Chapter 11: Harsh Reality (Part 1)

Harrison Family Camp
9:45 PM

Bill Harvey sat in stunned silence, his face pale and sweaty at the sight of the name on the dossier that was contained in the CIA file folder that Juan Cortez had brought. Seeing how distressed his cousin suddenly was, Harrison went around the picnic table and sat beside him.

"Bill?" Harrison inquired as he slightly shook him, "You okay bud?"

A still pale Harvey shook his head. "Hell no, man" he finally replied, "An old demon just kicked me in the balls."

The young FBI agent suddenly began dry heaving with incredible anxiety, at which point he immediately got up and practically sprinted inside towards the bathroom. Abigail Asher immediately got up to follow him. "I'll take care of him," she said to the others before hurrying inside the cabin on Harvey's heels.

A vexed Harrison nodded and pulled the file folder over to his view, reading the dossier out loud. "Ryan Cardenas," he read, "Born January Fourteenth Nineteen-Eighty-Six in Hinton, West Virginia to Francis O' Kelley and Eduardo Cardenas. Francis was an American nurse and Eduardo was a Corporal with the Yaran FND."

"What's the FND?" Hank Voight asked.

"The Fuerzas Nacionales de Defensa," Juan said, "Our army, in other words."

"It says here that Ryan and Francis moved to the Sierra Perdida region of Yara," Harrison said as he referred to the dossier, "That was in Nineteen-Ninety when Ryan would've been about five. Eduardo had reenlisted in the FND, so Francis took a job as a travelling nurse working for the American Embassy."

Juan nodded. "She went around Yara providing basic medical care and giving various vaccinations as needed," he explained, "That was until August of Nineteen-Ninety-Eight when the boy was twelve. There was a terrible flood in the small village of Maldito, and Francis got caught in it. She drowned."

Hailey Upton grimaced with sorrow upon hearing this. "So, what happened to Ryan?" she asked, "Did he go live with his dad somewhere?"

"Unfortunately," Juan replied, "Eduardo was off fighting a conflict in The Middle East by that point, so Ryan went to go live with his uncle who was a fisherman in the small village of Yarabi. He stayed with him until he turned eighteen in Two-Thousand-Four."

Jay Halstead then chimed in. "I have to ask," he said, "How do you know all this, Mister Cortez?"

"Because that's when I met and recruited him," Juan replied, "Ryan Cardenas used to work for the CIA."

"And so did I," Harvey replied.

Everyone then turned to see that Harvey and Asher had both come back out to the picnic table. Harvey's color was now slightly better, he had cleaned the sweat off his face, and he had replaced the bottled Bud Light that he'd been nursing with a glass of water.

"What?" A confused Voight inquired.

"It's true, guys" Harvey began explaining as he and Asher reacquired their respective seats, "Not long after I graduated from the University of Vermont, I decided to join the CIA. I spent my first year as an intelligence analyst working out of the Headquarters in Langley, Virginia. I later went through some additional training and got assigned to South and Central America as what's called a 'Non-Official Cover Operative' or 'NOC' for short."

Now having a better understanding, Halstead nodded. "So, that meant you worked without any official or publicized connection," he said, "which therefore allowed you to work with more secrecy."

"Right," Harvey replied before motioning to Juan, "In the summer of Two-Thousand-Four, I was assigned to a five-man team to carry out a contract mission in Yara. That's where Juan and I first met."

"I was the Agency's local contact," Juan added, "The Yaran Regional Police had pulled strings with the American government to employ Señor Bill's team to apprehend and interrogate a gentleman named Gabriel Benitez."

"Benitez was a Yaran businessman who owned an international freight company," Harvey continued, "However, the Yaran Regional Police opened a major investigation and discovered that he had been using his company and connections to traffic Yaran-made heroin into certain parts of the Caribbean as well as the US, which violated the big treaty that the Yarans had with us since the beginning of the Cold War."

Voight then raised a hand. "I understand the whole 'secrecy' thing," he said, "But wouldn't that whole drug angle put this Benitez guy in the DEA's crosshairs?"

"Normally," Juan replied, "You would be correct, Sergeant. However, the Yaran Police Captain who ran the investigation had a unique sense for the optics involved. He knew that bringing American Drug Enforcement agents into our country would make the press go crazy and bring a lot of attention, mainly because Gabriel's sister was a soldier with our FND."

Harvey nodded. "So," he added, "They basically leapfrogged over them and enlisted the help of the CIA, and by extension, the team I was with at the time."

"What exactly does all this have to do with this Cardenas dude?" Mannell asked.

Harrison saw an opportunity to speak up. "Ryan Cardenas is Gabriel Benitez's nephew, Robbie" he said, "It says so in the 'next-of-kin' portion of this dossier."

A suddenly apprehensive Harvey frowned and swallowed. "Which brings us to my last mission with the CIA," he said, "In the early morning hours of July Fourth, Two-Thousand-Four, we breached Gabriel Benitez's house and apprehended him and his wife, but it wasn't without incident. I was forced to shoot and kill Benitez's seventeen-year-old nephew, Iglesio Cardenas, in self-defense after he snuck up on me and tried to shoot me."

"That's not all, either" Juan said, "Iglesio Cardenas was Eduardo Cardenas' son from a previous relationship."

With that, a lot of the pieces than pretty much instantly fit together in Harrison's head. "Which would make Ryan Cardenas his half-brother," he blurted out, "Holy shit, guys. That gives us motive."

Asher shot her boss and longtime friend a confused look. "What are you talking about, Troy?" she asked.

"Think about it, Abby" Harrison replied, "All the victims: Audrey, Sam, Nate. They all had connections to us, either directly or indirectly. They were all people we, particularly Bill and I, knew in some sort of personal sense."

Harvey then caught on to the point of his cousin's theory. "Ryan Cardenas is our killer," he said, "He's trying to get revenge on me for killing his brother, even if it means getting to me through you guys, too. And the black stars even make sense now."

"How so?" Halstead inquired.

"When CIA operatives die in the line of duty," Harvey explained, "A single black star is placed on this big remembrance wall in the lobby at Langley to not only signify the loss but also protect the incredible confidentiality involved with the specific operative's job and identity."

"Then I think it goes without saying that our top priority is to find this asshole," Voight said before turning to Harvey. "Bill," he continued, "Do you even know what this Cardenas guy looks like? I mean, did you cross paths with him at any point during your time in Yara back in Oh-Four?"

Harvey shrugged his shoulders in retort. "Not really," he replied to both questions, "I mean, we flew into Valle De Oro on the same plane. The last time I saw him was at Santa María Airport on our first morning there, and we barely said two words to each other that whole entire time."

"He wasn't on your team, then?" Halstead asked.

Harvey shook his head. "If my memory serves," he said, "He was assigned to the Agency's counterterrorism team that was based out of the American Embassy in Esperanza. I stayed in Sierra Perdida as part of a five-man clandestine drug interdiction team. However, Ryan Cardenas did receive the same amount of training as the rest of us."

"Which means?" Asher inquired.

After a still apprehensive Harvey hung his head in lieu of a response, Harrison spoke up on his behalf. "Which means that Ryan is not only a CIA-trained trained spy and intelligence analyst," Harrison explained, "But he's also a skilled and precise assassin."

"That explains the precision involved with the murders," Jeanette Franco chimed in after taking in this wealth of information, "He was able to get in, take these people out, and make his exit by all but disappearing into thin air."

Harrison held up a hand. "But," he interjected, "Not even this guy's well-trained, shadowy ass is that meticulous, which explains how his governmentally-concealed fingerprints ended up at the farm crime scene and in the fuel company van that he bribed Nick Palmasano into jacking for him."

Hailey Upton nodded. "Right on," she said, "He probably left them there without even realizing it and, therefore, thought his tracks were completely covered."

"And I want to be there when you find this vato," Juan chimed in, using the Spanish word for "dude".

Harrison traded looks with everyone else in the room, at which point he was met by silent affirmative responses from his colleagues. "Say no more, Juan" he said, "Welcome aboard. Let's go get this son of a bitch."