Riley turned and looked at the captain along with the rest of the remaining occupants in the room. It was an early test for the new leader. Riley knew that Vaughn had, at best, a vague idea of how to organize the isolation. If he was smart he'd ask for help from Riley and Powers, to whom the whole procedure was old hat.
Vaughn seemed unsure of what to do. Riley decided to ease the burden for the young man and take him off the spot. In training, Riley might have kept quiet until asked, but this was the real thing; it was no time to make a point. "Sir," he said, standing up and getting the captain's attention. "If I might make some suggestions?" Vaughn nodded.
Riley grabbed a marker and went up to an easel with butcher block paper on it. He split the page in half with a line. On the left he divided responsibilities. On the right he worked out a time line as he spoke.
"Frank," he said, turning to the senior medic, "I want you and Colden to secure this isolation area. Cover the windows, get an access roster going, and all that. Basic S-2 stuff.
"Paulson, you and Lane and Holder hang the maps and set this room up according to team SOP."
Riley looked around. "For those of you who just joined the team, there are some copies of the 055 standard operating procedures (SOP) in the isolation footlocker we brought up here. Take a quick look through at the section on isolation procedures to get up to speed. The SOP pretty much breaks out your responsibilities by MOS and how we conduct isolation. I think each of you will have plenty to do for a while after you read that."
He turned to Vaughn. "Sir, you and I and Powers and Alexander should look at the locations of the targets and try to war-game it as far as what General Pike wants. Try to get some basic ideas." Again Vaughn nodded.
Riley turned to Westland. "Could you give us all a thumbnail sketch on Colombia? You know, culture, geography, current events. Whatever you feel we need to know as background, minus specific info on the drug people, which I'm sure," he turned to the DEA agent, "Mister Stevens can give us."
Westland held a pencil over her notepad. "When do you want it?"
Riley checked the time line. "Can you be ready by noon?" She nodded and he marked it in.
He looked at Stevens. "How about you go right after her?"
Stevens nodded glumly. Riley marked in a few more events on his tentative time line and then capped the marker. "Let's get going."
"All right. Let's pay attention." Riley counted heads and then turned his gaze to the CIA agent standing next to the podium.
Westland clicked the remote in her hand and a slide came on the screen behind her as she started. Riley noted that she spoke with confidence. It was apparent that she had either given this briefing before or had spent a lot of time working over the material.
"The Republic of Colombia is located here at the northern end of the South American continent. It's the only South American country with both a Pacific and an Atlantic shoreline. It is also the land gateway into South America from Panama.
"Colombia has an area of roughly half a million square miles, about slightly less than twice the size of Texas. With a population of about thirty million, it is the fourth largest nation in South America. The official language is Spanish, with some isolated Indian dialects spoken.
"The currency is the peso and the economy is based on agriculture and the export — besides cocaine, of course — of coffee and other agricultural products. It is estimated that anywhere from ten to twenty-five percent of the population is directly or indirectly involved in the cocaine industry."
Westland glanced back at the map of Colombia lit on the screen behind her. "I'll now cover the geography in a little more detail. Colombia is a land of great geographical and climatical contrasts. Depending on where you are in the country, you could be standing in a tropical rain forest, an open savannah, a temperate forest, or near-arctic conditions in the higher elevations.
"The terrain features that dominate the country are the Andes Mountains and its various smaller ranges. The second-largest feature lies to the east of the mountains and is called the Llanos, or area of plains. For the purposes of this mission we can basically ignore that part of the country, since it stretches off into the jungles of the Amazon basin. It's sparsely populated and undeveloped. The places we are concerned with will either be in the mountains, such as in the vicinity of Medellin or Bogota, or down on the Caribbean seacoast, where Cartagena and Barranquilla are located.
"Medellin and Bogota are located in the central highlands, on plateaus between the mountain ranges. Bogota, the capital city, is at an elevation of 8,660 feet above sea level; Medellin is at 5,000 feet. This makes for a temperate climate despite the proximity to the equator.
"Not far out of each city you can find yourself on steep, vegetated mountainsides. I don't mean to steal any of Mister Stevens's spiel, but I believe that this is the terrain where you will find some of your targets. Of the two initial targets I've brought, one is located in the hills just outside Medellin. The second is near Cartagena, which is located here."
Westland looked over her audience. "The Caribbean coast outside of the cities is swampy and tropical, crisscrossed with streams and lakes. Most people think of jungle when they talk of Colombia, but the terrain you will be concerned with will be either lowland swamps or temperate highlands. The areas you will be working in are not like the jungles you might be used to from your missions in Panama, although there may be a little of that along the coast, depending on where exactly you go.
"A quick sketch of recent history may give you an idea of the kind of social climate you'll be working in. Due to various reasons there has been a strong guerrilla movement in the country for many years. The two largest of these groups are known as the M-19 movement and the FARC. However, there are a total of almost a hundred splinter guerrilla organizations operating there."
Riley shook his head in amazement. What kind of screwed-up country were they going into? "What's the relationship between the guerrillas and the drug cartel?"
Westland shrugged. "Off again, on again. Mostly off. One of the reasons the cartel has the military so infiltrated with informers, and also receives a lot of tacit support from the armed forces, is because the cartel often helps in the war against the guerrillas, who have been a threat to their business operations at times.
"However, the guerrillas and the cartel have been known to cooperate when mutual goals have coincided. For example, the attack on the Supreme Court in late 1985 was actually the work of the M-19 group. This took place right after the Court took the step of allowing extradition of cartel members to the U.S. for prosecution, so saying that the executions were coincidence is kind of hard to do. It took us almost five years to recover from that blow to the point where they allowed extradition again.
"The government's recent efforts against the cartel have placed it in the unenviable position of having to fight two separate enemies— the cartel and the guerrillas. The military appears to feel, with some justification, that the guerrillas are the worse of the two evils.
"As a whole, the country of Colombia is perhaps the most lawless in the world. In many areas the only law is the power of the drug gangs. They employ people they call sicarios, which means paid assassins. Comparing the Mafia to the Colombians is like comparing Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to Attila the Hun and his army. The Springfield massacre was a typical example of how the sicarios operate.