“With an American missing,” de Salva continued, “and the support of the special forces, there will be no problem issuing the classification.”
“And we do this because . . .”
“It is the right thing to do. And will earn you a friend. And as word gets out that the Jesúses are being taken seriously, I suspect you’ll find new sources of information willing to talk.”
All this was true, and even reasonable. But after agreeing to de Salva’s request, and passing that information up to Colonel Carlosama, Juan Pablo found himself wondering why the haste. He understood, from the U.S. embassy point of view, why they’d want administrative hurdles to targeting the Jesúses removed in the event that a violent solution became necessary. But why would de Salva have been so keen? He could think of one possible answer. And that was this—the Jesúses didn’t have the journalist, but de Salva wanted them administratively placed on the chopping block before the army found out.
—
The thing about Colombia was that it was always easy to get a job. Contractors outnumbered soldiers five to one, last time Diego had checked. It allowed the U.S. government to claim a low footprint in Colombia, when, in fact, its fingers were everywhere, doing police and military training, crop eradication, logistics and maintenance. And Diego’s specialty, electronic surveillance.
The trick wasn’t getting a job. It was getting the job. Diego wanted to be there, in Norte de Santander. On the ground or, at least, in a plane, finding Liz. And that meant calling in favors not just within the contractor community but within the military as well.
“You owe me,” he told Mason at a bar in the Zona T. “You’re the reason she’s there. Does the embassy know that?”
Mason wasn’t ruffled. “They know that I met with you and told you the situation in Norte de Santander was interesting and underreported. I didn’t suggest she head out to coca country, wouldn’t have suggested it, and if she’d checked in with the embassy like reporters are supposed to we would have told her not to do it.”
But Mason helped. He helped quite a bit, which meant that perhaps he was lying about what he’d told the embassy. And within a few days Diego was seated behind a Colombian pilot in a single-engine AT-802U Air Tractor stuffed with radios, forward-looking infrared cameras, and other surveillance equipment. Air Tractors were agricultural planes usually used for coca eradication, so the thinking was that this particular plane would cause less suspicion than a King Air.
“The only problem is the guerrilla like to shoot at these,” the pilot told him as they taxied down the runway on Tolemaida, “so maybe we try to avoid coca fields.”
They touched down in Tibú, where soldiers from Counter-Guerrilla Battalion 46 helped them refuel on a makeshift dirt runway, and then, with ten hours’ worth of flight time filling their tanks, headed for La Vigia.
They flew at treetop level, deep green below them and clouds above, the shifts and turns of the plane felt immediately in the stomach. Headwinds, crosswinds. Diego didn’t like being helpless, didn’t like being just a passenger, so he focused on his equipment, the video feed from the thermal cam showing the occasional person, family, or even a microwave. Microwaves meant narcos.
The clouds ahead of them clustered and darkened, a storm front moving across the Catatumbo. They skirted it, the weight of the plane rolling, the nose dipping, the big, fuel-filled nose of the Air Tractor obstructing Diego’s view, making the cockpit feel a bit smaller, more cramped. The motors roared, they climbed over a ridge and then dipped down below and the motors quieted, or maybe that was just Diego’s imagination, and the flight felt calmer as holes poked through the cloud deck, light piercing down.
Then they were above La Vigia, doing long, slow loops, listening, taking photographs, looking for anything useful. From the air, a city or town is a simple thing. The heart of La Vigia was a small, neat grid of streets and buildings, with one central park that was roughly half the size of a football field. With the supposedly God’s-eye view of the airplane, it might seem there was nothing much to this town, and certainly nothing mysterious. But down below, on the streets and in the buildings over the past six months, something strange had happened. A reordering of the connections between people. How they moved. Who they talked to. Who they feared. In a normal operation, Diego’s job would be to help map that dynamic. To learn the rhythms of the town. To understand what would happen if a thread in the social fabric were tugged here, or a hole punched there. But this was not a normal operation. The lives of the people below him only mattered if they could help him find Liz.
—
Police captain Victor Hernández Nieto wasn’t expecting the call. Yes, since the kidnapping of the American, his carabineros had been working overtime, reaching out to every contact they had. Yes, Army assumed it was Mil Jesúses, but he knew better and he’d let the Operations and Intelligence Group know. And yes, he had some ideas about what might be going on, but still, he didn’t expect anyone to call him.
It had become obvious very early that the military had muscled its way into the lead for the journalist’s recovery. This was undoubtedly what the Americans wanted. So when a call came through and the voice on the other end of the line announced that he was a lieutenant colonel in the special forces and he wished to get Nieto’s honest assessment of the situation—not just the kidnapping situation but the security situation in La Vigia and the possible repercussions any military actions might have—he didn’t quite believe it.
“I know
