Читать книгу Seeds of the Bitter Harvest - John Sheppard - Страница 8

Ramos Chavez worked his way up the rickety wooden outside staircase to his second floor apartment. Even though he wasn’t a heavy man, the stairs groaned in protest of his weight. His lodging was in the seediest part of the Port City.

His ‘home’ was part of a small series of apartments built into the second floor of a warehouse, which he guessed the building dated all the way to the 1930’s or maybe 1940’s. These apartments could only be publicly accessed through the staircase, which faced a back alley.

He remained ‘in character’, even though by the end of his shift at KML, he was bone tired. Maintaining his fitness had gotten him through the long nights at KML, and his job as an undercover agent. In a few minutes he would shower, shave, and start his real job.

Once inside this shabby apartment, with the doors locked, and the blinds closed, his transformation could begin. Working second, sometimes third shift afforded him a reasonable explanation for keeping his ratty looking blinds closed. After all, a guy has to sleep. Yeah, right, like that happens, he mused. Sleep, what’s that?

The transformation began with removing the thick black wig. Ah, that’s feels so good. The agency had gotten him the highest possible quality wig; but it still felt hot, and itched. Ramos preferred his head naked. He had started experiencing hair loss in his early thirties and decided, back then to keep his head shaved; after all, it enhanced his ‘Mr. Tough Guy’ image.

Next off came the eye patch. While he could see through it, another high quality agency item - to those looking at it was a solid piece of material. Off too came the contact lens, which made it look like he had the beginnings of a cataract in one eye. Then there was the fake dental work, and the shoe designed to make him limp a little.

All of these items were carefully accounted for, and stored in a case. Taking the inventory of these pieces was important, so he wouldn’t be seen in public wearing only part of his disguise. Such an error could blow is cover, jeopardize the mission, and maybe cost some lives.

The case was then hidden in a false bottom of a cabinet in his tiny galley kitchen. The entire warehouse complex was wired with surveillance cameras, which kept him and this operation safe, but he was still careful.

As Ramos showered, he thought back on what got him here. His real name was Jose’ Chavez, but he had been undercover so long, his past had almost dissolved into his present. Born into a legal immigrant family, in El Paso, Texas, he and his parents often traveled across the border, just a few miles away to Juarez, Mexico, to see extended family.

His parents had received their advanced degrees in the USA, and became citizens. They were a model immigrant success story. They arrived in the country poor; they got their education, and with hard work and determination made something of themselves. Their retail business thrived. They were wealthy and respected both among the Hispanic and Anglos. In his junior year of college his parents had died in a fiery highway car crash, just outside El Paso.

It had been hard on Jose’ to deal with his parents death, but the extended family in Juarez reached out to him, and encouraged him to complete his degree in law enforcement. From there, he was recruited by the FBI and had started to make a name for himself within the agency. Tough, intelligent, hardworking, streetwise, were all adjectives used by his colleagues when speaking about him.

The FBI had decided to station Jose’ back in his hometown of El Paso. His fluent Spanish and natural knowledge of Hispanic culture made his an invaluable asset to the El Paso office as they fought the flow of drugs across the border.

He had planned to attend his nephew’s First Communion party in Juarez that afternoon on that fateful day fourteen years earlier. There had been unforeseen overtime that weekend, followed by an equally unexpected delay at the border crossing.

Jose’s uncle had gotten in on the ground floor of the auto industry expansion into Juarez after NAFTA had passed. His uncle was doing quite well, but feared the ongoing drug violence. It was not unusual for middle and upper-class parents to send their children to El Paso for a better education. Many of the family members were having their children cross the border daily. Maybe, his uncle said, it was time to leave Mexico.

As Jose’ traveled to the party, a drug cartel had mistaken his uncle’s family for family members of a rival cartel. Tragically, everyone at the party died in a hail of gunfire; including Jose’ cousin, Ramon.

In the chaos which followed, the Juarez news media incorrectly reported that Jose’ had been killed. Some quick thinking senior agent at the FBI saw this as a cover for Jose’ to assume his cousin’s identity and go underground. There was a moving public memorial service held for agent Jose’ Chavez, while his only surviving ‘cousin’ Ramon ‘recovered’ in an undisclosed US hospital, ‘for his protection from the cartel’.

So, Jose’ became Ramon, and was swept into this operation. Several international law enforcement agencies had targeted KML for its mob/cartel money laundering and numerous other illegal activities. They set up a dummy custodial-security company called Global Ashcott L. L. C. ; often referred to within the company as just GA. On the surface, the company provided contract workers to international corporations.

Those corporations were pleased to have someone who could meet their entry level security protocols and keep their buildings clean anywhere in the world. They also approved ofusing mostly Hispanic and Asian associates for cleaning duties, since those associates seldom spoke the local language and could be trusted not to understand high-level or confidential conversations held around them.

Indeed, many of the GA’s associates were the simple workers the worldwide companies thought they were. But, male and female operatives of transnational law enforcement agencies could work clandestinely alongside those same associates and never be suspected.

Ramos finished his shower, dried, and shaved. He quickly slipped into a pair of slightly worn jeans, a plain white T-shirt, and a comfortable pair of casual shoes. He took a couple of steps from his bedroom where he had changed to a small hall closet. Pushing aside his meager inventory of clothing, he felt for a hidden release knob, and pulled. The light was on in the closest, indicating that safe room was clear.

The back wall of the closet moved with a slight touch to that panel, allowing Ramos to enter a hallway with muted lighting, which ran parallel to the rear apartments. Once in the hallway, he reach into the closet, put his clothes back over to where they belonged, then slid the access panel back in place

From the hallway, he could access the safe room within the warehouse through a connecting restroom. The restroom had a missing doorknob and a dusty sign affixed to the doors which read ‘Out-Of-Order’. Ramos laid the tip of his right index finger on a well concealed scanning screen, and both the outer and inner bathroom doors slid open.

The safe room was the transition point for agents to move from their cover as menial workers to government agents. The room was a large windowless storage room used by Global Ashcott. There was a door directly across the room from the restroom lead immediately to another room on second floor of the warehouse, it was locked. Only those who knew of GA’s actual mission had the keys to open that door. Behind the door was ‘Mission Central’.

Even the safe room had another use to keep its actual purpose secret. It served as a storage room, filled with stacks of cleaning supplies. The room had a third door which led to the mezzanine of the warehouse. It was a general access door used only employees who weren’t undercover agents to obtain cleaning supplies.

Since the room was without windows, it forced anyone using the room to turn on the lights. An employee entering from the mezzanine would turn on the storage room lights. Turning those light on turned off the closet lights used by the agents. It was a simple system which kept the safe room secure.

Entering Mission Central, Ramos was greeted by a cheerful, “How ya doing, Ray”. The greeting came from Kelly. It was the only name he was known by. No one seemed to know if that was his first name, or his last name. He was just Kelly. He was the unit’s high-tech operative. At thirty years old, he was the youngest team member. Kelly had flaming red hair, deep-set hazel eyes, a full, round face and a generous sprinkling of freckles.

The ‘kid’ was always so upbeat, gentle, and pleasant, Ramos wondered if Kelly could really kill someone if need be. But Ramos didn’t have any concerns with Kelly when it came to his primary task; the agency’s databases and communications. The young man kept all of the unit’s technology humming.

Mission Central was crammed with electronic stuff Ramos couldn’t identify. The office was manned by agents 24/7. There was a desk and chair against each of the room’s four windowless interior walls. A large, oblong wooden table in the center of the room with six old straight-back chairs pushed up against it.

The air was stale, with combined scents of stacks of old paper and cardboard boxes, mingled with warm electrical equipment. The agents in this room took a daily rotating ten hour shifts, with two of those hours overlapping the shift with the next person.

The agents assigned to this part of the operation ‘rented’ one of the other adjoining apartments on the alley side of the warehouse, or lived in a flat nearby. Like Ramos, those living in the warehouse apartments wore disguises when leaving through the alley. If they entered the regional corporate offices on the ground floor of the warehouse, they were in normal street clothing.

The downstairs office was manned by locals who really thought Global Ashcott L. L. C. was just a contract cleaning and security company. The branch manager was Craig Ostendorf; he knew the actual purpose of this operation. He was a highly trained covert affairs operative, and the actual business manager for this regional office.

The comings, goings, and strange working hours of Ramos, Kelly and the other agents was explained to the locals as necessary for this branch to stay in contact with the international headquarters of GA and its other regional branches.

Ramos, like the other operatives, would often go downstairs, mingle with the staff, and be seen around town. He would attend office parties and have dinner with locals. To office staff, Ramos was known as Glen Allen, a guy from the international headquarters in Houston, Texas.

“Here’s your next box of goo”, Kelly chirped, as he handed Ramos a foil wrapped package. The package was just over six inches wide and a bit over a foot long. It contained 140 pieces of what Kelly called ‘goo’. Each piece was an individual listening devise, half an inch wide, an inch long and less than 1/8 of an inch thick.

The devices were encased in a somewhat firm, transparent, gelatinous substance. All the wiring, receivers, transmitters, and power sources were microscopic in size. The gelatinous substance would begin to very slowly degrade within days of being planted; giving each unit a one month life-cycle.

While Ramos and the other agents went about their tasks as custodians they would periodically place these around the rooms they were cleaning. The ‘goo’ was next to impossible to see with the naked eye, and they adhered to almost any solid surface, so they could be placed anywhere within an office.

The fact that the gelatinous substance encased the units, and they only lasted a month, made them extremely hard to detect. Once the ‘goo’ fully degraded, it left a tiny dust like pile. No one could really see it, so the remains were either unknowingly dusted or vacuumed away by people doing routine cleaning.

Ramos would unwrap the individual units in the privacy of the cleaning supplycloset on the 25th floor of the KML building, place a couple on his cleaning cart, and plant them while cleaning. He had the task down to a couple of quick precise moves.

He would predetermine where in the targeted room the unit or units should be placed. Just before he reached that spot, he would use his right index finger and press down on the devise while it lay on the cart. It would stick to that finger. Then, as he cleaned, he would press his finger on the appointed spot, and the devise was planted.

Kelly and Ramos heard the subdued sounds of the security panel being accessed in the room next door. There was a click, and then Craig Ostendorf swept into the room. Ramos liked Craig, but it seemed the man insisted upon making an entrance into a room. Ostendorf’s wide girth, bouncy stride, and gregarious personality seemed to make it impossible to just walk into a room like normal folks.

“Well, gents, what’s cooking?”It was Craig’s code for wanting the latest updates. He seated himself at the table, while Kelly swung his office chair to face the table. Ramos pulled a chair away from the table, spun it to face him, and sat straddling the seat, resting his arms on the back of the chair.

As Kelly filled in Craig with the most recent wire taps, and conversations gathered by the bugs, Ramos reflected on the curious gathering international law enforcement groups involved in this operation. He was from the FBI, Kelly was CIA; Craig was rumored to be from England’s M15. Interpol, the Canadians, French, and others were all said to be taking part.

Kelly finished his report, and Ramos gave his. Craig indicated that others from the team would be stopping by for an informal meeting shortly. He seemed to be processing something in his mind.

“It’s worse than we thought.” Craig said just blurting out the words, his forehead furrowed, and his jaws tense.”KML has more officials in various governments on the take than we ever imagined. Not only are there key members of the American President’s Cabinet in on it, but a couple of Senators and Congressmen too. The heads of several US government departments are taking money and other favors. Add them to the others we know about in the USA, and its ugly.”

Ramos was also aware that most of the Russian government was not only being paid off by KML, but some were even actively part of the KML operation. Whole South American governments had been subverted, along with some European Union states, chunks of China’s ruling party, a host of Asian and much of Africa. It was Craig’s next comment that floored Ramos.

“We have known for some time most of the Port City officials from the police to the courts are controlled be KML. What has been surprising is the level to which the GIE (Government in Exile) has been compromised. If this war hadn’t brought this country to the point of near extinction, the level of corruption would have sooner rather than later.”

Kelly questioned how one company could afford to bribe so many people in so many countries. The simple answer to a complex question was they had almost a monopoly on money laundering for the vast majority of the world’s drug cartels. They were the middlemen for sex trade internationally, and were pretty much the go-to professionals for all things illegal. They had taken the mingling of legitimate legal transactions with the illegal to an art form.

Craig continued, “The team has more than enough to make things uncomfortable for KML, but it will only lead to chopping off a couple heads of this Medusa. It will pain KML for a while, but then just they will just grow the heads back. In the meantime, the company will continue to function. We need something or someone who can take us to the very heart of the operation.”