“Good idea. But a SEAL team, that’s what you need to work on now. I want to be there waiting, in control of his facility, hideout, whatever it is when Kazan arrives. So make the call and scramble our guys. I’m going to throw some gear together. I’ll expect to hear from you in ten minutes or so. No more.”
He said, “I’ll call when I have something to tell you,” and hung up.
Half an hour later, now dressed in black T-shirt, camo field pants, and jungle boots, I answered the beeping satellite phone and heard Harrington say, “Okay, I’ve got a hostage-rescue team waiting for you. A chopper, too. Do you know where the Navy Amphib base is on the way to Boca Grande?”
Of course I knew where it was. Years ago, I’d been involved in an operation that had used the base as a staging area.
Harrington said, “Grab a cab, and you can be there in ten minutes. I’ll have one of our people at the gate waiting for you.”
There was something about his tone that made me uneasy. He wasn’t being evasive, but I got the impression that he hadn’t told me everything, either.
I said, “You said you have a hostage-rescue team. You mean a SEAL boat crew, correct? Snatch and bag. A squad of seven or eight studs, fully tactical, fully trained, ready to go.”
“Doc, SEAL Four is working way south and out of contact. I tried. Absolutely no way can they dump what they’re doing and redeploy out of here. So I got you the next best thing. I’ve got a Colombian Anfibio team waiting to go.”
I groaned loud enough for Harrington to hear me, so he raised his voice, continuing, “Now wait! Don’t get pissed off at me. They’re better than they used to be. Things have changed since you were in the business. What do you think SEAL Four spends half its time doing down here? Training their people, making them better so we don’t have to invest so much tactical time in their country. It’s not the same group that you used to deal with.”
I hoped not. Colombia’s Grupo de Commandos Anfibios or Amphibious Commando Group was a SEAL-type unit established back in the 1960s to work against drug trafficking, but it was also given other missions, such as naval counterterrorism.
I’d known some of their people and had worked with them once or twice over the years.
I was not impressed.
The Anfibios, or GCA as they are also known, are head-quartered at the Cartagena Naval Base and are approximately one hundred men strong. Soon after the unit’s inception, a Mobile Training Team from SEAL Team Two traveled to Cartagena to train them in basic swimming, demolitions, SCUBA, and land warfare. They were reportedly pretty good, but they lacked sound leadership-too often the case in Colombia.
I told Harrington, “You know what the last thing I heard about the Anfibios was? That their commanding officer got blown up testing a homemade limpet mine. Just a couple of years back. Is that true?”
I heard him sigh. “Yes, it’s true. You know it’s true. But they’ve gotten better.”
“I hope so. I hope to hell you’re right.”
“Look at it this way, Doc. They’re the only people we’ve got.”
24
The naval base ran for a mile or so along the busy four-lane highway that led to the beaches and tourist high-rises of Boca Grande. It was fenced the whole way, lighted guard-houses at the entrances and exits.
At this hour, there wasn’t much traffic, mostly donkey and ox carts pulling wagons filled with vegetables and woven goods toward the markets of the old city. On the way, I passed the time by using fishing line to create a light and comfortable strap for my glasses-a fishing guide’s trick. I also had a recent acquisition boxed and put away in my pants pocket: contacts. I didn’t like to wear them, but it was good to have a backup.
Standing inside the guardhouse, with three Colombian soldiers, was a tall, blond man wearing dark slacks and a white short-sleeve dress shirt. He could have been a model for a catalogue company. As I stepped from the cab, he came out, shook hands, and said to me, “My name’s Ron Iossi, Commander Ford. I’m with the embassy. I’ve been instructed to assist you on this mission.”
I’d been expecting someone like him to be waiting for me. Was glad, in fact, that he was there. The word embassy was a euphemism for the CIA.
He had a Humvee, engine running, driver waiting. We drove through the tree shadows and beneath streetlights, through the military complex, on the road that parallels Cartagena Bay. Like many military bases, the architecture was repetitive, as if stamped from a mold, and dated well back into the previous century.
I only got a glimpse of the base’s main docks. Among the Coast Guard cutters and light naval ships was a row of private vessels, both power and sail, anchored below powerful security lights. They’d probably all been seized because of some kind of illegal activity, so I was not surprised to see a black oceangoing motor-sailer there, more than one hundred feet long. I recognized the boat as having once belonged to a man nicknamed the Turk by a transplanted Australian friend of mine. The vessel had Istanbul registry and was christened The Moon of something. I’d forgotten exactly what.
That afternoon, when Amelia and I had had some free time, I’d tried to contact that Australian friend, Garret Norman, by calling Club Nautico, the local marina he owned. Garret’s a smart, observant guy, and he could have provided me with some useful insights into Colombia’s kidnap trade.
Instead, Candelaria, Garret’s wife, gave me a surprising update on what had happened since I’d last been in Colombia. The Turk had been found shot in the back of the head, floating in Cartagena Bay. Garret had been arrested on unassociated-and bogus-charges. He’d escaped from jail and fled the country.
No one knew where he was.
“Garret always liked you,” his wife told me. “He trusted you. You and your crazy old uncle. The one who beat up the Turk that time. What was his name?”
The way she spoke of her husband in the past tense gave me the uncomfortable feeling that Garret was dead.
No way of me finding out. In Colombia, people disappeared so commonly, so suddenly, that authorities no longer bothered to keep track.
The center for Colombia’s counterterrorism special forces, the Fuerzas Especiales Anti-Terrorista, is located on the bay side of the Cartagena base, not far from the old three-story tropical white house where the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and the CIA both keep offices.
We stopped briefly at that house, and Iossi-he pronounced it “Yohsee”-led me inside, then handed me several documents, including a laminated Colorado drivers’ license that identified me as “Marion North.”
I said, “You guys work fast.”
“Not us, the computer. Press a couple buttons, then hit print. Presto. It’s kind of what we do.”
“This picture’s at least ten years old.”
“It’s the only one we had on file. The other documents are important. Keep them on you at all times. They identify you as a privately employed mercenary for hire. A headhunter.”
I said, “Headhunter?”
“It’s a term we’ve come to use. There are still real headhunters out there in the jungle-don’t let those little bastards catch you-but this means something different. It means you’re an American soldier of fortune. Up in the mountains, there are probably a dozen ex-SEALs, former Rangers, Delta Force guys. Maybe more. Came down here to make lots of money as bounty hunters.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. An absolute fact. They’ve been hired by the Colombian government, using a front business called Gin-EE Electronics out of Virginia, or a dummy corporation called SAIC. They’re mercenaries hired to kill retreating FARC troops. They’re hired specifically because of their backgrounds and the quality of their work in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Central America, Africa-the world. They’re each assigned their own little territory, kind of like gold claims back in the old days. The more successful they are, the bigger their claim gets.”