The Magdalena Curse Read Online Free PDF Page B

former Yugoslavia, of course. But it did not add up to much. It was peripheral. The days of their champion, Margaret Thatcher, ecstatic at some piece of stun grenade theatre staged in Hereford, were long gone. Prime Minister John Major was more sanguine about the military and its costs. He might be a patriot. But he had the soul of a Chancellor of the Exchequer, which he had once been.
    The Bolivia incursion was a Whitehall initiative. Mark discovered that at a meeting with his own commander, when he attempted to extricate himself from it. He had endured a gruelling training attachment in Belize prior to his wedding only three weeks before this summons. He was supposed to have earned thirty days of leave. They had allowed him twenty-one. He had been summoned by phone at the newly bought home in Devon that he shared with his new wife. They were in bed when the call woke them. He could see no justification for it. There were plenty of other men as good as he was on active duty and with none of his resentment at having to go.
    ‘I can think of three,’ Colonel Baxter said over steepled fingers.
    ‘You flatter me.’
    ‘No. I don’t.’
    Mark wondered who the three were. It didn’t matter. Evidently they were already engaged on other missions. Outside, he could hear the punishing thud of percussion grenades, the adrenaline urgency of screamed commands. It was very hot on the base, in their breeze-block hut. It was July. They had opted for a summer wedding. The reception had been held on an island on the Thames at Kingston, where
Lillian was originally from. The water had shimmered on their short crossing to the island under the blue sky of a perfect English day. Rose petals had been strewn on the still surface of the river.
    ‘Dragging one of our best and brightest from the marital bed is not something I do with any relish, Mark. May I call you Mark?’
    Hunter was twisting his beret in his hands. He could feel pinned to it the stubborn sharpness of the badge he had been so proud to earn. ‘You can call me what you like, Sir. You’re my commanding officer.’
    ‘Please don’t be petulant,’ Colonel Baxter said. His eyes dipped to a document on the desk in front of him. He studied it, biting at his grey moustache with the bottom row of his teeth.
    ‘I’m sorry, Sir.’
    ‘And so you fucking well should be.’ Baxter’s eyes rose and met his. ‘It is a great privilege to be called to arms under the standard of this regiment. Never forget that. Infant children have been deprived of fathers who died valiantly serving our colours with nothing but pride.’
    There was no arguing with this. It was military fact, the regiment a family, its sacrifices familiar to and painfully borne by every member. ‘I’m sorry, Sir. I am truly and humbly sorry.’
    ‘Good. Your truculence is forgotten.’ Baxter picked the document up from his desk again. He did not wear glasses. He did not hold the slim stack of papers away from his face to find a range at which their words would come into focus for an ageing man. He must have been fifty, Mark supposed, but his vision was unimpaired. The colonel enjoyed the reputation of a superb rifleman. He could down a moving target at better than half a mile. As he read the short sheaf of papers in front of him, his hands were unnaturally still.
Mark was impressed but not surprised. You became accustomed to such accomplishments at Hereford.
    A cocaine cartel had established a presence in the north of Bolivia, near the town of Magdalena only a few miles from the border with Brazil. This territory was the Amazon, river tributaries and thick rain forest, a region which did not share the high altitude characteristic of much of the country. But it possessed challenges of its own. It was hot, swampy terrain, difficult to travel through, innately hostile to man. Trained at length in Belize, a man from the regiment would find it all very familiar, Mark thought. He would almost be at home. He did not