Mercer stared at Gomez. He thought he sensed a hint of sarcasm in the man’s tone and expression, but he could never tell.
What Mercer did know about General Gomez was that he’d once been trained by the U.S. Army, which was the only reason Mercer would work with him. In an odd way, they spoke the same language, and had once wornthe same uniform. Mercer had no idea why Gomez had developed an animosity toward the U.S.—maybe his U.S. Army trainers had made fun of him, or the chow in the officers’ mess gave him diarrhoea—but Gomez was now a full-fledged anti-American Chavista, dedicated to wiping out the last vestiges of protest and democracy in Venezuela. Kyle Mercer’s goal was more complex, more personal, and far less ideological. But, as often happens in life and in war, you make alliances with people whose motivations are different than yours but whose goals are the same. It works until it doesn’t.
The American government knew that lesson well, from decades of ratfucking elections and sponsoring insurgencies and counterinsurgencies in almost every country south of the Rio Grande. Now Uncle Sam had turned his eyes toward Venezuela, a country with an incompetent and corrupt socialist government, a weak military, and more oil reserves than Saudi Arabia. A target too tempting to resist.
And oil wasn’t the United States’ only motivation. According to a briefing Mercer had received from General Gomez in the Hen House, China and Russia were loaning the bankrupt Maduro government billions of dollars, and when the bill came due and the Venezuelans didn’t have the cash or oil to repay it, they would give away political influence instead. Russian mercenaries were already in country to protect Maduro, and more were on the way. Venezuela, like Cuba before it, was becoming a toehold in the Western Hemisphere for America’s enemies, and the U.S. was determined to change the equation. Kyle Mercer had learned in grade school that the Cold War was over, but as he’d learned firsthand in Afghanistan, one war just morphs into another.
And now Kyle Mercer was here, doing some ratfucking of his own. He was working with the Chavistas, but not for them. An important distinction.
So far Mercer and his men had killed a pro-American Air Force colonel in Caracas, an anti-Chavista National Police captain in Ciudad Bolívar, and an outspoken pro-democracy mayor in a nearby small town. But that was all warm-up for the big show—a counterinsurgency operation against armed groups currently being trained by the Americans across the border in Colombia.
Kyle Mercer had arrived here suspecting the Americans were up to something, but it was General Gomez who gave him the Intel on OperationBoyacá, an ambitious American plot to destabilize and ultimately overthrow the Maduro government. Mercer had assumed Boyacá was something along the lines of a traditional Latin American coup—recruit some disgruntled officers, have a plan to seize the Presidential Palace and maybe a media outlet, make some high-profile arrests. The kind of plan whose success relied on a swift, psychological blow. But, as Gomez had explained to him, coups had not been working in Venezuela for some time. Not for Chávez’ two coup attempts in 1992, or in 2002 for the people who tried to depose him—or just this past May, when a group of military officers were hatching a plot to arrest Maduro in the run-up to the presidential elections. The plot was exposed by SEBIN, and the conspirators were jailed and awaiting punishment.
So now there was Operation Boyacá—named after the victorious battle waged by Simón Bolívar that marked the beginning of the end of Spain’s rule in the north of their New World empire. Like Bolívar’s army, these U.S.-trained insurgents would sweep down out of the Andes to liberate Venezuela in the name of the people. No more top-down coups. This would look like a genuine people’s revolution, and the illusion needed to last just long enough for a group of pro-American Venezuelan Army officers to take command, promise elections at a future date, and kick out the Russians.
General Gomez had seemed particularly offended by the Americans co-opting the name of his beloved Bolívar’s military victory over the Spanish Empire for their own imperial project. But Kyle Mercer thought it was smart branding. Besides, whether you’re promising freedom or vengeance, revolution or restoration, the only constants in war are that a lot of people will die and nothing will turn out how you planned.
He looked again at Gomez’ list—a grab bag of assassinations to soften up the opposition on the home front before the battles to come. Maybe Gomez and his fellow Chavistas believed that if they killed enough collaborators now, they could starve Boyacá of vital support on the ground in Venezuela and stop the operation in its tracks. And maybe they were right.
At any rate, SEBIN could deal with all these people, but Mercer suspected that the regime was getting international heat for eliminating its opposition, and they wanted to outsource the killings to make them appear to be the work of patriotic Venezuelans who had risen up to defend theduly elected government of Nicolás Maduro. There were no such people, so Señor Kyle got the job.
Mercer looked at Gomez. “We’ll make it happen.”
Gomez nodded and took a long drag on his cigarette. “There is something else. Disturbing news from Caracas that I received just before boarding my plane. There were two Americans going around Petare this morning asking about you, Comrade. Their names are Clark and Sarah Bowman, and they claim to be your friends.”
“Never heard of them.”
“I am sure these are not their real names.”
“Good deduction. Who did they speak to, and what were they told?”
Gomez took a long drag on his cigarette. “They were stopped at a National Guard checkpoint, where they said they were looking for you. They even had your military portrait. The guards tell them nothing and wave them through. Then two Americans, a man and a woman of the same description, were sighted at a health clinic by the colectivo. And finally, an American man matching the same description as Mr. Bowman, along with a Venezuelan driver or maybe bodyguard, went into a bordello called El Club de los Malditos to inquire about underage girls. The man at this bordello directed them to El Gallinero.”
The Hen House had been a good spot—a no-go zone for foreigners and police, where he could get laid when he wanted to, and be left alone when he didn’t. Also, he’d recruited a few colectivo gangbangers there, and they were here with him now. More importantly, the Hen House was a place where powerful men came to not be seen.
But now, someone had tracked him right to it. But who? And how?
A rat in the National Guard or the colectivo could have been bought off by American Intel, but if that were the case, the Bowmans would have known to go directly to the Hen House instead of parading around the slums drawing attention to themselves…
“Comrade?”
Mercer looked at Gomez. “The Americans will return to Petare tonight. Either the man will attempt to enter El Gallinero, or they will stake out the place. Get word to your barrio thugs to be ready for them.”
Gomez appeared to bristle at being given orders by a man he outranked.He said, “This was already done before I boarded the plane to come see you, Comrade. The Americans will be taken care of.”
“Good. Then it’s nothing to worry about.”
“Is this so?” asked Gomez. “This sounds like something yanquis say. No worries. But I do worry, Comrade.” He added, “The Americans are making connections. They know of you and El Gallinero, and perhaps of me and you.”
Mercer stared at Gomez, who looked back at him stone-faced. General Gomez was no doubt pissed off that the Americans had learned of Kyle Mercer’s Caracas hideout. Gomez was the only direct link between Mercer and the regime, and Gomez was the regime’s bagman, carrying money to the renegade yanqui and his men. But Mercer had already made a contingency plan in the event this relationship soured.
There was a cocaine lab in the vicinity, and his men were more than equipped to hit it and take what they needed to fund themselves for a while.
Mercer said, “I can handle anything that comes, General.”
Gomez stared at him a moment, nodded, and then threw his cigarette in the dirt. He walked around the table toward Mercer and extended his hand. “My government is grateful to you.”
Mercer took his hand, looked in his eyes. “I’m not doing it for your government.”
