There was a small airport called Base Aérea Generalísimo Francisco de Miranda less than three miles farther east of the hotel, and it appeared to bethe only airport or airstrip anywhere within the city proper. Taylor traced her finger along the road that ran past the airport. She tapped an area in the eastern hills.
“Petare,” said Taylor. “One of the largest and most dangerous slums in the world. This could be where Simpson saw Mercer.”
Brodie took a closer look. The map of Petare consisted of a sprawling network of winding roads snaking along the ridgelines—a complex web with sharp switchbacks and countless dead ends. The vast slum ran from the foothills of the coastal range in the north all the way south to a river called the Guaire, stretching the entire width of the city’s north-south axis.
“Could be,” Brodie agreed.
“Though it’s also the kind of place where an American would stick out like a turkey at a hog show.”
Brodie smiled. He liked it when Taylor reverted to her country roots. He said, “If Mercer is hanging around the most dangerous part of one of the most dangerous cities in the world, maybe he’s doing something other than hiding. Like working with a gang. Maybe even running a gang.” He reminded her, “This is a tough hombre.”
Taylor nodded.
Or maybe Mercer was there as briefly as Simpson, and for the same carnal reason. They were starting this case with only one thread of a clue to hang on to, and maybe it wasn’t as strong as they wanted it to be.
Hoping that they had at least narrowed down their search, they gave their drink orders to the flight attendant, read a little more on the current situation in Venezuela, then reclined their seats for a couple of hours’ sleep in the darkened cabin. Now he could tell Dombroski that he’d slept with her.
The flight to Panama City’s Tocumen International Airport took a little over five hours, and they deplaned into a bright and bustling terminal. Their bags were checked through to Caracas and their connecting flight was in the same terminal, so they had a short walk to their connecting gate.
They took a seat at the Caracas departure gate, which was, unsurprisingly, almost empty.
There was a time, only a few years earlier, when the Caracas gate might have been full. Brodie had just read an article about a practice known as “currency tourism.” The Venezuelan government was selling U.S. dollarscheaply at their own artificially controlled exchange rate, but the demand was so high that they would only sell to Venezuelans who were traveling abroad and could present an international airline ticket. The farther you were traveling, the more dollars you could buy. So when this practice was at its peak back in 2013, someone could get a ticket to Los Angeles, buy dollars at a rate of about six bolívars to the dollar, have that money credited to their account, and then withdraw it in U.S. currency once they got to California. Then they brought that same money home, sold it back on the black market for an exchange rate of forty-five bolívars to the dollar, and made a nice profit. The clueless government finally caught wind of this scheme and started cracking down, restricting the sale of dollars even further. This, combined with airlines either canceling their flights in and out of Caracas, or refusing to sell airline tickets to anyone paying in bolívars, had led to a dramatic drop in the flow of native Venezuelans into and out of the country. They had become, quite literally, prisoners of their own shattered economy.
The bolívar had been in free fall ever since—by the end of July 2018 the black-market price for a U.S. dollar had ballooned from forty-five bolívars to over three and a half million.
Brodie said to Taylor, “We’ve been asking ourselves: Why Venezuela? The simplest motive is always money. You said goods are scarce, and it’s a problem that not even money can fix. That’s because they import everything, right?”
“Right,” said Taylor. “Except oil.”
Brodie nodded. Venezuela had the largest natural oil reserves in the world, surpassing even Saudi Arabia. “Oil is still cheap, especially with the power of Western currency. Are people smuggling it out of the country? Let’s say to Colombia?”
“I’m sure,” replied Taylor. “It’s a petro-state that’s bleeding out, so we have to assume there are enterprising vultures.”
“Maybe that’s why Mercer is there.”
“Here’s a simpler explanation: Mercer did something bad, and he is now hiding out in a hard-to-reach place that has no law and order, and that also happens to have great beaches and beautiful women.”
Venezuela did have the distinction of producing more international beauty pageant queens than any other nation. And, as Brodie had learnedin his brief research, it was also a place obsessed with plastic surgery. Cost wasn’t a barrier for entry, either. Plenty of Venezuelan banks offered special high-interest loans for boob jobs.
Brodie thought back to the video they’d watched in Hackett’s office. The heads on pikes. The theatrical resignation of his Army commission. Whatever Kyle Mercer was up to, Brodie didn’t think he was drinking rum on the beach and chasing señoritas. He said, “Getting rich off political instability and corruption is an angle, and we should keep it in the back of our minds.” He advised, “You need to start thinking like a criminal.”
“Is that what this job does to you?”
“It’s a perk.”
The gate agent began the boarding process, starting with business class. Only two other people, a Hispanic man and woman wearing suits, boarded. Brodie and Taylor approached the desk, scanned their boarding passes, and walked through the jet bridge onto a Boeing 737. The flight attendant seemed surprised to see them on the flight to Caracas.
As the plane pulled away from the gate, Brodie and Taylor shared a look. They were a long way from chasing hillbilly drug dealers in Kentucky.
Brodie imagined them days or weeks from now, making this journey in reverse. Hopefully on a private jet under cover of darkness, with Captain Kyle Mercer handcuffed to his seat.
It’s good to visualize success. Failure is not an option, as they say in the Army. The joke in Iraq was, “You’ll be coming home with a CMH,” which didn’t mean a Congressional Medal of Honor; it meant a coffin with metal handles. Bad joke.
PART III
CARACAS, VENEZUELA
AUGUST 2018
