Panama is a modern cosmopolitan city of just under a million and a half people, plus plenty more on vacation or business. The city’s crowded skyline comprised high rise buildings of shimmering glass and steel nestled between the sparkling blue water of the Pacific Ocean and the bright green foliage of the tropical rainforest. The city sat just seven feet above sea level, and the air and sky were clean and fresh, lacking the thick pollution and heavy smog of major Western and developing Asian cities.
Founded some five hundred years ago by Spanish conquistadors, Panama was now considered an international city, given its prominent role in the global economy. This was due to the Panama Canal, which accounts for over half of the country’s GDP. Three hundred million tons of cargo passed through the Canal annually, making it one of the most important waterways in global trade.
Panama’s role in global trade and commerce also made the city an important logistics hub for all manner of transnational crime, ranging from money laundering, to arms trafficking, kidnapping, sex slaves, and drugs.
Some neighborhoods and nearby districts were ridden with enough gang and drug violence to make Chicago or LA’s inner neighborhoods look tame by comparison, and bandits were always on the lookout for wealthy tourists to rob or kidnap. Consequently, there was a heavy police presence throughout the city, especially in the areas popular among foreign travelers and tourists.
FARC was also known to maintain a small presence in Panama, contrary to the Panamanian president’s recent proclamation that he’d successfully forced them out of the country, a niggling point of contention between the Colombian and Panamanian governments. FARC used Panamanian ports to move drugs and weapons, and it wasn’t a surprise that some of FARC’s senior political leaders opted to hide out here instead of rugging it out in the Colombian jungles.
The good news was that Panama didn’t have a secret police that routinely monitored suspicious foreigners or bugged hotel rooms, so Avery could operate somewhat freely here, long as he practiced smart tradecraft and discretion. Panama didn’t even have a military and instead kept only a Ministry for Public Safety, a police force that wasn’t even specially trained for counterintelligence and counterterrorism.
Before Aguilar and Castillo arrived later that day, Avery planned to spend a couple hours doing pre-mission prep work, but first, he had one stop to make.
He waited now in his Inspire on the top level of a parking garage four blocks away from the office building housing the American embassy. He had the wheels pointed to the left and the rear windows rolled half-way down, the recognition signal to his local CIA contact.
Waiting several minutes past the arranged time, Avery soon grew impatient. Finally he heard tires screeching at the top of the entrance ramp, and a black Ford Crown Victoria pulled into the second spot off his right, leaving a gap between the vehicles.
The CIA officer from the embassy climbed out, removed two medium-sized suitcases from his trunk, and approached the Inspire.
Avery didn’t get out. He popped the Inspire’s trunk and pointed with his thumb over his shoulder.
The CIA officer placed the cases inside the trunk and slammed it shut.
He walked around the car to the driver side door.
Avery lowered the window and looked up at man.
“Shit, I recognize you. You’re one of Culler’s gunslingers from GRS, aren’t you? What do they call you guys? Scorpions?”
This CIA officer — mid thirties, Hispanic — didn’t know what a contractor was doing here on his turf, without the input of the chief of station, but he had a fair idea what the cases contained, and he expressed in no uncertain terms to Avery the ardent displeasure of COS Panama that an op was being run on his turf without his authorization. He informed Avery that he could expect no further assistance from Panama station. He even went as far as to insinuate that the COS just may take the matter up with the ambassador, who likewise had not been briefed on a covert action in Panama.
Avery thought the officer now berating him likely never held a gun since his training at the Farm and had likely found it to be a singularly distasteful, uncivilized experience.
COS Panama probably spent his days reporting to the ambassador and attending diplomatic cocktail receptions, and when he did allow his officers to partake in the business of espionage, it was most likely to get the dirt on some foreign business illegally dumping industrial waste or to bribe politicians to vote yes on new anti-pollution legislation, or something equally vital to US national security.
After all, AMEMBASSY Panama proudly advertised its LEED certification and the ambassador once emphasized that rainforest conservation was one of his staff’s top priorities, following the president’s declaration that it “was the mission of all US agencies to safeguard the environment.” That no doubt included CIA.
The officer from Panama station was in mid-sentence when Avery raised his window, shifted into reverse, and backed out of his spot. He heard a hand slap against the trunk as he accelerated away toward the exit ramp. In his rear view mirror, he saw the indignant CIA man holding his ground, staring down the back end of the departing Inspire.
Avery wouldn’t put it past the Agency man to take note of the make and model and the license plate number, and pass it along to the local police to run interference. He decided that his team would have to stick with Aguilar’s and Castillo’s vehicles.
Avery pulled over a dozen blocks away from the embassy, after making certain he wasn’t being followed. He got out of the Inspire and walked around to sweep the cases in the back with a small device provided by Culler from the CIA’s Directorate of Science & Technology that was disguised as an iPod. He found a GPS tracker in one of the cases, removed it, flicked it away into the street, and got back behind the wheel.
His next stop was the Holiday Inn, near the Panama Canal, where a room was reserved in his cover name. There, he sat down and opened the cases from the embassy, to make sure that he had everything he’d requested and that the COS hadn’t further tried to shaft him.
There were three Type III ballistics vests, encrypted Motorola tactical radio units, a .45 caliber Glock 21, two SP-21 Barak 9mm pistols, and a mini-Uzi submachine gun, plus spare ammunition and holsters. The CIA station in Bogotá had delivered the gear in diplomatic lockboxes overnight to the Panamanian embassy.
When he disassembled the weapons and inspected the parts carefully, Avery discovered a tiny firing pin had been removed from one of the Baraks. Otherwise, everything else appeared in order, but he was still seething, wondering if it was just a sloppy fuck-up on Bogotá’s end, sending faulty gear, or if it was something more insidious on the part of Panama station.
He booted up his notebook computer and logged into Intelink to see the update from Culler, who had tasked NSA with hacking into the Trump Ocean Club’s security systems, to search the footage of the hotel’s surveillance cameras. The hotel had a modern system, with the data from the cameras stored digitally on a cloud. Culler also reported that Canastilla’s phone was still turned on and stationary, indicating that Canastilla was almost definitely still inside the hotel. Alive, dead, or held prisoner, no one could say.
At Café Gazebo, a French restaurant across the street from his hotel, Avery ate a meal of lightly sauced chicken, shrimp, rice, and vegetables, the best meal he’d had since arriving in South America two weeks ago, and then he returned to his room.
Twenty minutes later, he received a text on the disposable, pre-paid phone he’d picked up in Bogotá for this mission. Aguilar and Castillo had landed and were on their way from the airport. They were covered as representatives of a Colombian bank, in town for the same conference Avery was supposedly attending.