Extract
Recruitment and training, South Africa, 1964
‘Drugs, heroin. They must weigh about two pounds I’d say, Cap’n.’ The sergeant’s gut rested on his desk, the fat splaying and quivering as he leaned across, playing hard-man with a cuffed Oregon for his boss’s benefit. ‘You’re looking at twenty-five years penal here son – drugs across a State line
– that’s a lot of time to go without pussy, particularly at your age when you probably haven’t had much anyway.’
‘Lock’m up Sergeant Moses. We’ll do all the paperwork tomorrow. I don’t want to miss the game on TV,’ the Captain said. ‘Something’s not right here,’ Oregon thought, as he paced his cell, looking occasionally at the square of light from the window high on the wall. The ambush had been good, the plant had been professional and evidence-taking exemplary. Did patrol cars normally carry cameras? These guys were sharing one brain between them and wore riding boots because they could not tie shoelaces. These thoughts went through his mind. ‘There’s a puppeteer here somewhere,’ he reasoned. At midnight it would make sense.
Oregon was the only prisoner in the town’s new jail that night, and lay on a rock-hard bed in his barred cell which looked directly into the office. The street door was set into the office’s outer wall. A jelly-bellied night duty trooper, stinking of fat-man’s sweat, brought him steak, fries and ice-cream and even a beer from the local motel. The trooper sat and ate his own supper, comprising two of everything Oregon had, except beer – he had four of those and was asleep by 10.30pm on a camp bed. There was something musical about the trooper’s snoring which lulled Oregon into a half-sleep; he did not hear the street door open at midnight but sprang upright when he heard the gentle voice.
‘Oregon, Oregon, wake-up you lazy Apache.’
Oregon looked at a face he had not seen since WestPoint days. The cell door was opened, they passed the snoring trooper and sixty seconds later Oregon sat between two large men in the back of a Studebaker. The car purred gently away from the jail and headed back towards Interstate 5 and Portland.