Hostage Zero

“ Exactamente,” Victor said, smiling. “There are many scars here. I like giving scars.” As if reading Evan’s mind, he bent low till he was face to face with him. “And no matter how badly I make your back bleed, the pictures will always look just fine.”

Jonathan and his team gathered around the computer screen, examining the satellite imagery that Venice had gotten them via an encrypted sat link. “Mother Hen, those are some great pictures,” Jonathan said into the radio. “I don’t suppose you see any blond-headed kids on your screen, do you?” Back in the War Room, Venice would have these images displayed on the ninety-six-inch high-definition screen.

“I’m looking,” she said. “I haven’t had access to the sat link for much longer than you have.”

The imagery they were looking at now was just a few minutes old, and it showed a cocaine factory of a scale that Jonathan had never seen before. This one stretched for dozens of acres across difficult terrain, and showed a level of organization that Pablo Escobar could only have dreamed about. No longer burdened with the need to hide their activities from the government, they could incorporate efficiencies that were normally reserved for legitimate manufacturing. There appeared to be a central headquarters area, the details of which were difficult to discern because of the thick jungle canopy, but with penetrating imagery technology, they could clearly make out fourteen covered structures of various sizes, thirteen of which were built in a rough rectangle around a central structure that was four times larger than the next largest building.

Southeast of the city-why not call it what it looked like? — stretched the acres of coca bushes and the teeming population of workers, several dozen in total. While the detail was amazing, this commercial version of the highly classified technology available to the armed forces allowed only a bird’s-eye view, directly from above. State-of-the-art versions allowed digital enhancement to convert such images to ground-level views, making facial recognition possible from two hundred miles in space.

“Zoom in to about thirty feet,” Jonathan instructed as he squinted at the screen. “Let me see one of the workers.”

“Which one?”

“Your choice.”

While it was possible to manipulate the images from the laptop, it was far simpler for Venice to do it with her controls. The image moved to a section of the screen where the thirty-foot elevation would actually give them a view of four workers. In a single frame.

“I’m seeing children,” Harvey said. “Are you seeing children?”

“Turning you on?” Boxers jabbed.

“Fuck you.”

“Can it,” Jonathan snapped. He keyed his mike. “We’re seeing a workforce of kids, Mother Hen. Is that what you get from the big screen?”

“Oh, my God, that’s terrible,” Venice said.

Jonathan took that as a yes.

“Okay, back off to a hundred feet again.” The children seemed to fall away into the screen, and they saw the southwestern corner of the factory. Jonathan touched a spot on the screen with the tip of a retracted ballpoint pen. “Let me see this building right here,” he said to Venice. “Get me to ten feet.”

As the image started to move, Boxers asked, “You want to see the thatched roof?”

“Exactly.” The building he was calling up was the only structure in the compound that had been built outside the jungle canopy. It was therefore easy to see construction details.

When the image stopped moving, and the software finished its resolution process, the picture of an open-sided hut was as clear as if it had been snapped by a visitor. As he’d expected, the roof was made of what appeared to be palm fronds. Admittedly, though, he didn’t know one plant from another.

“Why is the thatched roof important?” Harvey asked.

“Because they burn really good,” Boxers said.

Harvey’s jaw dropped a little. “What exactly are we planning to do?”

“Win against ridiculous odds,” Jonathan said. Then, to Venice: “Go ahead and pull out again and let me see the compound. Just enough altitude to give me all the buildings.”

“Are we looking for something in particular?” Venice asked.

“We’re looking for stores of gasoline,” he said. He’d keyed his mike for Venice, but the answer was intended as much for Harvey as for her. “Cocaine manufacturing is a bizarre process,” he went on. “If people knew how it was made, they’d never in a million years shove it up their nose. After they stomp on the leaves, they soak the shit in sulfuric acid for a while, and then after another step or two, there’s a long soak in gasoline. Up here, I figure they’ve got to have a pretty good supply.”

“Gasoline, eh?” Venice said in his ear. “You should have said something earlier. Watch this.” The image on the screen blinked as it refreshed, and then it turned from a picture as you’d normally see it to something more akin to a photographic negative. It jumped a couple more times. And then rotated.

Harvey asked, “What the hell is going on?”

“That’s Venice being Venice,” Boxers said.