Brogan's Bust: The Brogan Series, #3

By Kev Richardson

A rich ragout of intrigue, murder, subterfuge, romance and adventure

Brogan flies a courier service between remote jungle outposts of the Amazon where ruthless crime bosses bludgeon their ways to wealth in land rackets, prostitution, extortion, illegal gem trading, drugs, gun-running and smuggling. He plots to do no more than upset the smooth running of the graft that plagues his world, yet back-stabbing by cartel middle men goaded by greed converts the hiccup into a stumble that generates into a fall to begin a slide that snowballs into an avalanche.

Into the hot-pot of dropouts from civilization that Amazonia attracts, stir in schemers and grafters, a novice priest on his founding assignment, the erstwhile upholders of law and order, ethnic Indians who resent the intruders and those who somehow continue to hold a moral faith in an environment that exists largely on moral faithlessness; you soon have simmering a rich ragout of intrigue, murder, subterfuge, romance and adventure.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wings ePress, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9781597051859

Book preview

A Wings ePress, Inc.

General Fiction Historical Novel

Wings ePress, Inc.

Edited by: Karen Babcock

Copy Edited by: Shonna Brannon

Senior Editor: Dianne Hamilton

Managing Editor: Leslie Hodges

Executive Editor: Lorraine Stephens

Cover Artist: Kev Richardson

All rights reserved

NAMES, CHARACTERS AND incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Wings ePress Books

http://www.wings-press.com

Copyright © 2007 by Kevin Richardson

ISBN  978-1-59705-185-9

Published by Wings ePress, Inc. at Smashwords

Published In the United States Of America

November 2007

Wings ePress Inc.

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Richmond, KY 40475

One

Leticia, Colombia

June, 1939

His balls itched.

Fingernails scratched irritably at his crotch until, as fingers found their mark, facial wrinkles eased. For the moment at least, anger gave way to relief, only to spark again as the motor spluttered in an agony of coughs.

Both men sucked in breaths.

We up shit-street if it fuckin croaks now.

The priest was repelled by Schiller’s vulgarity and closed his eyes, an ‘if the eyes can’t see maybe the ears won’t hear’ reaction.

Arschloch! Schiller kicked the engine housing hard enough to split the rotting timbers. All fuckin night you want us stuck here, eh?

I hadn’t expected to come amongst the Indians so soon, Señor Schiller. It was good of you to offer...

Schiller’s response was a grunt.

...perhaps then, marooned overnight, is opportunity for me to see how they live, learn their customs?

"No fuckin overnight ashore. If motor croaks, then far out we anchor. Eat their comida, you get gut gripe. Them mongrels fill you with poisons no fuckin God can cure you of."

The priest closed his eyes even more tightly but the profanity reverberated like the rumble of thunder. Only thing worse than spending a night on the river slapping at mosquitos for hours on end, knowing alligators and piranhas wait for a hand to reach over the side, a night of being hungry and thirsty, for they’d brought no food, was spending a night in Schiller’s company. He was repelled at the prospect of suffering the man’s stench for hours, even more than abiding his habit of coughing up phlegm to spit far out on the river. The priest’s only relief in the moment was that there was no one else present to whom he must admit how obnoxious, how physically repulsive he found Schiller.

You will meet all kinds out there, he had been taught in the seminary. His training had conditioned him to be patronisingly ambivalent in respect of all he would meet in his calling.

Yet you are still to discover most, his alter ego insisted.

Sheltered youth had kept the world at arm’s length, for he was farm bred, in the quiet dales of Curico in the shadows of Chile’s Andes, where few strangers broke their travels. Until high school in Santiago, he had never met city people, never experienced life beyond his homely village. He knew there were Schillers in the world yet was afraid of them, not of the men themselves for he accepted that despite their coarseness they meant him no physical harm, nor even spiritual; it was simply that he was unsure how to react to them, ignorant of how such men thought other than with selfishness and greed.

It was the fear of being out of his depth that caused him uneasiness, a fear that would dissipate only with experiences yet to suffer. But if they must now spend a night marooned together in this small boat, he would do it with good grace, seek a way to welcome rather than dread it, see it as opportunity for discovering new measures.

The engine spluttered, gave a final cough and died.

Then Schiller exploded.

"Fuckin Christ, it’s murder I will, the cabron wot fix this goddam thing."

He snatched the battered panama from his head and hurled it at the engine box to then sit with his head in his hands.

Padre Franciscus didn’t close his eyes this time. Already he was learning. To close his eyes every time his ears had been offended since arriving in the jungle, he may as well be blind. And his failure to see how he could possibly help in the situation caused a twinge of guilt; here was Schiller in this trouble for having offered to bring him.

Yet Schiller never did anything from the goodness of his heart. He was due to visit the Indians anyway; a consignment of artefacts was to be collected. But it was Schiller’s style to make even small capital of a situation and he’d seen this as opportunity to ingratiate himself with the new padre, hold out a hand in friendship that might provide useful payback some day. In fact his present distemper was for having to spend a night in company so uninviting; Schiller of all people spending a night with a priest would have him the butt of many a silent snigger.

Yet the priest remained innocently unaware of Schiller’s mind.

What is normal procedure when someone is overdue on the river? Will they come look for us?

They know Schiller not stay in jungle. When dark, they know we got trouble. But they not come when dark, so it a fuckin night out we got.

BRIDIE’S BAR, LETICIA

It’s worried I am, Carlos, it bein’ the new father’s first time.

Carlos flashed his debonair smile, knowing it never failed to send a shiver of thrill through Bridie Rourke.

Carlos Cordova was one of the beautiful Colombians. Many of the world’s selective women claimed Colombia’s mestizo men were the world’s most beautiful.

Not just the most handsome, Bridie would insist to sceptics, the most beautiful. It’s the Hispanic-Indian mix that gives that golden hue to the skin, high cheekbones, the narrowing of eyes, jet black hair and deep, ever so deep brown eyes.

Bridie shivered again at her thoughts. Young Carlos was not only endowed with all these glamorous traits, she claimed, his skin was even darker than most, a burnished gold, his eyes so deep and dark they gleamed and danced. He had a dimple in the chin so that when he flashed his impish smile, she felt all a-tingle.

He flashed it now because he doubted it was the padre that worried her.

I know you too well, Bridie Rourke. The honourable Herr Schiller is picking up a consignment for you and you worry that something is wrong.

Ooh Carlos, it’s too low an opinion that yer have of me.

No two people could be as dissimilar. Carlos stood medium to tall, and angular, Bridie short and round, her skin a bleached yet blotchy white, hair the fiery colour of carrot, eyes green, a distant green, the green of far-off Erin. She ran the town barotte, a sleazy bar fronting a guesthouse that was rarely full despite it was the cleanest, neatest old building in what could only be described as a miserable town full of only wretched buildings.

Yet she was ever quick, too quick, most said, to insist her reasons for living in such a backwater were private.

You’re into drugs, Bridie, even deeper than Schiller. You of all people know it is futile trying to keep a secret in this town.

They both grinned, knowing it for the truth.

But it’s truly concerned I am, Carlos. Schiller is the one man in all the world who can bring such a novice undone in an hour, let alone after them bein’ a whole night together.

You are right, as ever, but we can do nothing tonight. At dawn I’ll mount a search. If right now they are in a fix, there can be no better man than Schiller, devil take him, to make the best of it.

Carlos Cordova had been born in the jungle, raised on its edge, grown up river-wise and could quickly sum up every person to arrive there. He was her idol, and she his champion. He was little more than half her age yet in her eyes he could do no wrong. Had she a son, Bridie would want him to grow like Carlos, not merely handsome and beautiful but sensible, aware. It was not clever sense she saw in him, nor the inspirational sense of youth; it was all common sense. The Indian in him, she reckoned.

Well, it’s you who is best to know, my love, but it’s for the poor father I feel, stuck alone with Schiller. He’s not yet ready for such initiation.

Maybe you should offer to hear his confession when he returns, eh, Bridie?

Ooh, go on with you. It’s no doubt the poor man’ll survive, but he’ll be weakened in spirit, in resolve. He’s no match for the likes o’ Schiller, who’ll plant seeds of doubt in his mind even before he gets about the business he’s here for.

And will he save the Yaguas from themselves, Bridie? Is that why he’s come?

Carlos flashed the impish smile again, and she crumbled.

Yer baitin’ me, Carlos, which ain’t fair. It’s the father’s faith I’m worried for, not the heathen Indians.

Don’t worry, Bridie. They won’t stop making up their potions even if the padre does deliver them God.

Sure and yer don’t expect me to say they make up potions for me, Carlos, for they don’t and yer know they don’t.

She quickly clapped a plump hand over her mouth to half smother her smile. She knew that he knew.

Carlos was aide to the regional comisario responsible for clamping down on illicit border trade, the smuggling of cocaine and emeralds, the trading in Indian drugs, aphrodisiacs that could as quickly poison a man as improve his libido. And especially of Cacao Sabanero, locally known as CS, the dangerous, undetectable drug for which dealers were beginning to find markets in North America and Europe.

So with Carlos she need be careful, for he knew she knew he knew. But he also knew she adored him, would never place him in jeopardy through whatever clandestine business she was involved in. Yet nor could she openly admit her involvement, for that would create a dilemma for his conscience.

She was, however, prepared to throw Schiller into the slop-pile for he would do it to her if it suited his purpose, yet for the time being she needed Schiller to ferry her potions and poisons through his network. She needed him despite she despised him. And need and greed supplant any conscionable motive for wanting to see such a man undone.

"There are some people who travel to the ends of the earth and never leave home. We Americans are especially prone to this disease," wrote Carol Hollinger some fifty years ago in her delightful little memoir Mai Pen Rai.

The same could be said of Australians of the 1930s, for they hailed from the most provincial country on earth in terms of isolation from the rest of the western world. Brogan, for most of his life, had lived in that frontier’s far outback, yet now found himself in remote Leticia. Yet unlike the way Carol Hollinger saw her countrymen, he was uniquely adaptive to change, thoroughly conscious of how far he had travelled, not only in terms of geography but of experiences gained.

He slotted easily into his new environment.

Right now he flew over a jungle spread further and wider than even African jungles. Here it was like a lush green carpet with ribbons of red, twisting and turning like coils of an anaconda, the living spirit of Amazonia.

He by now knew every twist and turn, read the colours and contours of the rivers like a map. Every minute within a thousand-kilometre radius he could pinpoint his position, know how far yet to go, how many litres still slopped about in the spare tank behind his seat and how many would remain on arrival. Running low on fuel in El Amazonas was like knowing a contract was out on you. There was no escape, merely an inevitable end.

Ah, the Yellow.

The ribbon of red below now had a hint of yellow, the hue more scarlet than the ox-blood soil of the jungle, labelling it the lower Yavari.

Amazon waters here comprised hundreds of tributaries cascading down from the Andes, alluvial deposits tinting the water such that it was generally known as The Yellow Amazon. As it flowed east into Brazil it changed colour with deposits of alluvial soil from Venezuela to become The Black Amazon. Yet the Rio Yavari below, defining Peru’s border with Brazil, decidedly red in hue, was beginning to show hints of yellow. Soon, now, he would sight the confluence, see the broad yellow band of the Amazon itself.

On that junction stood home, the straggle of buildings that was Leticia, an ugly stain like a smudge of rust on the green carpet.

The engine purred sweetly, a sound as familiar as the lay of the land, for it was a motor tended like a baby, nursed, caressed and pampered. Faith in his motor was as essential to life as knowing the level of fuel.

And there it was. Leticia clung nervously to its patch of cleared ground, seeming to dare the jungle to creep further, push it into the river.

He strained his eyes against the glare of sunlight on the water, wiped a glove across his goggles to satisfy his mind that the river was clear. He pushed the joystick forward, eased his right foot gently and shifted posture so that he sat alert. The movements were synchronised, automatic. Muscular procedure for dropping a floatplane on a river was by now as instinctive as breathing.

He made his customary dry run along the landing path, a habit to both alert boats against moving into the stream and to check there was no flotsam. The sudden sight of a floating tree trunk on touchdown could well be the last thing an airman saw. And as he pulled out of the dry run, he could see the naked children waving, already running for the pontoon at the end of his jetty.

From the air, everything about the jumble of untidy buildings was a murky red, the red of the Amazon soil that left a film over everything in the dry, oozed over in the wet, either way leaving the stain that never washed off.

Not unlike the familiar red of corner country in Australia’s centre, he reckoned.

Carlos was waiting on the pontoon by the time he taxied in, and they passed not a word of greeting, even when Brogan caught the tether Carlos threw. Then they shook hands, stretched an arm each around the other’s shoulder and strode up the hill to Bridie’s Bar, a process of ritual. And like all ritual on the Amazon they were unhurried, neither in movement nor eagerness to exchange news, the latest gossip either of here or from ‘out there’.

Having reached the shade of Bridie’s verandah and waited for the coffee she had set to brew the minute she heard the distant hum, Carlos broke the silence.

If not too tired, my friend, can you take a run downriver in case there’s a problem more urgent than my boy’s boat can cope with?

What sort of problem?

Schiller took the new padre downriver yesterday and they didn’t come home last night. I sent off a boat at dawn.

Brogan smiled.

If it were simply Schiller, my friend, the answer would be ‘yes, I am, by far, too tired’. But for your padre I can do it.

His voice, like his complexion, was rough and brittle. He had wizened skin for a man of mid-thirties, toughened by life in the unrelenting sun of Australia’s outback, the sand and gibber deserts of Innamincka and Cameron’s Corner.

They shared a smile, and Carlos motioned Bridie to join them.

Strange bedfellows. What takes Schiller downriver with a priest?

That be dependin’ on who yer askin’, me darlin’.

So what if it be Schiller, I’m askin’? Brogan dropped playfully into her brogue.

He be doin’ the father a kind deed, puttin’ himself out especial like, takin’ him down river to meet the Yaguas.

And what if it be you that I’m askin’? he cooed, twigging her cheek.

Schiller must have dirty business there and the padre asked if he could come for the ride, the poor innocent.

Brogan had yet to meet the padre. He had left Leticia a week ago, knowing only that a new man was due.

What is so innocent about him that you should share such concern, him being with Schiller?

Carlos was quick to answer, his explanation likely more to the point than Bridie’s patronising sentiment.

He is but a boy, my friend, fresh from college, still wrapped in swaddling, thrown into this pit of human jetsam before he’s even learned to walk. His every sensitivity is yet shrouded in the folds of the Pope’s cassock.

Bridie blessed herself, kissing her thumb not once but three times.

Being a bystander with the padre, Carlos, an independent observer—he grinned—not a frontline player in religious stakes like Bridie, suggests the concern is real, eh? So you want me to pluck him from the devil’s clutches before his soul is too badly singed?

He quaffed the coffee and reached for helmet and goggles, glancing to the river, nodding in satisfaction that the refuelling was finished. It was part of the ritual, boys jumping to the topping-up task as soon as he tied up. Already they were toting an empty drum back along the jetty, others drawing covers over the cockpits.

But suddenly the smile turned sour, eyes fixed on several boys who had cigarettes drooping from the corners of their mouths.

I’ll take a bloody stockwhip to them, he bellowed. And ran for the jetty.

Carlos smiled, watching Brogan snatch the offending smokes from the boys’ mouths to throw them in the river, to then berate the boys loudly. His arms pointed first to the drums, then to the plane before finally waving in a great arc.

Brogan turned then, to wave, aping an exaggerated shrug of shoulders before climbing into his cockpit. Carlos and Bridie watched the little biplane gather speed, Brogan’s white scarf streaming in the wind.

It’s a gorgeous man he is, Carlos. What brought him here, keeps him here, do yer reckon?

Same as you, I guess Bridie. And Schiller. And all the gringos.

She had asked the question as often as he asked it of himself.

It is indeed strange finding such a man here, unique in fact. A man born and raised in a desert is beyond every conceivable expectation to be found in El Amazonas. Most gringos arriving here are either fleeing something, or simply seeking change, and those ones usually move on in a hurry. Isolation, heat, all the discomforts of a jungle suffocates them, to say nothing of boredom. Those escaping are the ones who stay. Like you, Bridie. Yet Brogan doesn’t give the impression of being a runner, or simply an adventurer, he seems to have a purpose about life and that makes a gringo unique in Leticia.

But neither he nor I are drifters, Carlos, despite maybe settling here for different reasons. He’s planted roots, created a business, adopted a meaningful role in the community, shouldered responsibility. And in a perverse sense so has Schiller despite his contribution is less wholesome. But the padre, Carlos? He is no gringo so why is he different from you?

He was sent here, Bridie, he had no choice, and I am certainly here by choice. I am a local and I guess part gringo, a foot in each camp anyway, so that gives me opportunity to see both sides of the coin.

Part gringo? Bridie knew his mother had been Yagua and had always imagined his father a Hispanic local.

Carlos grinned; a little wryly it seemed to her.

My mother would never tell me much about my father so to me he is but a ghostly image. The Indian style is to be sparing in talking of the past, they live only for the present. She told me only of his devout spiritual strength, hope that she would raise their child in his faith despite he couldn’t stay. I have often wondered, Bridie, if he might have been a priestly man like the new padre but who fell by the wayside, suffered the slip, made the mistake of a moment that couldn’t be undone.

She let a moment pass.

But the older locals, Carlos, they surely know, and this town being such a hot-bed of gossip...

Think on it, Bridie. It’s the gringos who gossip. Locals maintain an insular mind and to ask them would embarrass them. I have learned to get by with the question unanswered.

Bridie did not pursue it despite she would love to learn every detail about this man she loved like a son.

So she returned to Brogan.

Well ‘ghostly’ is a term to also fit Brogan then. All he has told is that he was born in a droving camp, never known his mother and that his father went off to the war in Europe, a light-horseman or something, to never return. Yet I hadn’t realised Australians wear turbans like Arabs.

He has told me, Bridie, and which in no way can be construed as gossip, that after his father’s death he was raised by an Afghan camel trekker to adopt many Moslem customs. Wearing a turban in Australia’s desert became sensible habit, he told me.

It riles me that Schiller refers to him as ‘Fuckin Arab’.

That is simply Schiller’s arrogance. And it’s typical Australian humour it seems, to leave the fellow guessing.

CALI, COLOMBIA

Cali challenged Bogota and Medellin as crime capital of the world’s most crime-infested country. Greasing palms and turning blind eyes were prime ingredients in graft and corruption the world over, and by those measures, Colombia glittered as the most shining example in the world’s most dangerous continent.

It was home to JoseAntonio Ramirez, who ruled his sordid empire with ruthless vigour. Trade protection, prostitution and emerald smuggling were enormously lucrative yet shrank into insignificance compared to his gunrunning operation. South America had ever been a haven for arms dealers, and Ramirez found Cali an excellent location for monitoring shipments. Supplies from the USA crossed the Caribbean to Colombia’s north coast and, his major markets being Ecuador and Peru, whichever port they were shipped into, they must pass through Cali on the country’s only southbound road.

Ramirez had the hungry markets of Peru and Ecuador to himself and exploited them to the full.

Freighting to Ecuador is as simple as driving the Cali road south to Quito, he liked to explain, but delivering into Peru has always been difficult. The only road is through Ecuador and with it and Peru heading for war, using that road is not an option.

Colombia and Peru shared more than a thousand kilometres of border, yet jungle for its entire length was so impenetrable