Authors: Ross Sidor
“He could be dead already,” Culler noted.
“Then I’ll snoop around and see what I can find,”
Avery said. He yawned. “If Canastilla’s in danger, then we need to move now. Work
out my travel arrangements and cover for action. I want a sanitized weapon,
preferably a Glock, waiting for me in Panama City.”
Avery started to get up. He hoped to be in the air
within the next couple hours. At least he’d be able to sleep on the flight.
“Wait,” Daniel said, and Avery froze. “There’s
something else we need to take into consideration. In his message, Canastilla
requested that we specifically send you.”
“Me?”
“Not you personally, but he used your codename. He
asked for Carnivore.”
Avery slumped back into his chair.
“What? How the hell is that possible?” Culler said. “He’s
no reason to even know that name.”
“I don’t understand it either,” Daniel said. “I’m the
only one from ANIC who knows your man’s codename, and I was only informed of it
last week, before Operation Phoenix. I’ve spoken to no one about it.”
“Okay,” Culler said, trying to control his temper,
“but how many people have access to the Phoenix after-action briefs and mission
analysis reports? How many transmissions were made during the mission
containing Carnivore’s codename?”
“Carnivore was not identified by name in the reports
disseminated throughout my government. His name also has not been mentioned in
any transmitted cables that the Venezuelans may have intercepted. We took
operational security very seriously.”
“Not seriously enough,” Culler said, “because we’re
obviously compromised.”
“Daniel,” Slayton said, “tell us again, what were
Canastilla’s exact words?”
The Colombian consulted the sheet of paper in front of
him and read, “Compromised. Initiate Omega protocol. Send Carnivore. Carnivore
is the only one we can trust. Central High Command discussing possible terrorist
attacks inside US.”
“Okay,” Slayton said, trying to make sense of it. “Canastilla
is on the Central High Command’s operations staff. It stands to reason that
he’d have access to information coming in from FARC intelligence networks. Maybe
Canastilla knows just how badly ANIC’s compromised and doesn’t trust your
people. Maybe FARC’s already received the Phoenix after-action reports from
their source, and Canastilla knows there’s a specialized, lone wolf American
operator in the theater, someone who he knows
isn’t
compromised.”
Avery nodded. It was a nice explanation, but it didn’t
offer him much comfort, since he was the one going in, and he didn’t like leaving
anything to guesswork.
“Regardless,” Daniel said, “we can speculate all day
long, but it won’t do us any good, and it certainly won’t help Canastilla. We
need to make a decision, gentlemen.”
“It’s up to you,” Culler told Avery. He knew what
Avery’s answer would be, and for once he felt guilty handing him a shit job. “Frankly,
I don’t like it, and if it was my ass on the line, I sure as hell wouldn’t go.
It’ll have to be deniable, non-official cover. We’re sure as hell not alerting
the Panamanians that we’re running an op on their soil.
“I’ve already said I’ll go,” Avery snapped, annoyed. He
thought they were wasting time.
“What about Canastilla’s family?” Slayton asked. “How
will w bring them out? That is, if we can even find them. If they’re left in
place, FARC’s internal security units will snatch them up the moment they
realize what happened.”
“They stay in a village in Santander,” said Daniel.
“The army is making arrangements to extract them by helicopter. There may be
complications. His wife is a staunch FARC loyalist who Canastilla met
after
Deep Sting began. She might not be interested in going with us. But that is
significant. She’s an enemy sympathizer, and what happens to her does not
concern us as long as she has no bearing over Canastilla’s cooperation.
Canastilla is the priority.”
“I’m not doing this one alone,” Avery said. “Do we
have anyone in Panama, Matt? Paramilitary or contractors?”
“Not any who are readily available.”
“I will assign two members of our Special Forces,
seconded to ANIC, to accompany you,” Daniel offered. “Captain Felix Aguilar and
Sergeant Jon Castillo. If that is acceptable to you, of course.”
“Completely.”
Avery
flew in from Bogotá aboard a Copa Airlines flight, arriving at Panama’s Tocumen
International Airport at 11:47AM. He breezed through customs on his forged
passport and tourist card, which the CIA Bogotá station had prepared for him on
the fly. Though he carried business cards for a CIA front company with a
professionally designed website and a front office number, his cover as a
Canadian investor was paper thin, poorly backstopped, and wouldn’t stand up
against close scrutiny. But this was Panama, not Cuba or Venezuela, and the
Panamanian customs and immigration agencies weren’t likely to look into it.
When Avery turned his phone back on after the flight,
he had a text from Culler, telling him that they were 90% sure Canastilla was
inside the hotel, that the job was on, and to check his e-mail if he wanted
details. In this case, e-mail meant Intelink, the secure Internet network used
by American intelligence agencies.
Avery sent Culler a one-word acknowledgement, but
didn’t ask any questions. He knew Culler had the Agency and NSA people working
hard overnight trying to garner a lead on Canastilla’s position.
Avery picked up his rental car, a 2010 Honda Inspire
at the airport. From there it was a slow-going thirty minute drive on the toll
road to Panama City. Traffic was a nightmare, worse than he remembered, the
streets congested with near bumper-to-bumper traffic and constant jams at major
intersections. Pedestrians crossed the streets wherever they pleased, weaving
between stopped cars. Local drivers were aggressive and didn’t believe in
giving anyone the right of way. Motorcyclists were an incessant irritation,
weaving in between the lanes of slow-moving traffic and around cars.
Panama is a modern cosmopolitan city of just under a
million and a half people, plus plenty more on vacation or business. The city’s
crowded skyline comprised high rise buildings of shimmering glass and steel
nestled between the sparkling blue water of the Pacific Ocean and the bright
green foliage of the tropical rainforest. The city sat just seven feet above
sea level, and the air and sky were clean and fresh, lacking the thick
pollution and heavy smog of major Western and developing Asian cities.
Founded some five hundred years ago by Spanish
conquistadors, Panama was now considered an international city, given its prominent
role in the global economy. This was due to the Panama Canal, which accounts
for over half of the country’s GDP. Three hundred million tons of cargo passed
through the Canal annually, making it one of the most important waterways in
global trade.
Panama’s role in global trade and commerce also made
the city an important logistics hub for all manner of transnational crime,
ranging from money laundering, to arms trafficking, kidnapping, sex slaves, and
drugs.
Some neighborhoods and nearby districts were ridden
with enough gang and drug violence to make Chicago or LA’s inner neighborhoods
look tame by comparison, and bandits were always on the lookout for wealthy
tourists to rob or kidnap. Consequently, there was a heavy police presence
throughout the city, especially in the areas popular among foreign travelers
and tourists.
FARC was also known to maintain a small presence in Panama,
contrary to the Panamanian president’s recent proclamation that he’d
successfully forced them out of the country, a niggling point of contention
between the Colombian and Panamanian governments. FARC used Panamanian ports to
move drugs and weapons, and it wasn’t a surprise that some of FARC’s senior
political leaders opted to hide out here instead of rugging it out in the
Colombian jungles.
The good news was that Panama didn’t have a secret
police that routinely monitored suspicious foreigners or bugged hotel rooms, so
Avery could operate somewhat freely here, long as he practiced smart tradecraft
and discretion. Panama didn’t even have a military and instead kept only a
Ministry for Public Safety, a police force that wasn’t even specially trained
for counterintelligence and counterterrorism.
Before Aguilar and Castillo arrived later that day, Avery
planned to spend a couple hours doing pre-mission prep work, but first, he had
one stop to make.
He waited now in his Inspire on the top level of a
parking garage four blocks away from the office building housing the American embassy.
He had the wheels pointed to the left and the rear windows rolled half-way down,
the recognition signal to his local CIA contact.
Waiting several minutes past the arranged time, Avery
soon grew impatient. Finally he heard tires screeching at the top of the
entrance ramp, and a black Ford Crown Victoria pulled into the second spot off
his right, leaving a gap between the vehicles.
The CIA officer from the embassy climbed out, removed
two medium-sized suitcases from his trunk, and approached the Inspire.
Avery didn’t get out. He popped the Inspire’s trunk
and pointed with his thumb over his shoulder.
The CIA officer placed the cases inside the trunk and
slammed it shut.
He walked around the car to the driver side door.
Avery lowered the window and looked up at man.
“Shit, I recognize you. You’re one of Culler’s gunslingers
from GRS, aren’t you? What do they call you guys? Scorpions?”
This CIA officer—mid thirties, Hispanic—didn’t know what
a contractor was doing here on his turf, without the input of the chief of
station, but he had a fair idea what the cases contained, and he expressed in
no uncertain terms to Avery the ardent displeasure of COS Panama that an op was
being run on his turf without his authorization. He informed Avery that he
could expect no further assistance from Panama station. He even went as far as
to insinuate that the COS just may take the matter up with the ambassador, who
likewise had not been briefed on a covert action in Panama.
Avery thought the officer now berating him likely
never held a gun since his training at the Farm and had likely found it to be a
singularly distasteful, uncivilized experience.
COS Panama probably spent his days reporting to the
ambassador and attending diplomatic cocktail receptions, and when he did allow
his officers to partake in the business of espionage, it was most likely to get
the dirt on some foreign business illegally dumping industrial waste or to
bribe politicians to vote yes on new anti-pollution legislation, or something
equally vital to US national security.
After all, AMEMBASSY Panama proudly advertised its
LEED certification and the ambassador once emphasized that rainforest
conservation was one of his staff’s top priorities, following the president’s
declaration that it “was the mission of all US agencies to safeguard the
environment.” That no doubt included CIA.
The officer from Panama station was in mid-sentence
when Avery raised his window, shifted into reverse, and backed out of his spot.
He heard a hand slap against the trunk as he accelerated away toward the exit
ramp. In his rear view mirror, he saw the indignant CIA man holding his ground,
staring down the back end of the departing Inspire.
Avery wouldn’t put it past the Agency man to take note
of the make and model and the license plate number, and pass it along to the local
police to run interference. He decided that his team would have to stick with
Aguilar’s and Castillo’s vehicles.
Avery pulled over a dozen blocks away from the embassy,
after making certain he wasn’t being followed. He got out of the Inspire and
walked around to sweep the cases in the back with a small device provided by
Culler from the CIA’s Directorate of Science & Technology that was disguised
as an iPod. He found a GPS tracker in one of the cases, removed it, flicked it
away into the street, and got back behind the wheel.
His next stop was the Holiday Inn, near the Panama
Canal, where a room was reserved in his cover name. There, he sat down and
opened the cases from the embassy, to make sure that he had everything he’d
requested and that the COS hadn’t further tried to shaft him.
There were three Type III ballistics vests, encrypted
Motorola tactical radio units, a .45 caliber Glock 21, two SP-21 Barak 9mm
pistols, and a mini-Uzi submachine gun, plus spare ammunition and holsters. The
CIA station in Bogotá had delivered the gear in diplomatic lockboxes overnight
to the Panamanian embassy.
When he disassembled the weapons and inspected the
parts carefully, Avery discovered a tiny firing pin had been removed from one
of the Baraks. Otherwise, everything else appeared in order, but he was still
seething, wondering if it was just a sloppy fuck-up on Bogotá’s end, sending
faulty gear, or if it was something more insidious on the part of Panama
station.
He booted up his notebook computer and logged into Intelink
to see the update from Culler, who had tasked NSA with hacking into the Trump
Ocean Club’s security systems, to search the footage of the hotel’s
surveillance cameras. The hotel had a modern system, with the data from the
cameras stored digitally on a cloud. Culler also reported that Canastilla’s
phone was still turned on and stationary, indicating that Canastilla was almost
definitely still inside the hotel. Alive, dead, or held prisoner, no one could
say.
At Café Gazebo, a French restaurant across the street
from his hotel, Avery ate a meal of lightly sauced chicken, shrimp, rice, and
vegetables, the best meal he’d had since arriving in South America two weeks
ago, and then he returned to his room.
Twenty minutes later, he received a text on the
disposable, pre-paid phone he’d picked up in Bogotá for this mission. Aguilar and
Castillo had landed and were on their way from the airport. They were covered
as representatives of a Colombian bank, in town for the same conference Avery
was supposedly attending.
By 6:15PM, Aguilar and Castillo checked into their
room, and then joined Avery in his.
“I wasn’t expecting to see you so soon after you flew out
of Tolemaida in such a hurry,” Castillo said, grinning. “Maybe I can make good
on that beer I owe you while we’re here. I know a few good places here. Get you
laid, too, while we’re at it.”
“Sure,” Avery said dismissively. “But let’s focus on
one cluster fuck at a time, yeah?”
Castillo laughed, and Avery left it at that, wondering
why the Colombian was in such a good mood today.
“You too, boss,” Castillo told Aguilar. “I know you’re
not getting
prepagos
anymore with Maria out of the picture.”
Avery noticed that Aguilar shot Castillo a stern look
indicating he was broaching on a topic not open for discussion. Castillo took
the hint and said, “Sorry, boss.”
Last year, Aguilar’s wife, Maria, gave him the choice
of the army or her. It wasn’t a difficult decision. He picked the army,
unwilling to abandon the men who were closer to him than brothers during what
was still a time of war. Maria left with the children. He hadn’t spoken to her
in over a year, and occasionally his oldest son, fourteen, called him, against
his mother’s wishes.
Avery turned to Aguilar and said, “Thanks for coming,
Felix.”
“When Daniel contacted us, we didn’t think twice about
it.”
Unlike Castillo, Felix Aguilar was soft-spoken and
introverted, but it was his authoritative, commanding demeanor and intense, thoughtful
eyes that people noticed. When he wasn’t training in counterinsurgency and
jungle warfare, while the other men let loose, got drunk, and chased women,
Aguilar was known to read philosophy and poetry and study history.
“No worries, we’ve got your back, hombre,” Castillo
told Avery. “Besides, this beats the hell out of another night at Tolemaida,
humping a sixty pound pack through the jungle.”
“Has Daniel briefed you?” Avery asked.
Aguilar shook his head. “He was vague on details, and
I got the hint that questions weren’t welcome.”
After Avery brought them up to speed, Castillo’s
enthusiasm quickly waned.
“We could be walking into a fucking ambush,” he
observed. “Figures; that’s the kind of fuck-up you get working with CIA.”
Avery silently agreed, but this time it was a
Colombian operation, not CIA. He supposed it was all the same shit, didn’t
matter whose Agency it was.
“Do we have the kit we requested?” Aguilar asked.
“It’s not exactly what we asked for,” said Avery, “but
it’s the best my people could put together on such short notice.”
“It’ll have to do then.”
Avery distributed the weapons, and they tested their
radios, with Avery having re-programmed them after the discovery of the CIA’s
tracking device and the missing firing pin. He sure as hell didn’t want Panama
station listening in on their comms. Avery took the Glock, Aguilar the SP-21,
and Castillo the mini-Uzi. They didn’t have silencers and weren’t concerned
about stealth. They’d be operating in a very public place. If they needed to
draw weapons, then it was already too late to worry about stealth, and the only
priority was survival and a fast getaway.
They intentionally carried no American-made gear. In
case somebody had to leave something behind that would later be recovered by
police, most of the kit was Israeli-made. Israeli weapons and equipment were
widely proliferated in South America and wouldn’t tell Panamanian police
anything about the identities or nationalities of Avery’s team.