Shadow Agenda: An Action Suspense Thriller (2 page)

The little girl was laughing at the Doodlebugs’ song, giggling the way only little kids can, with pure joy; he wondered whether she’d ever reach the same ripe old age as the old man with the gum and the bravado. For the first time in many months, the Chechen felt optimism.

The explosion ripped through the rear end of the bus, obliterating the back end in a second. The gigantic ball of flame ignited its fuel tanks, the air inside the passenger cabin instantly hot enough to cook the travelers where they sat, a column of flame descending on them before they even had time to scream.

The hot gases expanded rapidly outwards, ripping the bus to millions of pieces in violent combustion, scattering the remains like tin confetti, along with those of the little girl and her mother, and her father, and the two nicely dressed businesswomen, and the charming old couple, and the weary, overweight bus driver and the nervous, sweating Chechen. The blast flung the debris for a mile, most of it crashing over the edge of the roadway to the Pacific Ocean below, the carnage partially obscured by dense, black smoke.

MEDELLIN, Colombia, September 16, 2012

THREE YEARS LATER

It had been over a hundred degrees since noon, and Walter Lang was sweating profusely as he sat on the café patio; it was filled with young businessmen and women eager to grab a salad or sandwich before returning to the office.

The armpits of his tan-colored short-sleeve dress shirt were quickly stained through; the odd rivulet of perspiration made its way from his hairline, down past his left ear and into his matted, sweaty chest hair. It had been years since he’d been to Medellin but the heat certainly hadn’t gotten any easier to take. The city was charming, welcoming despite the nation’s sometimes negative reputation for vice and violence. But he was thankful he’d gotten a hotel room with a near-industrial strength air conditioner.

He wore a pair of Ray Ban aviators with steel rims, to ward off the sun and maintain a low profile, just another Gringo businessman. At fifty-six, Lang knew he was too old to be called middle-aged and when he looked in the mirror, he saw a face creased by time, the skin taut; but he still had most of his hair and it was mostly still brown, a fact in which he took a degree of pride. It wasn’t that he was normally a prideful man, quite the contrary; it was the very fact that Lang was so private that made him that little bit more self-conscious when someone actually checked him out.

Not that that had happened on the patio, where the local women all seemed to have walked off of a Vogue cover or out of a Bond movie, all curves and tans and perfect lips.

In movies, he thought, the spy always gets the girl. More typically, Lang knew, he just picked up the check.

Lang checked his aging steel-banded Seiko watch every few minutes, nervous as the locals hustled and bustled along the adjacent city street. It had been so long, he thought, so long away from this part of the game. The conventional wisdom was that once you were out of the field, you were out of the field. There had to be good reasons for that, Lang thought. It was a pragmatic industry. Maybe he was biting off more than he could chew; maybe it was a young man’s game. Maybe, maybe, maybe…

He polished off most of another bottle of water, its blue plastic cold and flecked with humid drops of moisture. He scanned the adjacent street in both directions again, trying to spot someone out of place among the crowds of lunch-going workers, tourists, local young women out shopping. But it was bustling and busy, the roadway loud and congested with vehicles.

He didn’t spot the man until he’d already entered the restaurant; he was short, with dark curly hair and a wispy beard, wearing a white summer shirt and tan trousers. He immediately approached Lang’s table.

“Pardon,” the man said in Spanish. “But would you happen to know when the weather will cool off?”

“Only in the northern hemisphere,” Walter replied fluently. “I’m not from around here.”

The man smiled at the confirmation code. He pulled out the plain wooden chair and took a seat across the small square table from the American. A middle-aged, balding waiter in a black vest and bow tie spotted them and came over to get the man’s order before they could begin to talk, and the man asked for a bottle of Costena, a local beer. Once the waiter had left, the new arrival leaned forward, resting slightly on his forearms so that they could speak softly and still hear one another.

“You’re late,” Lang said.

“It’s Medellin,” the man said. “Nobody gets anywhere on time these days.”

It was true, Lang thought; the city’s rebirth in the wake of the suppression of the drug cartels had led to increased investment, increased visitors, increased traffic. Already a busy city of more than three million, the sidewalk and street congestion looked a lot like parts of D.C.

His new friend looked around the patio several times, nervously assessing whether he knew anyone there or even recognized any faces. A few glanced back; at least one or two young women looked stern, deliberately off-putting, just in case he had the wrong idea. “But you should be grateful: I’m taking a big enough risk just sitting here with you.”

“We’re paying you well every month, Enrique, and so far with little-to-no return on that investment.” It wasn’t a real issue, Lang knew. The few thousand the man received was nothing to the agency.

“I know, I know,” he said. “But let’s be honest with each other: the cartels have ears everywhere here. They may be taking the brunt of the army and police efforts right now, but that does not meant they’ve lost their ability to deal with problems, yes?”

Walter leaned across the table slightly for emphasis. He wasn’t a big man – maybe five-eleven and a hundred and sixty pounds – but he wanted his point understood the first time. “When you contacted us and told us you could provide information, we made it clear that the consequences of not doing so after taking our money would be difficult for you. Do you understand that? Do you know what I’m telling you?”

The contact leaned back slightly in his chair, looking either worried or like his ego was bruised; Lang wasn’t sure which. It didn’t really matter, as long as he understood the implied threat.

“That’s very easy for you to say, my friend,” Enrique said. “But you do not live here day in and out. The cartels’ reign may be over for the most part…” He checked the room again, trying not to be obvious, “…but anyone who is not afraid nonetheless is a fool. The last time I checked, your people were not inclined to cut a man’s ears and tongue off. Or worse.”

Lang knew what to expect next; a veteran handler, he had volunteered for the assignment despite a decade away from field work. But some things didn’t change; when a source was delaying, humming and hawing about the agreement, it was usually a pretense to ask for more money. They nearly always asked for more, eventually.

“You’ve brought what I need?” Lang demanded.

“No, not here. Too public,” The man said. Lang gave him a stern, questioning look, but the smaller man motioned with both hands for patience. “Don’t worry, don’t worry, I have all of the material. But like I said…” Enrique glanced around the restaurant again, settling on the waiter near the bar as he glanced their way, “… eyes and ears everywhere.”

“We had an agreement. Time, place, hand over, done.”

“And this is fine for you, Señor,” the contact said. “But Medellin is a lot more expensive these days. Rents are going up; food is expensive and I have a large family to feed…”

“Get to the point.”

“I need another five thousand dollars.” Enrique stared intently as he said it, trying to gauge how the request was being taken.

“Out of the question.”

“Then three thousand. I have a little girl; she needs surgery on her foot to walk properly, so that the other children do not tease her. She is my world.”

He was an amateur, Lang thought, revealing such a personal detail -- or a liar; given his family’s money, probably the latter. There was no way David would authorize the spend in any case, and Lang couldn’t contact him to try; he was there off the books, unofficial, deniable. The Colombians, usually eager to work with America on narcotics suppression, had been surprisingly uninterested in their potential source. The agency wasn’t willing to give up an inroad quite so easily. Privately, a night earlier in his hotel room, he’d looked out over the city lights and wondered just which set of desk jockeys was making the wrong call; if it was the Colombians, then okay. If the Colombians had good reason to doubt Enrique? Then he had his own reasons to worry.

“Enrique, you push this and your little girl might find herself growing up without a father,” he said. “That’s not my call. But there are people above me who believe in enforcing obligations. And you owe us.” He hoped it had a double meaning to the man, if he was setting Lang up; he hoped it sounded like they’d come looking for payback.

So long away from all of this.
He was beginning to remember that anxious feeling, the feeling that had prompted him to get out of the field in the first place; it was a sensation of constant vulnerability, that no one could be trusted. He glanced over the short, stocky man’s head at the other patrons, looking for anything out of place but seeing average customers, friendly exchanges.

“Okay. A thousand, then,” Enrique said. “For one thousand more, we’ll exchange, you go about your business; I fade away until you need me again.”

Lang considered the request. It had taken two years to recruit Enrique, whose brother was a Barranquilla cartel insider, a former hit man and lieutenant fronting legitimate businesses to launder the Antonio Villanueva cartel’s money. They chose the larger city of Medellin because the attention from authorities was lower after the enforcement successes of recent years.

Another chance at Villanueva wouldn’t come again anytime soon, Lang thought, and the drug lord was, by all indications, the largest supplier of cocaine to the U.S. west and southwest. So an extra thousand he could handle; it was half his remaining petty cash for the op, but there wasn’t much else to spend it on. He was scheduled to be on a plane home in less than twelve hours.

“Fine… but only because we appreciate the risk you’ve taken,” Lang said. “Where and when?”

“We go now,” Enrique said, “while everyone is working in my community.” He lived in a modest neighborhood in Bello, just north of the city, called Quintas De La Cabanita. Lang had read his file, committed his home’s location to memory, as well as that of his wife’s workplace, his children’s school. He hadn’t seen anything in there about a daughter with a club foot.

“We can take my motorcycle,” Enrique said, nodding across the street.

“No, I’ll follow in my car,” Lang said. He hadn’t been on the ground in Colombia for twenty years, but he knew better than to go anywhere while on assignment without first having an exit plan. “Write down the address in case I lose you.”

Enrique glanced furtively around the café one more time, just to ensure no one was paying more attention than seemed normal. Then he took the chrome ballpoint desk-set pen out of his top pocket and scribbled the address on a paper napkin, before sliding it across. “It is humble,” he said, “but a proud neighborhood.”

Lang checked the address; it was the same as the one in the file. Again, he wondered why a cartel lieutenant’s brother was living in a modest suburb. It was core training to trust the intel he was getting from Langley, but his personal experience told him that analysis from a distance wasn’t always that reliable. He put the napkin in his breast pocket and nodded.

“Okay,” Enrique said. “Let’s go.”

They left the café and crossed busy Calle 10A, to where both had parked; their spaces were about thirty yards apart. Enrique’s motorcycle was an ancient Honda, perhaps a 250 cc; it had been fastidiously maintained, its black paint job gleaming as if it had just rolled off a 1968 showroom floor. “Stay right behind me,” he told Lang as they crossed the street. “It’s easy to get separated here.”

“No,” Lang said. “I’ll follow but you won’t see me. I’ll be well back.” As risky as taking Enrique’s offer of a ride might have been, the most common trap laid for kidnap victims locally was to have them follow closely, then cut them off in both directions with vehicles at an appropriately quiet intersection, eliminate any chance of escape.

They reached his car. “Are you certain?” Enrique said. “It is a difficult route…”

“I’m sure.” Walter said nodding towards the bike. “Get going.”

The drive took a half-hour and traffic was heavy throughout, the roads meandering up and down the mountain city’s undulating terrain. Instead of following the main highway that ran through the center of town, Enrique led Walter on a less-travelled route through older neighborhoods to the northwest, then back northeast to Quintas de la Cabanita. They followed the two-lane Rua Etcheveri as it sloped down into a trendy neighborhood of pastel-colored homes, past a monolithic multi-hued, gray-brick, architect-designed cathedral, its curved roof in old wood, like a miniature take on the Sydney Opera House. The road seemed crammed with yellow taxis, like Manhattan at rush hour, right up until it turned into Calle 58 and traffic thinned somewhat, merging onto the freeway “El Regional.” Then they moved into a poorer neighborhood and the cars were replaced by small motorcycles and scooters, many of the same vintage as Enrique’s ride.

Lang stayed back as he’d promised he would do, judging the pace and flow of traffic, keeping an eye out for sudden movements, people switching lanes around him or weapons being drawn by motorcycle passengers, anything that might indicate he’d been compromised. Enrique exited quickly from the left side of the freeway onto Calle 80, past the three-story red-brick morgue and adjoining cemetery to their right, then up a hill and back into the palm- and elm-tree-lined residential neighborhoods.  They zig-zagged through a series of industrial parks before turning back to the north, then the northeast, passing the Sena De Pedegral technology center, then up parallel to the highway into Bello. Lang glanced at the rearview mirror. He could see the far south extreme of the city as it sloped back up the mountainside, the view partially obscured by shadows from the clouds just above.

Quintas was the kind of old neighborhood that in most U.S. cities would be gentrified, restored by people who liked old things and had lots of money to keep them from falling apart. The houses were smaller, older, mostly made of cinderblocks. Some portions of the area were rundown while others seemed middle-class, normal. As with much of the city, a long-term casualty of poverty was paint: many of the homes and businesses were simply cemented together in shades of brick red or gray, unadorned by anything except splatters of mortar. The houses were set close together, without yards, roadways in front and alleyways behind.