by Ross Sidor
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.”
FIVE
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.
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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.
“This might be a stupid question, but how we do know Canastilla is still on site?” Aguilar asked.
“I suppose we don’t for sure,” Avery acknowledged. “But we do know his phone’s there. Plus NSA’s been sifting through the hotel’s security cameras, and they identified Canastilla entering the hotel yesterday, and heading to the elevators. Facial recognition software confirms it’s him, and they haven’t seen him leave, not even through non-public service or maintenance doors, all of which are covered by camera.”
“Maybe he walked out, but nobody caught it,” Castillo said. “He could have put a fucking hat on or something. Maybe one of your NSA guys blinked and missed him.”
“Maybe,” Avery said. “Either way, we know he’s been there. It looks like he entered alone, but cameras don’t show you everything. Several hundred people have come through that entrance. Any one of them could be a FARC or cartel hit man. My support at Palanquero is monitoring the live feed from the front entrance. The facial recognition software will spike if Canastilla shows up, and Palanquero will alert me immediately.”
“So what’s the plan?” Aguilar asked.
“We don’t know the name Canastilla has used to check-in, so we can’t learn anything from the front desk,” said Avery. “We’ll go to his room and se
e if he’s there. If he’s not, we’ll break in and do a sweep, try to pick up his trail. Or we might go in and find a corpse.”
“Sounds simple enough,” Aguilar said.
But all three men knew from experience that in reality these things rarely went as smoothly as on paper. Cars or aircraft broke down. Local police interfered for entirely unrelated reasons. Innocent bystanders stumbled in the way in a case of wrong place, wrong time. The defector became difficult or had a last minute change of heart. Assets were delayed and missed the rendezvous time. Someone in an office in Washington or Bogotá decided to abort mid-operation, often due to bullshit political considerations, or received an urgent bit of intelligence that changed everything. Some politician or bureaucrat with a dueling agenda caught wind of an active op and leaked it to the media. There was penetration by a hostile intelligence service.
The FUBAR potential was nearly limitless.
SIX
At 7:30PM, after checking the cameras again to make sure there’d been no sighting of Canastilla leaving the hotel, Aguilar entered the Trump Ocean Club and took up position in the lobby, while Avery and Castillo swept the exterior perimeter streets, looking for signs of surveillance or an ambush. They dressed in loose-fitting layers to conceal their weapons, vests, and radios.
At seventy stories, over nine hundred feet tall, the Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower is the tallest building in Panama, and, at almost half a billion dollars, the most expensive. The hotel’s predominant features are its two parallel, sail-shaped structures. Each of these extended from a narrow tower jutting out of the low, square-shaped base of the main building, and they were each connected by a glass skywalk corridor. The entire complex occupies two and a half million square feet on Panama Bay, and includes private beach and yacht clubs with piers, a casino, rooftop swimming pools, and numerous retail outlets. Perfectly manicured grass and swaying palm trees decorated the exterior grounds, with sailboats, yachts, and tour boats floating in the bay.