Arauca: A Novel of Colombia

by D. Alan Johnson

  Then he clenched his teeth, balled his fists, and pushed his arms against his side as his anger took over.

  I talked to them all. Didn’t I warn them that the FARC need to change? Needed to have a mission? They became blinded by their greed. Those “friends” betrayed the movement. For the good of the country, I had to have them moved out of the way. Our children and grandchildren will thank us for making this sacrifice for the progress of the Greater Colombia.

  Max knew that the grief and doubt would stay with him for years. He wanted badly go back upstairs and talk with Sandra. She would comfort him and reassure him.

  However, he felt no guilt and held no grief for the fifty-three agents he had ordered eliminated. For years Max had known who all of the men and women were who passed information to the CIA or DEA. This information came from his agents in the DAS, the Colombian equivalent of the FBI. Their assassinations had already started and would be spread out over the next several days.

  And Max had no pity for the bodyguards who turned on their masters. They were immediately arrested and then shot on Monday afternoon. These men deserved to die. A bodyguard has a duty to his master, and Max would have no one around him who would betray a trust like that. There was no irony in Max’s mind that he had betrayed his masters and suborned all of those men to kill theirs.

  This week was dedicated to consolidating power and meeting with all of his commanders. Loyalists would be promoted, ambassadors needed to be sent out to Panama, Venezuela, Ecuador, and of course, to the drug kingpins. Each one would carry the new message of the FARC. We are no longer engaged in criminal activity, we are a political force fighting for social justice, individual rights, and environmental clean-up. Max laughed at his own propaganda. He was now king of the FARC and, of course, they were fighting for land, oil, riches, and power.

  His finance chief came into the small workout room with a printed email.

  “Comandante, I have a message from Omar Torres of the 21st Front, asking for an extra one hundred ten thousand euros to be deposited in his account in Estonia for the release of Senator Ocon.”

  All of the FARC hostages, some having been held for years, had been released Monday afternoon on Max’s orders, and Max paid the commanders out of the FARC coffers to make up for lost ransom monies.

  “Why does he think he needs an extra payment? Haven’t we paid him already?”

  “Yes sir. But he says that the Senator is worth several times more than a regular hostage.”

  “Well, he does have a point. Tell him I will approve an extra fifty thousand euros. If he agrees, transfer the money. If not, then tell him I will talk to him personally about it next month.”

  The television and radio broadcast other benefits of the “New FARC”. Truck and auto traffic would no longer be stopped at roadblocks to collect extortion money. Max also ordered the FARC to abandon 275 farms and ranches, sending letters to the owners that they could once again occupy their lands.

  These three actions would cause a huge stir around the country as hostages returned home, owners returned to the country side, and people traveled more. This diversion would allow Max to move four thousand five hundred of his best troops from all over Colombia and Ecuador north to Arauca undetected.

  But Max knew his forces lacked air support, heavy artillery, and armor. When he attacked Cano Limon, the battle would be fierce. The Colombian Army had placed a reinforced company of troops next to the oil camp, given them two armored fighting vehicles and three high towers equipped with .50 caliber machineguns. The rest of the troops would be in well protected fighting positions. His light infantry forces would face a huge obstacle without thinking about the problems of combat aircraft. Therefore, he must knock out not only the Colombian Air Force aircraft, but he must take out the helicopter gunships located at Cano Limon along with the spotter aircraft, Ojo Azul.

  And Cano Limon had another weapon: The soldiers who struck at his men at night. All of the reports linked these men to Ojo Azul. Apparently, they were controlled by the surveillance aircraft, although they could detect no radio contact between the plane and an unknown force. They must be using frequency hopping technology.

  The attack last Thursday against Camp Julio Gomez proved that even with the NVGs and new weapons, the aircraft were too much for his soldiers. They had driven off the attack, but the gunships killed eighteen men and scattered his force like an attacking dragon. Without those aircraft, his men could have crushed the regiment that has been tracking his sabotage teams.

  His agents in Cano Limon, mostly the maids who cleaned the personnel quarters, told him all about Earl Eugene Madison. Their reports included pictures of Mad, diagrams of his sleeping quarters, maps of the location of the aircraft and the fuel supply, descriptions of the types of food he liked, and the women he flirted with.

  But where is that secret regiment? Where is their base? How do they move? I must know before we start our attacks in Arauca. I must destroy them before we proceed.

  In fifteen days, his forces would be in position to attack Cano Limon, seize the oil fields, and take control of Arauca. There is only one way to get that kind of information in that short time period. He needed an agent sleeping with Mad Madison.

  Chapter 6

  1010, Monday, July 22

  Office of Regional Affairs

  US Embassy, Bogotá

  Colombia

  Ann needed more coffee. She went down the hall to the Defense Attaché (DAT) office. They had the best coffee. As she poured herself another cup, a young-looking colonel walked out of his office. His door read “Air Attaché”, but Anne knew that he was Defense Intelligence (DIA).

  “I wondered who’s been stealing our coffee.”

  “Come on, Darrel, you’ve got the best coffee on this floor. How do you do it?” Ann asked.

  “Not very good elicitation technique, my girl. Besides, I could never tell you my secret. Then you would make good coffee in your office and I’d never get to see you. How are you holding up, anyway?” He asked with real concern in his voice.

  “This last week has been one of the worst I could have ever imagined.” She gave him a weak smile. “But I’m lucky I’ve got a great baby sitter for my son. Several nights I’ve had to sleep here.”

  After the first wave of news of the change in FARC leadership, information trickled in that contact had been lost with agent after agent. The body count kept rising. First it was FARC leaders and their body guards, and then the bodies of US government agents. They slurped the hot coffee in silence.

  Ann shook her head. She mourned each one. Although she only knew two personally, she understood the lives they were forced to lead. Many were patriots, some were snared in sexual peccadilloes, and others were corrupted by money. Neither side was innocent when it came to recruiting agents. Even so, it was a tragedy that her side could not provide some protection, or even warning of the massacre.

  “You know, I’m infuriated. I’m frustrated. There’s got to be a massive leak somewhere in the system. My job is to find and plug those leaks,” Ann said. Her failure weighed on her.

  “I know, honey,” Darrel said, and laid his hand on her forearm. Ann’s antennae perked up at the endearment. Have I been missing something with this guy? I must be working too hard, she thought.

  “I wish Whitehorse would give me some time to find the leak. He says that he needs me on other stuff.” She didn’t mention that he wanted her to work on figuring out the link between Gerald Minor and the FARC coup.

  “I’d better get back to it, then.” She eased her arm out of his grasp. “Thanks for the coffee.” Darrel looked like a scolded puppy as she left his office.

  Whitehorse remained positive that the Minor affair and the coup were connected due to their chronological proximity. Ann pored over the reports from the agents who investigated Gerald Minor. How could they have missed that his father was in such financial distress? Why could Minor run such a “profitable” business and no internal alarms sound?


  Using the Optical Character Reader, Ann scanned all the reports into their Information Coordination and Analysis System. The ICAS computer was not connected to any network. There was no way to hack in since there was no wireless hardware, no cable connection, and no phone connection. The data in this computer was too sensitive. Yes, it was a hassle to handle all the paperwork, but this was a very secure tool.

  The ICAS took data from several different sources and databases and, at the request of the operator, searched for repeated words, names, phone numbers, dates, images, and any other small bits of data that might pertain to the question posed by the operator. The system was very good in the hands of a skilled and intuitive operator. Ann’s problem was that their skilled operator had been posted to Iran two months ago. Ann was briefed and had practiced some, but she was still a novice at the arcane language and shaded questions needed to coax the beast to its best performance.

  Ann posed several of the standard questions, such as, “Do any of the people listed appear anywhere in our records as FARC?” For several hours she posed questions with little or no result. Whoever designed the Gerald Minor operation left no lose ends. When her frustration level reached the point where she wanted to throw the metal trash bin into the screen, she stood up from the console, punched “print” and walked away. All of the intersections and coincidences found in her queries would be printed out.

  At 1730, Whitehorse came into her office without any greeting or even a smile. Ann knew he had been living in the office, under tremendous pressure trying to come up with good answers for his superiors. She felt sorry for him and wished she could comfort him somehow. But when Whitehorse saw her wall littered with notes and lines, he laughed and threw his right arm around Ann’s shoulders.

  “What have we here, mi amor?” During the last six hours she had cut up the printouts, made notes on the scraps of paper, and taped them to the blank wall in her office. Not caring about the paint, she drew lines from one note to the other using different colored markers. She needed the visualization of the intersecting lines.

  “I couldn’t make anything out on ICAS, so I reverted to old technology,” she said, enjoying Jackson’s touch. Stepping closer and putting on his reading glasses, he started following the lines from one note to the other, paying special attention to the notes which had the most intersecting lines. Leaving silently for more coffee for both of them, Ann returned to find him making notes on a legal pad.

  She handed him his coffee fixed just like he liked it, double espresso with two sugars. He took a sip without taking his eyes off of the wall.

  “Ahhh, the elixir of life”, and he turned to look at her. “You know, you really are beautiful.” Then he turned back to the wall.

  Ann almost fell down. She then realized how much she had been hoping against hope he would see her as a woman, and not just as a competent subordinate. She tried to suppress the slow smile that grew on her mouth, then gave up, and enjoyed the view of his wide shoulders and back while he studied more of the wall.

  She continued to post information on the wall throughout the evening as reports drifted in.

  He left the room, but returned every half hour or so to stare at the growing spider web of lines and notes. Each time, he lingered longer. They ordered a steak dinner delivered, and sat down to eat at 2100. A small table was brought in so that they could continue to stare at their wall while they ate.

  Whitehorse got up and walked once more to the wall. He pointed at one of the intersections. He held his finger on it for a long time.

  “This is it!” he yelled. “This is it.”

  0912, Wednesday, July 24

  Cano Limon Heliport

  Arauca, Colombia

  Yolima Cifuentes could breathe again now that she had her feet back on the ground. Flying to Arauca City on the commuter plane was easy, but the ride over to Cano Limon in the Bell 212 helicopter terrified her. While two men unloaded luggage from the back, she rested her hand on the red chopper to steady her weak knees. What a whirlwind of activity during the last week. The opportunity to study the fresh water dolphins in the Arauca River just popped up on her screen three days ago. As a junior marine biology researcher at the University of Cartagena, she was chosen to study and photograph the pink fresh water dolphins under a grant given by a rich environmentalist who wanted to help preserve this rare species.

  A young man approached her, and stuck out his hand. “Welcome to Cano Limon. I’m Juan Carlos German, the Environmental Operations Officer here.”

  “Thank you for your hospitality. It’s such an honor to come here.”

  “We try to do our part to help the scientific community, especially anything having to do with the environment. As you can imagine, we get quite a bit of static from the greens about drilling here in the rainforest. You’ll see that the river is still pristine, and that Tyson Oil is very concerned that we make as little impact on the ecosphere as possible.”

  As his speech droned on, Yolima thought the young man was trying too hard. Obviously, this was his canned line to any visiting environmentalist. But he was just doing his job of trying to make an oil company look as harmless as possible. As he lead her to the entrance gate, she thought his title should be Public Relations, as she was sure that he had little impact on operations.

  She looked around and saw one of the other passengers walking toward her on the sidewalk that led to the security check point. When she first saw him on the ramp at the Arauca Airport, she knew that he was a security type. Muscular, always looking around, checking faces, noticing everything. His whole demeanor screamed ex-Special Forces. She smiled at him as he walked by and murmured, “Buenos dias.”

  She would quickly find out who he was and who he worked for. As ever, she was thankful for the training she had gotten from her instructors. All retired Bulgarian and Russian intelligence operatives, those men and women taught her to observe, analyze, and take action.

  Juan Carlos, took her by the arm, still talking about Tyson’s commitment to the environment, and led her over to the check-in point. She became a little frightened by the two guards with guns and the table where everyone was required to open their bags.

  “What’s this?”

  “Oh, it’s just a baggage check looking for alcohol. I’m sure that they told you that Cano Limon is completely alcohol free, didn’t they?” Juan Carlos replied.

  “Oh, yes. I remember now,” she said. Calm yourself down. This is just another recon. But then, this is not just another assignment. I’m supposed to seduce a pilot, and find out all that I can about his operation. I’ve never had to…

  She steeled herself for the hundredth time, repeating her mental mantra. Didn’t uncle pay for my school? Isn’t this the struggle for the common man to rise up against the injustice of the elite? This is a small price to pay for victory.

  Her bags were thrown on top of the table, and a guard went through them thoroughly. They’re not just looking for alcohol. Look how carefully they check the bottoms and corners. They’re also looking for weapons. Very professional. But she gave no indication to the guards that she noticed their attention to detail. Her mind kept up the small talk with Juan Carlos while she looked over everything in the compound. Now where do they keep those gunships?

  *********

  George Allen walked on into the dining facility and picked up a glass of iced mora juice. Mora is a small, tart raspberry grown here in the tropics. The Colombians juice them, mix in a little sugar and pour over crushed ice. So refreshing. While he sipped his drink he watched the subject of his surveillance as her bags were searched.

  Whitehorse Jackson called yesterday asking him for a favor. And when the Agency asked a contractor for a favor, the contractor jumped to it if they wanted contracts in the future. So George had called the project manager for Monroe, filling him in on the situation. The cover story would be that George was going to Cano Limon to check out the operation for a possible emergency landing facility when State Department de
cided to move north in the spray program.

  All that George had was a short description and a picture of Yolima Cifuentes. Whitehorse said he had no idea what she was up to, but she was his only solid connection to both the Gerald Minor case and the FARC coup. Whitehorse noticed Yolima because she had two intersections in the ICAS printout. Her original home address was the same leather factory in Pasto that had supplied Gerald Minor’s import business, and she had applied for permission to visit Cano Limon the same day that an email intercept caught two FARC talking about a new agent assigned to Cano Limon.

  So George had to leave the cool mountains of Bogotá and fly down to the hot, muggy plains of Arauca. As he stood watching Yolima while she was having her bags searched, the sweat started to soak through his khaki shirt.

  Got to be a dolly. Look at the way she’s dressed. Yolima wore tight, thin, white tropical pants, a red, low cut blouse, and high heel sandals. Her nose was just a little too big, but that small imperfection made her all the more attractive. Long brown hair flowed down to the middle of her back, and her saucy walk and perfect figure sent a pang of longing through George.

  Dolly was the term used for a female agent who would be “run by” a man, hoping that the man would be attracted into a sexual relationship. Then the woman would use her charms to elicit his secrets. Barring that, she could distract him at specific times so that his room could be searched. There were a hundred ways that a dolly could get valuable information. Dollies were as old as Sampson and Delilah and as fresh as a teenager.

  George looked away before she looked up from her baggage search. This one is just like a woman I’d pick for a dolly. I’ve got to be careful, because if she turns all that sexuality on me, I would be in deep …..