Harper said goodnight and went up to his room. He called Lupa on the number Standish had given him but it went through to voicemail. He left a message and she called back within the hour.

‘I’m Lex, a friend of Scouse’s,’ he said. ‘Have you heard from him recently?’

‘Not for a few months,’ she said. ‘Is he okay?’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Harper. ‘I’d like to meet you in Santa Cruz if that’s okay with you.’

‘That’s fine. When?’

‘Tomorrow. I’m in Colombia at the moment but I’ll be flying in from La Paz. I gather Santa Cruz can be a bit edgy, and I could do with some weapons, if that’s possible.’

She laughed. ‘You’re definitely a friend of Scouse’s.’ she said. ‘In Santa Cruz anything is possible, at a price.’

‘I’ll have money,’ said Harper.

‘Shall I meet you at the airport?’

‘No,’ said Harper. ‘We need a safe and semi-public meeting place - a hotel, a restaurant, or something like that. Do you have somewhere in mind?’

‘Of course,’ Lupa said, giving him the name of a hotel. ‘It’s in downtown Santa Cruz, about a half hour drive from the airport. We can meet in the coffee shop.’

‘Excellent,’ Harper said. ‘I’ll call you when I’m en route.’

Harper used his smart phone to book flights for the following day, then he showered and slept a dreamless sleep.

He didn’t bother with breakfast the following morning. He paid his bill and had the hotel call a cab for him. The flight to La Paz took four hours. The views of the Andes all the way south must have been breathtaking but like ex-soldiers everywhere, Harper always took any downtime as a chance to catch up on some sleep, so he was dozing well before the plane reached its cruising altitude.

After they landed at La Paz’s El Alto international airport, he shivered in the cold as he stepped out of the aircraft. The air at this altitude was crystalline, the sky a deep, dark blue and the snow-capped peaks of the high Andes looked so close he almost felt he could have reached out and touched them. He paid very close attention as he went through the formalities at arrivals in the airport, glancing around apparently casually as he waited in line to clear immigration and customs, but closely scrutinising the lay-out of the areas, the personnel on duty, and the glimpses of the secure areas where those suspected of smuggling or other crimes were taken. His practised eye also spotted the security cameras - one over each desk and two high up on the wall, giving general views of the area - and the mirrored glass concealing the observation window where police and customs men could scrutinise passengers for the tells that often gave smugglers and drug mules away.

Although the policeman on the immigration desk gave him a long look as he compared his face with the passport image, there were no hold-ups and no searches of his case or body before Harper was waved through.

He checked in for the shuttle to Santa Cruz de la Sierra, then passed through security and after an hour long wait nursing an airport coffee he boarded the plane. The flight was short but spectacular. As the aircraft climbed steeply from the Altiplano and then began to bank around, Harper caught a brief glimpse of light reflecting from Lake Titicaca - the lake, sacred to the Incas, that began thirty miles to the north-west and stretched well beyond the Peruvian border. The jet flew on, making a long turn to the east before passing between the mountains that reached over six thousand metres into the sky. As it did so, a glorious Andean sunrise lit up the heavens, painting the clouds red and gold, and then the aircraft was plunging down the eastern slopes of the mountains towards the vibrant green, tropical rainforest of the Amazon basin that filled the horizon.

After landing at Viru Viru airport in Santa Cruz, Harper strode through the terminal and walked swiftly to the cab rank, where he ignored the first few taxis and got into the fifth one in line. He jumped into the seat alongside the driver, waved a US fifty dollar bill at him and said ‘ Vamos !’.

Without taking his eyes off the $50, the driver let in the clutch and drove off at top speed, much to the consternation of the rank’s security marshal who was busy noting down taxi numbers, destinations and passenger ID’s, but now had no information at all on the gringo passenger who had just jumped the queue and ignored him.

Harper hunched down in his seat so that he could see out of the rear-view and wing mirrors as the driver pulled away and was amused to note that a small, nondescript and very weather-beaten saloon had tucked into the traffic behind them. The driver was obviously not well used to following a car because, still keeping an eye on the mirrors, Harper could see the red glow of the brake lights flickering on and off as the driver kept accelerating to keep pace with the taxi but then overdid it and had to hit the brakes repeatedly to slow down again.

Once they were clear of the airport, Harper told the taxi driver to head for the city centre, then phoned Lupa. She said she would meet him in the coffee shop of a hotel and Harper relayed the address to the driver.

Santa Cruz looked to be a big, bustling city, with plenty of luxury car showrooms, high-end clothing and jewellery stores showing the affluence of some of its citizens - just the sort of places favoured by narco-traffickers and gangsters with cash to launder, Harper thought. He paid off the taxi on a downtown street around the corner from the hotel, noting that the same weather-beaten saloon had pulled in to the kerb a short way up the street.

He waited until the taxi had driven off before walking swiftly up the road towards the hotel. He paused on the corner with a side-street, using the reflections in a shop window to check the pavement behind him and smiled to himself as he noticed a dark-haired young man twenty metres behind him, suddenly become surprisingly interested in the window display of a dress shop. He was wearing a trilby hat with a condor feather stuck in the hat-band, which might have been the sign of a professional; even the most experienced of surveillance operatives was sometimes guilty of following a distinctive hat, rather than the person wearing it, and if the hat was suddenly removed, the person effectively disappeared. However, the body language of the young man and the way he shot a sidelong glance at Harper when he thought he was not being observed, suggested that he was not a professional and the hat was probably being worn out of vanity, not tradecraft. However, he didn’t seem to pose any immediate threat, so Harper turned and carried on, but paused once more a few metres further on, as much for the entertainment value of watching his tail having to stop dead again and back-track to a newspaper stall he’d just passed, as from any sense of danger.

Harper was early and he took a seat at a corner table in the coffee shop. He put his backpack on the chair next to him. Dead on time Lupa entered and after a brief glance around the room, threaded her way through the tables to where Harper was sitting. She was in her early twenties, with a slim figure and long, jet-black hair. Her eyes were almost as dark as her hair and her beauty was little affected by the thin white line of a scar - the result of a slash from a knife or razor, Harper thought - extending from just below the corner of her eye to her jaw.