Arauca: A Novel of Colombia Read online

  Arauca, D. Alan Johnson

  Arauca

  by D. Alan Johnson

  Copyright © 2010

  Chapter One

  0100, Monday, July 8

  46 Kilometers West of Arauca City

  Arauca Province

  Northern Colombia

  The night has always terrified mankind. And yet humans are still fascinated by this physical manifestation of the earth’s rotation. With his rational brain, man knows that one side of the earth is just in shadow, but his emotions tell him that bad things linger in the night. By instinct, young children know that monsters only come out at night. And by experience, adults know that burglars, rapists, and murderers use darkness for cover.

  These thoughts moved through Lynn Metzler’s mind as he crept on his stomach to the edge of the clearing. The tall wet grass grabbed at his clothes, soaking him to the skin, and his ponytail slipped down across his neck, giving his ear a little tickle. Mosquitoes buzzed around his face, but he did not notice. He learned years ago his brain would function on two levels when under great stress. One part could be busy dealing with the task at hand, while another section, almost like a disinterested observer, could stand back and make comments about the most arcane aspects of the activity.

  Through his night vision goggles Lynn saw the guerrilla soldier standing shoulder deep in the hole beside the pipeline right of way. The man’s helper sat close by. Ebon jungle rose up on both sides of the pipeline right-of-way forming a corridor a hundred feet wide and over two miles long. Mud flew out of the hole every few seconds followed by another sucking sound as water at the bottom grabbed at the shovel.

  The two men knew it should take about three hours to dig deep enough to place their explosive under the thirty-six inch oil pipeline, so they brought water and some food wrapped in aluminum foil. Even with the background noise of the bugs and birds and monkeys, Lynn was close enough to hear every word of their conversation. They were joking with each other about the women of the village and which of them had more girlfriends.

  Why am I in this job? These guys are just trying to fight against the juggernaut of the oil companies and the corrupt Colombian government. Is it right for them to destroy the pipeline? No. But, in their shoes would I be any different? Such thoughts plagued Metzler each mission. But lately these doubts seemed worse.

  Metzler’s team all wore night vision goggles, the greatest leap forward in night warfare during the last two thousand years. By amplifying the ambient light from stars, the moon, and man-made lighting, these small devices gave the wearer a huge advantage. There were some limitations of peripheral vision and depth of field that made the yellowish green world of the NVG’s like watching a very crisp black and white television. But after a soldier became used to the goggles, he could function seventy-five per cent as well as in the daytime.

  The four men of Alpha Team had been lead to this spot by a small surveillance plane based out of the oil camp at Cano Limon. The aircraft flew high above the pipeline, scanning its length with a stabilized infrared camera. Anytime the surveillance crew spotted activity on the pipeline, they called one of the teams out to “take care” of the problem.

  Lynn whispered into his microphone, “Sid, I have him. Twenty meters ahead.”

  “All clear on the right,” he heard Sid in his miniature ear piece.

  The security team stationed themselves between the diggers and their compadres back at the camp. Now that Lynn knew no one was sneaking up on him and that his escape route was clear, he raised his silenced .22 caliber rifle and shot the saboteur in the head. The bolt snicked another round into the chamber louder than the shot he just fired. The small muscular man fell against the side of the hole. His helper stood up, and Lynn could see the look of surprise and puzzlement on the guerilla’s face as he tried to understand why his compadre had fallen. Lynn swung the rifle smoothly to the left and targeted the other digger, and then he too was lifeless.

  Careful not to look at the man’s face, Lynn moved up to the bodies and, after checking to make sure that both were dead, pinned a handwritten note in Spanish on the chest of the first digger, then moved an arm over it to hold it in place. I should be putting a note of apology for the widow. But instead, we put out a threat. The note read:

  Do not try to sabotage this pipeline again.

  Be afraid.

  Ojo Azul

  The team exited the area without alerting the small guerrilla camp less than four hundred meters to the north. It would be a short march to the landing zone three miles to the south. There, an unmarked Sikorsky Blackhawk would pick up the four man team and transport them back to the farm that served as their base.

  When he first joined the team, Lynn asked why they never took out all the members of the camp. They had the capability and the firepower. But the bosses in Bogotá were adamant. Terror was the mission. Keeping the oil flowing was the goal. Harm no one unless they were actually working at sabotaging the oil pipeline. By leaving alive most of the camp, there were more mouths to tell the tale of “Ojo Azul”, the Blue Eye, who would silently slay anyone seeking to damage the Cano Limon – Covenas pipeline.

  *******

  0530, Monday, July 8,

  Sufie’s Restaurant

  Larandia Air Base

  Southern Colombia

  The sun comes up early in the tropics, and the elite Colombian Army counter-guerrilla units had to start early to beat the tropical heat. Pete O’Connor watched them run down the road in formation, singing as they went. The humidity hovered near 100 per cent, and the jungle seemed to be invading the roadway. Oppressive. There was no other word to describe the feeling of being in the jungle.

  Some men adapted, but many never got comfortable with the heat, the thick vegetation, the bouts of dysentery, and always being wet. Pete felt old and tired. He took one last drag on his cigarette and flung the butt into the bushes before walking down the hill and into the little lakeside restaurant for some coffee.

  “Briefing in five minutes!” a bull horn-like voice bellowed. The pilots milled around the open air restaurant hoping to get something in their stomachs before a long day of flying. Some stuffed a couple of pieces of bread into a flight suit pocket; some just wanted one more cup of coffee. Spike tried to gulp down his fried egg and bacon sandwich as everyone else walked out the door and toward the briefing room. Since the restaurants on the base were so bad, some of the pilots brought their own food and cooked.

  Others brought snacks to keep them going. Tim, a Georgia crop duster, brought Zingers in his luggage to keep in his flight bag, while Steve, an ex-fighter pilot from California had scores of granola and protein bars.

  The pilots strolled out into the street and caught a ride on any available vehicle. It was over a mile to the runway, and already much too hot to walk that far dressed in a flight suit and combat boots. The Colombians are a gracious people, and everyone from a general on down stopped and gave the pilots a lift.

  Now a Colombian Army base close to Ecuador, twenty years ago Larandia used to be a large ranch. Soldiers of the FARC, the Fuerza Armada Revolucionaria de Colombia (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) had come one night and kidnapped the owner. After the family paid the ransom, the FARC killed the land-owner anyway, hoping to drive off the family and take over the ranch. The family did decide to leave the ranch and move to Bogotá. But instead of letting the guerrilla army take it, they deeded the ranch to the Colombian Army, on the condition that the Army use it as a base to fight the FARC.

  As the years went by, the Colombian Army built barracks and administration buildings and carved a dirt landing strip out of the jungle. The US counter drug agencies started using it. First the DEA hunted the labs whe
re coca leaves became cocaine. Then, in 1997, the US State Department came in with armored crop dusters to spray herbicide on the coca plants that grew so well in the region. More planes came every year. Now there was a camera plane, 10 crop dusters, and two large cargo planes that provided the air bridge to Bogota.

  The briefing room, a prefab building the size of a doublewide mobile home, sat on the east side of the white gravel runway. Each morning the briefing included weather, enemy strength and positions, spray targets, escape routes and disposition of search and rescue forces. Most of the pilots sat with bored expressions—they had been through this same briefing hundreds of times before. The only things different were the coordinates of the fields to be sprayed.

  This briefing had a different feel. This was the last mission of their rotation. They would go out early this morning and return by 1030. Then they would have time to shower and change before loading up on the C-27 to rotate out to Bogota at 1230.

  Pete O’Connor sat in the back of the room wishing he could smoke another cigarette. He only had time for two this morning. At 58 years old, Pete was one of the older spray pilots, but not the oldest. That honor belonged to Julio Juarez who would turn 69 this year. Pete, a standard issue West Texas crop duster, stood five and a half feet tall, 150 pounds, short white hair, and skin like old leather.

  For over 40 years, I’ve been herding spray planes around north Texas, Pakistan, Peru, Guatemala, and now Colombia, he thought. He hated the regimentation, the uniforms, the mandatory briefings, and the endless safety lectures. But he was addicted to the 165,000 dollars per year (plus per diem) that he was paid as the senior pilot on the program. One of the first pilots hired by the State Department, he and his wife quickly grew accustomed to the bi-weeky wire transfers to their joint checking account. With a big mortgage to pay, a divorced daughter and grandchild to support, and payments on his own toys such as his Harley and his private airplane to keep current, he needed this job.

  After the briefer (everyone called him the “Droner”) finished, they all wandered the 200 yards to the aircraft parked in rows parallel to the runway. Pete looked to the north and west, enjoying the view of the majestic mountains just ten miles away. Fog still hung in the steep valleys. He never tired of the view.

  Mechanics waited, one per aircraft. Each pilot went to his assigned plane and each crew chief helped him don his survival vest and helmet, closed his canopy, and stood out front to monitor the start sequence. By now, it was 0620 and everyone was soaked with sweat. With a hand signal, all the aircraft started simultaneously.

  At 0637, seven minutes late, Pete, in the last aircraft to take off, waddled into position on the runway. Holding the brakes, he pushed up the power levers and noted that the engines produced the required torque for takeoff. Barely. He released the brakes and started his takeoff. He rolled almost to the end of the runway and the old girl struggled up into the hazy sky. Once everyone was in the air, they joined up in two groups. Pete lead his formation of five OV-10D’s toward their designated area, about twenty miles west.

  The OV-10 Bronco was a high wing twin engine observation aircraft left over from Viet Nam. After the State Department operated regular crop dusters in Colombia for five years, they saw the need to have a fast, multiengine, armored spray platform. The Bronco fulfilled that requirement. It even had ejection seats for the pilots.

  A helicopter gunship and a helicopter with search and rescue personnel flew close by each spray element. In theory, if an aircraft went down, the helicopter gunship used its machine guns to keep the FARC away while the other helicopter went in and picked up the pilot. Since the helicopters flew at about half the speed of the OV-10’s, they had left Larandia twenty minutes earlier. As they neared the spray area, Pete called the helicopters on the radio.

  “BYR, BYR. Bronco Lead on Company Victor,” Pete called smiling at the word play of the helicopter lead. BYR stood for Buscante Y Rescate. Search and Rescue in Spanish. BYR was pronounced by everyone as “Beer”.

  “This is the Beer Company on Victor.” Pup called out in his deep voice.

  “Where you at?” Pete said.

  “Beer Company is five miles south of India Papa Three.”

  Pete looked forward and down spotting the white whirl of the rotor blades. The mechanics painted the tops of the blades white so that the spray planes could find them against the dark jungle below.

  “I have you at twelve o’clock and three miles.”

  Pete looked at his moving map display to see IP-3 just ahead. Initial Point 3 marked the start of their spray run. The route ran just along the base of the western mountains. Pete could see that the weather for the mission was marginal. A light mist blanketed the plains, and heavy fog piled up into the steep foothills. As lead pilot, Pete made the weather decisions. He was tempted to call RTB, return to base. Return to bed would be more like it. He had not slept well. But the big boss had been complaining that Pete’s group was not meeting their spray quota. So, like a good trooper, he decided to continue the mission.

  Each OV-10 carried a sensitive computerized GPS navigation package. These electronics posted position on both the moving map in the cockpit and on a lightbar mounted far forward on the nose. By following the directions on the lightbar, each pilot could spray within ten feet of his assigned line while still looking outside to avoid trees and terrain.

  Planners, the geeks back in the air conditioning, usually aligned the spray lines north and south so that the pilots never flew into the sun. All the pilots had to do was follow the light bar. In practice this was a very difficult task, especially at 200 miles per hour, in formation with other spray planes, and just above the treetops. At the end of every mission, the technicians would remove a card that stored the route each aircraft had flown, the areas sprayed and the amount of chemical applied.

  Turning on course, Pete felt the familiar tightness in his stomach. Checking his position relative to the other aircraft in his peripheral vision, his feet gently nudged the rudder bars to slip right the six feet to put him on line. Suddenly he heard a sound that reminded him of fingers snapping, and he knew that he was taking ground fire. Three thuds shook the plane in rapid succession from bullets hitting his armor plating. As per standard operating procedure, he pulled up and called out the code word for being hit.

  “Bronco Lead, Limon, Limon, Limon!” Pete said, a little more anxiety in his voice than he would have liked.

  “Bronco Three, Limon, Limon, Limon!” Short Round was hit, too.

  “Bronco Five, Limon, Limon, Limon!” And now Steve had taken hits.

  Pete scanned his gages and saw the right engine oil temp rising and oil pressure falling. I must have taken a hit in the oil cooler, he thought. He retarded the right power lever then shut down the engine and feathered the propeller. Since this was just the start of his spray runs, he was heavy with full fuel and all his herbicide still in the tanks.

  Things were piling up against Pete. The asymmetric thrust had to be countered with heavy left rudder pressure, he was low—too low to eject--and his airspeed was dropping fast. Pete pulled up the red cover on the emergency fuel dump switch, and toggled it. An electric charge triggered four exploding bolts, dropping the two external fuel tanks and simultaneously stripping off the spray booms bolted to them.

  Now 1,200 pounds lighter, and much more aerodynamic without the drag of external fuel tanks and spray booms, he could maintain his altitude. But Pete still had the main centerline tank, the hopper, full of herbicide. Down to 125 knots and 50 feet above the ground, Pete knew he had to pull the emergency hopper dump. He hesitated, hating the reports he would have to file and the ass chewing he would take for killing a tiny part of the rain forest. He toggled the switch and over 2,600 pounds of liquid gushed out of the belly of the OV-10 in less than 4 seconds.

  Now able to climb a little, Pete calculated his position and the shortest way to turn back to base. All of the radio chatter distracted him as different aircraft reported their positions and inte
ntions after taking ground fire. Because of the asymmetric thrust, the airplane had turned east from the spray area. Pete, busy with cleaning up the aircraft and dumping his load, did not notice he turned toward rising terrain. The low morning sun mixed with the light fog to make yellow soup outside. He could see fine out the side windows, and his peripheral vision gave him indications of his height. With all of his chemical dumped, and the external fuel tanks and spray booms stripped off, the OV-10 accelerated to best rate of climb speed. With a gentle turn to the left back toward Larandia Base, his forward visibility increased dramatically.

  As he turned away from the sun, his forward visibility returned. Pete saw the ridgeline less than a mile ahead and more than a thousand feet higher than his altitude. Reflexively, he pulled back on the stick and started to climb. Trees filled his windshield and Pete braced for impact. He felt a heavy weight, an instant of intense heat, then blackness.

  “Pete’s down,” Steve called on the radio, ignoring the assigned call signs for the day. He had been keeping Pete in sight as he struggled through his engine failure. Pete O’Connor had been his friend and wingman for over six years.

  “Steve, this is SAR. Give me some coordinates,” the Search and Rescue helicopter pilot said.

  Steve took a few seconds to answer. He could hardly talk from the sadness crushing his chest.

  “No rush SAR, I saw the fireball, there are no survivors. I’ll circle here until you get the others on their way home.”

  ***********

  0650, Monday, July 8

  Chia, a village north of Bogotá, Colombia

  George Allen turned and kissed his young Colombian wife. She still wore the white silk negligee he had bought her, and he fought a sudden urge to take her back to their bed. It was a Colombian holiday after all, and there was no need to even go to work, much less get there early. But he steeled himself and walked down his steps and into the cold morning air. Even though Bogota, Colombia is almost on the equator, the mornings are always cold because of the altitude. The city of Santa Fe de Bogotá, the Holy Faith of Bogotá, sits in a high valley eight thousand six hundred feet above sea level. Higher mountains completely surround the valley.