Eyes of the Hammer

CHAPTER TWO

The director of the CIA, Bill Hanks, turned his baleful gaze on the man seated across from him. Hanks didn't like the nattily dressed man, but the elderly director had long ago learned to respect and use talent wherever he found it and in whatever form it appeared. Peter Strom embodied some of what Hanks felt was wrong with the "new CIA," yet the young man also was a shining example of many of the qualities needed in the modern world of intelligence. Strom could compile and summarize information better than anyone Hanks had ever worked with. Hanks also knew that Strom's meteoric rise to deputy director at the relatively young age of thirty-four had been largely due to his ability to ingratiate himself with the people in power. Strom had been a particular favorite of the previous director, and Hanks had inherited the man. He detested Strom's two-faced behavior — sucking up to his superiors and lording over his subordinates. Yet, not liking someone's personality was not a good enough reason, in Hanks's book, to demote the man. Being honest with himself, the director also had to admit that his deputy did excellent work, and that was one of the reasons Strom was present in his office this morning.

The director waved a hand, indicating that he was ready for the briefing to start, then swiveled his chair to gaze out his window. He knew it irritated Strom not to be looked at while he briefed. "Give me the background on why Santia was here, so I'm up to date. The Old Man is screaming bloody murder across the river, and he's probably going to hit me up for something about the whole Springfield thing when I see him later this morning."

Strom snapped open a folder and started speaking in a rich, cultured voice that Hanks was sure he practiced. "Judge Santia was one of the twenty-four Supreme Court justices in Colombia. Using diplomatic pressure, the State Department finally got Santia and two other judges to sign extradition papers on several members of the Colombian drug cartel, most specifically members of the Ramirez family from the Cartagena branch, one of the most powerful drug families in Colombia. The Justice Department presently has three members of the Ramirez family here in the United States awaiting arraignment for drug trafficking.

"In exchange for signing the extradition order, State agreed to bring Santia and the other two judges here to the United States for protection. They've done this several times in the past, ever since '85, when eleven members of the Supreme Court in Bogota were massacred for allowing extradition of some drug traffickers."

Strom glanced up as Hanks mused out loud. "I remember that. They torched the damn Supreme Court building, didn't they? Held out for a couple of days there until the government ordered the army in?"

Strom nodded. "Yes, sir."

Hanks indicated for him to continue with the briefing.

"Santia was to finish testifying before a congressional subcommittee on drug trafficking on Friday and then he was to disappear into the Federal Witness Protection Program."

Hanks cut in. "Obviously that isn't what happened."

Strom glanced up from his notes. "No, sir."

"What did happen then?" Hanks swung his chair around and faced Strom. "What has the FBI turned up on the actual attack?"

"I've got an eyes-only copy of their initial report." Strom slid some pictures across the desk. Hanks didn't bother to ask where Strom had gotten hold of the highly classified internal FBI report. Obtaining useful information was another of Strom's assets. Hanks pulled his chair up to the desk to look at the pictures as Strom briefed.

"The final tally from yesterday's attack was seventeen killed. That includes Judge Santia, six U.S. marshals, and ten bystanders. There are six youngsters still in the hospital, two in critical condition.

"As best as the FBI can reconstruct, the sequence of events was as follows: The attack began with two unidentified males opening fire with 9-millimeter Ingram MAC-10 submachine guns on a group of twenty high school students waiting for the school bus." Strom pointed at one of the pictures. "Right about there. This was apparently done to lure in the lead car and stop the convoy."

The director of the CIA looked up. "Weren't those men properly trained to ignore a diversion like that?"

"I imagine that the killing of the school kids made them forget what they were supposed to do. That was just one of several mistakes they made," Strom sniffed, apparently feeling that the U.S. marshals had committed some personal affront to him.

Hanks didn't bother to hide his irritation. Strom had never seen a shot fired in anger. "Well, I guess they won't make any more mistakes, will they? Continue."

Strom pointed at another picture. "The lead car pulled up to the bus stop and the two marshals inside exited. As they did so, an M60 machine gun opened fire on them from across the street, located here in this culvert. The FBI believes that the machine gun and its firer had been hidden in there since dawn, because they have not been able to find any witnesses who remember seeing anything suspicious earlier that morning. They believe that the firer most likely stayed hidden well back in the culvert until the attack started.

"The initial M60 firing killed the two marshals from the lead car who had stopped to engage the men firing at the students. At about the same time that the M60 was taking out the first car, a Soviet-style RPG antitank rocket was fired from a van behind the trail car. This rocket destroyed that car, killing both marshals in it."

Hanks shook his head. "Jesus. Those boys sure had a shitload of firepower."

Strom ignored the interruption. "After the destruction of the trail car, the car carrying Santia attempted to go around the lead car and escape forward. Apparently, the driver hesitated when he saw the bodies of the youngsters lying in the street in front of him. The rearward route was blocked by the destroyed trail car and the van."

"It looks like they deliberately used those school kids to stop the car. Probably would make me stop, too," Hanks mused out loud.

"They did, sir. Use the youngsters, I mean." Strom pointed at another picture. "Although they killed several students in their initial burst to draw attention to themselves, the two gunmen literally herded the surviving kids out into the street with bullets and then cut them down to block the road.

"The M60 then engaged Santia's car. Although the car was armored and had bulletproof glass, the protection was not designed to stand up to concentrated heavy machine-gun fire. The 7.62-millimeter bullets from the machine gun broke through the windshield. The driver was killed by a round through the head. The agent in the front right attempted to roll out his door and fire back. Apparently he was immediately shot down by gunmen advancing from the van."

Strom looked up. "At this point, the assassins went up to the center car to confirm that Santia was inside. He was killed, torn apart really, when they emptied two magazines from MAC-10 submachine guns into him.

"The attackers escaped using the van. It was found abandoned near Fredericksburg, Virginia. The van had been stolen the previous night from the Springfield area. It was wiped clean of prints. The FBI's forensic people haven't been able to turn up any leads from the van.

"Quite frankly, that's as much as they've got. Tracing the spent cartridges has turned up nothing useful. Standard 9-millimeter parabellum for the MAC-10s. The ammunition for the M60 has been traced to a lot sent to the Contras over four years ago. The Contras have no way of tracking down that ammunition after all this time." Strom summed up the situation as he snapped shut the file folder. "The FBI investigation is at a dead end unless they get a break."

Hanks pointed at the folder on the desk. "What do your people have to say based on this information?"

"We really don't have enough yet to be able to speculate anything," Strom said evenly.

Hanks shook his head. The president wasn't going to buy that. Although the FBI was catching the heat over this, Hanks knew that sooner or later his agency would get drawn in because of the high probability that foreigners were involved. He wanted to be able to give the Old Man something if asked this morning.

"I know you don't have anything that you can go to a court of law with, Strom, but I want your professional opinion. Surely after working on this for the past twenty-four hours you have some idea."

Strom realized he wasn't going to be able to skate out on this one. "Yes, sir. I have some theories. My best guess is that Santia was killed on orders from someone in the Colombian drug cartel. Everything points to that. Santia had struck a powerful blow against one of the most influential drug families down there with his extradition orders. One of the weapons used in the attack, the Ingram MAC-10, is a favorite of the Colombians. The descriptions of the two men firing on the kids match that of Latinos. The brutality of the attack and the disregard for bystanders is indicative of the way the Colombians do business in their own country.

"Additionally, whoever shot Santia spaced the rounds in a T pattern on the body. This is a trademark of the Bogota branch of the drug cartel, the Terminators I believe they call themselves, although that may have been done to mislead us. The Terminators are under control of the Ahate branch of the cartel, not the Ramirez's branch."

Hanks nodded. "It's good to see that you agree with the newspapers, Strom. What do you think the chances are of catching the people who did this?"

"Truthfully, sir, I think the gunmen are already back in Colombia. I doubt the FBI will turn up anything here, stateside."

"Which means there's a good chance we'll get involved," Hanks mused.

"Yes, sir."

Hanks switched to another tack. "I imagine the FBI is examining how the attackers learned where Judge Santia was and when he would be traveling?"

Strom nodded glumly. "Yes, sir. Unfortunately, they have no leads on that angle either."

"Anything from the State Department side?"

"Yes, sir. With the media really jumping on this Colombian angle, their government has been getting nervous. As you know, their ambassador has been making all sorts of public exclamations of shock and outrage. On the private side, though, he requested a meeting with the secretary of state to discuss the situation."

Strom consulted his notes. "They met last night, and the Colombian ambassador still denies any knowledge of the people behind this crime. But he's smart enough to realize that something has to be done. He flew back to Bogota after the meeting to confer with President Alegre. There's another meeting set up between the secretary of state and the Colombian ambassador tomorrow morning at 6 a.m. to find out what they've decided."

Hanks assimilated the new information. "OK, Strom. I want you to let me know immediately what's happening with that. Tell our source in State that this is top priority. I want to know what comes out of that meeting."

"Yes, sir."

Hanks peered at the ceiling. "What about the DEA?"

Strom flipped through his files. "I've got a summary of the DEA's report to the president. They take the old party line in it."

Hanks reached out. "Let me see it." He scanned the document. He was only slightly surprised at the bluntness of the language. Cory Mullins, the acidic new director of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), must have had a hand in the writing.

The Colombian government can deny it all they want, but cocaine is their primary export and a mainstay of their economy. They've pretended all along that the drug trade was something they were against and trying to eradicate. Quite frankly, they've been presenting us with a smoke screen.

The conclusions drawn in this report are based on years of DEA field experience in country. Without the tacit support of the Colombian government, the drug cartel would never be able to do the amount of business it presently conducts. Corruption and graft are an accepted part of the culture in South and Central America. Judge Santia was threatening the drug cartel with his extradition order on the three members of the Ramirez family. Santia was a problem and the cartel got rid of that "problem" the only way it knew how. Subtlety is not a trademark of its operations.

We are not saying that the government was behind the assassination; we believe the drug cartel was. But in Colombia the line between those two institutions is very vague. Drugs, money, power, and politics all go together down there. Colombia's economy relies more heavily on the drug trade than on the coffee business. We estimate an approximately 5O billion dollar a year business in the cocaine and marijuana export field and we believe that estimate is on the low side. Any political movement against the drug trade is a self-inflicted economic wound for the Colombian government.

Admittedly, President Alegre has been making some progress in the war against drugs. However, the progress has been mostly cosmetic rather than real. Since the summit in Cartagena the Colombian government's efforts have at best cut the export of cocaine by approximately 10 percent, a rather insignificant dent in the torrent of drugs flowing out of that country.

There is no doubt in this agency's mind that the Colombian drug cartel was behind the events last Friday in Springfield, Virginia.

Hanks shook his head in disbelief as he finished the brief summary. "Mullins actually sent this forward to the president?"

Strom nodded.

Hanks laughed. "Since when does the DEA have a collective mind?" He threw the report down. "I would like to come up with some tentative courses of action in response to this assassination. I need your people to give me options to go on if the president hits me up."

Strom made a note on his pad. Hanks gestured toward his subordinate's folder. "Anything else I should know? What about the Department of Defense? What's their stand?"

"Secretary of Defense Terrance is still against using active forces in the drug war. He sticks to the legality of it. The old, it would be illegal if they were used domestically, argument. Also, the same old, it would deteriorate the state of readiness of our forces, argument."

Hanks shook his head. Terrance better get off his ass, he thought to himself. The Old Man wasn't going to buy those lines much longer. The sooner the Department of Defense (DOD) got behind the president's policies, the better.

Strom found a note he had buried in the back of the folder. "Even though the secretary of defense isn't too thrilled about using the military in the drug war, I have information that General Macksey is war-gaming various military options for retaliation."

Hanks sighed. "They have to have a target to retaliate against and they don't. Is that it?"

Strom nodded.

Hanks stood up. "Whatever comes down on this, you're going to be responsible, so I want you to stay on top of everything and keep me up to date."

"Yes, sir."