Authors: Ross Sidor
A Colombian Air
Force C-130 carried the specially equipped-surveillance vehicles. These were
brand new Ford E-150 cargo vans converted into mobile surveillance command
centers. The vans were equipped with Stingray, a controversial IMSI (International
Mobile Subscriber Identity) catcher that forced all cell phones within a given
area, including those with encrypted data, to connect to Stingray’s base
station. The vans also carried computers equipped with GPS mapping software,
other SIGINT and ELINT gear, and a connection to the Bunker’s Real Time
Regional Gateway.
At Gerardo Tobar
López Airport, a small airport eight miles outside Buenaventura serviced only
by the government-owned SATENA airline, the National Police commandeered a
hangar. Here, while Benning’s people physically and electronically scoured the
streets of Buenaventura, Avery remained on call, with Aguilar’s squad and the
FAST team acquisitioned by Slayton and headed by DEA Special Agent Tom Layton.
FAST stands for
Foreign-deployed Advisory and Support Team. Specially trained by the FBI
Hostage Rescue Team and the marines, FAST is tasked with special enforcement
operations around the globe. Based out of Quantico, there are five FAST units
on rotating deployments. One is always deployed to Afghanistan.
Layton was
already a familiar face to Slayton, so he required little time being brought up
to speed on the current situation, and he and Avery got along well from the
start.
Abigail Benning’s
ELINT spooks took up pre-planned routes to cover different sectors of the city
in their surveillance vans, with Stingray active and intercepting all calls on
their way from cell phone users to local towers.
It was early-afternoon
with humidity at ninety percent. Dark gray rain clouds hung low in the air over
Buenaventura, unleashing a seemingly endless downpour onto the city.
Buenaventura is one of the world’s rainiest cities, and a week straight of almost
non-stop rain wasn’t uncommon. Rusty buckets and cans were lined up everywhere
to collect rainwater, the only source of water for most of the city’s
residents. Benning was glad to spend the day dry inside the van, stepping
outside only once to stock up on snacks at a local market.
Aside from the
rain, Buenaventura is also known for being Colombia’s most violent and
impoverished city. Street crime is high, and gang activity is rampant. Two dominant
and rival gangs—Los Urabeños and La Empresa, both originally paramilitary
groups formed to combat FARC—fight each other in the streets for control of
territory in the drug market.
Both gangs are
well armed and many of their members have military training, veterans of the
Colombian military or the country’s various paramilitary groups. La Empresa
especially ranked high on DEA’s target list. DEA agents have pursued Empresa
members across Nicaragua, El Salvador, and as far as Spain.
The dueling
gangs are unconcerned about the numerous civilians that enter their crossfire. Mutilated
and dismembered bodies, taken apart in so-called chop-up houses, regularly washed
up on the beaches. Anyone suspected of cooperating with the police or affiliating
with a rival gang disappears or turns up dead, often along with their entire
family. Armed men run checkpoints on the main streets that serve as borders
between neighborhoods, stopping motorists and pedestrians, occasionally
executing them in the street.
The situation in
Buenaventura has deteriorated so badly that President Santos ordered the
deployment of six hundred army troops to keep the peace, but the army’s primary
focus is the security of businesses around the docks and safe passage for
commercial traffic on the highway. The soldiers have done little to curb the
gang violence. In fact, it wasn’t uncommon to see soldiers on the streets
openly fraternizing with gang members.
The city’s
unemployment is at thirty percent. Most of the Buenaventura’s residents are
poor and uneducated, many of them immigrants looking for manual labor jobs. Ports
and foreign trade are managed and taxed by the national government, while the
local economy reaps little benefit. The population lives in small,
overpopulated apartments or tiny wooden shacks built on stilts on newly-formed
marshland where the coastline is moving gradually inland. Those with the means
to do so have fled the city. Those without are trapped in this urban hell and
stay barricaded indoors. Several thousand residents of the outlying villages
have been forced out of their homes by corporations seeking to expand the port
facilities and drill for oil.
The roads are
narrow, many unpaved, and are obstructed by broken down and stripped vehicles,
all manner of garbage and debris. Streets are often flowing with raw sewage,
mud, and filth. Many buildings are pock marked from bullet strikes and adorned
with colorful gang graffiti.
Benning’s team
was given a complete brief on the security situation in Buenaventura. Both Daniel
and Slayton had ventured into the city before to meet informants and agents,
and Tom Layton’s FAST team had conducted raids here before. They gave Benning’s
team, and their security escort, a complete rundown on how to stay safe and
discrete, and the routes to take through neighborhoods to avoid being stopped
or ambushed by gangs.
Benning’s
surveillance vans were each accompanied by a chase car—armored Lincoln
Navigators with blacked out windows—carrying CIA security contractors wearing
armored vests and carrying MP5 submachine guns or HK413 assault rifles. These men
had done time in Iraq and knew how to maneuver through and stay alive in hostile
urban environments. Still, they were on edge the whole time, trailing the Geo
Cell’s vehicles through the rundown ghettos. Some sections of the city were
patrolled by armed gangs, while in other areas there were Colombian soldiers. Daniel
had informed the army and police that ANIC units were conducting operations in
the area, so that Colombian forces would not stop Benning’s team.
At one point,
one of the surveillance units was forced to make a detour, because a gun battle
was in progress between rival gangs, and the army had cordoned off the area.
Despite their
security teams’ concerns, Abigail Benning’s crypto-spooks seemed unfazed by the
bleak, violent conditions around them. Their focus was set entirely on analyzing
the ceaseless stream of cell phone activity. They worked intently at their
stations in the backs of the vans; occasionally cursing out loud as their
fingers slipped on a keyboard or coffee was spilled when the driver made an
abrupt turn or braked suddenly or the van bounced along over potholes and
poorly maintained roads.
Sorting through
all of the calls was time consuming and tedious work. But the undercover DEA
source had been able to provide the cell phone number of the North Valley
cartel facilitator believed to have met with Sean Nolan, and within four hours,
that number appeared on the network, instantly providing Stingray with its
IMSI. Benning hacked into the phone and obtained the numbers listed in the
contacts and the recent calls history. A couple of the numbers had North American
codes, but most of them were local.
Two numbers
appeared on the network within the hour. Both were Colombian numbers and the
calls were made between Colombian and Spanish speakers. One call was to Mexico,
the other to Bogotá. The former was drugs related, the latter a personal
matter; and neither appeared related to Sean Nolan or the Viper.
An hour later,
another of the targeted numbers registered on Stingray’s network for a
ninety-seven second conversation with the cartel facilitator. The number had a
Cali area code, and the caller spoke English with the hardened consonants and
soft drawn-out vowels of an Irish accent. The accent was feint, the speaker
seeming to try to sound American, but it didn’t fool NSA’s voice recognition
algorithms. More important, the cartel facilitator directly addressed his
caller as “Sean,” and the Sean Nolan voiceprint provided by Great Britain’s
Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) was a 94% match with Abigail
Benning’s intercept.
The conversation
between Nolan and the cartel lieutenant was terse and innocuous, concerning
shipment of unspecified cargo aboard a freighter called
La Orca
that was
set to
leave the Buenaventura docks early the next morning.
Over the next couple
hours, as a result of that call, Benning’s team learned several things.
The caller’s
number belonged to a phone in the name of Tom Wilson, paid for by a known
cartel associate.
La Orca
was a medium-sized freighter belonging to a
legitimate freight company. She was bound for San Diego, California. The cargo manifest
Benning obtained listed coffee beans, tea, spices, sugar, and nuts.
But the cartels
regularly smuggled cocaine and weapons aboard legitimate ships. Somewhere along
the voyage, the drugs, placed in waterproof packaging with a GPS locator, would
be dropped at a rendezvous point off the American coast for retrieval by clients
aboard a small craft.
More important,
however, Benning’s Geo Cell next pinpointed Nolan’s location.
Each
surveillance van perused the streets while measuring the signal strength of
Nolan’s cell phone. If the signal grew weaker, the van would circle around.
When the signal grew stronger, they knew they had the right direction.
Once they had
the location fixed, and were within proximity, a National Police surveillance
unit with embedded DEA agents took over from there. They eventually observed
Sean Nolan, who was accompanied by two Empresa enforcers, at a local café, meet
a man later identified as a shipping agent. Thirty minutes later, Nolan left
with his thugs in a red Chevrolet Tracker. They drove to a three-floor
apartment building near the beach in the southern tip of Buenaventura, deep
within La Empresa territory.
Nolan’s appearance
had changed from the MI5 file. He now sported a shaved head, a neatly trimmed
goatee, and a tan. But the FBI’s facial recognition software confirmed that the
man tracked by the Geo Cell was in fact Sean Nolan. The human face has eighty
distinctive nodal points, essentially the landmarks that make up the face, and the
software matched sixteen between the face in the Geo Cell’s surveillance
picture and the original MI5 file photo. Generally, a dozen matching nodal
points is regarded as sufficient for positive identification by law enforcement
agencies.
Overnight, a DEA
squad with CIA security contractors took over surveillance of the apartment
building. While Benning’s people continued to monitor local cell phone traffic,
Daniel and Slayton discussed options to arrest Sean Nolan. They decided that
FAST should do it rather than rely on Colombian police. Daniel warned that
corruption was rampant in Buenaventura, and they’d risk Nolan being tipped off.
Avery advised Tom
Layton’s agents on the takedown plan. They looked over the FalconView satellite
imagery of the target building and the surrounding neighborhood, and planned
the FAST team’s route into the city, their takedown of the target building, and
their exfil route, in addition to discussing possible contingencies that may
arise that needed to be taken into account. Thanks to 4-72, the private company
responsible for mail delivery in Colombia, and a call to the apartment
building’s property management, they knew the apartment Nolan stayed in. There
was only one unit in the building leased under an Anglo-Saxon name, and he paid
cash each month.
It was unusual
for Avery to play a support and advisory role relegating him to the sidelines,
but after Medellin, he was happy to sit this one out. His mind remained a
thousand miles away. During the planning with the FAST agents, Slayton and
Layton caught Avery zoning out more than once, and recognized the hollow,
vacant stare in his eyes, but neither man asked questions.
Avery knew he
was in no shape to run an op right now. The last time he felt anything like
this was in the army during his first deployment to Afghanistan, after he’d
seen two guys on his chalk cut to pieces in front of him by an RPG.
Avery tried to
push those thoughts from his head. He had no problem with punishing himself for
choices he made, and there were many that still stuck with him, but he needed
to keep his mind focused and grounded for the sake of the agents who were
getting ready to put their lives on the line.
The planned
timeframe from leaving Gerardo Tobar López Airport to returning with Nolan in
custody was approximately forty-five minutes. Daniel would arrange at the last
minute for a National Police escort, since Culler’s security contractors were
currently tied up with DEA doing surveillance of the apartment building.
Simultaneously,
the Colombian coast guard, accompanied by the second half of Layton’s FAST
unit, would hit
La Orca
. Rangel hoped to find the Viper’s missiles
onboard the freighter, if not the Viper herself.
The Bogotá chief
of station, eager to give a favorable, self-congratulatory report to the ambassador
and D/CIA, expressed optimism that this entire affair could be brought to a
close within the next twenty-four hours.
Tom Layton’s FAST team rolled out of
Gerardo Tobar López Airport onto the Simón Bolívar Highway at 07:15 the next
morning, crossing the bridge over the bay onto Cascara, an island that is
barely three by five miles in size, just off the Colombian mainland.
The team rode in
two armor-plated Chevy Suburbans, four agents per vehicle, doing sixty on the
highway under a gray, overcast sky. They were accompanied by two marked
Colombian police cars, one in front leading the way, one bringing up the rear,
lights flashing, sirens silenced.
Federal law
prohibited the Drug Enforcement Administration from making arrests in foreign
countries, so officers of the Colombian National Police would accompany the
FAST team into the building and put the cuffs on Nolan.
The FAST
shooters were armed with Heckler & Koch MP7 compact submachine guns with
laser aiming modules. For sidearms, they carried a mix of 9mm or .40 caliber
Glocks and Smith & Wesson M&P (Military and Police) 9mm or .45 caliber pistols,
depending upon personal preferences. The agents wore t-shirts or black DEA
windbreakers with white lettering, jeans or khakis, and armored vests. Some
wore DEA caps, or sunglasses, and their faces were taciturn and all-business.
Tom Layton
personally led the mission. Thirty-six years old with a closely buzzed receding
hairline and square jaw, he’d been with DEA for the past eight years after
leaving the Marine Corps. He had experience on the streets of Bogotá and Mexico
City, as well as in the ghettos of Chicago and Los Angeles, busting cartel
agents, gangbangers, and drug smugglers. He’d also been in more than one firefight,
remained calm under pressure, and was known for his reliable, independent
decision making.
In the makeshift
ops room at Gerardo Tobar López Airport, Avery and the others monitored the
progress of the unfolding interdiction, as DEA missions were called, listening
to the radio updates along the way. The mood was tense, but subdued. Despite
the potential stakes, this was still a routine job for the FAST team, and
Layton’s shooters were as professional as they came, but no one would be able
to completely relax until the Suburbans safely returned with Sean Nolan in
custody.
From the
airport, the Geo Cell continued to monitor Sean Nolan’s cell phone, ensuring
that he remained stationary until the takedown team arrived on target. Other
than a phone call placed overnight to order a prostitute, who the CIA surveillance
confirmed arrived at the apartment an hour later and left two hours after that,
there’d been no activity. Nolan’s thugs were at the apartment, so Layton knew
there were at least three people present.
Although the
docks were busy, there was little activity this early in Buenaventura’s inner-city
neighborhoods. The streets and sidewalks were mostly empty and quiet, and the
gang members and paramilitaries were not yet out in force. This bought Layton’s
team additional time, but it also made the small convoy stand out all the more
on the quiet streets.
As the four
vehicles turned off the highway and drove south on Carrera 20 Street, a spotter
for La Empresa watched from a second floor window of a two-flat dwelling that
served as a drug storage facility. He observed the direction in which the
vehicles travelled, recognized the US diplomatic plates on the Suburbans, and
produced his cell phone to make a call. He was able to think of only one target
in that area that would warrant a convoy of vehicles this size.
At 07:43, the
Suburbans rolled to a stop on the narrow front street outside of the apartment
building. The Colombian police cruisers parked perpendicular with the street,
seventy feet apart, to block traffic coming from either direction.
The FAST agents
dismounted from the Suburbans and fanned out, four men stacking up outside the building’s
front door to make entry, while the other two took up positions outside the
apartment to cover the streets. Two Colombian police officers fell into line
behind the entry team, pistols drawn.
The first agent
in the line dropped to one knee near the front door and overcame the lock’s
simple pin tumbler cylinder with an EZ Snap lock-pick gun.
The door swung
open.
Weapons ready, the
entry team poured past the threshold into the stuffy, musty smelling foyer. They
crossed the soiled, worn out carpet, followed the creaky wooden stairs to the
second floor, and stopped halfway down the dark hallway where they stacked up
along the right wall. They moved cautiously and silently.
The first agent
in line un-slung a short barreled shotgun and shouldered the stock. Aiming down
at a forty-five degree angle, he held the barrel five inches away from the narrow
space between the doorjamb and the doorknob and lock. After Layton gave the
“go” signal by nodding three times, the agent fired the shotgun.
The specially
designed TESAR door-breaching copper slug decimated the locks and subsequently dispersed
into a harmless powder on the opposite side of the door. To ensure the lock was
defeated, the agent immediately cocked the shotgun and gave the door a second
blast. Then he kicked the door in, lifted the shotgun up, and sidestepped clear
of the doorjamb, making space for Layton, who charged through the smoky doorway,
MP7 held in the ready position, with his teammates close behind him.
As he entered
the sparsely furnished apartment with warped wooden floors, Layton turned immediately
left. Staying along the perimeter of the wall, his feet and his eyes never
stopped moving as he scanned for threats.
The first one
appeared when a shirtless, well-muscled African man with a shaved head stepped
out of a bedroom with a pistol in his hands. Ignoring the DEA agent’s command
to drop the weapon, his one and only warning, Layton broke the trigger on his
MP7 without a second’s hesitation, drilling the man twice with Heckler &
Koch’s special 4.6mm high velocity, armor piercing rounds. The man managed two
more steps before falling over flat onto his face, emptying blood over the
dirty, scratched hardwood floor.
Another man, a
native Colombian, came out of the bedroom directly behind the fallen black man.
He managed to fire a single shot from his Glock, which punched a hole
harmlessly through the drywall behind Layton, before two DEA agents
simultaneously opened up with their submachine guns, riddling him with bullets.
The agents
stepped over the bodies into the short hallway and split off into two elements
to simultaneously clear each bedroom. The first bedroom, from which Nolan’s two
goons had emerged, was now clear.
The second
bedroom door was locked, and as the agents stacked up outside of it, they heard
furniture scraping across the floor and footsteps on the other side.
The FAST team
repeated the process of blasting the lock and kicking the door in.
But the door
stopped a third of the way into the room when it struck a heavy wooden desk
that had been pushed in its path.
Following his
MP7 through the narrow gap and turning sharply around the obstructed door into
the room, Layton spotted a barefooted Sean Nolan in the process of squeezing
through an open window.
Nolan heard and
ignored Layton’s command to stop, which only encouraged him to move faster as
he slipped a leg out the window.
Two more DEA
agents, with the Colombian cops, pushed their way through the door, moving the
obstructing desk out of the way.
Layton and the
Colombians, covered by DEA agents, closed the gap across the floor. They
latched onto Nolan, hauled him roughly back inside through the window, body
slammed him against the floor, disarmed him of the pistol snugged in the
waistband of his pants, and flipped him over. The Colombians put the cuffs
around his wrists. The whole time Nolan thrashed, kicked, and spat, until one
Colombian gave him a face full of mace and punched him hard and low in the
kidney.
Escorted by the
FAST shooters, the Colombian cops hauled Nolan onto his feet and dragged him
out of the apartment unit, down the stairs, and out the front door as he kicked
and threw his weight around.
One DEA agent opened
the rear passenger door on one of the Suburbans to accommodate Nolan as the
Colombian police officers steered him toward the vehicle. The agent jumped at
the distinctive
whoosh
of an incoming projectile. His mind didn’t even have
time to register Layton’s cry of “RPG!”
The 72mm rocket
propelled grenade travelled at 115 meters per second and connected broadside
with the Suburban. Unlike Hollywood’s dramatic depiction, the Suburban remained
completely stationary upon impact without flipping over in the air. The RPG’s
impact fuse detonated, and a large orange explosion blossomed around the
Suburban, surrounded by a plume of thick, black smoke. Designed to bust NATO
tanks, the RPG easily decimated the Suburban. The windows were blown out. The
light armor panels designed to repel small arms were easily overcome. Errant
shrapnel and debris flew through the air. The nearest DEA agent and one of the
Colombian cops were likewise eviscerated; their bloody remains tossed through
the air and over the pavement. The surviving Colombian police officer grabbed
onto Nolan, pushed him onto the ground, and covered him.
The shockwave
blew over a couple more DEA agents, including Layton. Two more agents took
multiple shrapnel hits, one critically, but the other’s vest caught the lethal
hits and saved his life. The agents able to do so were quickly on their feet
with weapons up.
Layton
shouldered his MP7. He was stooped over in a half crouch with his head low. He
swept his sights along the upper windows and rooftops of the buildings across
the street. He spotted movement; two figures in the process of reloading the
RPG launcher. One man held the launcher over his shoulder, while the other
screwed the projectile in. A third man came into view on the rooftop, aiming an
assault rifle into the street below and firing shots on semi-automatic.
A DEA agent
behind Layton grunted as his vest caught multiple 7.62mms. Then the rooftop shooter
raised his aim and sent the next series of rounds through the soft space
between the bottom of the American’s throat and the top of his chest. He fell
over, gurgling blood and clutching his neck.
Layton raised
his aim, though he knew he was pushing the MP7’s short range of 656 feet. The
weapon was lethal in close quarters, but it simply wasn’t suited for this type
of combat. He sighted his target and was about to press the trigger when a
voice to his left called out and was cut off by incoming automatic fire pelting
the remaining Suburban.
The gunfire
chopped down another agent while he was in the process of making a move for the
driver’s door. Then another RPG whooshed in from above and plowed through the
Suburban’s engine block, rocking the heavy vehicle against its suspension and
turning the Suburban into a smoking, pulverized wreck. Heavy clouds of black
smoke billowed into the air, obstructing everyone’s line of sight to the
rooftop attackers.
Layton spun
around at the sound of voices and movement in his left peripheral.
From forty feet
away, five men, a mix of Latinos and Africans, armed with AKs and M16s appeared
in the street from a nearby alleyway. The Colombian police car was parked some
twenty feet behind them. The two officers inside were slumped over, riddled
with bullets, the car’s windows blown out.
“Fall back!” Layton
commanded his agents. His mind suddenly recalled a dozen flashbacks of the
hellish urban combat of Fallujah, taking fire, dead and wounded marines in the
streets, and his instincts kicked in. He became driven by the single-minded
determination not to see another of his agents die. “Everybody back inside now!”
Two surviving
FAST shooters retreated back into the apartment building, grabbing onto Nolan and
dragging him along. The surviving Colombian cop, who covered them, took
multiple hits from at least two directions and fell over.
Two more DEA
agents laid down covering fire at the attackers in the street and on the
rooftop, while Layton stopped to stoop over and grab onto a wounded agent lying
on the street by the back of his vest. Bent over and leaning forward to keep a
low target profile, Layton pushed his legs, taking wide steps backwards toward
the door, and dragged the wounded man’s weight with him across the sidewalk.
Bullets
continued to pepper the pavement and the cars around them, and the front of the
apartment building. Layton flinched when he heard the crack in the air and felt
the heat of a shot zipping by inches from his face. Then he watched helplessly
as a barrage of rounds shredded the wounded agent’s legs. The Empresa shooter
elevated his aim, stitching a line upward across the agent’s chest and face,
and then moved his aim up to cover Layton.
Taking multiple
hits across his vest, and one across his right arm, Layton cried out. As his
arm suddenly went slack, and he reeled from the hit, he staggered back and involuntarily
released his grip on his wounded teammate. He fell back, tripping over his own feet,
but he managed to stay upright and regain his balance. He dodged another volley
of bullets as he stumbled across the rest of the way to the front door, where a
pair of hands grabbed onto him and hauled him the rest of the way inside,
behind the safety of the sturdy brick wall.