King of All I Survey
Chapter 101: When the Inmates Run the Asylum

Chapter 101: When the Inmates Run the Asylum

"So, I assume you’re tracking Vargas’s communications and then those of anyone he contacts and so on up the chain, Joe?"

"Yes. All comms from the embassy or anywhere Vargas visits after leaving the Presidential Palace. He has an invisible drone escort to make sure we don’t miss anything."

"Excellent, so let’s see if any of those lead to anyone who watched the meeting from that encrypted server. Not damning evidence, but still..." I mused.

"Say, Joe? Are there any CIA operatives, regular guys not assassins, who are stuck in foreign prisons?" I asked.

"There are a few people that are being held either on charges of espionage or trumped-up charges, who also have personnel records in the CIA database. Three in Russia, two in China, 1 each in Belarus, Kuwait, Iran, Colombia, and Myanmar."

"Send me their info., would you? Include details of the prisons. See if you can get drones in to scout the layout, guard locations, electronic surveillance, and monitor communications," I ordered.

"Sounds like you’re thinking of a superhero rescue operation," Joe guessed.

"Maybe, just thinking out loud and getting the background. I was thinking of using some of our Guatemala paramilitaries to rescue them. Then use an LITV to transport them to a simulation room so they think their flying in airplanes to get back here. Then we can hand them over to our guy at the US embassy, courtesy of the country of Guatemala," I said. "That should get us some goodwill, don’t you think?"

"Maybe, but it’ll certainly draw attention. They’ll want to know how we did it. It might just make us a bigger target for them if we show off too much," Joe suggested.

"Yeah, maybe you’re right. I hate to leave people in prison, though. Hey, wait a minute, did you say Colombia? What’s up with that one?"

"Jorge Maldonada was captured by the Colombian army forces during a raid of a minor cartel faction 3 years ago. He was one of 42 people arrested, 23 were killed in the operation. He appears to have been working undercover to infiltrate the group under CIA auspices. I found one recorded mention of his incarceration in CIA files. It reports that he had left the CIA voluntarily when confronted with aiding the cartel, two days before the raid. It appears to have been back-dated after the fact. The report recommends that he be left to serve his sentence since he was in fact a criminal and no longer a CIA employee at the time of his capture," Joe reported as he scanned the hacked CIA systems in real-time.

I cocked my head and furrowed my brow, "Except he was an employee at the time... Is there any mention of him going rogue before that date?"

"No, in fact, he submitted a report two weeks prior with two follow-ups requesting a status update of his report in the following days. Access to the report has been restricted to the Colombia Theater Bureau Chief, a sub-division of Organized Crime/ Narcotics/ Latin America. The report provides his suspicion that two agents embedded in the Rain Cartel, were providing Colombia and US law enforcement operation warnings to the cartels and organizing small-fry scape goat targets for law enforcement to keep them from getting too aggressive in their efforts. He supplied several specific incidents supporting his claim. He requested the agents in question be recalled from the Colombian Theater immediately for assessment in the USA."

"Holy Cow! Joe, that’s our man! The guy that buried that report must have been complicit in the rogue activity. Can you find out why the Colombian Army ordered the raid and picked up Maldonado?"

"Yes, they received intelligence information and a strong recommendation to take action from the same Colombian Theater Chief of the CIA. It included Maldonado’s name and photo and suggested that he be considered an extreme threat, lethal force was authorized under highly classified recommendations. He seems to have escaped that fate, and instead been rendered to El Modelo Prison in Bogota. Records there are... kept inconsistently. There is no record of him being killed, so it is likely he is still alive. Forty-seven inmates have been killed in the prison in the last year. Of those killed in the prison since Maldonado was put there with 22 others captured in the same raid, 3 of that group have been killed by violence. It is common for the inmates to possess firearms, smuggled in from outside."

"I want eyes on him as soon as you can get a drone there!" I ordered, "Keep him alive, until we go get him."

"I can LITV a drone into the prison in twelve seconds," Joe replied, It may take somewhat longer to locate him."

"What do you mean? Won’t he be in his cell?" I asked picturing the prisons I had seen on TV with two men to a cell, locked in at night and only allowed out into common areas only during daylight hours for meals and yard time or whatever.

"It doesn’t work like that. It’s essentially a free-for-all with bosses controlling sections of the prison. Inmates must pay to buy a place to sleep and pay a monthly rent to keep it. The place is stuffed far over its planned capacity. There are several factions in the prison that are at odds with each other, and a large population of common-law prisoners who are caught in the middle. Notably, the North Wing is entirely controlled by far-left FARC Guerillas while the South Wing is controlled by a far-right militia group, the United Militias of Colombia. Both groups are heavily armed and extremely violent. Both groups are classified as rebels and terrorists by the Colombian government."

"What about guards, don’t they keep order?" I asked.

"Guards are not armed inside the prison, and they are very few, outnumbered by hundreds to one in some areas. In the watchtowers, they have rifles, but they basically protect the walls or respond to gunfire within their line of sight."

"So, the worst criminals with the largest personal army or whoever can smuggle in the most guns runs the place? How can they let that happen?" I asked.

"Often, those people are well-connected to larger organizations that remain at large. If a 23-year-old guard finds someone smuggling a handgun in during a visitation, he knows that the inmate inside, all his already armed prison pals, and all his colleagues on the outside will be very upset with him if he stops that gun, or cash, or drugs from getting in. In his place, what would you do? You know, if you weren’t a bulletproof superhero."

"Doesn’t seem fair to the unconnected criminals..."

"There are some very bad people in there, King Tim. But others with fraud convictions or relatively minor non-violent offenses. For them, it’s not pleasant, but if they keep their head down, do as they’re told, and pay their rent or whatever fees they’re told to pay. They’ll probably live to finish their sentence as long as they don’t get in the way of a stray bullet."

"So, our guy should be ok?"

"There are a lot of people from different cartels in the general population. It depends on who holds a grudge or wants to make a point to the members of a group still on the outside. Since the entire cartel he was in was taken down, they no longer interfere with anyone else’s market share on the outside. That’s a positive. If other prisoners knew he was CIA, or if someone from the Rain cartel has orders to find him... On the other hand, he has a good-sized group from his former organization in there with him. They’ll probably stick together for strength of numbers. OK, the drone is now in the prison rotunda, scanning faces against the CIA personnel file photo."

Dad and I had been walking as I talked with Joe, and we were now seated back in the Status Room.

"Put it up on the display, Joe. Let’s see what a Colombian prison looks like."