“Then don’t sign my paychecks for the next couple days. Tell them I’m off the job, and I’ll stay completely off the books. I’ll go along as an independent actor. We smoke the Viper, and Rangel can take credit, and you’ll even save Langley’s bean counters a couple grand.”
But Culler was still shaking his head. “You can’t go after her alone.”
“DEA is all over Mexico,” Avery replied. “Slayton will know someone there he can put me in contact with. After Buenaventura, I don’t think DEA will need convincing to go all out after Moreno.”
“Captain Aguilar and his men remain seconded to my agency,” Daniel told Avery, ignoring the angry look Culler shot his way for encouraging Avery. “They can accompany you to Mexico. It will not be a problem. My country works closely with the Mexican government on drugs, and provides advisers and liaisons to their security forces. We have a very good working relationship. We can cover you as an adviser or consultant.”
Colombia and Mexico also shared increasingly close relations based on their historical and cultural similarities. Both countries were former Spanish colonies and have had their societies torn apart by drug violence and internal insurgencies, and trade between Colombia and Mexico increased by almost four hundred percent over the past decade. From Aguilar, Avery also knew that Colombian special ops troops had slipped into Mexico before to wax FARC and cartel targets.
“I’m going after her either way, Matt. And then after I get my shit together, I’m going after Kashani, and I don’t give one fuck about his diplomatic status or where he’s hiding.”
“Alright, alright, just relax.” Culler sighed, relented. He knew that once Avery was determined and committed to something, there was no deterring him. The best thing to do was to set him loose and give him whatever support he required. “I’ll clear it with Slayton. He can get your team into Mexico. Don’t fuck this up. And don’t worry about Kashani right now. Stay on track. You find the Viper and you put her down.”
“Count on it.”
SEVENTEEN
The Gulfstream II was previously owned by a New York-based Forbes 500 company before being bought by one of the surviving Cali cartel drug lords who refurbished the aircraft, fitted it with auxiliary fuel tanks, and especially equipped it to be the ultimate smuggler’s plane, manned by the best crew money could buy.
Technicians installed an electronic countermeasures suite, developed by France’s Sofema weapons company, purchased by the Venezuelan military, capable of spoofing radar and sending back false reflections. The Gulfstream was additionally equipped with tail-mounted rearward radar and a warning receiver capable of scanning military and coast guard radar frequency bands. They’d never be able to sneak into United States airspace, but they didn’t need to, and they could easily slip past and evade Colombian and Central American air defenses.
The pilots were the best the cartel employed. Former Brazilian air force, they’d once interdicted drug smuggling flights, giving them firsthand familiarity with the region’s defense and surveillance measures, and they were well-trained in tactical flying. Running drug smuggling flights in this part of the world was dangerous work, but the cartel paid these mercenary pilots up to $25,000 per flight.
The Gulfstream flew low, nearly hopping the waves off the surface of the South Pacific, far off the western coasts of Guatemala and El Salvador. The crew flew this route to Mexico at least once a month, sometimes transporting up to two or three tons of cocaine at a time. The flight, circumventing Central America rather than flying a straight line from Buenaventura to Tijuana, pushed the jet’s 4,123 mile maximum range. The fuel tanks would be nearly dry by the time they landed in Mexico.
The Gulfstream’s home base was a well concealed landing strip cleared out of a narrow stretch of jungle in western Colombia, south of Panama, run by the cartel, protected by FARC mercenaries, and not to be found on any aeronautical charts.
It was unusual for the Gulfstream’s crew to make the six hour, non-stop flight in daylight, but their passenger insisted upon it. The pilots didn’t object. They were being paid well enough. Plus daylight did present optimal flying conditions. The previous month, a North Valley cartel pilot crashed his jet into the Pacific on a particularly dark night. It was easy to become tired and complacent on long flights, and in the dark it was difficult to visually discern the ocean from the sky.
The Gulfstream cruised four hundred and eighty miles per hour at two thousand foot altitude, below and well outside of the defined air traffic corridors and outside the normal coverage of ground-based coastal radar installations and the American E-3 AWACS planes patrolling the skies on routine surveillance missions. The pilots kept the Gulfstream far enough away from the coast to eliminate the risk of detection by Guatemalan and Salvadoran coast guard patrols.
These countries possessed limited capability to intercept flights in the air, instead relying mostly on SOUTHCOM aerial surveillance to track suspect planes, and then use their own police or army forces to seize the aircraft once it was on the ground. Four countries in the region — Colombia, Bolivia, Brazil, and Venezuela — had policies to shoot down unauthorized flights. Venezuela wasn’t a threat, and the Gulfstream had already cleared Colombian airspace, by far the most dangerous portion of the flight. The Gulfstream was well away from Brazilian and Bolivian territory, so those countries also weren’t a concern.
And SOUTHCOM faced gradual force reductions as leftist, anti-American governments in the region kicked the US military out of their countries, and America re-deployed forces to the Middle East and Africa. It wasn’t like the 1990s anymore, when SOUTHCOM heavily patrolled the skies over the South Pacific and the Caribbean as part of the discontinued Operation Coronet Nighthawk, which had intercepted and seized over 30,000 tons of cocaine.
The pilots did not know who their passengers were, but they had a good idea as to what the attractive, fit-looking woman and her subordinates carried in their long, gray steels cases, and it definitely wasn’t cocaine. The pilots assumed they were delivering weapons to the Mexicans, either for use by the cartel or to be delivered to an end user in America, but it didn’t matter to the pilots — a job was simply a job — and they hadn’t made inquiries.
Arianna Moreno sat in one of the cabin’s tan cushioned seats. She hadn’t moved since take-off and hadn’t said a word in the past four hours, taking advantage of the rare opportunity to relax, since she didn’t know what she’d face in Mexico or America.
Seated nearby, Carlo Ibarra and Benito Trujillo retained their guard. They stayed close to the Viper and were protective of her. In addition to the Mexicans, they were equally leery of the Iranian operative’s intentions.
Mirsad Sidran sat apart from the others and did not converse with them. The only time he spoke was when it pertained to operational or logistics details, but his eyes were constantly on Arianna, appraising her, carefully weighing her words and actions. He thought she was formidable, if and when her mind was focused, but she was too easily distracted and governed by her emotions and insecurities.
And that would be her downfall. Mirsad Sidran could see it now, and he understood why Kashani assigned him this mission. He was to keep her centered and focused on her objective, and reign her in, one way or the other, if she slipped too far.