Authors: Ross Sidor
“My superiors
and I would be most grateful for any assistance you may offer us in this
matter, as will Canastilla and his family,” Daniel told Culler and Slayton.
Culler stood up,
and Slayton took his lead, indicating that the meeting was over.
“We will discuss
it and look into the options we have at our disposal,” Culler promised Daniel.
“I can’t make
guarantees, Daniel,” Slayton added, “but I feel the same way you do. Canastilla
has been an invaluable asset and has always been there for us, often at great
personal risk. We owe him a free ticket out, but I’ll have to run this up the
chain of command.”
Daniel left, and
the Americans returned to their seats.
“What do you
think?” Culler asked Avery as soon as the doors shut and locked.
“Is this guy
Canastilla really as important as everyone’s making him out to be?”
“Absolutely,” Slayton
replied. “The intelligence Canastilla has provided has been first rate. Men
have died to protect Canastilla’s identity. Look, what I’m about to tell you
doesn’t leave this room. The Colombians would have my ass for this. Canastilla
is one of their most closely guarded secrets.”
Agent
Canastilla’s real name was Pablo Muňoz, a former rifleman in the National
Army of Colombia. When he enlisted at age eighteen, he’d never intended to
enter the world of espionage and deception. But given the immense difficulty in
cultivating informants within FARC, the Colombian security services implemented
a clandestine undercover operation, codenamed Deep Sting, to recruit, train,
and insert agents into FARC’s Central High Command. Pablo Muňoz, twenty
three years old when he was first approached by Daniel, then a DAS case officer,
fit the mission profile requirements.
He was an
orphaned child, a loner, raised in a peasant family. Although his adoptive
parents had connections with the communist party, Muňoz himself remained
apolitical, never interested in politics or social issues.
Daniel
orchestrated the cover story for Muňoz’s departure from the army. As far
as FARC was concerned, as well as official army records—which also documented
Muňoz’s very real trouble with authority and run-ins with superior officers,
as evidenced by numerous disciplinary demerits—Muňoz deserted shortly
after his patrol came across the remains of a tiny village slaughtered by
government-supported right-wing death squads.
He travelled
alone across the country on foot, hitchhiking, stealing vehicles, and traversing
the jungles and mountains, into the deep FARC controlled-territory of the southwest
Popayàn, where, wanted by the army and police, he presented himself to the camp
commandant as a defector.
The FARC
intelligence officers who interrogated him were at first skeptical, but Daniel
provided Muňoz with just enough enticing details on troop movements and army
operations to capture the Central High Command’s interest and gain their trust.
Muňoz
played his part well, and over the next ten years, he rose through the ranks,
by far exceeding Daniel’s expectations.
He’d proven his
worth and commitment to the Central High Command early on, when he passed the
ultimate test by executing a captured army captain, a man he’d once served
under. It had been a difficult choice, one which still haunted him to this day,
but it was either him or Muňoz, and FARC would have still killed the
captain anyway.
Presently, Pablo
Muňoz was assigned to the operations staff of the FARC Central High
Command. From this position, feeding inside intelligence to ANIC, he was
instrumental in the Colombian government’s recent string of victories against
FARC, including its campaign of precision air strikes against the FARC
leadership. In addition to leading the army to Emilio Reyes, he’d given ANIC
the location of Alfonso Cano, commander-in-chief of FARC, who was killed in
Operation Odysseus in 2011, still to this day the single biggest blow Bogotá
has delivered to FARC.
But Canastilla’s
efforts hadn’t resulted only in death. He’d saved lives too by helping the
police to disrupt terrorist attacks in Colombian cities. Information Canastilla
fed to ANIC also allowed the army to conduct Operation Jaque, where Special
Forces, posing as members of the Central High Command, entered a FARC camp and took
custody of fifteen hostages—the last bargaining chip FARC had left in its
negotiations with the government—without firing a single shot.
Avery patiently
listened to the story.
The details
didn’t matter much as far it concerned his mission, and he wasn’t sure why Slayton
bothered to relay all of this to him. Avery knew he could never go through with
what Canastilla did, living a lie for that long, deeply embedded with the
enemy, becoming one of them and wondering which side you were really on, all the
while knowing that they could find you out at any moment and skin you alive. He
thought Slayton told him the story of Pablo Muňoz to garner some sense of
sympathy or solidarity, but Avery didn’t do sentimentality. He’d take the
mission, but he didn’t give a shit about Pablo Muňoz.
“How do you feel
about making the extraction?” Culler asked Avery.
They both knew
he wouldn’t say no. Avery’s 201 file included words like “reliable” and
“dependable,” traits that had gotten him into trouble more than once.
“If your agent’s
at risk, I’ll bring him out.”
It rained on Arianna Moreno as she strode
across the camp grounds. The coastal downpour seeped through the layered jungle
canopy, drenching her, and she seemed to neither notice nor care. She passed
two men on guard duty wearing ponchos with the hoods pulled up around their
heads. Their eyes lingered long over the wet tank top clinging to the contours
of Arianna’s breasts, betraying her choice to not wear a brassiere. She set her
gaze forward, didn’t acknowledge the men, and they held their silence, knowing
it would take a bold or foolish man to provoke her with crude sexual overtures.
Despite the
social justice and equality FARC espoused, female recruits were often second
class. The weaker ones became sex slaves, used to service the men to boost
morale, receiving forced abortions if impregnated in the process, and performed
demeaning tasks, like preparing meals and keeping the camps clean. Arianna
Moreno was one of the rare exceptions, and most FARC men who set eyes on her
recognized this immediately and made no passes toward her. Those who did, like
the sergeant who had cornered her and groped her when she was a new recruit, quickly
and painfully realized their mistake and became an example for others. That
sergeant who assaulted Arianna had his scrotum ripped from his body when he’d
dropped his pants.
She barged into the
general’s hut without knocking, without caring whether she interrupted
something of importance or a private moment. She thought she knew why the FARC
chief of intelligence, who was a major general and a deputy of the Central High
Command, the military leadership of FARC, had summoned her. Usually, it was
because someone needed to be killed or something needed to be destroyed, but
she sensed that this time would be different.
Of course by
now she had heard of Operation Phoenix and of the government oppressors’
jubilation over slaughtering Emilio Reyes barely two days ago. The last she
heard, there wasn’t yet a complete roll call of the dead, but she hadn’t heard
from Aarón since before the raid—he never failed to check in with her—and she doubted
the government would have left survivors after an illegal military operation in
a foreign country.
Normally, a
Central High Command deputy would not deal directly with a captain, the rank
Arianna nominally held. In FARC, captains command columns—two companies,
numbering forty-eight troops—but Arianna was assigned to a special section of
the military intelligence network that performed sensitive tasks, a euphemism
for assassination and terrorism, directly for the Central High Command. She answered
directly and only to Flores. Informally, within the Central High Command,
Andrés Flores’s colleagues referred to him as the snake charmer, because
Arianna Moreno was the Viper.
She found Flores
seated at an old, decrepit wooden desk, consulting a notebook computer under
the glow of a burning oil lamp. Raindrops drummed against the wooden rooftop. His
hut smelled of tobacco, and a bottle of aged Chivas Regal sat on his desk, next
to a short glass filled with half a measure of the liquor, but his eyes
remained clear and focused. He looked up over a pair of smudged, crooked glasses
at Arianna Moreno’s entrance.
“Please come in
and sit down.” Flores indicated the chair in front of his desk. “Make yourself
comfortable.”
“I prefer to
stand.”
“As you please,”
Flores said, annoyed that she always seemed to feel the need to be disagreeable
simply as a matter of course. “This is an informal visit. It’s a personal
matter. There is no easy way to say this, I’m afraid. Your brother’s body was
found in the jungle outside the Venezuelan camp.”
Arianna provided
no reaction. Flores simply confirmed what she already knew, and she’d already
unleashed her grief. She spent the previous night alone, crying and screaming,
wanting to tear her guts out. There were fresh cuts in the exposed flesh of her
arms, where she’d pressed the blade of the straight razor deep and sliced, out
of the need for some outlet through which to unleash the rage surging inside
her. She’d finally exhausted herself and fell asleep covered in blood and tears.
The worst was waking up, the couple of seconds of peace and normalcy in the
morning, followed by the realization that it hadn’t been a nightmare, and then
the agony seized her again.
Aware of Flores’
eyes on the fresh wounds, she self-consciously covered her arms in front of her,
internally reprimanded herself for doing so, seeing the move as a sign of
weakness, and asked, “Where is the body now?”
“I have arranged
for the return of your brother’s remains to Jasminia.”
This was a small
hamlet in the north, the closest thing to a home Arianna ever had to return to
the over past fifteen years. Now, without Aarón, the place was nothing. She
didn’t she think she had any reason to return now.
“He will be
given a proper military burial with full honors.”
That meant
little to Arianna. Symbolic gestures were without value, and no one would care,
anyway. She needed to think ahead, to the future.
“What will
happen next?”
“Members of the
Secretariat are in discussions with Caracas to formulate a political as well as
tactical response to this provocation,” Flores said. “As far as the latter, I
imagine that you would care to extract some measure of retribution on behalf of
your brother. It is apparent that Emilio Reyes was betrayed. Finding the spy is
our top priority.”
“You have suspicions
as to the identity of the spy?”
“As far as I can
tell, there are only two men who had advance knowledge of Emilio Reyes’ visit to
Venezuela. One of those men is a member of the Secretariat, which means there
is little I can do. But we will bait a trap for the other man. When we find the
traitor, an example will be made of him, whoever he is.”
Arianna gave it
thought and shook her head. “It is not enough.”
“Excuse me?”
“Aarón is dead,
along with thirty of our soldiers massacred in their sleep. One spy is not
enough, not for Aarón, not for the fascists’ cowardly assault in another
nation. A message needs to be sent to Bogotá, and their American masters. I
want more than one life, and so should the Secretariat. We’re capable of
inflicting so much destruction upon them.”
“With all due
respect to your brother, and the others who died, the Secretariat is dealing
with the enormous political and security ramifications that will follow Reyes’
death. We have never lost someone as important as Reyes.”
“I think I
understand,” Arianna said. “They care only about Reyes. They probably do not
even know Aarón’s name. But I’ve done more for the FARC than any of them ever
will, and by rights I should have earned their support. I should at least have
your
support.”
Flores sighed.
He’d wanted to keep this to himself, but he realized he had to give Arianna
something to placate her. “Very well. Through our intelligence sources, we have
identified the man who killed your brother.”
Her eyes widened
and she leaned in closer to Flores. “And you intended to withhold this from
me?”
“I intended to
keep you from doing something…imprudent, at least until you had time to compose
yourself and distance yourself from recent events.”
“He’s mine.”
“He will not be
an easy target.”
“I will put my team
together. They are the best.”
And Flores knew
it, too. Four months ago, he’d tasked the Viper’s team with ambushing and
destroying a convoy of oil tankers on the highway, spilling their contents to
cause millions of dollars of financial and environmental devastation. The
following week, they killed the president of the same company with a car bomb.
“The Secretariat
cannot authorize personal missions for revenge, you know that. The risk is too
great for little reward.”
“Look at me,
Andrés. My judgment is not impaired. Give me a name, and I will find him, quick
and professional, like any other mission. I’ll do it myself, and there will be
no risk involved to anyone but myself.”
Flores knew she
possessed the skills and the capabilities. Despite her arrogance and
zealousness, she was one of the Central High Command’s most lethal weapons.
Arianna Moreno
started out at the FARC training camps at a young age, but her intelligence,
sharp reflexes, natural marksmanship abilities, and quick grasp of hand-to-hand
fighting skills quickly set her apart from the other recruits. She was selected
for advanced special warfare and terrorism training, and that’s when the Viper
came into being.
Credit for the
creation of the Viper was owed to FARC’s toughest, most unforgiving IRA and Israeli
mercenary trainers, and to the DGI, Castro’s Directorate of General
Intelligence, at Camp Matanzas, near Havana, where Carlos the Jackal was
trained.
The Viper once used the promise of her sex to lure an
undercover DEA informant from a bar in Bogotá to his hotel, where she castrated
him and slit his throat. She assassinated a senior, well-protected Cali cartel
member who had ceased paying the tax required of those trafficking cocaine
through FARC-controlled territory. In Quito, she assassinated a right wing
Ecuadoran presidential candidate who sought closer ties to Colombia and
military cooperation with the US. In the Bolivian city La Paz, outside the US
Embassy, she held the American deputy chief of mission in the crosshairs of the
VSS sniper rifle and broke the trigger on her. She’d even been sent to America
once, for the early stages of a mission, later aborted, to bomb the FBI’s
Hoover Building in Washington, DC.
But…
“It won’t be
quite that simple,” Flores said. “We only have a codename for this man—Carnivore.
This is the first time my intelligence people have heard this name before. From
our source, we believe he is a former American soldier, probably from an elite
unit, and now works for the US intelligence agencies. Other than that, we have
only a vague physical description.”
“So the chances of
your intelligence networks identifying and locating this man are small,”
Arianna said, the disappoint clear in her voice.
“When I said
that he would not be an easy target, it was not because I questioned your
capabilities. We may simply never know who he is.”
“And if you can
identify him?”
“Then he is
yours.”
As usual Flores
did not divulge the details. The Viper didn’t need to know that one of Flores’s
informants in the Colombian army, an NCO who occasionally bought and smuggled
cocaine, put Flores’ agents into contact with an army sergeant at Tolemaida,
where the Colombian Special Forces were based. From this man, Flores’s agents
were given a name and a full account of the army raid and the shooting death of
Aarón Moreno. Flores’s agents offered $30,000 for the American, but their
source wasn’t confident he could deliver.
In the meantime,
Arianna Moreno’s vitriolic anger and need for bloodshed would fester and become
her obsession, demanding an outlet. She wondered if killing one man would
really satisfy her. Americans as a whole disgusted her, and she’d long been a
proponent at striking at the American electorate, the ignorant, pampered people
who put into power those subjugating the Colombian people. Whether her brother
was killed or not, the Colombian operation into Venezuela demanded a strong
response to show that FARC was still a powerful military force.
“What about Plan
Estragos?” the Viper asked, catching Flores by surprise. The name was supposed
to be known only to the highest ranking FARC commanders. Plan
Estragos—Havoc—was a new military endeavor intended to shift the war in FARC’s strategic
favor. “Reyes was close to finalizing the acquisition of weapons. That’s why he
travelled to Táchira, to see the man from Caracas.”
“Plan Estragos
will proceed according to the original timetable,” Flores said, “but I do not
see how our measures for enhanced air defense are relevant to this discussion.”
“I can bring the
weapons into the US, just as the Americans arrogantly violate the borders and
sovereignty of other nations with impunity. With just a couple strikes, I can devastate
their entire country.”
Flores shook his
head, and the Viper cut him off when he started to respond.
“It would be a
far better use of my abilities than using me to catch one worthless
sapo
,
and you know it,” she said.
Sapo
was the
derogatory slang term used within FARC for spies who collaborated with the
Colombian federal government.
“We both know
it will never happen. The Secretariat must take into consideration the politics,
current negotiations with the Bogotá government, and our long term strategy. As
satisfying as it may be, the Secretariat will most definitely not authorize military
action against American civilian targets, certainly not within the borders of
the United States. There is no way.”
“You
misunderstand me. I am not asking the Secretariat to sanction anything.”
Arianna realized that she now crossed a line from which there could be no going
back. “I will use my own agents. All I require from you are the weapons and
financing. I think I’ve earned that much.”