The Prince of Risk

31

A gentle breeze rustled the palms surrounding Simón Bolívar International Airport in Caracas, Venezuela. It was dusk and the thermometer registered a mild 75 degrees. A veil of mist decorated the crown of the El Ávila, the mountain that divided the city and stood as an imposing guard to the airport’s west.

Inside the terminal, 110 passengers crowded the waiting area at Gate 16, anxious to board Mexicana Flight 388 with service to Mexico City. Departure had been delayed two hours owing to a cell of thunderstorms passing to the north. Children pressed their faces to the glass, eager to spot a bolt of lightning streaking across the sky. They returned to their parents disappointed. The sky was cloudless. Not one of them had seen so much as the spark from a firefly. Parents shook their heads. Faulty weather forecasts were the least of Venezuela’s problems.

No one paid attention to the chartered bus that crossed the tarmac a little after 6 p.m. and pulled up to the rear of the aircraft. Nor did anyone notice the twenty-three men and women who alighted from the bus and climbed the mobile staircase onto the plane, having bypassed normal airline check-in procedures, security checkpoints, and passport control. When boarding was announced, the passengers sighed and filed onto the aircraft. No one said a word about the gringos already seated in the cabin. Nor did anyone comment when the plane landed in Mexico City and they were asked to remain in their seats while the gringos exited before them.

Two men waited for the twenty-three inside Benito Juárez International Airport. One was tall and broad-shouldered and wore the uniform of the Guardia Nacional. The other was short and dumpy and wore a wrinkled suit and expensive sunglasses. The soldier smiled and spoke loudly as he welcomed the group to Mexico. He had wonderful teeth. The short, fat man in the rumpled suit told him to shut up and get moving. The soldier clamped his square jaw shut and led the twenty-three to a door across the hall from Immigration Control.

Another uniformed official waited inside a large, unremarkable room. He asked the visitors to line up and have their passports ready. One by one, he examined the travel documents. All were new Portuguese passports that had never been stamped. The official had worked in immigration for many years. He knew that citizens of the European Union required a visa to visit Venezuela. He also knew better than to point out this discrepancy. One by one, he returned the passports to their owners. He did not, as was his custom, stamp each. Nor did he pass any through the optical scanner that recorded a person’s entry and read the biometric magnetic strip containing the visitor’s personal statistics. The official was a smart man and possessed a remarkable memory. It did not require significant effort to memorize two of the passport numbers and the names written inside. The official had many masters.

Thirty minutes after setting foot on Mexican soil, the twenty-three boarded a private bus and were driven to a respectable hotel on the outskirts of the city. Here they showered, changed clothes, and enjoyed a traditional Mexican dinner of carnitas, tortillas, and frijoles. Each was allowed one beer.

At 11 p.m., the first of three vans pulled into the hotel’s forecourt. Eight individuals-six men and two women-climbed aboard. All were trim and fit and in high spirits. They did not speak Portuguese but a mixture of German, French, and English. The van drove them to a private airstrip north of the city. A Pilatus P-3 waited on the asphalt runway. The eight stowed their bags and mounted the staircase. At midnight, the Pilatus took off and pointed its nose north for the five-hour flight to its destination.

Team One was airborne.

The second van collected a group of seven, six men and one woman. Again, all were fit to look at, impressively so. In contrast to the plain van that had picked up Team One, this one was painted sleek black and was as shiny as if it had been driven directly from the car wash. Two golden interlocking S’s adorned the doors on either side. The van drove west across the city to a private airport that catered to the city’s wealthiest citizens-industrialists, oilmen, ranking officials, and the landed gentry who counted as Mexico’s aristocrats. Tonight, however, the armed guards manning the main gate waved the van past without even a cursory inspection.

The van continued to the western end of the 6,000-foot runway where a Cessna Citation business jet waited, stairs lowered, navigation lights flashing, a uniformed steward standing by to help his passengers board. Like the van, the jet had the symbol of interlocking S’s painted on its fuselage.

At 1 a.m. the Citation radioed “wheels up” to the control tower. Its flight plan called for a first leg northwest to the city of Puerto Vallarta before it turned due north, crossed the United States border at El Centro, and continued on to its destination, San Francisco. Somewhere over the Sierra Madre mountain range, the pilot dipped the nose and descended to 6,000 feet. He plugged new coordinates into the plane’s navigation system. Moments later, the wings banked and the needle on the plane’s compass swung to east by northeast. The pilot was pleased to note that the fuel needle had barely strayed from full an hour after takeoff. His passengers were going to need every mile he could get if they hoped to reach their destination.

Team Two was en route.

A third van collected the final group of eight. The van drove all night east through the jungles of eastern Mexico. At 5 a.m. they arrived at the port city of Vera Cruz. The eight did not board a ship, however. Instead, they proceeded to a private airstrip owned by one of the multinational oil corporations based there and boarded a Bombardier business jet for the two-hour flight up the coast to Tampico. In Tampico they exchanged the jet for a CH-53 helicopter, formerly in the service of the United States Marine Corps but purchased recently by Noble Energy Corporation. The helicopter was spacious inside and fitted for another class of able-bodied men and women: roughnecks.

At dawn, they took off for the short flight to Tamondo.

Tamondo was not a city. It was the name of Noble Energy’s newest oil rig located in the Kaskida Field, 250 miles southwest of New Orleans.

Team Three was under way.