“This business,” she began. “It offers incredible opportunities. Take the fields outside this village. The farmer plants one hectare of coca. He harvests ninety arrobas. That is, perhaps, a thousand kilos of leaves. We add two hundred litres of gasoline, the lime, the other chemicals that we need. The final result is two and a half kilos of paste. It seems ridiculous, no? All those leaves and so little paste at the end of it. That paste will make two kilos of cocaine—two of those bricks that you are holding. We sell the bricks for thirty thousand dollars each, and our distributor—perhaps you, Señor Smith, perhaps someone else—can put them into the market for fifty.”

Milton looked more closely at the course of bricks. There must have been thirty bricks along the bottom, and it was ten bricks high. The three hundred bricks were worth nine million to the cartel and fifteen million on the street. He replaced the brick he was holding in the same spot it had come from.

“I can do the maths,” he said.

La Bruja cocked an eyebrow. “So—you are satisfied with our operation?”

“Of course. It’s very impressive.”

“Good,” she said. “Are you hungry?”

“Very.”

“We will eat. Come.”

63

Night had fallen, and the darkness swallowed everything. Ellie relied upon her goggles to enable her to see the way ahead, following the spectral shapes of the SEALs as they made their way along the narrow track; it looked as if it had been laid down by larger animals as they made their way to the river to drink. Ellie took regular glances down at the ground to ensure that she did not stumble into the muddy patches where the water table had risen high enough to drench the earth. She clutched her pistol in her right hand, holding her left hand out ahead of her to brush aside dangling creepers and branches that scratched at her skin and caught in the fabric of her jacket.

The SEALs slowed right down as they advanced upon the camp. Their main concern was the possibility that their approach would be noticed and that word would then be passed to La Bruja. Their route to this point had been chosen to minimise that possibility. It was the best that they could do, but it was impossible to say with complete confidence that their arrival would be a surprise. The tactical assessment was that, if WITCH was warned that she was under attack, she would flee along the guidelines to the northeast or northwest, making her way to the river where an exfiltration attempt could be made. That would not be a wise move for her tonight; Alpha had radioed that they were in position, waiting for the attack to start. Bravo were the gun dogs, flushing the birds out of the undergrowth and right into the shooting party.

“Thirty seconds,” McCoy hissed over the radio. “On my mark.”

* * *