Hostage Zero

by John Gilstrap

  Victor explained, “For the first few days, you work the same bag. Today you will learn, Evan. Tomorrow, you are half responsible for Charlie’s double production. You don’t want to fail. Show him, Charlie.” Victor made a spinning motion with his forefinger, and Charlie turned to display crosshatched scars on his lower back. He showed them just for a few seconds, and then he turned back.

  “Tell our new friend how you earned those,” Victor encouraged.

  Charlie cleared his throat and spoke to Evan’s feet. “From the whip,” he said. “Because I didn’t work fast enough.”

  “ Exactamente,” Victor said, smiling. “There are many scars here. I like giving scars.” As if reading Evan’s mind, he bent low till he was face to face with him. “And no matter how badly I make your back bleed, the pictures will always look just fine.”

  Jonathan and his team gathered around the computer screen, examining the satellite imagery that Venice had gotten them via an encrypted sat link. “Mother Hen, those are some great pictures,” Jonathan said into the radio. “I don’t suppose you see any blond-headed kids on your screen, do you?” Back in the War Room, Venice would have these images displayed on the ninety-six-inch high-definition screen.

  “I’m looking,” she said. “I haven’t had access to the sat link for much longer than you have.”

  The imagery they were looking at now was just a few minutes old, and it showed a cocaine factory of a scale that Jonathan had never seen before. This one stretched for dozens of acres across difficult terrain, and showed a level of organization that Pablo Escobar could only have dreamed about. No longer burdened with the need to hide their activities from the government, they could incorporate efficiencies that were normally reserved for legitimate manufacturing. There appeared to be a central headquarters area, the details of which were difficult to discern because of the thick jungle canopy, but with penetrating imagery technology, they could clearly make out fourteen covered structures of various sizes, thirteen of which were built in a rough rectangle around a central structure that was four times larger than the next largest building.

  Southeast of the city-why not call it what it looked like? — stretched the acres of coca bushes and the teeming population of workers, several dozen in total. While the detail was amazing, this commercial version of the highly classified technology available to the armed forces allowed only a bird’s-eye view, directly from above. State-of-the-art versions allowed digital enhancement to convert such images to ground-level views, making facial recognition possible from two hundred miles in space.

  “Zoom in to about thirty feet,” Jonathan instructed as he squinted at the screen. “Let me see one of the workers.”

  “Which one?”

  “Your choice.”

  While it was possible to manipulate the images from the laptop, it was far simpler for Venice to do it with her controls. The image moved to a section of the screen where the thirty-foot elevation would actually give them a view of four workers. In a single frame.

  “I’m seeing children,” Harvey said. “Are you seeing children?”

  “Turning you on?” Boxers jabbed.

  “Fuck you.”

  “Can it,” Jonathan snapped. He keyed his mike. “We’re seeing a workforce of kids, Mother Hen. Is that what you get from the big screen?”

  “Oh, my God, that’s terrible,” Venice said.

  Jonathan took that as a yes.

  “Okay, back off to a hundred feet again.” The children seemed to fall away into the screen, and they saw the southwestern corner of the factory. Jonathan touched a spot on the screen with the tip of a retracted ballpoint pen. “Let me see this building right here,” he said to Venice. “Get me to ten feet.”

  As the image started to move, Boxers asked, “You want to see the thatched roof?”

  “Exactly.” The building he was calling up was the only structure in the compound that had been built outside the jungle canopy. It was therefore easy to see construction details.

  When the image stopped moving, and the software finished its resolution process, the picture of an open-sided hut was as clear as if it had been snapped by a visitor. As he’d expected, the roof was made of what appeared to be palm fronds. Admittedly, though, he didn’t know one plant from another.

  “Why is the thatched roof important?” Harvey asked.

  “Because they burn really good,” Boxers said.

  Harvey’s jaw dropped a little. “What exactly are we planning to do?”

  “Win against ridiculous odds,” Jonathan said. Then, to Venice: “Go ahead and pull out again and let me see the compound. Just enough altitude to give me all the buildings.”

  “Are we looking for something in particular?” Venice asked.

  “We’re looking for stores of gasoline,” he said. He’d keyed his mike for Venice, but the answer was intended as much for Harvey as for her. “Cocaine manufacturing is a bizarre process,” he went on. “If people knew how it was made, they’d never in a million years shove it up their nose. After they stomp on the leaves, they soak the shit in sulfuric acid for a while, and then after another step or two, there’s a long soak in gasoline. Up here, I figure they’ve got to have a pretty good supply.”

  “Gasoline, eh?” Venice said in his ear. “You should have said something earlier. Watch this.” The image on the screen blinked as it refreshed, and then it turned from a picture as you’d normally see it to something more akin to a photographic negative. It jumped a couple more times. And then rotated.

  Harvey asked, “What the hell is going on?”

  “That’s Venice being Venice,” Boxers said.

  Jonathan added, “You learn over time not to ask questions. It’s best just to sit still until she’s finished. She’s good enough with this computer shit that electrons are actually afraid of her.” In anticipation of the show that always accompanied one of Venice’s digital accomplishments, Jonathan unplugged his earpiece from the radio and ran the audio connection through the laptop’s speakers.

  “Quit talking about Venice,” he said. “She can hear us all now.”

  “Ha, ha, very funny,” she said.

  They listened to the clatter of her computer keys as the image on the screen continued to shift and change colors. For the first part of this dizzying display, she trolled around the outline of the main building, zooming in and out of different quadrants. When one quadrant showed a yellow-orange aura, she said, “There it is.”

  “There what is?” Jonathan asked.

  “Just wait,” she said.

  She zoomed away from the main building and then shifted to the others in the compound. Through the canopy, they appeared more as outlines than real images, but the footprints of the huts were plainly visible. The screen shifted from building to building, pausing for a second or two, and then moving on to the next. She zoomed out and then in, at what seemed to be random intervals, and finally, she paused at one hut, perhaps the smallest of them all. She zoomed in closer, and as she did, a similar yellow aura appeared on the screen.

  “There’s your gasoline storage,” she said.

  Boxers blurted out a laugh.

  “You’ll tell us how you know this?” Jonathan asked. He didn’t for a moment question the accuracy-Venice was always right-he just wanted to know how she got there.

  “Did you forget what SkysEye was designed to do?” she asked.

  Then he saw it. He had in fact forgotten. “Petroleum research,” he said.

  “Bingo. The program is designed to search for petroleum compounds. Don’t ask me how it does it-something about the light signature of vapors-but there you go.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Harvey marveled.

  “I told you she was good,” Jonathan said.

  Venice continued, “That first yellow plume we saw was the gasoline in operation. I figured it would be easier to find when it was in use, and I figured that the big building was the actual factory. I just needed to see what it looked like in use, where vapo
r concentrations are high, so that I could look for it in storage, where vapors are more contained.”

  “I’ll be double-damned,” Harvey said. “So, now that we know where it is, what are we going to do with it?”

  Jonathan and Boxers exchanged glances, and together said, “Blow it up.”

  Jonathan expanded, “We’re going to need a diversion to get our PC out of there in one piece. If we give the guards a choice of saving one kid or saving the whole compound, maybe we can catch a break.”

  “Speaking of breaks,” Venice said. There was a sudden lightness in her tone. “Wait till you see this.” The screen blinked with another refreshed signal, and then they were looking at a clear image of the coca field again.

  Not much seemed to have changed. The workers still toiled, and shadows were still sharp. It wasn’t until she started to zoom into the workers that Jonathan got that anticipatory quiver in his gut. Was it possible that she’d found Evan in the middle of the crowd?

  The answer came when he got his first flash of white-blond hair. He pointed to the screen. “Holy shit, that’s him, isn’t it?”

  The boy stood with a tall black man and another child. It was hard to tell from a still picture, but they appeared to be having a conversation. “Take me in as close as you can.”

  Even as he said the words, he knew that he’d overstated. If Venice took the imagery in as close at it was capable of going, they’d be able to count the freckles on his shoulders. As it was, Venice understood his meaning and brought them in to within four or five feet.

  “I see a white boy with long blond hair,” Boxers said. “Look at the sunburn on his shoulders. That’s someone not used to this much exposure. I give it a ninety-nine percent.”

  Jonathan agreed. “I call that confirmation,” he said. “That makes us a go. Mother Hen, can you put a tag on him somehow and keep up with him?”

  Silence.

  “You still there?” Jonathan asked.

  “I’m here,” she confirmed. “I just don’t know how to answer you. His heat signature is going to be just like everybody else’s. I can track him visually, but that gets to diminishing returns really quickly. After dark, he’ll be lost.”

  “Screw it,” Boxers said. “We already know he’s there. Once we create a little chaos, we just search him out.”

  “That’s a lot of chaos,” Jonathan said. “I don’t want to have to find a moving target if people start running around.”

  “Then we’ll find him before we blow the gas. Eyeball the kid, then bring hell to life.”

  “Then we’ll be the only things moving in the camp,” Harvey said. “I’m not the tactician that you guys are, but that sounds scary.”

  Boxers laughed. “Scary, huh? You do know about the guns and stuff, right?”

  “I’ve got it,” Venice said.

  All heads turned to the computer. “Got what?” Jonathan asked for all of them.

  “How to track him after dark-at least until he goes under cover. It’s not about acquiring his heat signature. It’s about eliminating all the other identical heat signatures.”

  Jonathan looked to Boxers. “Did you understand that?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  Jonathan smiled. “So it’s not just me.”

  “It’s a simple concept,” Venice continued. “Normally, we worry about heat signatures as a way to differentiate one target from others. That doesn’t work in a population of targets who all have a signature of ninety-eight point six degrees, give or take a couple of tenths. So what we do instead is teach the computer to ignore all but one of the identical signatures.”

  “Oh, I get it,” Jonathan said. He wasn’t sure he actually did, but as he said so, he made a slicing motion to the others, telling them not to pursue it any further. When Venice said it was possible, it was possible. Understanding the hows and whys really wasn’t all that important.

  “It shouldn’t take all that long,” Venice said. “First I want to mark the GPS coordinates for every target and download them to your equipment. We don’t want you getting lost in the dark.”

  Jonathan smiled. Technology had changed so much of warfare over the years; and it wasn’t just in the weaponry. In fact, the business of the actual fight hadn’t changed much at all. You still had to pierce the flesh of other human beings to kill them, albeit with progressively greater accuracy and effectiveness. The real changes came in the noncombat elements. When Venice was done with the download she’d just mentioned, the specific coordinates of every landmark in the enemy compound would be documented to within inches, as would the details of their infiltration and exfiltration routes. On a cloudy, foggy night with zero visibility, they could arrive at their destination and get home again. It was a whole new world of land navigation.

  While Venice worked on her cyberspace easel, Jonathan and his team hammered out their assault plan. Given the limits of their intel, it was necessarily straightforward. Get in, create a diversion, and get out. Any enemy with a weapon would be killed without hesitation. Unarmed enemies would be spared as long as they stayed out of the way.

  “Tactically, Box, you’re the explosives king. Harvey, you’re the medic. I’m the lead on whatever entry we need to make. We stay together as a team, we cover each other’s asses, but once we have the PC in hand, nothing stands in the way of getting him to the vehicles. And I mean nothing, understand? If things go to shit and we get separated, whoever gets to the vehicle with Evan leaves immediately and goes to the exfil site. The reason we have two vehicles is specifically to plan for us getting split up.

  “Once the PC is secure and on his way, if we’re separated, there’s some room for improv.” He looked directly at Harvey. “You’re the new guy on the team, so you need to know the rules of engagement. We will not leave you behind if you’re alive, unless it’s the only way to exfil the PC. Understand?”

  “Us jarheads aren’t big on leaving people behind, either,” Harvey said.

  Jonathan nodded. “Didn’t mean to imply otherwise.” He checked his watch. “It’s five twenty-eight. That gives us fifty-six minutes till sunset, and that’s when we step off. Figure three hours to get to the compound, and then the night gets interesting. One way or another we should be clear of this shithole country in thirteen hours, tops.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  “Spit that shit out,” Charlie said when Victor finally walked away. “It’ll mess up your head. These people are all half crazy anyway. Don’t need anybody being any crazier.”

  Evan hooked a finger into his cheek and pulled out the foul-tasting leaves. “How do you keep him from hitting you?”

  Charlie’s expression said, Give me a break. “Remember the scars? That’s the part I’m not good at.” He walked to one of the few trees that were growing amid the field of bushes and pulled off a few of the green leaves. “Suck on these.”

  “What are they?”

  Charlie shrugged. “Not a clue. Not that other shit, but after you suck on ’em for a while they look the same, and they don’t make you feel like crap.”

  Evan took the leaves gratefully and slid them into the space formerly occupied by the coca leaves. “Why are you here?”

  “We better get to work,” Charlie said. “There’s nothing to this. You just pull the leaves off and stuff them into the bag.” He demonstrated. Using his thumb against the first knuckle of his forefinger, he could clear a whole branch in a single swipe.

  Evan mimicked the motion, then shook his hand in the air to relieve the hot spot caused by the friction. “That hurts.”

  “Yeah, you might want to pluck them for a while till your skin gets tough. After a few weeks, you won’t even feel it.”

  Evan gaped. “A few weeks? I’m not staying here a few weeks.”

  Charlie chuckled.

  “What’s funny?”

  “Nothing’s funny,” Charlie said. “That’s just the same thing that everybody says. But nobody ever leaves. Not the way they want to, anyway.”


  “Why not?”

  Charlie gave him a glance, but kept stripping leaves. “You’d better keep plucking. That whip hurts like shit.” He craned his neck to see if they were being watched. “They don’t leave because there’s no place to go. You walked in here, right? You see any places to escape to?”

  “I could go to the police.”

  This time, Charlie laughed in earnest. “Don’t bother-they’ll be here. They come all the time. And don’t bother looking all hopeful like that. Helping you will be the last thing they’re about. They come here to get paid by the bosses, sample the product a little, and then do the village girls down the hill. This is like Rain Forest Disneyland. A damn amusement park. You go lookin’ for police, they’ll just grab you and bring you back. Then you get to have a serious talk with Victor and his toys. Trust me. You’re not going anywhere. It’s better if you get used to being here.”

  The knot of fear returned, churning Evan’s stomach. “How long have you been here?”

  Charlie shrugged. “I have no idea. I was ten when my parents were killed in a robbery in Bogota. I shuffled around to orphanages and stuff for a while, and then I ended up here. That was a long time ago. I really don’t know. It’s not like we celebrate holidays. No birthdays, no Christmases. And the weather never changes. How can you know? How old are you? We’re about the same size.”

  “Thirteen,” Evan said.

  Charlie stopped and gave him a look. Color had drained from his face. “Thirteen? Really?”

  Evan nodded.

  “You small for your age?”

  “Not really.” As soon as he said it, Evan wondered if he should have lied.

  Charlie looked away. He didn’t do or say anything for a long time. Maybe a minute. When he went back to work, he kept his back turned.

  Evan felt like shit. If Charlie had really spent three years of his life out here, doing this, how could he keep going? Could he really not have known how long it’d been? Evan shouldn’t have said anything.