Aztec Treasure

Spider Monkey’s POV

Arrowhead Pack, Alpha Conference Room

Chase had gathered everyone for a strategy session as soon as Vic told him what we had. Around the table were the key players; Chase sat at the far end of the table with Rori next to him. Vic and I were to his right, with Brian Steele next to us. Colletta and Frank Grimes were to Chase’s left, with Roadkill and Possum farther down. “I didn’t invite Frank Donovan intentionally,” Chase said. “The downstairs group will not be involved in this part unless we agree to bring them in.”

It was an upstairs/downstairs division of labor. Legitimate investigations, using the information provided by the FBI or other government agencies, all happened in the basement. Our independent investigators were mostly retired government service. They would not appreciate involvement in illegal activities that could threaten their pensions or their freedom. They were there as a shadow Task Force looking into the CIA and the attacks on the President, in case the bad guys had people inside the real Task Force.

The illegal shit all happened in my office, where only trusted Pack members and hacker friends of mine were allowed in. My team didn’t need search warrants or probable cause; if we needed something, we broke into the computer system and took it.

Frank Grimes, the former DEA agent now with Homeland Security, was the go-between. If the guys downstairs were running into walls, he’d ask us to break them down. If we found something the team downstairs (or in Washington) should know about, he’d find a way to clue them in. It was a high-stress job, and it was showing. The constant calls and travel left him exhausted. He lifted his tired eyes at me. “I heard you found something?”

“I traced the money used to lease the offshore oil rig back to its source,” I told him. I laid it out; the bank transfers, the shell companies, and Banco Mexico’s use by the Sinaloa Cartel and the CIA. “In the past five years, the Cartel has transferred almost two hundred million dollars into accounts controlled by the CIA. The Agency then uses the ‘off the books’ money for covert operations and enrich those in charge.”

“How are they doing this?”

“The Cartel has to launder billions in cash. The Cartel uses dozens of CIA front companies to bring the money to the banks. If there are any questions, the CIA uses its contacts in Mexico to shut them down. The front companies then ‘buy’ goods from Cartel businesses, and the bank transfers them the money. I’ve just scratched the surface; it’s a big operation. The best part is if the DEA or anyone else gets close, the CIA stops the investigation and shuts down the companies involved. Nobody ever asks where the money is coming from or where it is going.”

Chase shook his head. “I can’t believe the CIA is working with a drug cartel.”

“It’s nothing new,” Frank said. “The Reagan Administration sold arms to Iran and used some of the money to fund a rebellion in Nicaragua; this allowed them to bypass restrictions prohibiting direct support of the Contras. As for working with the Cartels, the CIA and other agencies have been doing that for decades. The CIA helped move opium out of Laos to support the secret war they’d opened up next to Vietnam. Of course, they never did it directly; they just supplied arms, aircraft, and protection of the drug shipments. Nicaragua, Mexico, Honduras, Panama, Venezuela? People have accused the CIA of supporting or actively transporting drugs in all those nations.”

“You can’t trust the Cartels,” Roadkill protested.

“The cartels are the true power in Mexico, not the government,” Frank said sadly. “Whole swaths of Mexican territory are under their exclusive control. The police are hopelessly compromised and outgunned, and the military can only control its bases and fixed positions. The DEA has known this for years, Spider. If we are honest, we’ve already lost the war on drugs. After thirty years, we have more supply and lower prices than ever.”

“So you’re joining in?”

“No, but we work to keep them fighting each other. We cultivate sources within the Cartels who are happy to use us to take out their competitors. Keeping them fragmented is the only thing keeping Mexico from being a narco-state on our southern border. Imagine a powerful Cartel controlling the entire country? I don’t like what the CIA is doing, but I’m not thrilled about some of the operations I oversaw either. We’d look the other way to gain something elsewhere.”

I shook my head; moral clarity wasn’t a virtue in intelligence OR hacking.

Chase got us back on track. “You’ve discovered these links, so the real question is ‘now what?’ Spider, what exactly have you gained access to within Banco Mexico?”

“I’ve got access to the account records,” I replied. “We are still downloading information and following the money trails. There is a lot of work left, as the oil rig lease wasn’t the only transfer bounced around to multiple banks. The bank records show that three men have account rights, and one of them is the CIA’s station chief in Mexico City.” I put Henry Consuellar’s photograph on the screen. “The second man, Daniel French, was the CIA’s Deputy Director of Covert Operations until Julio killed him on the oil rig.”

“And the last man?”

“Is a dead end. ‘Daniel Alejandro Cortez’ appears in no government databases, and Mexican immigration records do not show him. It is a false identity for an unknown person.”

Frank sat back in his chair. “Or the CIA had his information removed from the system.” His finger tapped on the table. “The only link we have is the CIA station chief.”

“What do you recommend?”

“Well, the simple option would be to download the account records and anonymously turn them over to the Task Force. They use the information to get warrants, arrest the Station Chief, crawl through the data to uncover where the money went, and keep pulling the weed until you’ve got it out by the roots. We end the conspiracy, declare victory, and have a pool party.”

I smiled at that. Vic was the first to pick up on why simple might not be the best answer. “And as soon as the Task Force has his name and the data, he disappears before they can get a warrant. The money disappears to accounts unknown, and the people responsible spend their retirement days sipping umbrella drinks at a Mexican beach resort.”

“That’s the risk,” Frank said. “These CIA men aren’t stupid. Any records get destroyed before the arrest team makes it into the compound, and they won’t keep anything incriminating at the Embassy.”

Vic nodded. “So what is the alternative?”

“I can think of a few things,” Frank said. “One is to go directly to the President with this. She could send a team, probably military, to capture the Station Chief and his men along with the information in their Safe House. There’s less chance of losing him or the records, but you’d have a military assault on CIA agents who won’t know they are on the same side. People will get killed.”

Chase didn’t like this idea either. “Or?”

“We do it ourselves,” Frank replied. “A team of warriors goes to Mexico City and assaults the Safe House, capturing all the information we can and bringing back the Station Chief with us. It’s the only way to avoid someone tipping them off. It’s not just the President that can’t trust her people, Chase. We can’t either.”

Chase put his head in his hands. “Let’s say for a moment I’m not ready to declare war on the CIA. What else can we do?”

“I can keep hacking,” I told everyone. “If I can get access to the CIA account, I can do what I did with the Sons. The money will disappear, and no one will ever find it. That’s over fourteen million dollars in off-the-books cash gone in a keystroke. Give me more time, and I could bust into the Cartel accounts as well. They have billions in assets floating around for me to take.”

Vic didn’t like that a bit. “The Cartels would kill us all if they found out. We only took the Sons’ money, and the Cartel was already cutting them out of the picture.”

“I won’t get caught,” I said.

Frank was on Vic’s side. “The Cartel would stop at nothing to get the person who took their money. Eventually, they would find you, and they would destroy us. Even if we limit ourselves to the CIA money, we’re talking international bank fraud. I can’t defend that. I don’t have a get-out-of-jail-free card for you, Spider.”

“You could get one,” I told him evenly. “The President doesn’t need to know specifics, just that I hurt the ones responsible. The Cartels are not innocent in this if they supplied the missiles.”

“I’ll pass that along to her privately,” Colletta said. “For now, I think it’s best if your team focuses on accessing account records and tracing the money transfers. Stealing from accounts is a risk we don’t need to take quite yet.”

“I can do that,” I said. “I’ll keep working on the account access codes just in case.”

I couldn’t stop the yawn, and Chase noticed. “I want you to go back and brief your team, and then I want you to take a nap,” he told me. “You’ve been working hard on this, and we all appreciate it, but your health is more important.” I saw Rori looking up at him before he held his hand up. “No, wait. Brian, you go back to work with the team and pass along the orders. Spider Monkey can go straight to bed.”

I put my hand over my belly and thought about arguing, but then I felt my baby start kicking my bladder and decided to use the bathroom instead. “Excuse me,” I told everyone.

“I’ll take you,” Vic said.

“No, I’m fine. You stay here and do your job. I need to use a bathroom like RIGHT NOW.” I left the room with Brian, hearing it lock behind me. He waited for me to finish before walking with me outside and down the hill to our home. It sucked not having the link because I couldn’t listen to the rest of the meeting, and Brian wasn’t saying anything.

There was nothing to do but nap. I fell asleep quickly, dreaming about what kind of pool we could build if I stole a billion dollars.