The Swetky Agency - The Old Spies Club

The Old Spies Club

by Steve Jennex

Book Opening:
Burke rubbed at his eyes and glanced at his watch. It was only ten after three. He'd been on his shift since midnight, and that left him with almost four hours to go. The late night shifts were a real bitch, he'd long decided. Too much coffee and too many cigarettes in a dank cubicle that smelled like somebody's armpit. He remembered when word of his posting to Guantanamo had reached his buddies in the agency, and he'd been the envy of the group. Visions of Caribbean beaches and jiggling bikinis had filled every head at the going-away party. If they only knew.

He'd been in Cuba for nearly a month, one of just a handful of CIA personnel currently at the American base, and the heavens had poured nearly every day. It was the 'rainy season', he was told, and he could look forward to the equally-thrilling 'hurricane season', too. The food on the base stank. The accommodations were poor at best, and to top it all off, he'd been assigned the graveyard shift, satellite tracking small aircraft from Central America. Most of the planes were legit, but some were carrying white powder destined for the streets in hometown U.S.A. Regardless of their intent, all of the planes flew unaware the big eye in the sky was watching them.

The glow from the video screen reflected in his tired eyes. He adjusted the field of view and watched as the signal passed seamlessly from one satellite to another. Line-of-sight, or LOS, meant that in order to keep a target, the satellites had to pass the signal before they disappeared over the horizon. There was always the danger of losing the signal if the satellite failed to find a new host before slipping over the edge of the globe, but that was rare. Technology, Burke mused, could track a sparrow across its migration route to within a foot of accuracy, but all the assembled intellect of the free world couldn't design a chair that didn't put your ass to sleep after an hour of sitting in it. Progress.

He looked at his logbook. There was a big event scheduled for four-thirty. The boys upstairs wanted to keep a close eye on a plane set to leave Pasto, Colombia, and then likely fly across the ocean to Panama before continuing north with its load of cocaine. Most of the small aircraft leaving Colombia headed to La Palma or Yaviza in Panama for fuel. But they were propeller-driven and ponderously slow. This baby was a jet. Burke figured it would most likely land somewhere near Chitré or Santiago, considerably further north and west. Time would tell.