Chapter Thirteen
Cole
Thanks to the I.T. wizards on our task force team, they were able to import the location-sharing data from Bella ’ s phone. This Carlos character's movements showed him traveling southeast in the Caribbean Sea from our decoy hotel, which is practically on the border between Costa Rica and Panama. They lost the ping for a while, but then it reappeared on radar, and movement stopped near the islands of Bocas del Toro, Panama, which tells us that we ’ re most certainly dealing with drug traffickers.
A surveillance drone was immediately launched with an expected flight time of one hour, so recon intel will be available soon. A Skype briefing is planned for about thirty minutes from now.
While Bella was in the shower, I ordered a pizza and a bottle of wine to be sent up to our room. She comes out of the bathroom looking fresh-faced and revived – beautiful as always, without a stitch of makeup – which is just another one of the things I love about her. Her natural beauty is breathtaking, and though it ’ s clich é , she ’ s just as beautiful on the inside as she is on the outside.
“ You literally read my mind on ‘ the Za,’ Cole. I ’ m starving.” she says as she pours a glass of wine for herself and offers me one, but I tell her I ’ ll hold off for now since I ’ m about to be in a team briefing.
This sort of briefing would typically be considered classified, but since Bella has played a significant role in this thing, no one has a problem with her sitting in on it. She ’ s about to learn a great deal about my job as a SEAL on this Joint Task Force.
I guess I’m about to find out whether that's a good or bad thing.
Commander Merrick is leading the planning session. He pauses the meeting for a few moments and says, “ We ’ re just waiting for the MSRTs to join the meeting.”
Bella motions for me to mute us and asks, “ What are MSRTs?”
“ Good question. They are the SEAL counterparts in the Coast Guard – Maritime Security Response Teams,” I answer. “ They ’ re the Coast Guard's elite. They specialize in high-risk maritime law enforcement. And like SEALs, they ’ re highly trained in VBSS operations.”
“ And, what is —” she starts, but I know exactly what she ’ s asking.
“ Sorry – Visit, Board, Search, and Seizure operations,” I smile and add with a laugh, “ I know… too many freakin ’ acronyms!”
She ’ s shaking her head and smiling, “ It ’ s like a whole language! I ’ m going to need some training if I ’ m ever to know what you ’ re talking about.”
“ Roger that, I ’ ll teach you,” I smile as I unmute the Skype meeting.
I think this is a good thing… the fact that she ’ s taking an interest in my job. Why would she bother asking questions if she just viewed this as a temporary situation until we get Harley back? That ’ s what I tell myself anyway.
Commander Merrick resumes the meeting and asks the MSRT team leader to summarize what we ’ re likely dealing with and why. Mason shot me a text before the briefing started to tell me that there would be several high-ranking government officials from Costa Rica sitting in on the briefing. Up until this point, Costa Rica has not been involved with the task force, and since these problems are not going away, they want justification for why they need to become involved and how much involvement they will allow us to have in their country.
Bella appears locked in and focused, and she’s even taking some notes. It makes me proud that she seems invested in and interested in how this whole ‘ military thing ’ works (as she calls it).
The MSRT team leader gives some history, mainly for the benefit of the Costa Rican officials…
In 2020, when the pandemic forced the closing of land borders, drug trafficking in the Central American Caribbean waters increased dramatically. And though the pandemic is long over, traffickers realized they could significantly increase the amount of product being moved by utilizing the sea versus land and skirting border security in the process. Panama is the water superhighway for drugs coming from Colombia and on their way to Costa Rica, Nicaragua, the Northern Triangle countries, Mexico, and the United States. Drugs and weapons are typically smuggled using speedboats, fishing vessels, commercial ships, and even submarines.
To add insult to injury, in 2021, when the President opened up our southern border, it led to a massive increase in illegal immigration, which, in turn, caused human trafficking and human smuggling to increase at an astronomical level.
At the mention of the border crisis, I see Bella shake her head and roll her eyes. Living in San Diego, fairly close to the southern border, she knows firsthand how the crisis has negatively impacted the entire country and its citizens. Every state is now becoming a border state, and these are unprecedented times. I nod in acknowledgment because I know exactly why she ’ s rolling her eyes.
Cartels are the benefactors of billions of dollars at the expense of the most vulnerable groups: women, children, migrants, and indigenous people hoping for a better life. The Darien Gap in Panama is a treacherous route that the cartels use to smuggle migrants from Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador. Crimes against these vulnerable populations have skyrocketed.
There ’ s a pause in the briefing as we transition to the intel officer from the OIJ who ’ s about to summarize the information gathered thus far, so I take the opportunity to clarify something for Bella.
“ JTF: SHIELD deals with both amphibious and land pursuits of traffickers, so there are multiple teams and companies within the task force,” I say.
“ Makes sense,” she acknowledges with a nod.
To clarify further, I give her a bit more logistical context, showing her on a map where we are and where Carlos’ location is pinging. “We’re here,” I say, pointing to the map. “In Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, very close to the border of Panama, and right there is Bocas del Toro, where the locator last pinged,” I say, and then we turn our attention back to the briefing.
Our team ’ s home base is in Col ó n (at the north end of the Panama Canal) and about 150 nautical miles south of Bocas del Toro. This is where our Coast Guard air and amphibious support is located and where this mission will launch from. As soon as we were confident that our target ’ s movement would remain stationary, we launched a surveillance drone from the Col ó n base for recon purposes. Our findings are enlightening, to say the least.
“ Enlightening” is an understatement. What the surveillance revealed could not only put Harley ’ s rescue mission on an unlevel playing field – in favor of the good guys in this case – but also blow the lid off an extensive trafficking operation.
Our target – “ Carlos ” – utilized a mid-sized open console watercraft to travel southeast off the shores of Bocas del Toro. Its destination: an anchored superyacht that ’ s registered to one of the wealthiest hotel moguls in Central America. This particular superyacht is new to us, as it ’ s not in our database of vessels we ’ ve tracked or interacted with. And truthfully, we have never surveilled or targeted a superyacht. The vessels we usually deal with are much smaller yachts, fishing vessels, sailboats, and speedboats.
With this discovery, we quickly established the working theory that Los Morreco has been using this superyacht to hide in plain sight and conceal its smuggling operations. In essence, they were flying under the radar, with no one suspecting that such a gargantuan vessel could be operating a secret organized crime network within it. They banked on the idea that it’s just too obvious; therefore, why would we waste our time taking a closer look?
And it worked. For a while, anyway.
We ’ re surmising that they used smaller decoy yachts to throw the enforcement agencies off their trail, and meanwhile, they parade drugs practically under our noses in a 250-foot superyacht. It ’ s basically a floating resort with the added benefit of camouflaging their organized crime headquarters while having the ability to continually relocate, based on where the Feds aren ’ t focusing their efforts.
With the photos our undercover tourist was able to get, it seems that “Carlos” actually provided some truthful information, mainly his name and the fact that his father is a resort mogul. Carlos Reyes is the oldest of the three sons of Manuel Reyes, a billionaire resort mogul. Or at least that ’ s what he poses as. “ Lucas ” and “ Sebastian” are actually Juan and Tomá s Reyes, the two younger sons of Manuel Reyes. We now suspect that Manuel Reyes is likely the long-time nameless, faceless leader of Los Merreco. “Hotel mogul” is merely a cover – a shell company – to launder his fortune from drugs, weapons, and human trafficking.
But it’s the drone’s thermal imaging that provides the critical information we were hoping for. It shows that there are at least 50 individuals on that superyacht. The beauty of thermal imaging is that it shows us that we ’ re dealing with both male and female passengers on board.
Surely Harley is one of them.