“Assuming he was on the plane, there’s only one other place I can think of,” Venice said. “In with the luggage.”
Gail sat forward. “Wouldn’t he suffocate?”
“I thought the same thing,” Venice said. “But the research says no. I’d never really thought about this before, but they have to keep cargo holds pressurized now because of people transporting pets and such. With the pressure, there’s plenty of oxygen to survive and temperature controls to keep you from freezing to death. I verified this on the Internet. But the key…” She paused for dramatic effect, hoping the Jonathan would complete her thought for her.
“Ven, please. You know I hate this game.”
“The key is to properly sedate the passenger you pack.”
Now he saw it. “Jeremy Schuler was sedated, too.”
Venice licked her finger and affixed a gold star to the air. “Bingo.” She pressed her remote and revealed a sea of luggage being managed by uniformed airline personnel. “It turns out that the El Dorado Airport in Bogota has high-end security in their baggage claim.”
“But clearly not on their firewall,” Jonathan quipped. “You never cease to amaze me with this stuff.”
She gave a coy grin. “Oh, I’m just getting started. So, at the airport, every bit of luggage is tracked as a function of the passenger who carried it. Since we have fingerprints, we also have a ticket number. With the ticket number, we can know exactly what our guy was carrying on his direct flight from Washington.”
She clicked again, and the screen filled with images of an unremarkable black nylon suitcase and an oversize hardsided case that was double-sealed with a wrap-around strap. “Take a look at the big one,” she said, “because I believe that it contains Evan Guinn. Notice the orange tag warning that it’s overweight.”
“I don’t buy it,” Boxers said. “It’s too risky. TSA opens half the bags that get loaded onto a flight.”
Venice clicked again. The screen displayed a close-up of a TSA clearance tag. “I thought the same thing, so I enhanced this image and got lucky. I cross-referenced the number to the tracking database, and wouldn’t you know it? There’s no record of this particular piece of luggage being processed through TSA’s Houston operation. It is a Houston tag, but it was cleared outside of normal channels.”
Jonathan continued to be amazed, but right now he was confused. “Read between the lines for me, Ven. What are you telling us?”
“This is the same sort of thing that the government does when they transport items that they don’t want to be opened in transit,” she explained. “It looks to me like these skids are definitely being greased at a high level. I figure the guy with the grease gun must be in Houston.”
Jonathan thought she was right. “I hope you’re going to tell me where that big bag ended up.”
Another smirk. Jonathan had learned over the years that this bit of theater was as important to Venice as the information she got to dig up. She pressed the button again.
Now they saw a still picture of Mitch Ponder at an airport luggage carousel, pulling the heavy bag off the turntable. “Prepare to be impressed,” Venice said as she clicked through photo after photo. Each showed a still image, yet as she scrolled through, the photos left the impression of a movie on Jonathan’s mind.
Together, they watched as Mitch Ponder left the terminal and wheeled his luggage to what Jonathan assumed was the Colombian version of short-term parking. “Notice how careful he is on the curbs,” Venice said. She was right. Although for the life of him, Jonathan couldn’t imagine how a bump on a curb could do anything to wake up a child that manhandling by baggage claim attendants hadn’t done already.
The farther Ponder moved out into the parking lot, the wider and higher the angle became in the security camera photos, but they could easily make out the images of him wheeling the bags to a dark-colored SUV. The distances didn’t allow for detailed viewing, but from the way Ponder squatted at the rear wheel well on the driver’s side, Jonathan figured he had to be searching for a key. If so, he found it, because he stood again and loaded the bags into the rear compartment. From there, he backed out of his space and drove out of the frame.
“I thought for a second that we were going to lose him,” Venice said, articulating Jonathan’s thoughts. “But we lucked out.” The image shifted again, this time to a split screen. On the left, they saw a head-on shot of the driver, unfortunately distorted by glare in the windshield, and on the right was an even more valuable prize.
“Holy shit,” Boxers exclaimed. “Is that his license plate?”
Venice beamed. “The Holy Grail. Unless he changes it-and why would he? — we can use that number to track him through any number of databases. With any luck at all, he’ll get pulled over for speeding or something.”
“And if he doesn’t?” Jonathan asked.
“Well, there’s a little more,” she said. She scrolled through a few more photos showing the SUV passing through various traffic cameras at intersections. “The complexity of their surveillance surprises me,” Venice said.
“They’re officially trying to beat down their drug industry,” Jonathan said. “It’s costing billions of dollars and thousands of lives, but-wink, wink, surprise, surprise-it continues to thrive. I’ll bet you a thousand bucks that U.S. aid paid for that surveillance system.”
Venice acknowledged him with a nod, but clearly she’d moved on in her mind. “These last two or three shots just show him driving into the jungles north of the city,” she said. “I wish I had more.”
“That’s a lot,” Jonathan said. “We know that Evan is alive-at least that Ponder thought he was. And we’ve got a positive means to identify his vehicle. Compared to other square-one intelligence data we’ve had, we’re in a pretty good place.” He turned to Boxers. “We need to get this info to Josie so he can start bribing the right people.”
Boxers’ expression showed disbelief. “I don’t believe you’re going to trust that son of a bitch again.”
Jonathan recoiled. “Why shouldn’t we? What did he do?”
“It wasn’t what he did,” Boxers said. “It’s what he didn’t do.”
Jonathan rolled his eyes. “Don’t dig all that up again. He was in self-preservation mode. He did what he thought was best.”
“Since when did doing what’s best involve throwing your ass under the bus?”
Venice cocked her head. “What are you talking about?”
“Nothing,” Jonathan said.
“Fine. Have it your way. I just always promised myself that the next time I saw that son of a bitch I’d be pulling his liver out through his nose.”
“Oh, now that’s pleasant,” Gail groaned.
“I’ve given Josie a list of what we need,” Jonathan said, moving on. “He’s going to meet us in the boonies at what he said will make a good base camp.”
“You gave him the list of acceptable aircraft?” Boxers prompted.
“We’ll exfil in a private jet, but only after a long hike and a car ride.”
“No chopper, then?”
“No stealthy LZs,” Jonathan said. “We can’t afford to make noise.”
“How do we get in?” Boxers asked.
“Commercial. Just like Ponder. The Colombian government is quick to shoot down anything these days.”
“What about visas?”
“I’m going in as David Grossman. I’ve got you as Richard Lerner.” Both names came from the lengthy list of fully vetted and documented aliases that Jonathan had collected for them over the years. If things went well, the aliases could be recycled, but if not, they could just as easily be tossed.
“I wish we had a third,” Boxers mused aloud. “It’s doable with just the two of us, but another face you know you can trust is always a good thing.” He looked to Gail.
“No,” Jonathan said before he could ask. “Gail has a job to do.”
“Bruce Navarro has a sister,” Gail explained. “Apparently, I’m considered charming enough to squeeze information from her. We’ve got to find Bruce. We’ll never know it’s over if we don’t know why it started.”
Boxers moved back to addressing Jonathan. “What are we doing for manpower there?”
Jonathan cleared his throat. This was the hard part. “Josie promised to raise an army for us.”
“I’m not talking about cokeheads and farmers in green suits, Dig. I mean skilled operators. Shooters who are more likely to hit a bad guy than a good guy.”
Jonathan set his jaw against the rising flash of anger. “Time is short, Box. We’re going to have to live with a few shortcuts. Josie said he’d try to use as many familiar faces as possible.”
