In the vast NSA command center, Knuckles saw that it was Cade calling and answered his phone. “Cade. Go.”
From the hillside in Antigua, Cade stuttered. “Knuckles, Uncle Bill, get him. We’ve got . . . there’s a problem.”
“Well I guess so,” Knuckles replied. “Dude, calm down.”
Uncle Bill, the grandfatherly section chief, walked to Knuckles’s desk with a grin on his face. “Is that Cade? Put him on speaker.”
“Yes, sir.”
The speaker phone blared. “She’s . . . she’s . . .”
“Just calm down, Cade,” Uncle Bill said as he wiped a few crumbs from his beard. The tiny bits of orange cracker disappeared into the tight-weave carpeting. “Let me guess. Jana’s in a bar? Perhaps surrounded herself with drug lords?”
There was a short silence. “How did you know that?” Cade said.
“Come on, buddy,” Knuckles said. “We can see the location of your cellphone. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out you’re staked out on a hillside, probably surveilling the, let’s see, a bar called Touloulou?”
“There’s a couple of security cameras inside the bar,” Uncle Bill said. “We hacked them. If you’re seeing what we’re seeing, she’s been talking to Diego Rojas, right?”
“Rojas is bad enough, but it’s this new guy—”
“Gustavo Moreno?” Uncle Bill said. “Yeah, that’s not good. Been looking for him for a long time.”
“Dammit,” Cade said, “Why didn’t you guys tell me we had eyes inside?”
“Dude,” Knuckles said. “What fun would that be? We just wanted to see how long it would take before you called us in a blustery panic.” Knuckles handed Bill a five-dollar bill. “And I lost the bet.”
“Yeah, hysterical,” Cade said. “Moreno, he’s the guy that used to work for Pablo Escobar? Do I remember that right?”
“He’s the one,” Uncle Bill said. “He was head of Colombia’s National Intelligence Directorate. We haven’t seen him for over a year. I’m impressed you remembered his bio.”
“Didn’t he used to work on our side?” Cade said. “But then took up with the Medellín Cartel?”
Knuckles jumped in, always eager to assert his knowledge. “Looks like he’s changed teams. Our workup says he spent the first ten years of his career at Langley, took his intelligence experience to Colombia’s NID, then disappeared.”
“How does the CIA have another mole?”
Uncle Bill answered. “He wasn’t a mole, Cade. He worked legitimately for the CIA. He resigned and went back to his home country to work intelligence there. It’s after that that he decided the pay was better working for a drug lord.”
“Whatever,” Cade said. “But if Rojas has Moreno working for him now, and Moreno is gathering intelligence for the Los Rastrojos cartel, then that means—”
Uncle Bill interrupted, “That Rojas will likely run a background check on Jana. He certainly already knows that a woman broke that guy from the Oficina de Envigado cartel into pieces last night. What we’re hoping, of course, is that this chance encounter with her will lead to Rojas trusting her.”
“Bill,” Cade said, “why are you so calm? If Moreno runs a full bio on Jana, they’ll no doubt have her fingerprints. They’re going to find out she was FBI. And if they know she used to be a federal agent, they’re going to suspect she’s working undercover.”
“We’re prepared for this eventuality, Cade.”
“What?” he yelled into the phone.
“For a man with the intelligence-gathering capabilities of Gustavo Moreno, it’s not surprising he would be able to find she’s a former fed.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
“No, I’m not,” Bill said, “but I’m prepared for it, and so is Jana. Look, the only thing she’s going to do tonight is pique the interest of Rojas, right? Our only hope of finding a clue to Kyle’s whereabouts is for Jana to get on the inside. We’re assuming Rojas will find her identity and Jana will not deny it. In fact, she’ll embrace the fact that she was Bureau and threw away her badge. Moreno’s background check will confirm she’s been living in a tiki hut on the beach ever since, under an assumed identity.”
“The story is plausible, Cade,” Knuckles added. “It’s not unlike the story of Gustavo Moreno himself. He also worked at high levels within the US government, but became disillusioned and left.”
Uncle Bill said, “When she gets back to the safe house tonight, you guys go over the story.”
Cade rubbed his eyes. “Fine.” He exhaled. “I can’t believe we’re using her as bait.”
“Cade?” Uncle Bill said, “Jana is a grown woman of high intelligence, and she’s especially loyal to her friends. We’re not exactly using her.”
“How do you figure?” Cade replied.
“Would you want to be the one who didn’t tell her Kyle was suspected as missing? If anything happened to Kyle and she could have done something about it, she’d kill the three of us for not telling her. We may be using her as bait, but she knows exactly what she’s doing.”
“Bill?” Cade said. “Kyle is not suspected of being missing. He’s missing.”
“We’re on the same team, Cade. But at this point, Kyle is still assumed to be under deep cover. Unless we have proof he’s been abducted, we’ll never get authorization for a strike team. I want you to understand the magnitude of what we’re talking about here. If we send in a team to extract Kyle, and it turns out he’s not been abducted, we’d not only be effectively ruining six months of undercover work, we’d be violating international law. You’re not in the United States down there. Antigua is a sovereign nation. It would be viewed as an incursion, and the repercussions on the world stage would be disastrous.”
Cade rubbed his eyes. “Fine. But, Bill, when this is over, I’m going to tell Mrs. Uncle Bill Tarleton about the secret stash of orange crackers under your desk.”