That Night in Cartagena

For long range surveillance, I carry a Bushnell 20-50x65 spotting scope and tripod. Along with my food bars, my pack and gear weighs in at just under twenty pounds. If the job requires me to take pictures, I leave the spotting scope at home and take my Nikon digital camera with the 70-300 lens and tripod. At maximum power, the Nikon lens is as good as a spotting scope.

That's also why I change locations every night. A good tracker could see where I'd slept by the compression of the grass or plant undergrowth if I'd been there for more than one night. I know. I've spotted the location of a prior enemy encampment that way in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Anyway, I'd planned all that out for this mission in detail. I had an exit route planned as well as an alternate if I was discovered. I'd just disappear into the surrounding country and then make my way to my pickup point. If I had to use my alternate, I'd have to reduce my rations to make my food last, but I'd make it back home.

What I hadn't planned on is standing face to face with three very scared looking women holding two rifles and a pistol aimed at me. I smiled as I slowly crouched down to put the Sig on the ground and then spoke in Spanish.

"Please don't shoot me. I'm on your side of this. It was me that shot the third man before he could shoot you. Maybe I can help you get out of this situation, but I can't do anything for you if you shoot me."

The two younger women still looked scared to death and they were waving the rifle and pistol at me. The older woman didn't look as scared. She was frowning when she asked me who I was and what I was doing there. There wasn't much point in trying to lie to her. She could see the rifle, my pistol, and the camera sitting on its tripod.

"My name is Andres Sandoval. I work for a company that sometimes watches people like the people you just killed. That's what I was doing when the truck brought you here. I thought you were being held for some reason, maybe ransom, and when you killed those two, I was pretty sure they weren't your friends. I killed the third because he was trying to kill you.

"Now that I've told you, how about if you tell me the same thing about you?"

She shook her head.

"There is no time. When they find the dead men, they will look for us and probably kill us. We have to leave here as quickly as possible."

I asked her where she planned to go, and for the first time, her face changed from angry and determined to a face that pleaded with me to help her. She lowered the rifle then too.

"I do not know where we are, so I do not know where to go. I only know we can not stay here."

I considered my options then, and they all sucked big donkey dicks. I could let the three go off by themselves. I wouldn't technically be responsible for them, but in my mind, I would be. I'd wonder what happened to them until I was able to find out. In my mind, they'd probably just disappear either because they were caught and killed, or just because they couldn't survive on their own. I didn't want to be responsible for that.

If I helped them get to someplace safe, what then? I was sure the men in that compound were members of some cartel and losing three men and their hostages or whatever these women were would be really piss the cartel off. All cartels have members in virtually every country in the free world and probably have connections in the rest. If the cartel decided to hunt these women down, they'd probably be found and killed.

I didn't have any training that covered this situation, at least not any military training. It was about then that Andres Sandoval, a former altar boy at Saint Christophers in my Chicago neighborhood, whispered in my ear that the right thing to do, regardless of how things turned out, was to help them. I decided I'd follow my original plan for getting out of Venezuela and take them along with me.

"I know where we are. We're about fifty kilometers from the Colombian border. If we can get to Colombia, I can get a plane to fly us to Cartagena. From there, I'm going back to the States. You can decide where you're going once we're out of Venezuela.

"I do have to warn you that it won't be an easy trip. It's going to be mostly over the mountains. The mountains aren't very high, but it will still be tough going especially barefoot. I can fix that part. You wait here and I'll be right back."

There were three pairs of boots on the three dead men at the compound. It took me half an hour to get there, take off their boots, and come back. While I was there, I took a quick look around the main building and picked up a few things that looked like we might need them.

When I got back to my clearing, all three women were sitting down and they still looked scared. I dropped the three pairs of boots in front of them as well as one of the blankets I'd picked up at the house.

"These boots are probably too big for you, but rip the blanket up and stuff the pieces into the toes. The boots will at least protect your feet from getting cut up on the rocks."

While they were doing that, I packed up my stuff and took out my map and compass to find a landmark I could use to make sure we stayed on course. That was always important in navigating strange country, but I had no idea how strong the three women were and I didn't want to wear them down by wandering around. It had to be the shortest path possible if we were going to make it.

When the older woman said they were ready, I gave them my last instructions.

"OK, here's how we have to do this if we're going to get out of here in one piece.

"One - I don't know if the men who took you will be looking for us or not, but starting now, there can be no talking out loud. If I need to tell you something or you need to tell me something, we'll use whispers.

Two - I'll lead and you three will follow behind me."

I pointed to the older woman.

"You bring up the rear and help the other two if they need help. Following me means walking in single file behind me. No walking off to the side to avoid a rough place. I'll lead you through the safest places. We can't stop if one of you gets hurt because you think you know better."

I turned to the older woman again.

"Do you and these girls know how to use the weapons they're carrying?"

She smiled.

"I do because of the military training the government requires. I taught Felicia and Maria how they work and how to aim, but they haven't ever shot either a rifle or a pistol.

"OK. Three -- don't get nervous and start shooting at anything. That will tell anybody within a kilometer that we're here and they'll come to investigate. I'll tell you if and when to do that. I picked up some extra magazines for the rifles and pistols at the house, but we don't have enough ammo to start a firefight.

"Four -- We're going to be short of food. I have enough to last one person another two days. We'll have to stretch that to two days for the four of us. That means we'll only eat enough to keep us going. You'll be hungry but you won't starve to death.

"Five -- don't ever question what I tell you to do. Just do it as soon as I tell you. Waiting to ask me why could get us all killed.

"Do all of you understand?"

All three nodded.

"OK, let's go."

I hadn't chosen a difficult route just to make things hard on the women. I did it to avoid roads and villages. I'd done a couple dozen missions watching the cartels in South America, and one thing had stood out to me. The cartels don't do many foot patrols. They'd rather go down roads in their Toyota Landcruisers or in pickup trucks with a machinegun mounted in the bed. By taking the route I'd chosen we'd go around any small villages and wouldn't have to cross any roads.

That meant we'd do some tough walking, but it was unavoidable. The last thing I wanted was to be going through a village or crossing a road and meeting a vehicle full of cartel members. Since I was traveling with three women wearing really nice jeans and shirts and combat boots, we'd stick out like a sore thumb amongst the local population. It was pretty likely someone would tell the cartel that some strange people had gone through the village.

The radio antenna on the roof of the main building told me that the men in the compound probably were in communication with at least another cartel compound. It was likely they were supposed to report that they had the women and find out what they were to do with them. I figured we had about a day before somebody came to see why the compound wasn't responding to calls.

If I'd been by myself, I'd have kept walking all night, but the women probably weren't accustomed to walking any distance and had probably never walked anywhere outside of a bedroom in the dark. My plan was to walk that first afternoon for as long as I could see my landmark in the distance and to put as much distance between us and the compound as possible. Once someone came to check on the compound, the area would quickly be crawling with cartel members searching for whoever killed the men and took the women.

It was likely that the first suspects would be another cartel, especially considering that two of the men had been shot in the head and their weapons had been taken. That would look to about anyone like a typical cartel execution. That would work in our favor. The cartel that ran the compound would be out on the roads looking for any rival cartel members.

They'd probably find at least one, and would try to make him talk. That would also work in our favor. Since the guy wouldn't have a clue about what really happened, it would take a while before he told them what he thought they wanted to hear. That would probably take the rest of the day and would give us a two-day head start. It looked like we were going to need all the head start we could get.

I can easily cover four kilometers an hour on level ground without exhausting myself. The route I'd planned would take us through a gap in the mountains, so I'd figured we'd make the Colombian border in about two days. After the first hour of walking, I stretched that to maybe three. The older woman was keeping up with the pace. The two younger women were not. I ended up stopping to let them rest and to give them a drink from my canteen every hour or so.

We were well into the gap in the mountains when it got too dark for me to see the mountain peak that was my landmark. After finding a cluster of bushes and small trees big enough the four of us had at least a little cover, I handed each woman a food bar and a blanket.

"This food bar isn't much, but it'll keep you going. The blanket is for warmth. We can't have a fire and it gets chilly at night as high up as we are. Put one blanket on the ground and two of you pull the other blanket over you. Your body heat will keep each other warm so you can sleep. You're going to need to sleep, so don't stay up talking to each other."

I was eating my food bar when the older woman walked up and sat down on the ground beside me.

"Felicia and Maria have done what you said, and they said they are warm enough to sleep. There wasn't room for three under their blanket and when I tried it by myself, I was still cold. What are you going to do...just be cold too?"

I shrugged.

"I've been cold before."

"Well, I haven't", she said. "If we share these two blankets, maybe we'll both stay warm."

With the woman snuggled up beside me, I was warmer but it was still hard to fall asleep. It wasn't the fact that once she was asleep, she rolled over and got as close to me as she could get. I was still wondering who she was and what the hell an obviously well off woman and two young girls, also obviously well off, were doing in a Venezuelan Army truck out in the middle of nowhere.

The sky was just turning into that shade of purple-gray that's not still dark but not yet sunrise when my watch vibrated me awake. I gently moved the woman's arm from across my chest and then got up. After walking out a ways to take a leak, I went back to the bushes and shook the woman gently. When she opened her eyes, I said it was time to get up.

She shook the girls awake, picked up one of the pistols, and then led the girls out of the bushes. A few minutes later, they came back and the two girls covered up with their blanket again. I walked over and gave them another food bar.

By the time we'd eaten and had a drink, the sun was just peeking over the horizon. The two girls still were huddled under their blanket because it was still pretty chilly and their T-shirts wouldn't have been doing much to keep them warm. I walked over and told them it was time to go and that's walking would warm them up. The older woman said she had a better idea. She asked me for my knife.

She folded a blanket in half on the longest dimension and then cut a slit in the center of the fold. When she slipped it over the head of one of the girls, I kicked myself for not thinking of it sooner. The blanket would not only keep the girl warm. It also covered the T-shirt she was wearing and made her look more like one of the women I'd seen all over the rural areas of South America.

Once she'd slit three of the blankets, the older woman slipped hers over her head, then handed me my knife and said they were ready to go. I took another bearing to make sure we were where I thought we were, and then started walking west through the gap in the mountains.

All through the afternoon before and now today, I'd been stopping about every hour to give the women a chance to rest a little and so I could look through the Nikon to see if we were being followed. Up until about noon on the second day, I hadn't seen anything and was convinced we'd probably make it to Colombia. When I stopped at noon and looked back, I could see a vehicle slowly rolling over the rough terrain of the gap. It was another Pinzgauer, except this one was a soft-top, and the top was down. There was a machinegun mounted in the bed.

Without thinking, I cursed to myself, "Son of a bitch. Who the hell are you lady"?

"I will tell you when the time is right."

I turned to the voice. It was the older woman and she was speaking English instead of Spanish.

"You speak English?"

She nodded.

"Yes, and so do the girls."

"Why didn't you say something before?"

She frowned.

"I did not trust you because your Spanish sounds funny. I figured it out just now when you spoke English. You're an American, aren't you?"

"Yes, but that doesn't change anything. That truck down there does. There's no reason why a Venezuelan military truck should be here. A group of trucks with some infantry, maybe if they were doing some sort of exercise, but one truck by itself with a machine gun in the bed...they're looking for somebody and that somebody has to be you. Why the hell would they be doing that?"

She wouldn't tell me. All she said was, "We can't move as fast as they can. We should keep going until they get close enough we can kill them. That's the only way to stop them."

In two short days, I'd gone from quietly watching a cartel house to up to my eyeballs in shit. I'd have been on my way back to the States by now if it hadn't been for the women. Now, I was going to have to either figure out a way to get our asses out of this, or I was going to have to shoot my way out.

I started us walking again, but as we walked, I kept looking back at the Pinzgauer. It was definitely gaining on us. What I couldn't figure out is how it knew where we were. I'd been careful to stay on the rocks so we wouldn't have left a trail. I'd also been careful to pick up every food bar wrapper.

An hour later, I stopped for a rest and to look back through the Nikon. The Pinzgauer was close enough now that I could make out some detail, and one of those details told me how that truck was following us.

Mounted on the roof of the cab was a small loop antenna that kept sweeping from left to right and then right to left. As I watched, it stopped moving when it was pointed directly at our current location. The antenna was a radio direction finder antenna and one of us was carrying a small radio transmitter it was picking up. I realized that someone was me.

The FNC like the one I was carrying has a hollow pistol grip to save on weight. Mine was fitted with a radio transmitter so if I didn't report to my designated pickup zone, my company could track me down and find out what happened. It was basically a cell phone without the receiver circuitry that called a random number at random intervals of one to five minutes. The transmitter also sent its phone number, but that number changed with each call according to an algorithm programmed into the CPU of the transmitter.

The tech guys at my company had come up with the transmitter and claimed that unless someone had the algorithm for the transmitter number, they'd never be able figure out it was just one transmitter. The calls would be pinging the same cell tower, but anyone looking at call records would just see a bunch of calls to random numbers from random cell phones.

I was planning to say a few choice words to the tech guys when I got back, if I got back. The tech guys had assumed there would be cell towers that would receive the signal along with thousands of others. Where we were, my transmitter was the only signal source within probably four hundred kilometers. It didn't matter what number had been dialed by what phone. The guys in the Pinzgauer were just following the source of the transmissions.

I used my knife to pop the cap over the pistol grip and pulled out the transmitter. What to do with it was the next question. If I broke it so it wouldn't transmit anymore, I'd also be breaking the only way my pickup would know I was coming. If they didn't get that signal, they'd wait a couple days but would then leave the area and leave me and the women stranded.

If I'd been following a radio signal and it suddenly stopped, I'd figure the person I was following knew I was there. Instead of stopping, I would just speed up. I had to leave the transmitter like it was and hope for the best.

At the rate the Pinzgauer was gaining on us, we had maybe half an hour before they saw us. It looked like the older woman was right. The only way out of this was to kill everybody in the Pinzgauer.

I wasn't going to let that happen in open country where there was no cover. After putting the transmitter back into the pistol grip, I stood up.

"They're going to catch us in about half an hour. I don't know how many there are, but probably a driver, his shotgun, and a couple in the back to run the machine gun. We need to find some cover and that means up the side of the mountains. If we're lucky, we can take them before they spot us. Like I said before, don't get nervous and start shooting before I do."

It took another fifteen minutes before we reached enough rocks to give us a place to hide. I spread out the women so if the guys in the Pinzgauer used the machinegun, they'd have to spray a larger area. That would give me a chance to take them out one by one. I'd decided it had to be me because I didn't think the women had much of a chance of hitting anything.

I didn't have any reservations about killing every one of the guys in the truck. I'd been taught about the methods Venezuela uses to interrogate their captives and I had no intention of learning those methods first hand. I couldn't imagine how creative they could get with three women.

When the Pinzgauer was even with our position, I sighted in on the driver, took a breath and let half of it out, and then pulled the trigger. The driver slumped over on the steering wheel and the Pinzgauer veered sharply to the left and then stopped and the engine died. Two men in the back stood up, wheeled the machinegun in my direction and started firing. I'd ducked back down behind my rock when I heard several quick, three-round bursts from one of the MP5's. That had to be the older woman. She'd surprised me again. The machine gun stopped firing then, so I peeked around my rock.