FINAL BEARING: Chapter 1
Juan de Santiago was a man who insisted that his world rotate smoothly on a well-oiled axis, that his organization operate as a properly maintained machine. He knew how the tiniest overlooked detail could derail an operation. The smallest unobserved defect in a propeller could crack a bearing and seize up a perfectly good engine. A minor flaw in an otherwise perfect plan could doom the efforts of hundreds.
And Juan de Santiago was not a man who would tolerate imperfection.
Now, on this beautiful morning here in his beloved mountains, he could only watch helplessly as the awful result of some unknown minor flaw in an otherwise faultless plan played out below him.
“Bastard Americans!” he spat, his hot, angry words barely audible over the strident buzzing of the giant black insects that danced above the mountain field below him. “And that son of a dog, El Presidente Guitteriz!”
The smaller man standing beside him took a short, strategic step backward. He wanted to be out of his leader’s reach. He could feel the heat of the man’s fury. He knew only too well how that rage could sometimes manifest itself.
Roaring flames raced through Juan de Santiago's best coca fields. The crop, mere weeks from harvest, was now little more than a fog of thick, black smoke, being shoved up the mountain slopes and into the jungle by a gentle tropical breeze. That breeze would usually bring him the fragrance of the wild orchids that grew among the trees below the field.
Not today. There was the foul odor of the imperialists’ destruction.
The fragrance was one reason de Santiago loved to make the long, treacherous hike through the mountains over the ancient Inca trail from his base camp. This was his boyhood home. It rejuvenated him to come here.
He would often trek to this high clearing just before the harvest. He could see for himself the bounty God had sent him to help him free his people. He could watch some of those people as they worked below. He would go down and join the peons, walk among them, honor them with his presence, embrace each of them, thank them for their sacrifice and loyalty.
He now watched as a half dozen Black Hawk helicopters reloaded the Colombian troops and their American advisors. Their morning's work was completed. There was no mistaking where the choppers came from. The U. S. flag unashamedly marked each of them. Four Apache ‘copters still buzzed overhead. Guarding the men below, they scouted about in the surrounding jungle for any rebel troops that still lurked there.
Most of de Santiago’s men had fled at the first thumping of the approaching helicopters. They had taken to the thick underbrush. Their loyalty to the Marxist cause and to their leader had given way to self-preservation. Their leader angrily kicked at the dirt. His perfectly polished boots now covered with dust, he spouted a continuous litany of deep-throated oaths. His swarthy face grew even darker with rage as a tic contorted his right cheek and eye.
That was not merely a cash crop going up in smoke down there. The fields represented the financing he needed to continue the revolution. It was a war that he was convinced would eventually return this beautiful land to him, to his people.
The Americans and their “war on drugs” had taken on a ferocious new intensity in the last year. It seemed El Presidente had unlimited resources. With the help of the yanqui military and their fancy machines, the president seemed to have the strength to break both of de Santiago’s backbones, his revolution and the coca fields that financed it.
He had received the reports from Cartagena. He had heard the breathless reports from the mouths of those who had seen it for themselves. The Americans filled every wharf with their heavily laden ships, unloading more troops, more weapons and more supplies every day. In only a few months, their advisors had transformed El Presidente's ragtag troops into an effective fighting force, putting the rebels on the run as they torched the coca fields. Even more disheartening was the word of the surveillance satellites overhead that were now trained on de Santiago’s precious jungle mountains, never blinking, never missing anything.
De Santiago would build a processing factory. Build it even in the most remote jungle clearing, and the government troops would be there before the first shipment of silvery powder was prepared. Government troops and their American advisors met many truckloads of ammunition as if they had been sent an invitation. Or if the rebels sowed a field in some remote mountain valley and carefully nurtured it, they would soon see the fine coca devoured by flames when it was so tantalizingly close to harvest.
His people in Bogota whispered of some new organization he had never heard of. Something called the Joint Drug Interdiction Agency, a seamless coalition of the imperialists who had finally come together to fight those who would use the coca to win the righteous war of the people. Beyond the name, little was known about this alliance. If it weren't so obvious that the Americans and their allies were doing something radically different, de Santiago would have dismissed this JDIA as simply a myth. If one could not see it, feel it, smell it, it likely did not exist.
Juan de Santiago stared at the choppers. He felt the heat of the flames they had set loose. He smelled the stench of the smoldering revolution this JDIA seemed hell-sent to destroy.
“JDIA must be stopped! But how?” de Santiago muttered to himself.
They had no idea where its headquarters might be, its communications facilities, or its leadership.
De Santiago had been certain this series of fields, high in the Colombian
