King of All I Survey
Chapter 80: Who’s Who?

Chapter 80: Who’s Who?

"Let’s go to the next one," I said, "We’ll use the same interrogation team." I grinned.

We stood outside in the hallway by the next door as a display popped up on the wall. ’Dmitri’ and his two guards entered the cell. The second prisoner had removed his camouflage jumpsuit and was wearing ordinary work clothes, the type you’d see over and over again walking down any street in Sacapulas. He was lying down, using the balled-up jumpsuit as a pillow. He looked over at the newcomers, but continued lying there, with his hands clasped across his chest.

"I have a few questions for you." I said as Dmitri.

Prisoner #2 laughed out loud and turned his head back to looking up at the ceiling.

"We have captured five men dressed like you with RPG launchers. Are there more?"

He did not respond. "He’s thinking there’s a sixth one," Dmitri said aloud. "And he’s thinking there are four more men in police uniforms... in a police car... to shoot people as they exit the warehouse and cast blame on the government. Get our people searching for them immediately!"

The man’s face froze, he turned to study Dmitri. Dmitri stood face impassive, meeting the man’s gaze without flinching or blinking. "Am I reading your mind? Is that what you want to know?"

The man snorted, "That’s too obvious."

"Are there other teams besides those you’ve just revealed?" Dmitri asked.

In the corridor, Joe interpreted his brain scans, "No... qualified, maybe."

I frowned. Dmitri continued, "Let me rephrase that. Are there other teams in Guatemala already?"

The man frowned, but did not speak.

"No," Joe said. "He doesn’t believe there are. If he thought that more teams could be sent from outside, that would explain his reaction to the previous question".

Dmitri smirked at the prisoner. "There are no more active teams in Guatemala, but additional resources could be sent from... elsewhere."

The man’s eyes went wide. "You’re just guessing. You’re trying to see my reactions."

"Am I?" Dmitri asked, he turned around and faced the door. "Are you CIA?"

"He’s blanking his thoughts, avoiding thinking about it as best his can. He is with the CIA, though maybe not exactly," Joe told us.

"A CIA contractor, then?" Dmitri asked.

"Yes," Joe told us.

"How much do they pay you for mass murder?" Dmitri asked rhetorically as he knocked on the door and waited for the door to open. He walked through with his two guards, leaving the prisoner staring after him.

In the hallway, I stood silently for a minute trying to think of what to do next.

"What now?" Dad asked.

"I’m thinking..." I answered, I honestly had no idea what to do next. I didn’t really want an open confrontation with the United States or any major power at this stage. The fact that they would send mercenaries to kill hundreds of people, though... I could not let that go unanswered.

"Joe," I said finally, "Skip the simulation with the fake cops, I have what I need to know. Keep all these guys here. Run full psych assessments and tell me if they can be reliably rehabilitated with memory imprint therapy. Meanwhile, send us back to Headquarters."

Two seconds later, we were standing in the Status Room.

"You know, Tim," Dad said in that tone of voice which meant, you’re not going to like this, but it’s for your own good, "You could just walk away from world conquest. Sure, monitor intergalactic stuff and whatnot, but we’ve got enough cash to live comfortably in the Bahamas or wherever for ten thousand years."

I sighed, "I’m tempted, Dad. I really am. I mean I could buy a little spaceship and zip around exploring the galaxy on a five-year mission to seek out new life and new civilizations..."

"Sign me up!" Dad said.

We chuckled at the running joke about him being such a huge Trekkie. It was just a momentary diversion.

"I’ll keep it in mind, Dad, but I’m committed to making the world a better place. Why don’t we get Mom back here tonight and talk about things with her?"

Dad’s face brightened as I knew it would. "Absolutely!"

"Joe, I’m going to need to speak to President Arroyo later, maybe around 7:00 PM. Can you arrange that with his secretary. I’ll need a surrogate face and voice for a video conference. Meanwhile, I want you to use everything you’ve got to find a list of CIA covert agents, contractors, assets with handlers, and regular employees. I want current locations, current assignments, cover identities, recent activities, chains of command, ... and names and locations of family members. Also bank accounts, stocks or other investments of all of them, plus does the CIA have shell companies and unofficial bank accounts? I want those, too."

"Family members?" Dad asked with obvious concern showing in his tone, "What are you thinking?"

"Don’t worry, Dad, I’m not going to take hostages or anything, I just want to be able to make a point about the depth of our knowledge and moral restraint. Joe, I want audio and video of any communications regarding covert activities supporting criminal activity of any kind, or any actions targeting governments or private individuals. Get drones inside secure locations, I don’t need them to be big enough for weapons, just shielded audio/video relays. You can LITV them in if you have the precise locations, for buildings you can pop in on the other side of doors, then figure out the location of the next room inside and so on. That should work for even the deepest, most secure bunkers or whatever."

"Acknowledged. I will need to fabricate many more of the mini drones over the course of several days."

"Fine but get what we have into position at the top priority locations as quickly as you can," I ordered.

"Wait a minute," Dad said tilting his head as though thinking about something, "it doesn’t make sense. The two guys inside streaming live video with their cell phones were sending video to likely CIA locations but appeared to know nothing about the attack. If the attack happened, they would almost certainly have been killed. Not only that, but they would have had maybe five minutes of video before the attack so they wouldn’t even have sent any useful information, before they were taken out in a hail of shrapnel. It’s a pointless sacrifice if they’re both CIA. It’s like there are two separate groups altogether."

I paused. He was right. There’s no reason to have the two inside. The other guy inside clearly knew about the attack and took cover by bending down and trying to avoid getting hit, but these guys didn’t.

"Joe, you’ve got drones following them?" I asked.

"Yes. No notable unusual activity after the event, so far."

"Could the gunmen be acting for a rogue group within the CIA? Maybe one or more top people compromised by the cartels..." Dad suggested.

"Or just greedy bastards using the cartels and third world governments to get super-rich... and willing to kill to protect that." I added. "No," I said, still thinking out loud, "maybe ideologues with the mentality that the ends justify the means. If they couldn’t get approval for some project like taking down governments and installing puppet regimes or whatever, maybe they decided to use cartel funds to run their own operations with their own goals. Goals they feel are patriotic and justified in the name of... whatever, but have been denied by their normal chain of command. They might think their normal bosses are weak-willed and too worried about little things like the lives of innocent people who get in the way or being complicit in drug-running when all that matters is the spread of some warped form of democracy and America first ideology."

"That sounds plausible, but kind of far-fetched," Dad offered, "I don’t think we can assume that without some pretty strong evidence."

"Yeah," I agreed. "I mean if we suggested that theory to legitimate CIA leaders and it was false, they’d pretend it was true anyway as a way to hide their involvement in the planned massacre and shift blame to a rogue scapegoat."

"Hmmm," Dad pondered, "Maybe. I say we try it anyway. With the surveillance drones inside their offices, we can listen in and see their reactions. It should be fairly obvious by their internal reactions. Either they’ll try to root out the rogue actors, or they won’t. Either way, they’ll talk about it."

"Joe, do you have any more information on the identities of any of the people we picked up or the other two?" I asked.

"Yes, the two appear to be native residents of Guatemala. One works for a newspaper in Guatemala City as an editor, the other is a public school teacher in Cobal. Both have some involvement in local politics, not running for office, but as organizers, poll-workers, and advocates for various candidates over the years. Both have supported Arroyo’s campaign in minor ways. There is no evidence that Arroyo ever met them or is even aware of them." Joe replied.

"That tracks with minor CIA assets," Dad added, "Hardly people that would be thrown into a storm of shrapnel to be killed needlessly."

"The others," Joe continued, "are harder to trace back over time, some have minor criminal records, two are former El Salvador military, one former Colombian military. Entry level rank, nothing of special note in their records. Four of them have no public records that I can find. All of them have been absent from public records for at least six years. Locations unknown. I assign a high probability that these are the people or at least some of the people set in motion by the mystery phone call from the cartel. I can’t say whether there are others. This group doesn’t appear to know of others already in motion, but they may not have full information."

"So, maybe they’ve been at some paramilitary facility training or conducting other operations for the last few years?" Dad suggested. "The knife guy seemed to have some pretty good hand to hand skills. Our guys were better, but he showed some training and skill."

"All that might fit with the theory of a rogue CIA group using cartel complicity to fund their own side project," I concluded. "We need to make some preparations for the meeting with Arroyo tonight. Joe, I’ve changed my mind about the fake face and voice. Dad, if you’re up to it, I’d like to reveal our true faces, no names, but I’d like to start coming out of the shadows a bit. Let’s recall Mom and have her sit in as well. Joe, can you get Luis to arrange for a pretext for her to be absent from the house for a day or so, and get her back here as quickly as possible."

"Acknowledged."

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