Authors: Gary Ponzo
Walt had to smile at that one. It was no secret that the FBI and CIA were constantly at each other’s throats over jurisdiction. Since this assignment was in South America, the CIA would have the authority to control the situation, but that wasn’t happening here. And it took an order from the Commander-in-Chief to make that happen.
“Ken’s in Egypt breaking in a new field director,” Walt said, speaking of Ken Morris, the CIA Director, with more than a little contentment in his voice.
Riggs returned the grin. “I don’t know, Walt. You want all that responsibility?”
Walt looked up at Riggs. “Why? Are you leaving for vacation?”
“I’m just saying. As soon as something goes wrong, you know Ken’s going to be able to point the finger at you.”
Walt clicked his computer mouse and began to focus on his latest e-mails. “Don’t worry, I’ll have a finger ready for him as well.”
Riggs laughed. Both of them multitasking at warp speed, trying to find an answer to a question that wasn’t answerable.
The door opened and Walt’s boss, FBI Director Louis Dutton, came in carrying a brief bag and a cup of coffee from Starbucks.
Dutton patted Riggs on the shoulder and looked around to decide where to situate the meeting. There was a large coffee table sandwiched between two leather couches which served as a gathering spot for most staff meetings.
“Who else is coming?” Dutton asked.
“Just Fisk,” Walt said.
Dutton shrugged and dropped his brief and coffee on Walt’s massive desk and pulled up a chair next to Riggs. He unloaded his tablet from the bag as a couple of flash drives and assorted paper files spilled out. Walt swiveled his twenty-four-inch computer monitor for everyone to see. On the screen was the latest satellite images from a specific region over Colombia.
“Here’s the latest image,” Walt said. He played with the controls, trying to illuminate the picture as best he could. “It’s not even sunrise yet, so it’s hard to distinguish much.”
“Distinguish?” Dutton said. “All I see are trees.”
Walt kept trying to adjust the clarity, but the image kept getting grainier as he zoomed in and less detailed as he zoomed out.
After a slight tap on the door, Sam Fisk came in with a McDonald’s bag. He was still wearing the suit he’d worn last night, minus the tie. He dropped the bag on the coffee table and poured himself a cup of coffee from the counter.
“You look like crap,” Riggs said.
“I feel worse,” Fisk said, stirring his coffee with a wooden stick.
“How’s the president?” Walt asked.
Fisk’s large hand practically covered the entire cup of coffee as he took a sip and faced the team. “Not good.”
“What are his expectations?” Dutton asked.
Fisk reached into the McDonald’s bag and unwrapped some sort of breakfast sandwich. He took a bite of the sandwich and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Once he swallowed, he said, “At the moment his expectations are unrealistic.”
“Why’s that?”
Fisk dropped the sandwich on the coffee table and began a slow pace. “Because we have no reliable assets down there. The jungle canopy is so thick our satellite images are useless. There’s no way we could send as much as a drone over that airspace without being detected. A team of soldiers would trigger an immediate response. As soon as the Camenos knew we were there, they’d kill Trent immediately.”
Fisk gestured to Walt. “Did you have time to review that data I sent you?”
Walt grimaced. “Yes.” He clicked the mouse a few times and began reciting the information. “We currently have thirty-five CIA operatives in Colombia. Ten in Bogota and twenty-five in Medellin. That’s it. The rainforest consumes the entire southeastern portion of the country. For obvious reasons we have no contacts down there. There’s never been a reason.”
Riggs placed his tablet on the desk and folded his arms. “I’ve spent some time in the Amazon. Once these two men step foot into the jungle, they will instantly become prey. And I’m not even speaking about cartel thugs. I‘m talking about the deadly coral snakes, the piranha, the anaconda, the cyanide-squirting millipedes. They have parasitic worms which cause blindness, the phyllobates terribilis, a frog which contains enough toxins to kill a hundred men, red hairy chiggers that consume human tissue, ticks, poisonous spiders, do you want me to go on?”
Fisk acknowledged the comment with a terse glare. He looked at Walt. “Do we have a guide prepared to assist them?”
Walt kept his attention on the computer screen. “Nick is lining one up right now.” In the corner of his eye, Walt could tell Fisk was ready to challenge the answer, but then must’ve noticed the avoiding eye contact.
“Okay,” Fisk said and wisely left it at that.
They waited as Fisk pursed his lips and dropped down on one of the couches, his legs giving way like a boxer in the twelfth round of a championship fight. He leaned back and sighed. “What other options do we have?”
There was a prolonged silence until Riggs said, “We can negotiate.”
Fisk slowly moved his head from side to side. “I know the president of Colombia fairly well. He’s unstable. Maybe even bipolar. I doubt he’ll ever allow Trent to live.”
“Have you told the president that?”
“Yes.”
Again silence as they grappled with their dilemma.
Fisk bent forward, placed a hand on each knee and pushed off until he was standing again. He resumed a slow pace with his hands in his pockets. “How else can we reduce our risk?”
Walt’s phone vibrated on the desk and he looked at the display. “It’s Mac,” he said. “Maybe he found something over at Trent’s house.”
Walt picked up the phone and listened for almost a minute. He said thanks, then put his phone down and scrutinized the image on his computer screen. He clicked the mouse a couple of times and the longitude and latitude lines appeared.
Walt pointed to a specific spot on the screen. “Here. Just east of that deforestation along the border of Brazil. That’s where Trent was headed just before he was captured. He left the exact coordinates in a text message to his wife the day before yesterday.”
Walt made a red X pop up on the monitor, then zoomed in on the image. It was nothing but a green blur.
“What if we can get them into that exact spot?” Fisk asked. “How close do you think they’d be?”
“I’d guess inside of five or ten square miles,” Walt said, staring at the image, trying to evoke a clue with his glare.
“Is that something we can pull off?” Fisk asked, obviously searching for a positive response.
The men at the desk exchanged glances. Finally, FBI Director Louis Dutton pushed back on his chair and leaned forward, elbows on his thighs. “Let’s abort, Sam. Why kill off our best agents for an impossible rescue mission like this?”
Fisk picked up his sandwich and shoved the final piece into his mouth as if he were in a competition. He quickly chewed, then washed it down with a sip of coffee. He placed the coffee back on the table and scrunched up the McDonald’s bag in his right hand.
“The problem is,” Fisk said, moving in a tight circle now, “Nick and Matt have saved our skins so many times, John thinks they’re invincible.”
“But why—”
“Because it’s Trent, dammit!” Fisk snapped at Dutton. “That’s why.”
There was silence while they collectively remembered the September eleventh disaster which took thousands of American lives, including the president’s brother, Paul Merrick, who was working at the Pentagon when the attack occurred. Now, Trent was the only sibling he had left.
The testosterone level escalated, while the roomful of type-A personalities tried to find common ground. Walt looked down at his desk wanting to say something to protect his crew, but when the Commander-in-Chief gave an order, it was his job to follow.
Fisk seemed to assess the department heads with a sense of empathy.
Finally, Riggs broke the silence. “Sam, he’s no dummy. He must know this is a suicide mission.”
“Oh, he knows,” Fisk said, squeezing the McDonald’s bag until it was a merely the size of a golf ball in the palm of his right hand. “He knows.”
Chapter 8
Manny Padilla found Trent Merrick lying behind a Brazil Nut tree. It was still a couple of hours before dawn broke, so he and a dozen men had to canvas the perimeter of the camp with their spotlights. The American prisoner was only thirty feet from his tent. His face was saturated from the jungle humidity even in the middle of the night. He had obviously crawled to his current location.
Padilla ordered his men back to their quarters and told Garcia to stay. “Where did you think you might go?” Padilla asked Trent.
The man huffed while rubbing his splinted leg. “Just out for a stroll.”
“You do not appreciate your situation, do you? You are fifty miles from the closest village. Even if you managed to guess the correct direction, you couldn’t crawl there inside of a month. The beasts of the jungle would ingest you before you left the shadows of our camp.”
Garcia snickered and Padilla squinted. “What is so funny, Carlos?”
Garcia stood stone-faced.
Padilla turned back to his prisoner. He could feel his blood pressure begin to escalate as he considered his options. Padilla could kill the American and be back in Medellin for dinner tomorrow night. His boots began to sink in the soggy jungle floor. As he pulled up on his boot, it made a sucking sound as it came free. He took two wide steps back, looking down at his muddied footwear. He let out a low growl, then readjusted his spotlight on the American. Once again Padilla was losing the battle with his temper.
He shook his head and pulled his gun from his holster. The American squirmed in the dark, his back up again the tree, nowhere to go.
“I cannot wait any longer,” Padilla said. As he stretched out the pistol, his phone chirped. He looked down at the number and saw who it was. Pablo Moreno. The middle of the night and he is still at it. Does not the man ever stop?
Padilla touched the screen and put the phone to his ear. “Yes, Patron.”
“Amigo,” Moreno said in a loud voice. There was music playing and women’s voices cackling. “How are you?”
“I am well,” Padilla said, flipping the gun in his hand like a cowboy, just wishing the American would try something. “You are up late.”
It was clear Moreno was talking over the speakerphone, the entire party coming to life while Padilla slapped at mosquitoes. He could practically smell the cigar burning between Moreno’s fingers.
“Listen, Manny, I have a bet with Julio,” Moreno yelled. “I say the American prisoner is already dead. He says you have changed and are ready to accept responsible chores. Tell us, who wins the bet?”
Padilla lowered his gun and frowned. “You have lost, Patron, because the American prisoner is still very alive.”
There was a boisterous cheer on the other end of the line, while beer bottles rattled against each other.
Finally after thirty seconds of roaring laughter and screams of delight, Moreno said, “You have made me proud, Manny. This is one bet I do not mind paying.”
The flamboyant cartel leader of the Cameno Cartel hung up the phone and left Padilla in the stillness of the rainforest. He kicked the American in his bad leg and watched him double over in agony.
“Get him back inside,” Padilla ordered Carlos. “And be sure to have him staked to the ground, so we don’t have to pull him from an anaconda’s belly.” Then he pointed the gun at the president’s brother. “You are dead. You just do not know it yet.”
* * *
Matt pulled over the SUV in the quiet neighborhood and snapped his gearshift into park as a pair of headlights slowed behind him.
“Who is it?” Nick asked, twisting around in the passenger seat to see who was following them.
Matt glanced at the dashboard. “It’s three thirty in the morning. I don’t think it’s the paperboy.”
The headlights slowed even further until the driver of the vehicle stepped on the gas and swerved to the side of the road and slammed on his brakes, coming to a stop just inches behind Matt’s car.
Matt unsnapped his holster. Nick already had his gun in his hand. Two figures jumped out of the car, both heading to Matt’s side of the car, immediately announcing their amateur status. They wore dark clothes and full-face ski masks to disguise themselves. Both of them held out pistols while the driver’s side guy barked for Matt and Nick to get out of the car.
Matt shook his head and let out a breath. “Teenagers.”
“Now don’t go and hurt them,” Nick said. “They’re too young to know what they’re—”
“Stop,” Matt pointed to his partner. “You’re too easy on these punks.”
“Get out,” barked the lead assailant in a high-pitched tone. Both of the kids were now waving their pistols just like they’d seen it done in the movies.
Matt slowly got out of the car.
“This is a hold up,” the boy said.
Matt rolled his eyes. “No it isn’t.”
“You don’t see these guns, mister?”
Matt rubbed some residual sleep from his eyes. “You picked the wrong guys to pull over. We’re with the FBI.”
“Shit,” the lead kid said, immediately lowering his gun. He looked at his fellow thief and said, “You told me he was a basketball player.”
“I did not,” the second boy said, still holding out his gun, but without the enthusiasm. “I said he looked like a basketball player.”
“Hey, that’s great,” Matt said, approaching the boys with his hands out. “Now give me the guns before someone gets hurt.”
They both stood frozen, waiting for the other to move.
“Guys,” Matt said, “this is Payson, not South LA. There hasn’t been a murder here in almost a year. You guys aren’t hardcore, so don’t go down with a hardcore sentence.” Matt pointed to the tattoo on the side of the lead kid’s leg and winced. “Besides, that’s the same lion tattoo everyone on the Payson High School Marching Band got last fall before the playoffs. How long before they find you? Two hours?”
This got the kid fidgeting. He was almost there.
Matt pointed over his shoulder. “My partner has already phoned the sheriff’s office and they’ve been listening in on this conversation.” Matt shrugged. “C’mon guys. You really going to shoot a federal officer and spend the rest of your life cuddling with bodybuilders?”