Arauca: A Novel of Colombia

by D. Alan Johnson

  “Uh, Mr. Rondel. I know you. You’re a Cultural Attaché, not CIA.”

  “No one carries a badge that says that he is with the Agency.” Andre leaned back and smiled a little bit. “We all have some type of phony title,” he laughed, a little nervous. Ann felt a stab in the back of her brain. Phil was the Business Affairs Officer for the Commerce Department, yet he was always out of country, going to “Trade Shows”. She put her sudden insight into a mental box to be taken out later and examined in detail.

  “Mrs. Snyder, we need someone in our CI section. CI is Counter Intelligence. We track the bad guys and make sure that they are not spying on us. We look for weaknesses in our procedures and intelligence leaks. I think that you would find this to be a very interesting job.”

  “Sort of like security?” she asked.

  “Oh no, more than that. And less. The security guys are interested in locks and fences. Physical things. CI looks more at people. They look for the little things that could indicate a leak or even a mole. For example, a man always needs to go and get a haircut right after an operations planning meeting. The CI officer would find out if the man was going to meet with someone. CI puts together puzzles from little hints. I have a feeling you would be very good.”

  Ann leaned back and looked out the window. He could see her mind turning over this new data set. She’ll be good, he thought. But fears and doubts swept through his soul.

  This went against everything Andre had ever been taught. He was revealing his real job with the Agency to recruit an outsider. Unbelievable, outlandish, and far outside of normal procedures. Andre Rondel was terrified. But he reviewed his plan and knew he was right.

  Phil Snyder is the most valuable and powerful field agent in Latin America and Central Africa. As the Agency put more emphasis on electronic and satellite intelligence gathering, the few remaining field agents became even more important to Langley.

  As Phil’s liaison officer, Andre’s job was to see that everything was right on the home front so that Phil could concentrate on his job. This included personal things such as buying flowers for Ann on their wedding anniversary and making sure that Phil’s utility and rent payments were made.

  Last month Phil said his wife was bored and Andre had better do something about it. Andre tried to get her involved with the other ex-patriot American women in Panama, but Ann was not interested in coffee, cards, or kids. He had convinced her to attend some of the embassy parties, but she told him that she felt awkward without Phil.

  Andre was here today because Phil sent a very ugly message to him yesterday from Africa.

  Andre,

  This is the third time that I have communicated with you about my wife. During my last phone call with her I could tell she feels empty and useless. She needs to find an activity to keep her occupied. As my LNO, I hold you responsible. Am I understood?

  I will be home in three weeks. I know that when I arrive she will be excited about some new activity.

  Snyder

  Andre was desperate. Phil could ruin his career with a single report to the DO [Director of Operations]. If Headquarters got wind that Phil was not getting the support from Andre that he needed, his next posting would be a listening post in Greenland.

  Last night, Andre pulled Ann’s extensive dossier looking for any hint of something that might interest her. First he reviewed her education.

   Bachelor’s Degree.

   Double major in History and English literature.

  As he continued to read, he came to the section on hobbies.

  “Possesses an addiction to crossword puzzles. Makes a daily trip to the corner newsstand for the NYT.”

  That was it! If she liked crossword puzzles and history, Andre had a hunch she just might enjoy the cat and mouse of CI. Besides, they were so short handed now with the retirement of Felix Hand. Her grades in high school and college showed that she had a fine brain. And what a body...

  “Are you pulling my leg, Mr. Rondel?” Ann asked, leaning forward and glaring into his eyes.

  “No, Mrs. Snyder, my career is teetering on your decision.” He covered his mouth with his left hand. The truth had such a strange way of squirting out sometimes.

  Her face softened. Was that a bit of compassion in her eyes?

  “All right. What do you want me to do?” she asked. Andre was so relieved that he slumped in his chair, smiling at the ground. He stood up and shook her hand.

  “You’re going to love it! We’ll start tomorrow.”

  A whirlwind of training started with classes every day at 0700. Each evening she carried home policy manuals and history books for her “light reading”. She soon deduced that not only was Phil CIA, but he swung an awfully big stick. Any time someone would balk at briefing her, Andre would simply say, “Phil wouldn’t like that.” Then the cooperation and information would flow.

  At first Phil was livid that Andre used Ann to solve his personnel shortage, but when he saw how much his wife enjoyed her new job, he relented. The Director of Operations loved it too. The Agency always liked married couples who were both “read in” to the workings of the intelligence community and working for the CIA. Phil and Ann became the new power couple in Latin America. They enjoyed their times together, working in Honduras, San Salvador, Argentina, and finally Colombia. Phil was often gone, but when he was back, life was grand. And Ann had her work to occupy her time while he was away.

  In 1997, they decided to have a baby. Soon after announcing that she was expecting, Phil had an emergency assignment to Angola. He died when Tepper Air, a CIA contractor, lost the C-130 he was on to a SAM-7 surface to air missile.

  Phil Junior was born seven months later in Bogotá. Ann never even thought about leaving her job or Bogotá. All she had now was Phil Junior and Counter Intelligence.

  Whitehorse Jackson put aside Ann’s file, satisfied with his decision. She would have a whopper of a first assignment. He was still thinking of the best way to use this new information about Gerald Minor.

  After his talk with George Allen, he gently suggested a stand down of all flight operations. Of course, this was quickly accepted by George, and then by the station manager for Monroe. This was only a short-term solution to the leak. George also agreed that nothing should be said to the Monroe management until Whitehorse had decided what to do.

  Anne hurried into the office carrying a stack of files under her left arm and a Styrofoam coffee cup in the other hand. Whitehorse couldn’t help but smile. She was wearing a pair of tight black pants, spike high heels with long pointed toes, and a white button-up blouse with long sleeves.

  “What is the latest on our boy, Gerald Minor?”

  “I’ve been talking with George Allen. He was with the IT guys all day. They checked email records, and traced the messages with the coordinates to the laptop that Minor used.” She dug through her files, and opened one.

  “He was smart enough to use a hotmail account, but he used his own laptop on Monroe’s wireless network on the base. We had the IP address of his computer from their company email. They cross-referenced every email out of Larandia, and found his within just a few minutes.”

  Whitehorse put down his coffee cup, and stared at Anne. “I want you to turn him,” he said.

  Turning an agent was the process of making an enemy’s agent a conduit of information back to one’s own side. The agent would also be used to pass disinformation to the enemy. Often called a “double agent”, this arrangement could easily backfire, especially with a non-professional like Gerald Minor.

  Ann remained silent, holding Whitehorse’s gaze. He smiled at her control.

  “You are a beautiful woman, Ann, and I feel you could have a huge influence over a younger, single man.”

  Whitehorse saw the impact of his compliment, and then her face darkened as she considered the implications. Both realized the risks of such a move. Their careers would hang in the balance. If they were successful, and were able to run a double agent to the FARC, the accol
ades would flow. But if Minor ran, or blew his cover, it could be bad for them both. Neither had any fear of losing their jobs, but even more to be avoided was the loss of face with the other professionals in the State Department, DoD, and Langley. The punishment could be a posting in Equatorial Guinea or Botswana.

  Ann leaned back in the chair as she pondered the implications of Whitehorse’s plan. He couldn’t help but notice her long legs.

  “I won’t sleep with him,” she said quietly. Both of them knew that the easiest way to turn an agent was to use sex. But for the gambit to work, the man or woman who turned the agent must be a volunteer.

  “I don’t think that would be good in this case. You will represent the unattainable. He will desire you, but still respect you. I’ll be the hammer.”

  The other side of turning an agent was the threat of jail or worse. Whitehorse would make a good “bad guy.” He knew he would have to work at keeping himself under control because he really wanted to pound this punk for leaking info that got a good man killed.

  “First, I’ll interrogate him. I’ll threaten him with torture, fifty years in jail, public humiliation—you know, all the normal stuff. Then you come in and shoo me out of the room. Be nice to him. Explain how we know that he has betrayed his country, but you have a way he can redeem himself. And make him WANT you.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Anne asked Whitehorse as she pretended to rearrange her files. “I’m CI, not Operations.” She paused for several seconds. Jackson said nothing, seeing that she was thinking it through.

  She looked Whitehorse in the eye and said, “This could be the operation of a lifetime for me: The chance to penetrate FARC. No telling what type of intel we could mine out of this.” Jackson could see her excitement well up as her mind raced through the scenarios.

  “I want you in on this from the beginning because it started as a CI issue. Besides, I think you’re ready to move into ops.”

  She gave Whitehorse a dazzling smile. Her mind scrambled. Such an opportunity! She wanted to think about the career benefits, the operation at hand, but she could only see his “little boy” smile, and crinkles around his blue eyes.

  They started to plan out the process. First, they would need to find out more about their pigeon.

  *****

  1600, Wednesday, July 10

  Cano Limon Oil Camp

  Arauca Department

  Colombia

  Mad Madison woke up from his nap refreshed. Here on the oil camp, Mad was quite a celebrity. Everyone knew he was the surveillance pilot who called in the gunships that kept the oil flowing. Less guerrilla problems meant greater job security for everyone on the camp. And less chance of a guerilla take over like what happened in other oil camps in the past.

  With his status came several benefits. The oil company provided a private room with air conditioning, cable TV, and hi-speed internet. Maids and laundry service came with the room. Since he flew both day and night missions, he could eat at the dining facility 24 hours a day.

  Stretching and yawning, Mad decided it was time to go to the gym. Boredom was the one downside to the job. Mad filled some of his time at the gym. Most of his missions were at night, but they varied the flight times so as to keep the FARC off balance. Today, take off time had been 0900, and Mad went out for 90 minutes just looking over the pipeline. This morning’s flight would be it for today unless some of the seismic sensors or an Army patrol reported activity around the pipeline.

  Being a civilian contractor, Paladin’s flight hours were limited to ninety hours per month. If the customer requested more, there was a large cash payment to Paladin for every hour over the limit. Last month, the oil company paid Paladin over $65,000 for just twenty hours overtime. Each month the Tyson Oil accountants almost went berserk. They called both Paladin’s home office and Mad, telling everyone who would listen that this was the last time. There would be no more overtime. Of course, everyone knew the facility director had an almost unlimited budget as long as the oil kept flowing.

  Picking up his cell phone, he called Steve Ironwood, his sensor operator.

  “Yeah,” Steve said.

  “Steve. Gym.” And then he hung up. Smiling, he walked out the door and down the walk to the open air gym. Communication with Steve was easy. Most women liked to speak around forty thousand words each day. Most men liked to say about twenty thousand words a day. But Steve hated to say more than two thousand per day. When they flew, Mad talked about people he had met, the novels he had read, and politics in Colombia and back in the States. Steve listened intently, and when he did say something, it was well thought out and sometimes even profound.

  Mad, meanwhile talked almost non-stop. They made a great crew. Steve flew with Mad in Angola, and when Mad volunteered for Colombia, there was no question in the company, or in the flight crew that Steve would go with Mad.

  Starting his regular work-out with 15 minutes on the stationary bike to get warmed up, Mad admired the twenty-three year old beauty who managed the gym, the recreation equipment, and the games. At Cano Limon, an oil worker could work out in the well-equipped gym, check out fishing equipment, bicycles, or soccer balls, play tennis, pool, ping pong, chess, or just float in the Olympic sized swimming pool. The oil company wanted their people happy. Mad thought that perhaps all this was to make up for the fact that there was no sexual contact allowed and no alcoholic beverages.

  Being nearly a tee-totaller, Mad did not mind the lack of adult beverages, but the women thing was tough. Especially with the beauties around here. Mad had a 19 year old maid that could have been a model back in Texas. In addition to the 155 men, there were 18 women on the camp full time and another 40 maids and cooks brought in daily from the local town.

  Occidental built a separate facility with rooms for ten women in 1986. It sat on the far side of the camp, on the other side of the production facility, and guards walked the fence 24 hours a day. But as women had made their mark in the oil business, becoming engineers, accountants, psychologists, and safety managers, eight had to sleep in the men’s section. These women always shared, two to a room for safety. But, being volunteers, Mad was convinced from their flirtatious actions and conversation, they secretly enjoyed being in the danger zone.

  As Mad finished his warm-up, Steve came into the gym. Without a word, both Mad and Steve moved toward the seated row machine. Today was back and biceps day. Yesterday they worked chest and shoulders, and tomorrow they would work legs and abs. After each workout, the pair went to the pool and did laps. In the cool of the day, they jogged up and down the camp road along with many of the Tyson employees. On the fourth day, they only ran and swam, and then the cycle started again.

  “You know, Steve, I’ve lost another two pounds. We really have surprised the Colombians. Just look at how good we scored on the last PT test.”

  When Paladin crews first arrived at Cano Limon, the Colombians were aghast at the poor physical condition of Mad, Steve, and Nelson Bunte, their boss. Like most American middle-aged men, all three had beer guts, pasty skin, and got out of breath just walking down the flight line. Tyson gave every employee on the oil camp a physical fitness test every third month, and kept graphs of their progress. The three Americans arrived the day before the next scheduled test. They posted the three worst scores on the camp.

  “Well after that first test, I guess Tyson management wanted us in better shape. They are a great company, caring about the health and wellness of their employees like that.” Mad continued, as if Steve had answered him. “They have this nice gym, all this equipment…. You know, they even assigned Walt as our personal trainer, and really encouraged us to keep up the program he wrote for us.”

  The ground security chief, Walt Hedges had showed them the gym, gave them a work-out program, and often worked out and always ran with them. It was difficult to complain that the workouts were too hard since Walt was sixty-three years old, and still ran competitively. Mad wasn’t about to tell a sixty-three year old that he c
ouldn’t keep up.

  “Tyson only wanted us to get in shape so we won’t be an embarrassment. Their wanted to gain the respect of the Colombians,” Steve answered.

  “Yeah, maybe you’re right.”

  Consequently, Mad and Steve each lost over 15 pounds in the last three months. Their skin glowed, and Mad felt better and looked better than he did when he was forty. Of course, the camp had very little candy, no snack food, and the chef in the dining facility used fresh fruit, vegetables, and local meat and fish. The last test they took put them in the middle of the camp overall, and at the top of their age bracket.

  Steve was never happy about the work-out routine. He would rather drink coffee by the gallon and watch TV. But his career in the Air Force taught him to take orders without too much complaining. Mad, on the other hand, was enthusiastic about his new physique, and truly looked forward to his daily workouts.

  Mad finished his last set and jumped up off of the bench.

  “Why are you so happy?” Steve asked?

  “You know, I just can’t believe they pay us to do this!” Mad said as he slapped Steve on the back. Steve just scowled at him and slowly shook his head.

  0400, Thursday, July 11

  Camp Julio Gomez

  Near La Esmeralda

  Arauca, Colombia

  The night was damp, as always. The grass felt like knee-deep water, pulling at Lynn Metzler’s feet and soaking his boots and socks as he walked toward the guerilla camp. Only another hundred meters now. He was tired and soaked. Was it with sweat or the dew from the bushes and ferns that brushed him during his march?

  But Lynn Metzler was happy and excited. At last they were going to make a real strike on the FARC. Both teams were combined under his command, so he had a squad of eight. He hoped that this attack might make a difference for the people of Arauca and Colombia. Lynn knew it was unwise to remain a true believer. Most of his friends cautioned him to remember that money was the real reason they fought.