Viper: A Thriller (27 page)

Daniel took deep
drags off a cigarette like he couldn’t get enough.

Culler read
Avery’s expression as he came near them.

“What do you
have?”

“How are
Layton’s men doing?” Avery asked, ignoring the question.

“They’re being
treated here, except for Tyson. They stabilized him and flew him out to Palanquero.
He’s in critical condition. Even if he pulls through, his days in FAST are
over. By the way, Layton was asking about you.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“He wants to
talk to you.”

 “What about?”

“To thank you,
I’d imagine. There’d be a lot more dead agents if you and Aguilar hadn’t gone
in.”

 Avery was glad
he was able to bring those guys out, but he didn’t plan to shoot the shit with
Layton and exchange Christmas cards. His thoughts were with the dead agents and
Colombian cops he failed to save, and that little boy in Medellin. When this was
over and he left Colombia, Avery didn’t want any reminders of what happened
here. He wanted to blot all of this from his mind, bury it behind new walls.

“So what did you
get out of Nolan?” Culler asked Avery.

“Everything.”

Avery handed
Culler a piece of paper with his handwritten notes.

“The Viper is headed
to Mexico with the missiles. She has nine units. They left this morning from a
small cartel airfield.”

“They?”

“Yeah, she’s travelling
with two others; Benito Trujillo and Carlo Ibarra.”

“I know these
men,” Daniel said. “Ibarra is a Basque terrorist. Madrid provided us with CNI’s
complete dossier on him. Trujillo is a Peruvian mercenary. Both men are closely
connected to FARC. Ibarra is known to have worked with the Viper in the past,
but he’s been inactive for the past couple years and there has been no recent
sighting of him. We surmised that he had retired.”

“Terrorism’s a
business with a pretty a shitty retirement package. They can never fully give
the life up,” Culler observed. Indeed, Abu Nidal had been inactive for over a
decade, and it still hadn’t done him any good when his Iraqi hosts had decided
that he was a liability and murdered him in the middle of the night.

“There’s someone
else, too,” Avery said. “An unknown foreign player linked up with the Viper in
Bogotá, before she hit Flight 224. But I don’t have a name, not even a
description. Nolan only heard Moreno mention him once. Whoever this guy is, she
doesn’t trust him. Nolan’s impression is that she didn’t bring him onboard by
choice.”

“What the hell
does that mean?” Culler said.

“I’m thinking it
has to be one of Kashani’s men,” Avery said. “It’s the only thing that makes
sense.”

“And you think
we can believe Nolan?”

“He was telling
the truth. He had no reason to lie. Plus his mental defenses were down, and he
doesn’t care about the Viper’s cause. He knows she sent La Empresa to kill him
this morning, to silence him, so he’s holding a bit of a grudge.”

“Nice,” Culler
said.

It wasn’t a
total deception Avery had pulled on Nolan earlier. The Empresa prisoners from
La
Orca
had in fact revealed that the Viper instructed their organization to
keep a close watch on Nolan and eliminate him if it appeared he was to be arrested.

“But it’s still
worth having Daniel’s people continue working on him,” Avery added.

“We will,” the
Colombian said.

“What’s going to
happen to Nolan?”

“When it is
clear that we have no further use for him,” Daniel answered, “I will contact
the British embassy. They are welcome to have him, if they want him.”

“Where in Mexico
is the Viper headed?” Culler asked.

“Tijuana,” Avery
said. “They’re paying the cartel for safe passage into the US. Nolan says they were
supposed to leave Colombia early this morning. He claims he doesn’t know the
exact destination, but once in Mexico, they can be in America within a couple
hours.”

“FARC has close
ties to the cartel in Tijuana,” said Daniel. “FARC sells them cocaine.”

Avery started to
walk away.

“Where are you
going?” Culler called after him.

“Mexico. At most,
I figure we’re six, seven hours behind the Viper. You guys coming?”

“Just hold up. You
know I have to take this up with Rangel first.”

“No, Matt. We
can’t waste any more time with that shit. We have to move
now
. What
happens if the Viper reaches the States? Then the FBI has jurisdiction, and
we’re out of the picture.”

“So what? Let
the Bureau handle it.” Culler paused. “Afraid you won’t get the kill?”

“You think
that’s what this is about, Matt?”

But Avery wondered
if he was really that easy to read.

“Come on,”
Culler said. “I know you. You see the Viper as a challenge, and you’re pissed
off that she got the upper hand on you in Panama. You’ve gone through a lot of
shit because of her. You want to be the one to put her down.”

 “You know I’m
right. A lot of people are going to die if we don’t stop her before she reaches
the States. I don’t give a shit about Rangel. Let him complain and make
threats. It’s not my problem.”

“No, but it’s
my
problem,” Culler said. He was once an ops officer himself, a veteran of the
Afghan campaign, and he once held the same disdain for Seventh Floor oversight
that Avery did. But it was different now. Culler answered to the director of
the National Clandestine Service now, and he had a wife and children to
support. “I’m responsible for you, and I already have Rangel and the Seventh
Floor on my ass after Medellin, not to mention what happened in Panama.”

“Then don’t sign
my paychecks for the next couple days. Tell them I’m off the job, and I’ll stay
completely
off the books. I’ll go along as an independent actor. We
smoke the Viper, and Rangel can take credit, and you’ll even save Langley’s
bean counters a couple grand.”

But Culler was
still shaking his head. “You can’t go after her alone.”

“DEA is all over
Mexico,” Avery replied. “Slayton will know someone there he can put me in
contact with. After Buenaventura, I don’t think DEA will need convincing to go
all out after Moreno.”

“Captain Aguilar
and his men remain seconded to my agency,” Daniel told Avery, ignoring the
angry look Culler shot his way for encouraging Avery. “They can accompany you
to Mexico. It will not be a problem. My country works closely with the Mexican
government on drugs, and provides advisers and liaisons to their security
forces. We have a very good working relationship. We can cover you as an
adviser or consultant.”

Colombia and
Mexico also shared increasingly close relations based on their historical and
cultural similarities. Both countries were former Spanish colonies and have had
their societies torn apart by drug violence and internal insurgencies, and
trade between Colombia and Mexico increased by almost four hundred percent over
the past decade. From Aguilar, Avery also knew that Colombian special ops
troops had slipped into Mexico before to wax FARC and cartel targets.

“I’m going after
her either way, Matt. And then after I get my shit together, I’m going after Kashani,
and I don’t give one fuck about his diplomatic status or where he’s hiding.”

“Alright, alright,
just relax.” Culler sighed, relented. He knew that once Avery was determined
and committed to something, there was no deterring him. The best thing to do
was to set him loose and give him whatever support he required. “I’ll clear it
with Slayton. He can get your team into Mexico. Don’t fuck this up. And don’t
worry about Kashani right now. Stay on track. You find the Viper and you put
her down.”

“Count on it.”

The Gulfstream II was previously owned
by a New York-based Forbes 500 company before being bought by one of the surviving
Cali cartel drug lords who refurbished the aircraft, fitted it with auxiliary
fuel tanks, and especially equipped it to be the ultimate smuggler’s plane,
manned by the best crew money could buy.

Technicians
installed an electronic countermeasures suite, developed by France’s Sofema
weapons company, purchased by the Venezuelan military, capable of spoofing
radar and sending back false reflections. The Gulfstream was additionally
equipped with tail-mounted rearward radar and a warning receiver capable of scanning
military and coast guard radar frequency bands. They’d never be able to sneak
into United States airspace, but they didn’t need to, and they could easily
slip past and evade Colombian and Central American air defenses.

The pilots were
the best the cartel employed. Former Brazilian air force, they’d once
interdicted drug smuggling flights, giving them firsthand familiarity with the
region’s defense and surveillance measures, and they were well-trained in
tactical flying. Running drug smuggling flights in this part of the world was
dangerous work, but the cartel paid these mercenary pilots up to $25,000 per
flight.

The Gulfstream
flew low, nearly hopping the waves off the surface of the South Pacific, far
off the western coasts of Guatemala and El Salvador. The crew flew this route
to Mexico at least once a month, sometimes transporting up to two or three tons
of cocaine at a time. The flight, circumventing Central America rather than
flying a straight line from Buenaventura to Tijuana, pushed the jet’s 4,123
mile maximum range. The fuel tanks would be nearly dry by the time they landed
in Mexico.

The Gulfstream’s
home base was a well concealed landing strip cleared out of a narrow stretch of
jungle in western Colombia, south of Panama, run by the cartel, protected by
FARC mercenaries, and not to be found on any aeronautical charts.

It was unusual
for the Gulfstream’s crew to make the six hour, non-stop flight in daylight,
but their passenger insisted upon it. The pilots didn’t object. They were being
paid well enough. Plus daylight did present optimal flying conditions. The
previous month, a North Valley cartel pilot crashed his jet into the Pacific on
a particularly dark night. It was easy to become tired and complacent on long
flights, and in the dark it was difficult to visually discern the ocean from
the sky.

The Gulfstream
cruised four hundred and eighty miles per hour at two thousand foot altitude, below
and well outside of the defined air traffic corridors and outside the normal
coverage of ground-based coastal radar installations and the American E-3 AWACS
planes patrolling the skies on routine surveillance missions. The pilots kept
the Gulfstream far enough away from the coast to eliminate the risk of
detection by Guatemalan and Salvadoran coast guard patrols.

These countries
possessed limited capability to intercept flights in the air, instead relying
mostly on SOUTHCOM aerial surveillance to track suspect planes, and then use
their own police or army forces to seize the aircraft once it was on the
ground. Four countries in the region—Colombia, Bolivia, Brazil, and Venezuela—had
policies to shoot down unauthorized flights. Venezuela wasn’t a threat, and the
Gulfstream had already cleared Colombian airspace, by far the most dangerous
portion of the flight. The Gulfstream was well away from Brazilian and Bolivian
territory, so those countries also weren’t a concern.

And SOUTHCOM
faced gradual force reductions as leftist, anti-American governments in the
region kicked the US military out of their countries, and America re-deployed
forces to the Middle East and Africa. It wasn’t like the 1990s anymore, when
SOUTHCOM heavily patrolled the skies over the South Pacific and the Caribbean
as part of the discontinued Operation Coronet Nighthawk, which had intercepted and
seized over 30,000 tons of cocaine.

The pilots did
not know who their passengers were, but they had a good idea as to what the
attractive, fit-looking woman and her subordinates carried in their long, gray
steels cases, and it definitely wasn’t cocaine. The pilots assumed they were delivering
weapons to the Mexicans, either for use by the cartel or to be delivered to an
end user in America, but it didn’t matter to the pilots—a job was simply a job—and
they hadn’t made inquiries.

Arianna Moreno sat
in one of the cabin’s tan cushioned seats. She hadn’t moved since take-off and
hadn’t said a word in the past four hours, taking advantage of the rare
opportunity to relax, since she didn’t know what she’d face in Mexico or
America.

Seated nearby, Carlo
Ibarra and Benito Trujillo retained their guard. They stayed close to the Viper
and were protective of her. In addition to the Mexicans, they were equally leery
of the Iranian operative’s intentions.

Mirsad Sidran
sat apart from the others and did not converse with them. The only time he
spoke was when it pertained to operational or logistics details, but his eyes
were constantly on Arianna, appraising her, carefully weighing her words and
actions. He thought she was formidable, if and when her mind was focused, but
she was too easily distracted and governed by her emotions and insecurities.

And that would
be her downfall. Mirsad Sidran could see it now, and he understood why Kashani
assigned him this mission. He was to keep her centered and focused on her
objective, and reign her in, one way or the other, if she slipped too far.

He was
satisfied, not quite impressed, with the operation at El Dorado. Most
importantly and revealing, Flight 224 had been an impulsive decision on the
woman’s part, executed with little preparation, and that would be unacceptable once
they pursued targets within the United States.

Mirsad Sidran failed
to understand the Viper’s reputation or the fear and respect men in Venezuela
and FARC held for her. Perhaps she had been more disciplined and calculating,
not governed by impulse and passion, before the death of her brother.

Sidran’s own
biases toward women and non-believers prevented him from recognizing it, but he
underestimated the Viper, as others have before, and that was to be a fatal
mistake.

The VSS rifle
was assembled and rested on the seat beside Arianna, and she still had the big
Desert Eagle holstered at her side, along with a knife sheathed around the
cargo pants on her opposite leg.

Benito Trujillo
had worked with the Mexicans before, and he’d warned Arianna that they couldn’t
be trusted. They held loyalty to no one, and their word was worth shit. If
someone offered a higher price, the Mexicans would happily betray them. Making
a deal with the Americans to turn them over to the DEA or FBI immediately upon
landing was not outside the realm of plausibility, and the Viper was prepared
for all contingencies.

The Gulfstream descended
from the sky and landed on a dusty airstrip in the Mexican desert sixty-five
miles south of Tijuana on the Baja Peninsula. The crude, makeshift airstrip was
one of many created by the cartel after the Mexican government raided and shut
down legitimate airfields used to smuggle drugs. The airfield was sparse,
consisting of a narrow, unpaved runway and a couple structures; a small hangar,
a four-vehicle garage, and a storage shed. About a mile out from the airfield
Los Zetas gunmen ran a checkpoint on the inbound road.

A sedan, truck,
and refueling tanker truck were positioned off the side of the unpaved landing
strip, waiting for the jet’s arrival. A shimmering heat mirage from the burning
afternoon sun hung over the horizon.

As the jet
touched down, several men dismounted from the parked truck. Five of them
carried rifles or submachine guns. They looked grimy, dirty, and impatient.

Benito Trujillo craned
his head to look through the nearest cabin window as the plane rolled toward
the gunmen. “It looks like they’re going to pull some shit.” He looked over to
Arianna and shook his head. “I told you we shouldn’t trust those fuckers.”

The Viper caught
a glimpse of the armed men as the plane rolled past the welcoming committee. She
reached onto the neighboring seat for the VSS. Once the plane braked to a
complete halt, she stood up and slung the rifle over her shoulder.

The copilot had
already emerged from the cockpit. He unsealed the cockpit door and collapsed
the foldable stairs.

“Be prepared to
leave in a hurry if there’s trouble,” the Viper warned him.

The copilot
raised his eyebrows. “With what fuel? Sure, we’ll get in the air, and then
we’ll come right back down. If there’s trouble, your guys better be prepared to
deal with it, without putting holes in my aircraft.”

Besides, the
pilot thought but did not say aloud, he worked for the cartel, not this
arrogant woman. And he was confident the Mexicans wouldn’t touch his crew or
his aircraft. That would be bad for business with the North Valley Cartel.

Trujillo sprung
onto his feet and readied his own weapon, an Uzi, and the Viper shot him a look
and warned him not do anything rash. She knew the small Peruvian was
temperamental, easily provoked, and highly paranoid, always eager for a fight.
These traits had gotten him into trouble before, including a stay in a Bolivian
prison.

“Carlo, with us,”
the Viper instructed Ibarra.  She turned to Mirsad Sidran, who remained in his
seat, his posture and demeanor relaxed. “Would you mind staying with the cargo
and covering us?”

Ibarra handed Sidran
an AKS-74, the compact version of the AK-47. As he took the selector switch off
safety and wracked the bolt, Sidran’s mind worked through his own escape. If
anything happened out there, he’d stay aboard the plane and leave with the
pilots and the missiles. Kashani’s plot would have failed before it ever really
got underway, but that would be okay. As long as they’d never be connected to
the Viper, and no one would knew of their involvement.

The Viper
descended the stairs with Trujillo and Ibarra close behind. She was halfway
down when the Mexican gunmen, spotting the weapons, raised their own guns.
Reacting instantly, Trujillo and Ibarra did likewise, undeterred by the fact
that they were outnumbered.

One of the
Mexicans stepped forward and yelled out in Spanish for them to stop and lower
their weapons. Trujillo and Ibarra complied with the first part, stopping on
the stairs, keeping a gap between them, but they didn’t stand down from their
firing positions and kept their sights trained on the Mexicans.

 With the VSS
hanging from her side, cautious to keep her hands still at her sides, the Viper
continued down the stairs and approached the Mexicans. Dust blew in her face,
but she did not blink or look away. She stopped twelve feet away from the
cartel men and sized them up. She recognized fellow predators when she saw
them, and she assessed these men to be Los Zetas, GAFE special operations
troops who turned mercenary and went to work for the cartels.

From the cabin
of the Learjet, Mirsad Sidran watched the standoff unfold. He stayed near the
open door, feeling the heat blaze penetrate the air conditioning of the cabin.
He held the AK-74 in front of him, barrel pointed up, finger indexed along the
trigger. He had a clear shot at her from here, and the Mexican gunmen below did
not see him. If the Mexicans attempted to detain Moreno, he would kill her and
end this ridiculous fiasco.

 With the
Learjet’s engines powered off, Sidran could hear the voices outside speaking
Spanish

“What are you
people doing?” the Viper demanded. “Where is Arturo?”

“Tell your men
to lower their weapons now.”

The Mexican’s
voice sounded measured and controlled. That was good. Cartel shooters weren’t
known for their discipline and nerves under pressure.

“Why are you
pointing guns at our plane?”

“I don’t know
you, and we aren’t in the business of trusting others, are we? My men won’t
shoot if you don’t do anything too stupid.”

After several
seconds, without taking her eyes off the cartel lieutenant, the Viper finally
barked an order to Trujillo and Ibarra to lower their weapons. They reluctantly
obeyed, and the Mexican likewise instructed his men to stand down.

“You are not
Arturo,” the Viper observed.

“Call me Carlos.
Arturo sent me.”

“You will transport
my men and our cargo across the border?” the Viper asked.

“That was the
original arrangement, yes, and maybe it still will be. Anything is possible
now, but it’s between you and Arturo.”

“What does that
mean?”

“It means a lot
has changed over the past several hours. If you don’t like it, you can buy fuel
from us now and fly back to where you came from. Otherwise we’ll hold your
cargo for you, make sure your plane is secure here, and you’ll need to speak
with Arturo to work out the details of the new arrangement.”

Arturo Silva was
Sean Nolan’s contact in the Tijuana cartel. He was also one of the most wanted
targets of the Mexican Federal Police and of the FBI and the Chicago and Los
Angeles police departments in the US.