All The Big Ones Are Dead Read online

  It was Gauss’ turn to nod.

  “The poachers are never where you think they’re going to be when you show up with a task force and field operators,” Bishop said, looking directly at DeCourcey, “which means you’ve got a leak somewhere. And whenever you do latch onto a warm trail, it gets lost in mazes of shipping ports, goods transfers and other camouflage. That means you haven’t so far been able to get even a quick glimpse of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. What’s worse, you don’t even have any suspicions about who is working the strings from somewhere at or near the top of the pile.”

  Case Officer Rector, who’d been working with Bishop for well over ten years, kept silent. Rector was one of the best case officers at the CIA on any continent, he was a superb resource, and always liked seeing Bishop in action. In fact, he and Bishop had already concluded that there was only one way the mission could proceed. There were fifty-one agencies in the U.S. alone, either directly or indirectly tasked with tracking flows of money to and from terror networks. There were at least thirty more such agencies in Europe. Leading up to this meeting, Interpol had used conventional CIA resources abroad and on loan to Interpol’s European central bureau in Brussels, NSA and FBI resources in the U.S., EU security and intelligence resources, and at least eight different autonomous governments in central and west Africa, called in a lot of favors and a lot of trust, and had got, basically, nowhere. DeCourcey himself had met with the directors of eight different private companies who tracked money sources for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. For the past six months or so, nothing had helped. An uncomfortable short-list of comms had suddenly become opaque and they didn’t know why. It was true that DeCourcey and his counterparts in several countries could identify on sight any number of individual poaching gang members, gang leaders and some of their distribution and smuggling contacts, but the information was doing them no good because the top of the pile remained invisible to them. The individual villains had become untrack-able. On top of all that, DeCourcey and Linders suspected that there was a leak either inside Interpol or inside one of the high-level agencies with which they exchanged information. Rector and Bishop knew all this and more.

  “There’s only one play here,” Bishop said finally. “Follow the money.”

  “That’s what we’ve been trying to do, Bishop!” DeCourcey burst out. He’d been listening carefully, growing more and more agitated, tapping his right thumb in quick succession against the fingertips of his right hand. He realized immediately that he’d almost yelled, so he asserted some bit of inner calm as the group turned toward him. “What do you propose, Bishop?” he said in a nearly normal tone. “What do you think you can do that we haven’t already tried?”

  “I propose,” Bishop replied calmly, “to track poached ivory and rhino horn directly from a hot kill site, moving with it every step of the way, tracking every split and misdirection and shadow transfer, until I get to the top of the pile.”

  There was a pause as DeCourcey, Linders and Gauss digested it all. DeCourcey was shaking his head. Deputy Director Claes looked up from his personal note-taking.

  “What you propose, Agent Bishop,” Claes said, “is both dangerous and a low percentage gamble. Perhaps it will merely be difficult to obtain the permissions needed from various governments to drop you into Congo, Cameroon, Nigeria or wherever you want to start. It is my understanding, though, that encrypted traffic has increased significantly between the groups we are trying without success to monitor. That typically indicates that time is of the essence. It could take months to obtain certain permissions to allow you to operate in a number of countries.”

  “You’re correct, Deputy Director,” Bishop said, “but you may also be discounting the possibility that all previous attempts to do what you describe, and to do what Superintendent DeCourcy has described, failed because either you’ve got leaks in your organization or there are serious leaks among the people with whom you’re interacting in at least two countries. I am proposing to go in unannounced, and that only Rector and my people work the in-country resources we already have in each area we touch. In areas where we have no existing resources, I propose to develop my own on the spot.”

  “And we’ll need orders and authorization to proceed as outlined,” Rector added.

  “Follow the money,” Bishop repeated, “and we’ll find the head of the snake that has been slithering around under the radar, killing endangered animals like it’s fun, making themselves rich, and feeding a steady stream of dirty money to the worst terrorists on the planet.”

  Claes objected, DeCourcey objected and raised his voice as well, but their arguments were weak in the face of their own prior failures to make even a tiny dent in poaching operations and the flow of money back to the freaks, brutes, and quasi-Islamic lunatics that make up modern-day terrorism. In fact, their private discussions about the operation had been aired in front of a room full of senior directors from the CIA, NSA, Interpol, ENISA, and the DGSI in France, and they had only stopped consulting when they realized they’d almost dug down to the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. They feared that all their consultation might eventually hit the leak that they already knew existed. Of course they weren’t discussing possible mission details—those hadn’t existed at that point. But they were very wary of alerting anyone to any sort of hint that new resources were being brought on board.

  Bishop and Rector received their orders and authorizations less than twenty four hours later. They were to follow the money by whatever means were available. Deputy Director Claes met privately with DeCourcey and Linders prior to issuing the orders containing the cooperating agreements from the CIA. He was brief.

  “Do not fuck this up. We’re putting a staggering number of resources into this. We’re calling in a lot of markers. In fact, we may have to give some out. This is either a career maker or a career breaker.”

  Chapter One

  “Fabrice!” Michael Bishop’s voice grated, “look at me and pay attention.” Bishop was sweating in the 37C heat of a high summer November day in Cameroon. It was brutally hot at the late morning hour, and everything had quieted on the street. The locals would stay out of the heat during the middle of the day. The weather forecast on the radio station in Garoua, the Department capital, had said it was going to hit 39C by 1400.

  Fabrice, the local fixer and bar owner, caught Bishop’s aggravated and urgent tone and for once just shut his mouth. He stared at Bishop in an attempt to somehow put him off. It was an absurd thing to do.

  “What do you want, Bishop?” Fabrice bit off the words, finally. “I’ve told you where Elvis and his boys went! You want to know about Michel Mkutshulwa too? Then you have to pay. You want the Powderhorn gang, you have to pay. No pay, no information. Some of Michel’s boys claim to be Boko Haram. They say they help Da’esh. In public Michel says no, they don’t, but he acts different in private. Dangerous people, Bishop. Too dangerous for me to talk freely for nothing. You have to pay!” Fabrice Masiki folded his bulky arms across his chest and stared defiantly at Bishop.

  Bishop glanced at his wristwatch. It was a beat up Rolex Submariner he’d purchased new sixteen years earlier. The case and bezel were scratched, the stainless steel bracelet was abraded, but he’d taken care of it with regular service over the years at his watchmaker’s little shop in Boston. The watch had never let him down, and it was now telling him that he had no more than four hours to drive almost seventy kilometers of really horrible roads from the village of Tcholliré to the rendezvous location at the edge of Bouba Ndjidah National Park. Then there was still a three kilometer hike through hill country to head off or surprise or interrupt or just scare off a pack of murderous terrorists and poachers. They were undoubtedly the worst bunch that he and Interpol and the governments of Nigeria, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Tanzania had ever been forced to deal with.

  But, maybe they were deeper into the bush. Or maybe only at th
e edge of the park. He didn’t know, and that was the information he needed from this local fixer. He was due to meet a team comprised of Cameroon army special operations, two IUCN observers, Richard DeCourcey, and three park rangers. They needed a precise location.

  “I do not have time for this, Fabrice.” Bishop said more quietly. “In fact, I don’t believe that Elvis Malangute is even in the area. The last I heard, three days ago, he was being tracked by SAPS somewhere along the Botswana border south of Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. How did Elvis get from KTP in southwest Botswana to northern Cameroon, with SAPS hot on his trail, in seventy two hours?”

  “No, Bishop. It is Elvis.”

  “No, Fabrice. Elvis is not part of Powderhorn. Forget about Elvis now. I don’t believe you. Stop playing around. Your friend is done. The South Africans will take care of business. Elvis has left the building. Forever.”

  “He is an idiot then.” Masiki said, distracted, shrugging his shoulders and staring away from Bishop.

  “Fabrice!” Bishop practically yelled at the man. “One more time. Mkutshulwa and his boys. Where is the location of their kill site today? Who is the fixer at Douala? Where is the next destination? You know it, and now I want to know it. I’m not going to repeat the questions.”

  Bishop tensed up. This was the moment. Fabrice Masiki was a brute, but he was also crafty and he had a mean and violent streak a full kilometer wide. Though he had killed before, and many times by all accounts, the authorities in Cameroon were usually a very long way away from the hot, dusty, humid waypoint town of Tcholliré. Masiki could hack or shoot another man to death here, and expect that police inquiries might take months, if they ever occurred at all because Masiki was just well-known enough and well-connected enough to make the authorities a bit nervous. The police had many other less dangerous snakes to chase.

  It was also true that elephant ivory and rhino horn were serious business out here. Fifteen different west and central African countries had made positive noises about protecting endangered species of all kinds, and especially the magnificent elephants and rhinos, but the governments mostly had dull teeth, limited investigation capabilities and fewer enforcement resources. They also had little taste for confrontation with many newly minted voters in these places struggling with concepts of democracy. Many of those voters did not hesitate to take their livings from whatever opportunity presented itself in the midst of corrupt, struggling economies and outright poverty. The police did not want to be seen to deprive locals of much needed cash by entirely taking away ivory and rhino horn poaching. Of course nobody had ever thought to ask what all of these people would do to put food on their tables after they’d slaughtered the last elephant and the last rhino. The terrorist financing angle simply added an aspect to the increasingly impossible situation that these governments had even less interest in facing. The terrorists were killing people on Promenades and in shopping malls, after all. The Web allowed them to be everywhere and their influence and intimidation reached deep. Those trying to govern these tumultuous areas were reluctant to confront even the overtly violent fanaticism online because they could no more control the Internet than they could control the weather or the movements of the stars. Their answer was to launch government web sites that harangued against the fanatics, and broadcast radio and television shows that admonished the population against consorting with terrorists and thinking bad thoughts. Anyone with half a brain ignored the governments’ efforts. People who worked at jobs or ran their own businesses continued to do so. They did not need any government to tell them what to think or how to live. The worst of the population simply weren’t scared enough of the government because they all believed—they knew really—that the governments were as riddled with corruption as the criminals, gangs and poachers. The few intellectuals in government knew that they could not sustain financial support from wealthy western nations forever. The corrupt governments knew too that they could never solve their problems, at least not without extensive financial support, logistics, intel, weapons and boots on the ground provided by the EU and NATO and the Americans. So it was a stalemate.

  Sure enough, Fabrice was using his vacant stare to try to distract Bishop from a subtle move toward a shelf behind the bar. Bishop caught him leaning.

  “Fabrice... don’t make another move,” Bishop said it tightly. He put his right hand on the butt of his holstered Glock 30, then settled into himself to wait patiently for Fabrice’s next decision.

  Fabrice glanced down at Bishop’s right hand.

  “I think you will not shoot me here, white man. It would not go well for you, I think. This is, ah, this is my place.”

  Bishop couldn’t help himself. He burst out laughing.

  “Fabrice, you asshole. I could shoot you dead where you stand, and every person around here, including the women and children—especially the women and children—would cheer for me. Nobody likes the Powderhorn gang, and nobody likes you, Fabrice. They do business with you only because there is no other choice. Believe it.”

  Fabrice chose that moment to jump for his shotgun under the bar. Bishop was waiting for the move and had already started to step left and duck low by the time Fabrice came up with the long gun. The fixer didn’t wait. He just pulled the trigger and the deafening blast of ‘00’ shot hit nothing but thin air. Bishop, on his back on the dirt floor had his Glock drawn and fired between his knees through the thin wood panels below the bar top. One, two, three shots in two seconds, tracking right. The second or third bullet caught Masiki in his right knee right through the middle of the patella. He went down screaming in agony, the shotgun clattering empty against the bar.

  Bishop paused a beat then stood up, dusted himself off, wiped gritty sweat away from his eyes, then took another step to his left and half-turned to look out the windows to see if anyone was coming. Time was racing by and he still needed a couple more minutes of Fabrice’s uninterrupted attention.

  Bishop walked around the bar and stood over the wounded fixer lying on his back, keening in pain, clutching his smashed knee.

  “Shut up, Fabrice,” Bishop said, practically spitting the words. “Nobody is coming to help. You think about contacts as though they are your special friends; your special business partners. Who do you think gave you up, Fabrice? It was one of your precious contacts who cut a deal for himself. Police in Lagos picked him up. He screamed for Interpol and made a deal. In return for the information he had, Interpol agreed to get him out of the country. Do you know what the interrogators in Lagos would have done to him just to pretend to the U.S. and the Europeans that they’re fully involved in the effort to stop poaching? They’d have tortured him. They’d cut off his right foot, and if he still wouldn’t talk they’d cut off his left foot. They’d keep going too. You know that, Fabrice. So one of your own contacts avoided all that by giving you up in less than a heartbeat. So listen. Again. I need information and you will give it to me. If you fuck around and feed me lies, I will come back quietly here one night and shoot your other knee. Do you understand?”

  Fabrice was staring wide-eyed at Bishop’s full 6’2” height. He glanced at the long, panga machete hanging from Bishop’s belt. He looked directly into the barrel of the Glock 30 pointed at his good knee.

  “Fabrice, you will never walk again without a terrible limp. I promise you that. Think about that. I can make it worse. It’s up to you. Think about that. Tell me what I want to know.”

  The fixer stared back at him, either too shocked or too distracted with pain to understand. He was drenched in sweat, shaking, and still not talking. So Bishop helped him along.

  “Fabrice,” Bishop said tightly, kneeling down, holstering the Glock. “This is going to hurt.” Then without warning Bishop snapped the machete out of its sheath and quickly tapped the point into the fixer’s ruined knee. Masiki instantly writhed and screamed in agony, but Bishop clamped his large, rough left hand over the fixer’s mouth and nose. Sweat from Masiki’s face squeezed through his fingers. Bishop le
aned in, his upper body weight pressing down on the fixer’s face.

  “Tell me what I want to know,” Bishop whispered in Masiki's ear.

  By this time the fixer’s eyes were wide open again, he was struggling for air, and he was starting to believe that Bishop was prepared to kill him. That unalterable belief was not based on some fear of violence. The fixer was familiar with violence and death. The belief was based on something rather more fundamental. It was the direct result of Michael Bishop’s somewhat rare physical characteristic, something Bishop had battled all his life. It was a bit of a curse, but it did have its uses. Simply put, he had a very tough looking face. It was a strong, well-proportioned face, not unhandsome in a rough-hewn kind of way, but it was not kind. Some women were very attracted to him because of it, perhaps some of them in spite of it. Many men had backed down from confrontations with Bishop simply because in these sorts of situations he could look unwaveringly violent and deeply unnerving.

  He slowly eased the pressure of his hand on the fixer’s mouth and nose.

  “No more,” the fixer said in a raspy voice. “No more. Take me to the doctor’s house and I will tell you what you want to know.”

  “Fabrice . . .” Bishop said very quietly. “Are you trying to negotiate with me?”

  “I, uh . . .” and then the fixer finally gave up. He grunted in pain first, but he talked. Latitude and longitude for the GPS tracker, park entry point, vehicles, number of men he knew about in the Powderhorn gang, the name of another fixer—man located in Douala—his best guess about the next shipment destination, everything he knew. When he had it all, Bishop rolled Masiki onto his stomach and prepared to incapacitate him. A thought occurred to Bishop though, so he backed off slightly.