The Geronimo Breach (7 page)

“Ernesto Sanchez, spelled like it sounds,” Carmen replied. “Sanchez might not be his real name, though,” she cautioned. “Here’s a photograph for the document you’ll need to create...” She placed a passport sized color headshot on the table – her digital camera and photo printing setup in the corner of the office came in handy for such assignments.

“It’ll take me a few hours,” Al said. “I’ll see you at ten. Thanks again.”

“
De nada
, Al,
de nada
.” Carmen waved her fingers at him. “Now come back downstairs with me – I’ll accompany you out. It’s a busy night so I have to be available to help the clients make smart choices. Otherwise I’d stay and chat with you forever,
Amor
.”

Al understood. It was time to hit the road and get his stuff together. Carmen had money to make and the evening wasn’t getting any younger.

Neither was he.

They walked down the stairs, arms linked, Al playing the gallant courtier to Carmen’s regal descent.

~

Al sat at his ancient computer and typed in Senor Sanchez’ name, then printed the document. It was pure bullshit but would suffice when the police decided to stop and check cars going towards the border, which they routinely did. Purporting to be a photocopy of the photo and signature pages of an American passport – the story being that he’d lost his original, which accounted for Ernesto being escorted by State Department personnel – it was pure invention; one of Al’s many sleights of hand he’d come up with for his little side business.

Al knew from past experience he could bluster through by waving it around and leaning on his diplomatic passport. Truth was, very few folks were trying to slip from Panama to Colombia at night with a U.S. diplomat escorting them, which made his job all the easier; the scrutiny traveling south was typically lackadaisical. Other than a few routine traffic stops by bored, tired, disinterested policemen, they’d be golden.

Getting near the border wasn’t that tough, but making it out of Panama and into Colombia was harder than it sounded, at least if you didn’t have the right paperwork and couldn’t travel in a legitimate manner. If you’d had a misunderstanding with law enforcement and couldn’t hop on a commercial airliner, there were only three options: boat, private plane, or foot.

Cars and buses were out because there were no roads between the two countries, nor any rail service – just some of the densest jungle in the world. That created a natural, virtually impassable barrier to movement between South and Central America, which was where he and Carmen came in.

Al ran the timeline in his head. Pick up Ernesto at ten, fill out the blanks in the bogus document, like birth date and physical characteristics, and then drive to Meteti – which would take almost all night. Ernesto then faced the hard and dangerous part – forty-four miles of jungle skirting the northern section of the infamous Darien Gap. Fortunately for Al, he didn’t do that part of the trip – his brief was to get the customer to the rendezvous point outside of Meteti, and his part of the transaction was done.

There was no frigging way he’d have taken the job otherwise.

Rightly considered one of the most dangerous areas on the planet, due to the drug smugglers’ rebel forces or armed militia – often one and the same – that controlled the area, you’d need to have a death wish to stray anywhere near the Gap. Normally, Al wouldn’t have ventured within fifty miles of it, however, Carmen’s contacts with the border shadow organizations ensured safe passage, at least to the rendezvous point. After that, Ernesto would be on his own with the guide Carmen had arranged and Al would return to his car, eighteen hundred dollars richer. He’d done the trip a dozen times and by now had full confidence in the arrangement – after all, he was still around to tell the story, so the system obviously worked.

He didn’t envy this Ernesto character the next part of the trip. If you somehow managed to evade being shot to pieces by homicidal drug smugglers or bloodthirsty armed insurgents, you’d likely succumb to any number of toxic plants, insects or animals. It was the perfect place to disappear if you wanted to drop off the face of the earth, but in the absence of someone like Carmen’s guarantee of safe passage, trying to make it through was an imminent death sentence. Every year an occasional hiker would ignore the plentiful warnings and try his luck crossing the tangled, verdant expanse and inevitably disappear, never to be heard from again. Even the police were deathly afraid of that frontier, and wouldn’t approach even the perimeter.

Not that Al cared – he was only playing glorified chauffeur as far as Meteti, and after going for an early morning hike, would be out of the deal. He understood his role; the police had checkpoints all along the southern part of the Transamerica highway, as the two lane strip of asphalt was self-importantly labeled, and unless one had, say, a diplomat for company, it could be difficult to make the last fifty miles. That was his value. Al had zero issues with ferrying a fugitive to the middle of nowhere as long as he got paid. Who was he to judge his fellow man? Carmen wouldn’t have helped a murderer or rapist, and anything less was just a question of local laws being bent. He’d been around long enough to understand that everyone made mistakes – his philosophy was: do the job and let God sort it out in the end.

He inspected the document with satisfaction. This was the easiest money he’d ever make. Beat the hell out of roasting in his oven of an office, that was for sure.

The rutted dirt runway glistened with dark mud following the constant afternoon showers. The private twin-prop plane struggled to maintain control as it came in to land. The pilot wrestled with the flaps, eventually straightening the craft and gliding to a slithering halt by a waiting late model Toyota Land Cruiser. A weary customs agent emerged from the small shack near the end of the landing strip and waved at the pilot. Don Tomas reflected on how relaxed crossing international borders could be when the local officials had gambling debts they needed to pay off. The pilot killed the engines, restoring the hushed quiet of the thick jungle on all sides of the clearing.

The door of the Cessna opened and a small folding ladder descended gracefully from the fuselage, coming to rest on the waterlogged gravel. Two black-haired males in their late twenties followed the white-suited Don Tomas as he made his way towards the Toyota. The younger men, one tall, one stocky, scanned the surroundings and slipped into step on either side of the Don in a protective formation. The driver, who waited by the vehicle, stepped forward as they approached and hugged Don Tomas, enthusiastically shaking his hand in greeting. “Don Tomas. Always good to see you.”

“Thank you, Cesar,” the Don replied, an easy smile complimenting his cherubic, yet forty year old face. “It’s good to be seen.”

The stocky young man waved at the pilot. After a few moments the props slowly turned as the starter fought to engage. After a splutter or two the engines roared to life, leaving a puff of black smoke hanging in the air as the plane taxied to the far end of the runway. The motors howled as the RPMs went into the redline. It leapt forward and within a matter of seconds was airborne, its wheels narrowly clearing the surrounding tree line.

The tall man attended the passenger door for Don Tomas before getting in the back with his partner. Cesar took the wheel and started the engine. He opened the center console and extracted a small black nylon sack. He handed it to Don Tomas, who unzipped the bag and extracted three Glock 17 pistols, one of which he slipped into his jacket pocket, passing the remaining pair to his two younger bodyguards.

“
Gracias
, Cesar. You did well,” Don Tomas said.

“
De nada
, Don Tomas. Any time I can be of assistance, you know you only have to call,” Cesar replied. “And how long will you be with us
this
trip?”

“Just for the weekend,” Don Tomas said. “We’ll be leaving tomorrow, about the same time. The pilot knows to arrive at seven.”

Cesar frowned. “A very short trip indeed.”

“
Si
. And how are things?” Don Tomas asked Cesar.

“Ah, you know. Always the same. The police want more money every month. The politicians want more money every month. Everyone wants to do less for it,” Cesar complained as they navigated the road north.

“It’s the same everywhere, Cesar.” Don Tomas raised an eyebrow. “And have you had any trouble with our associates here?”

“No, it’s been business as usual. Seems like things have settled down since the last disagreements,” Cesar said cheerfully. “But I still don’t trust them.”

“The only ones you can trust are family, and even then you have to sleep with one eye open.”

The three men laughed at the Don’s dry observation, and when the mirth subsided Cesar said, “When the police stop us at the checkpoint ahead, let me handle it. There won’t be any trouble.”

“I trust there won’t be,” Don Tomas said.

The bumpy dirt track steadily wound its muddy way to the intersection with the Transamerican highway.

“Do you have any special requests for your only night in town?” Cesar asked. “Do you want entertainment brought in, or are you in the mood to go out?”

“I think I’d like to go out. Surprise me. Somewhere
tranquilo
, but where the ladies are friendly,” suggested Don Tomas.

“I know the perfect place,” Cesar assured them, as he turned onto the main road. A rusting green sign, almost hidden by encroaching vegetation, advised
Panama City, 32 KM.
.

~

They’d had no luck locating the cook. He hadn’t returned to the house and his roommate had come up empty, so now it was time to move to plan B. Sam’s only problem was that he wasn’t sure what plan B should be. There was a limit to how much he could get the local police involved. Pulling a few strings to have them accompany his team while they searched a house was one thing, but doing a nationwide manhunt for a camera thief wasn’t practical. And if he stretched the truth and accused the cook of something appropriately serious to get the cops mobilized it would invite undesired attention. Sam tried to think like a petty crook. What would he do?

Probably sell the camera.

Which would introduce yet another layer of complexity. It was clear that Langley wanted exposure limited to as tight a circle as possible. And of course, it would mean yet more people to track down. It wasn’t as though Sam had an unlimited team to follow up every lead. Panama wasn’t exactly a hot zone, and he only had four men for field work under his command. He’d requested additional manpower and been assured it would be forthcoming within a day, but that didn’t do much for him right now. And as he’d learned in the classroom, as well as from
CSI Miami
, the more time that passed after the commission of a crime, the longer the odds of catching the perp.

Hardly consistent with his desire for a meteoric rise within the service.

Sam understood he had a problem, all right. But the part where he came up with a brilliant complementary strategy for closing the box and catching his man was proving more difficult than he’d hoped. If he were in the U.S. he could have commandeered traffic camera footage from the time the cook had left the villa – assuming the NSA played ball. But in Panama there was no technology to work with, unless you considered mud huts high tech. So he was out of luck – and ideas.

Except for the phone.

He’d put in a demand for the cook’s cell phone, and was still waiting for the info. The data they’d had on file was out of date; the number he’d given them long disconnected and moved to a new owner. But Sam had headquarters working through channels with the phone company to see if they had a new cell on record. If so, once they got the data, they could use NSA – even in Panama – to track the clipper chip in the device and locate the cook to within a few meters.

That would be a game changer – leading to a simple snatch operation. Find him, grab him, and pray he hadn’t sold the camera. His men were standing by but, unfortunately, nothing moved quickly in the boonies.

Frustration mounting, he opened a bottle of Maalox and chugged it. The acid from tension was eating away at his ulcer, increasing his discomfort. Why the hell had this, whatever this was, happened on his watch? He only had three lousy months left, and now a stolen camera conspired to make the agency look inept in his backyard?

The worst part of it all was that he didn’t know why the damned thing was worth so much effort and concern. Nobody was telling him anything other than ‘find the camera’, which didn’t speak too highly of Langley’s faith in his abilities. And soon he’d have some stuffed shirt looking over his shoulder from headquarters, no doubt taking all the credit for any success and blaming any failures on Sam. He knew the way things worked and could see that this was going down the bad road.

Sam rubbed his face, tired from being there since 3:30 that morning. He paced around his office, trying to get the blood flowing so he would stay alert. His computer beeped, and he moved the mouse, activating the screen.

They’d gotten a match on the cook’s number.

Maybe things were looking up after all.

Ernesto fiddled with his drink coaster, glancing around the room every few minutes. The waiting had made him edgy, and the parade of scantily-clad young Latinas had grown stale after a few hours. Adrenaline from the day’s events had faded, replaced by a crash, and it was all he could do to keep his eyes open.

The stream of clients in the brothel had increased to full flow – unsurprising given that it was Saturday night. The diverse crowd comprised a mix of locals and visitors. One group in particular drew his attention – three obviously Colombian men hanging out in the lounge area with
narcotraficantes
written all over them. That also wasn’t surprising because the drug traffickers packed the kind of money that made a night at Carmen’s about as financially significant as a trip to a fast food restaurant for a Happy Meal.