The Geronimo Breach (29 page)

So far, Cartagena sucked.

Al padded into the kitchen to see if he could do anything to help with dinner.

After they’d eaten, Mari and Al sat on the couch, Mel having been put to bed. They discussed Al’s scheme, which Mari refined considerably.

“I called a friend, and by tomorrow my brother will have a message that I’m coming to Cali for a day or two. He’ll figure out a way to meet me – we’ve done it before,” Mari explained. “Then I’ll introduce you to him and you can make your proposition.”

“That’s great, Mari,” Al enthused.

“Maybe not so much, at least not initially,” she warned. “He’ll want to gut you like a pig when he realizes you’re Mel’s father.”

“I wonder if we could leave that part out?” Al suggested.

“No, I think he needs to know. If he ever finds out later, your safety would be jeopardized – he’d put your head on a stake and feed your body to the crocodiles.”

“I’m sensing there may be a problem in all this,” Al ventured.

“No, I’ll tell him that I left you, which is true. He’ll still want to tie your intestines to a tree and make you walk around it until you die, but over time he’ll mellow. He knows me,” Mari said.

“What if he acts before he’s had time to consider all the facts?” Al asked.

“Well, the worst that can happen is you die, which it sounds like will happen if you don’t see him,” Mari reasoned. “So what have you got to lose?”

“Put like that, how can I resist?”

“Seriously, though, it’s probably best if I meet him first,” Mari said. “If I think there’s any danger for you, we’ll just have to think of something else.”

“Is he really that bad?” Al asked.

“They call him the “Borderland Butcher. He’s one of the top officers in FARC. But I’ve known him all my life – he’s really as gentle as a lamb,” Mari assured him.

Al’s eyes widened. “The Borderland Butcher?”

“Usually, just
El Carnicero
– ‘The Butcher’,” Mari said. “‘The Borderland Butcher’ is more his official title.”

“So…” Al clarified, “only for formal situations. With family he’s just The Butcher?”

“Exactly. But I think it’s all exaggeration to create fear in the hearts of his enemies,” Mari suggested.

“It’s working on me,” Al said.

“You see? That’s why they call themselves these things,” Mari reasoned, glad Al had finally gotten it.

“Given that he’s a top dog with FARC, isn’t it possible there’s a side of him you haven’t seen, that maybe has developed over time?”

“Al. I’m his crazy sister, and I dumped you, and never told you we have a daughter together. He may be a violent psychopath, but he’s still a man. So let’s hope he’ll see your side in this,” Mari said. “At least he wasn’t around when I was crying myself to sleep every night for a year,” she continued. “I hope Mom didn’t tell him.”

“Hmmmm. So if we go to Cali together, who’s going to watch Mel?” Al asked.

“Oh, Momma and my sisters will. They absolutely love her,” Mari gushed. “I’ll call them tonight and see what time they can come over tomorrow.”

“And getting to Cali?” Al was almost afraid to ask.

“We’ll hire a plane. A small four passenger one, so you won’t have to document anything.”

“If you recall,” Al reminded her. “I don’t do well with motion.”

“You’ll be fine,” Mari replied. “The alternative is being slaughtered by Gringo death squads.”

“You have a marvelous way with words.”

“After three years, one forgets the little things, no?” Mari chided.

The discussion went on for another hour, as they argued the fine details of the plan. But in the end it was Al’s only shot.

The talk turned to Mel, and the childhood he’d missed sharing with her so far. She sounded like a good kid and it was obvious that she was the light of Mari’s life. Al wondered what it must be like to care so profoundly about someone besides yourself, and again felt an uneasy stirring.

At ten p.m. Mari went to a closet, got a sheet and a pillow out and invited Al to make himself at home on the sofa. Her only request was that he sleep clothed so if Mel wandered in for any reason she wouldn’t be permanently traumatized by the sight of his unclad body.

What else was new? Seemed like a fair deal to Al.

At least he had clean socks.

The following morning, Al woke early and was showered, shaved and in shape by the time Mari emerged from her room with Mel.

Mel regarded Al with seriousness, and held out her hand. “
Buenas dias
,” she recited, lisping over the soft consonants.

“
Encantado, Senorita Melissa
,” Al replied sonorously, shaking her little hand with as much gravity as he’d ever shown at a diplomatic event. “She can talk?” Al wondered aloud to Mari.

“She started young, at eighteen months, forming simple words,” Mari explained. “At this point she’s up to three and four word sentences.” Pride bloomed in Mari’s face. “She’s advanced for her age.”

“I don’t have any experience with this...” Al explained.

“I wouldn’t expect you to,” Mari said as she headed into the kitchen to set about feeding Mel.

The two sisters and Momma arrived at nine a.m. and were introduced, in turn, to Al. He got the feeling Mari hadn’t fully explained his relationship in the family, although he sensed that Momma wasn’t particularly warm towards him. He asked Mari, who told him that no, as far as they knew he was just a friend, nothing more.

He supposed that painted an accurate picture, at this point.

Mari explained to Al they’d be taking a taxi to the nearby airport – she’d arranged a small plane to take them to Cali for a thousand dollars plus hotel expenses; the pilot would wait for two days in Cali to fly them back.

“That seems expensive,” Al grumbled.

“You can always take the bus,” Mari countered, “which takes several days and runs the risk of requiring your passport to be checked as you get further south.”

That about covered that issue.

Al quickly calculated; with the flight and some hotels, he would burn a third of his money. Then again, he wasn’t going to need much if this didn’t work – his retirement would be measured in hours, not decades.

Every cloud had a silver lining.

Which might have been a poor choice of phrase, given Al’s reaction when he saw the plane Mari had hired. He’d been in economy cars that were bigger. Mari seemed unconcerned. Al needed a drink. Or ten.

The captain, Jorge, patted the side of the dilapidated plane with pride, assuring them that they were in for a treat. A 1978 Cessna Turbo Skylane. Finest plane in the air. Hundred and fifty knots per hour would get them all the way to Cali with no refueling. And Jorge proudly told them that he’d wisely bought his fuel for most of the flight in Venezuela, due to the radically lower costs. He’d have to charge $1500 if he did the whole trip using Colombian fuel.

“Isn’t the plane almost thirty-five years old?” Al asked Mari.

“That means it hasn’t crashed for thirty-five years,” Mari observed. “Relax, you’re in safe hands.”

She had a point. Sort of.

The plane interior smelled like ass. Maybe all small plane interiors did.

“Where’s the co-pilot?” Al asked, noticing the dual controls.

“
No necesito
,” Jorge replied. “Don’t need one.”

Al wasn’t convinced. “What if you have a heart attack or something?”

“Let’s hope I don’t. If I do, try not to hit anything,” Jorge advised.

“How about the bathroom?” Al asked.

Jorge handed him an empty
Gatorade
bottle. “Liquids only.”

Al could already see this was going to be a hoot. He gazed at the clouded over sky skeptically. The thunderheads looked ominous.

So did the pilot.

They were airborne within ten minutes. Al watched the altimeter as the small plane rose to nine thousand feet and steadied. Jorge seemed suspiciously close to nodding off. Every so often they’d lurch and bump and plummet alarmingly. Al left finger grooves in the armrest. Mari looked like she was sightseeing.

He was convinced they were going to go down at least a dozen times over the Andes, when they were only three thousand feet above the mountain tops. Jorge would let out a ‘whoo’ every now and then following a particularly alarming loss of altitude or sideways wind shear.

They touched down in Cali just a little over three hours later. Al felt like he’d been doing sit-ups the entire time – his abdomen was cramping painfully from the stress.

“Maybe on the trip back it will be bumpy. There are supposed to be storms moving in over the next couple of days,” Jorge said as they left for their hotel.

Just making idle small talk.

Al’s stomach did another flop – he made a mental note to knock back a liter of Absolut before the return flight.

The FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) have existed since 1964, when insurgents from the Colombian Communist Party armed themselves to combat regular army units bent on breaking up communist strongholds around the country. It had developed over time into an armed militia that controls almost half of Colombia’s territory, even to this day.

FARC forces are significant players in the Colombian cocaine production and shipment trade, having escalated from ‘taxing’ production to becoming involved in manufacturing and trafficking. Estimates of revenue exceeding $100 million per year from these activities are probably conservative, and FARC is known to be instrumental in many aspects of the business.

Although Colombia doesn’t like to advertise the fact that almost half the country is under the sway of, or completely controlled by, an armed militia which makes its living via the drug trade, kidnappings and extortion – the fact is that the nation has existed in a state of
de facto
civil war for half a century.

While some of the grievances that drove FARC in the early years have passed into obscurity, one of its central themes remains vital – the subjugation of manual laborers and murder and terrorism against union activists by agents of American multi-national corporations…

Along with strongholds in and around the Darien region, FARC controls most of the south-eastern portion of Colombia, the Andean plains region, and much of the area along the Brazilian and Ecuadorian border. Viewed by some as armed thugs and murderers, and by others as the voice of the proletariat against foreign imperialism and oppression, the truth is complex, and likely somewhere in between. It’s undeniable that armed clashes tend to be brutal and indiscriminate, and yet it’s also obvious that the group is a political force to be reckoned with.

Venezuela has attempted to temper the tone of the rhetoric surrounding FARC, and has encouraged the group to disarm and to stop employing kidnapping and similar terrorist/criminal tactics – with minimal success.

The U.S. Government’s official stance is that FARC is a terrorist organization, but as with many such stances, the position that its duty is to stamp out global terrorism is highly elastic, given that the total narco-profit pie is a massive number – some estimates place it at nearly a trillion dollars a year globally. Money of that magnitude has to find legitimate homes in mainstream industries; multiply this by thirty years and apply simple compounding at a nominal rate – say 3% per year – and it’s easy to see that a large piece of the global economic pie has had to pass through or has been generated by narcotics trafficking.

One illuminating example of how the U.S. talks out of both sides of its mouth when it comes to terrorism and organized crime is an embarrassing photo from 1999, when Richard Grasso, the Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, was photographed in the cocaine production territory of Colombia hugging the then second in command of FARC, Raul Reyes.

Another is a slew of lawsuits alleging that Chiquita, through its subsidiary in Colombia, funded payments to the AUC – the ‘United Self Defense Forces’ – a paramilitary organization that was in reality a murder-for-hire and extortion group that killed hundreds of union leaders and ‘agitators’ who were pushing for better wages and working conditions in the banana industry in Colombia. While the U.S. Justice Department fined Chiquita $25 million in 2005 for what it termed ‘extortion’ payments to the AUC, a host of internal company documents recently released under the Freedom of Information Act suggest that the payments were much more than protection money.

Whatever one’s views, it’s obvious from even a cursory review of the history of Central and South America over the last fifty years that what are perceived as American interests have resulted in massive numbers of violent deaths, and the populations of the affected countries have long memories.

They hold a grudge.

~

Sam was back at the embassy, having grabbed a few hours of sleep at home. He now occupied a temporary office down the hall from his permanent one. Richard, as far as he could tell, had done no more than catnap in the office since his arrival.

The interrogation of Carmen had yielded no new information, other than confirmation that Al occasionally moonlighted as an escort for customers who wanted to cross a border with no questions asked. Given that Al didn’t actually transport them across any borders he technically wasn’t doing anything wrong, and it seemed like he was more of a feel-good chauffeur than anything else.

So far, the foreign intelligence angle hadn’t provided any additional illumination on the enigma that was Al. If he
was
a foreign operative, then he was deep cover and had been spectacularly good at playing the part of a harmless, drunken oaf. That either made him a dangerous fool or an even more dangerous genius capable of years of sustained, convincing role playing.

Richard swiveled in Sam’s office chair taking stock of events and their implications. Jenkins had continued the questioning until he’d been sure there was nothing more to tell, and had dumped Carmen’s body in an outlying area where she was unlikely to be found for weeks. The jungle typically consumed anything that hit the ground very quickly so any complications were unlikely. Richard hadn’t shared this with Sam because he didn’t want the idiot to complicate his life further with any vague ethical considerations about the value of foreign nationals’ lives.