PRECIPICE (11 page)

“We should have three days from when they deploy until they reach the objective. I imagine that should be enough time?”

“Once I present it, I expect things will move quickly from there,” Craig responded with the confidence of a man who knew the system and was accustomed to getting his way.

They both leaned back as the harried waitress slid plates of food onto the table in front of them, and Craig wriggled his meaty hand between his ample paunch and the table to unbutton the front of his suit coat.

Their eyes met across the table and both men nodded, satisfied, and then dug into their sandwiches.

*

Chip paddled to the side of the river and climbed out of his boat onto the rough volcanic rocks lining the river’s edge. He was exhausted but very happy after a whirlwind week in the Pacific Northwest. Three days on Callaghan Creek in BC had preceded the arrival of more fall rains which had filled up a profusion of whitewater options for them. They had worked their way south through Washington, running several rivers. They were now finishing their week of training on the Green Truss section of the White Salmon River, located on the southern edge of the state just across the wide Columbia River from the town of Hood River, Oregon. The White Salmon had plenty of challenging rapids formed by the same basalt bedrock as Callaghan Creek—and the same as their objective creek in the satellite photos. The “Truss” as it was commonly called, was highlighted by a massive twenty-five foot falls called “Big Brother,” which had taken the life of an Olympic kayaker fifteen years ago. The team had made it look easy today, and Chip wondered if there had ever been a crew of four rafters that had run so many hard rapids. Large waterfalls were usually tackled by rafting teams of only two.

It was fist bumps and cold beers all around as they deflated and rolled up the raft before changing into dry street clothes. Most of the rain was over, leaving a cold grey mist that clung to the evergreens like vaporous spider webs. Two of the team drove up Highway 141 in the SUV that had been left at the take-out point, headed to retrieve the other SUV in which they had all driven to the put-in. They stopped on the way back down to load the team and the gear into the two vehicles for the drive across the long bridge over the Columbia to find a hotel in Hood River. Chip could get used to this style. Every past trip that he’d taken had found him sleeping in the covered bed of his pickup truck and subsisting on noodles, canned tuna, and PB&J. Every night of this trip had been spent in a hotel, and dinners had all been in restaurants—a welcome change for a dirtbag like Chip. He certainly didn’t miss camping out in the soaking northwestern rain.

Although the men were mostly quiet about their objective after this training ended, he had gleaned a little bit from their guarded conversations. He knew that they had to get to the compound near the top of the waterfall, and he was now aware that they were not welcome and could expect conflict when they arrived. It was a whole new element to consider when planning a trip, and one that he was trying hard not to think about too much. One of the main lessons he had learned through years of river adventures was that it does no good to worry about the things you can’t control. He would save his energy for performing his job by helping the team stop at the appointed place, then he would rely on the others to do what they were trained to do better than anyone else in the world.

He was pulled from his reverie by the rumbling hum of the tires on the metal grate surface of the Hood River toll bridge. He looked ahead to the outline of the town on the far bank, seeing the houses, businesses, and the Full Sail Brewery nestled on the hill in the foreground with the snow covered spike of Mt. Hood stabbing up into a low ceiling of clouds in the distance. He’d spent many good times here and had a lot of friends that he wouldn’t get to catch up with on this quick, low profile trip.

As they paid their toll and exited the bridge, Chip directed Harris onto the ramp for I-84 West, then immediately off an exit and left into downtown. It was a bit surreal being here in the fall since Chip usually hung out in Hood River during the sunny summer paddling season. The crowds were definitely smaller now; the summertime hordes of windsurfers and kite boarders that frequented the Columbia Gorge had headed south to California or Baja to find warmer spots with good wind. Harris took a right on the main drag downtown, Oak Street, and crept a few blocks up the narrow street to a left turn up the hill on 13
^th
, headed for Chip’s favorite taqueria in town.

“So where to next?” Chip asked.

“Back to DC for mission assessment and training.”

Chip knew the whitewater part of the training was over and wondered what the next phase would be. His apprehension was growing for the portion of the mission that wouldn’t be spent in his kayak. He once again tried to put those thoughts out of his mind and focus instead on visualizing himself making the perfect landing off the huge falls. Focus on things you can control. Close out distractions. Now that the week of river training was over, that was going to become harder and harder to do.

“Will we be staying in DC?” Chip asked, bringing himself back into the moment.

“Only for a night or two, then we’ll move to a location a few hours away.”

“And we find out what this is about tomorrow?” Chip tried to hide the anxiety he felt over this mystery.

“Probably first thing Friday morning. We’ll have briefings and a planning session where we’ll need your input about the river stuff. Hopefully we’ll be able to make a best guess for the date when the water levels will be right, and then we’ll move on from there.”

Chip pointed out the restaurant on the right, and Harris looked for a parking space. Whatever this was about, he thought, he couldn’t complain about the epic week of kayaking he had just done or the bankroll he had built up. Combined with an entire rafting season’s worth of savings, the money from the past few weeks meant that he could probably skip winter entirely while paddling in South America. He would get to travel in style for once and be able to afford some hotels and meals out at restaurants instead of eating pasta and sleeping in the dirt. As exciting as that prospect was, what really haunted his dreams was that mysterious waterfall in the canyon that he would hopefully be visiting soon.

They all piled out of the vehicles and into the crowded taqueria, finding a table large enough for all five of them. Tonight it was tacos and cervezas, no matter what tomorrow might hold.

7

Friday, October 28th

THE SOUND OF the alarm felt like it was piercing Chip’s brain. He usually used a soothing song from his music library for the alarm on his smartphone, but there was no way anything but the harshest of noises could wake up him this early. He fumbled for the phone on the table beside his hotel bed and struggled to hit the right part of the touch screen to make the awful noise stop. It was 6 AM here in DC, but his body was still in a deep, 3 AM west coast slumber. Yesterday had been a long day. A four-hour drive back to Seattle had preceded a cross-country flight that had touched down late last night at Dulles. He thought he was in a Holiday Inn Express again, but there had been so many hotels over the last week that he couldn’t be sure. He struggled to the shower, noticing that Mendez—his roommate throughout the last week—had already left for his morning run. What was wrong with these guys?

The hot water brought him somewhat awake. He dried off, dressed, and staggered down to the lobby. He sniffed a coffee pot that smelled faintly of weak joe, then opted to walk outside and across the parking lot to a Safeway supermarket. He immediately regretted that in his morning confusion he’d forgotten to put on a jacket. From the misty grey weather he couldn’t tell whether he was in DC or still in the other Washington. As he entered the store he saw that he was in luck—there was a Starbucks inside. He got a double cappuccino then went through the grocery checkout line and grabbed a RedBull from a cooler. He paid with cash then stuffed the drink into his pants pocket, wishing again that he’d brought a jacket as the cold can pressed against his leg.

As he was opening the door to the hotel lobby to go back and fetch his jacket, the others were already coming out. Harris pulled up in the same dark blue Suburban they had used for their West Virginia rafting trip. Although they weren’t supposed to leave for another fifteen minutes, Chip was forced to turn around and pile into the truck with the others.

He barely finished his coffee before the truck stopped in front of an old, three-story brick office building. They scrambled out of the truck and into the building, where Harris led the way to the stairwell and began skipping up two steps at a time. After three flights of stairs, Chip was mostly awake and warm. He followed the others down the hall to the left to a door marked “Export Logistics, LLC.” As the rest of the group entered, he ducked back down the hallway to look for a bathroom. The coffee had gone straight through him.

A few minutes later, Chip sheepishly opened the door to the office suite and entered as the smiling receptionist waved him inside. She indicated a door to the right. When Chip stepped inside, the rest of the crew was sitting around three sides of a conference table. A large flat-panel TV on a rolling stand stood just beyond the fourth side. Chip winced as the stale smell of decades-old cigarette smoke wafted up from the ugly 1970s block-print carpet. The old suit, Sutherland, thin and drawn as ever, sat next to the TV working on a laptop which was connected to the large TV screen. Chip sat in the remaining available chair, stood back up to awkwardly pull the can of RedBull out of his pants pocket, then sat again and helped himself to a glazed jelly donut from a box on the table. The others were already eating.

Sutherland eventually leaned back in his chair, pulled his glasses off and put them next to his computer, then called the meeting to order.

“Welcome back, gentlemen. I hope you enjoyed the Northwest. Harris tells me that it was a productive training session, and that you’re prepared for what’s to come. You’re probably all wondering exactly what that is.”

He turned and addressed Chip specifically, “The rest of us are familiar with this sort of thing, but I need to emphasize here the importance of keeping everything covered in this meeting absolutely confidential, and that you in fact never share it with anyone.”

Chip nodded. He would agree to just about anything at this point to find out what this was about, and more importantly where that waterfall was located.

Sutherland kept looking pointedly at him until Chip felt the need to speak.

“Yeah, yeah, of course. I’ll never tell anybody.”

Mollified by the verbalization of Chip’s commitment to secrecy, Sutherland reached to his computer and pulled up the first slide. It was a photograph of a man taken from some distance away and obviously without his knowledge. He was a Latino of what looked to be European descent, around forty-five years old. He had short dark hair and a thick moustache which angled down sharply from the base of his nose. He looked fit and competent, and was walking toward a dark Ford Expedition flanked by two serious-looking men in aviator sunglasses.

“This is Vicente Guerra Cardenas,” Sutherland began, “formerly of the Mexican GAFE—their elite special forces. Although the situation is somewhat muddled with regard to the power structure down there, we believe he is currently the number one man in charge of the Leones del Oriente drug cartel.”

Mexico! Chip’s heart raced. He was one step closer to knowing the where the falls was. It was familiar territory for him—he’d driven down there on several kayaking trips back when gas was cheaper and a South American trip wasn’t in his budget.

“This is one serious bad guy,” Sutherland continued. “He’s the driving force behind much of the violence that’s consuming Mexico and spilling over the border. Current estimates indicate that his organization accounts for as much as sixty-five percent of the narcotics that enter the U.S. from Mexico. Not only is he manufacturing his own, he is also the main liaison with some major producers in Columbia. His organization is known for the brutality of their methods, as well as for kidnapping innocent people to use as mules or soldiers in their ongoing fights with police and competing cartels. Virtually none of those kidnapped survive the ordeal.”

“Although most of his smuggling operations work out of the northern states of Tamulipas and Nuevo Leon, we believe he currently runs the show from the security of a secluded compound located farther south in a remote area in the western part of the state of San Luis Potosi.”

This was getting even better. Chip had paddled in San Luis many times during Thanksgiving and winter breaks from college, as well as several times after the rafting season had ended in the States. It was home to some of his favorite rivers to kayak south of the border, and he loved the culture and food as well. How could he have missed this river in his many hours of scouring the area on Google Earth looking for new rapids to run?

The display on the screen switched to a wide-angle satellite view showing a vast area of green jungle with a fringe of desert along the western edge. Sutherland slowly zoomed in on one area of jungle to bring up the familiar picture of the globs of green mountains with the ribbon of white river running through them.

“This is the compound where we believe he’s located. It’s isolated nearly ten kilometers of rough terrain from his perimeter, where he has a force of approximately seventy men on guard. The other side of the river has even worse terrain, and it’s about twenty kilometers from the nearest entry points, which are also guarded. Of course, the canyon and river are formidable obstacles as well.”

The men were all leaning forward intently now, each analyzing the terrain and immediate defenses of the compound, their years of training and experience quickly telling them more than Chip could imagine about the picture they saw. Chip, on the other hand, was analyzing every ripple and cataract visible on the surface of the river hidden deep in the jungle canyon. His years of experience were providing him with an entirely different set of information. The images were obviously newer than the ones he had seen a few weeks ago in the café in West Virginia, and there was less water flowing in the river this time. The rainy season was coming to an end down there. There still appeared to be more water than they wanted, but the time was drawing nearer. As the curls of whitewater called to him like an alluring siren song, his mind drifted to thoughts about the seventy heavily armed men. He didn’t like that part at all. That sort of risk wasn’t something he was comfortable with managing. He would have to rely on the skills, training, and experience of the team even as they’d relied on his for the rivers over the last few weeks. It still made his heart rate increase, so he switched his thoughts back to the waterfall. That didn’t help much either.