📸 Photo

- FROM HEAVEN TO HELL -

thrown to the lions so that he could slip around us unnoticed. It was a thought that would haunt me throughout our time in Venezuela.

I was convinced that he was carrying drugs, too. I felt like we'd been the bait, and he was the main man. Had the Russian done a deal to make the cops look good nicking us, but also thereby ensuring his drugs still got through with the 'real' smuggler? What were ten kilos of charlie to a cartel? Naff all. It was expendable – and so were we.

One of the armed guards smirked, 'This is thirty years in prison, boys, thirty years.'

I couldn't believe it. All I could think to say was, 'Oh, fuck.'

And he smashed me in the chest with his pump-action shotgun.

'You no say "fuck"!' he shouted at me. 'I see Die Hard. I know what "fuck" means.' A tiny, tiny part of me – the only bit that wasn't terrified – actually wanted to laugh at that. It seemed surreal that there we were, about to get Christ knows what punishment, and here was this twat talking about Bruce Willis. But I'd already worked out that laughing in the cop's face would mean another smack with his shotgun, so I shut it.

They cut the vests off of our backs with bowie knives and dumped them on a table in the middle of the room. The vests made a huge, heavy, clumping noise when they landed. There was a serious amount of class-A