"Pretty easy, actually. I sat propped up on the building across the street for three days in a row, just watching movement. Our intel was okay, but having eyes on a place as a local gives you the real stuff. I had watched thermals from our drones and Sats but I had to have eyes on the street and the building to really pick up the rhythm of what they were doing. The motherfuckers weren't dumb. They were driving a truck practically up to the door, blocking the view from the street.

"The truck would stay there for an hour or two while the driver and helper went into a taco place on the corner and ate. Sats couldn't pick it up, but I could see activity under the truck. Those smart bastardos had pulled up a manhole cover and were unloading cargo through a trapdoor in the floor of the truck. It was quick and I missed it the first day. But I kept thinking there must be something that wasn't obvious, and I finally spotted the activity. Then it was time for my plan."

"Sounds like you did a good surveil. What did you do?"

"For three days I moved from sitting up against one wall to another and another. The fourth day I got closer to the truck on the same side of the street, but about 30 feet away. Once they started moving cargo I lurched to my feet and shuffled past the truck. A guy came out of the building when I got close to the truck and he yelled at me to get the hell out of there. I stumbled on and went to a different building where I sat down against the wall.

"So far, I wasted more than half a week just being a local immigrant bum. Sometimes I would go to the soup kitchen or panhandle for some change. On the fifth day I did my shuffle past the truck and when the guy came out of the building, I held out my hand like I was going to fall and he reached out to me. I spun his arm behind him and pulled it up high until it cracked, at the same time grabbing his throat to keep him from making a sound. Then I pulled him quickly back through the door he came out of. It was dusty and a bit dark but I could see that this room was just an empty room with a chair and a table. I smashed his head against the wall and he dropped like an old rag to the floor."

He stopped. I reached over to the liquor cabinet, pulled out a cut crystal decanter and poured a half glass of vodka, neat, handed it to him and watched as he downed it in one swallow.

"I thought you might be a bit thirsty," I said.

He smiled for the first time and said, "No shit," before continuing to tell me about the op.

"I got my bearings in the semi-dark room and looked for doors and windows, anything that might allow a threat to inflict harm on me. My quick inventory? One other door besides the one I carried him back through. One small window in front and no windows on three sides. Just smooth wall. I walked quietly to the door, listened and hearing nothing I slowly turned the doorknob and with my Sig Sauer in the other hand I slowly opened the door to see three men standing over what looked like a sizable hole in the floor. One of them started to yell just before my silenced Sig took out the back of his throat. The other two dropped like stones before they could even find their weapons - great evidence that the element of surprise is the X factor that can change every fight in your favor.

"I walked slowly into the room and sat on one of the chairs and waited. The first guy that popped out of the hole got all the way out, stood before me and said, "¿Quién carajo eres tú?" ("Who the hell are you?") I'm a man of few words and he wasn't worth wasting any on. I shot him in the forehead and he crumpled without making a sound. I pulled his body over and propped it up in a corner.

"The next guy came out slowly and looked around like he wasn't sure where he was or what this was. He turned to me and said in Spanish, 'Hey, man, what happened to Rivera and where do you want the stuff?'

"He's taking a break," I replied in perfect Spanish. "He said to keep an eye on you guys and shoot you first if anything goes wrong. So, you're going to have to stay with me until the delivery is complete.

"'Fuck, man, you think I'm stupid,' he spat back at me. 'I gotta have more than that to go on because I gotta go back and give them the go-ahead before we bring any of the stuff here. So, what's your name and what's your affiliation?'

"I told him, my name's Armando and he has to trust me because I'm the one with the money. Which was sort of true in a way.

"We had a short stare-down and he shrugged his shoulders and got back on the small cart at the bottom of the hole in the floor. I heard the vibration of the rails as he rolled back across the border.

"I waited a half hour and then another guy showed up from the border hole. He had a 9mm with a silencer and that's what I noticed first because it was the first thing to pop up out of the floor. I waited for his head and then put a clean .38 payload through his forehead. He fell back into the hole, which was a bitch because I had to go down there and haul his dead ass up.

"Now I was in trouble because I killed the guy that was supposed to vet me as to whether I was friend or foe. Who knows what the other side of the border would be thinking now.

"Another hour and people are pounding on the door of the building, which is fine because I was long gone, the element of surprise having slipped away like a fart in a tornado. We had three other guys take turns watching and none reported any unusual activity at the building or the manhole cover. Finally, we just sent in some special ops and they blew the tunnel. End of that rat hole but not the end of the rats."

"Okay, so you're resting up for a little R&R, getting ready for the next op," I observed.

And that was the end of our conversation.

Two weeks later, "Tangelo Cooler" was back out there, sniffing the butts of bad guys and returning several of them to the donor institution.

What surprised me was where the agency sent him. Of all the hot spots in the world, this was not my first, second, or even 30th guess.

Santiago de Cuba, second largest city in Cuba, situated on a bay, a town with a 500-year history.

I had worked my way up to handler after the assignment in TJ. JD was my charge. He worked alone, so the surreptitious nature of our relationship was touchy. We had to be very careful about being seen together or even being tracked to the same building. The cartels are like a legion of rats. They're everywhere, driven by a poor economy, power-wielding drug lords, and one of the few ways of escaping the poverty that surrounds them.

We knew that one of the most accessible avenues for escape from poverty was in a cartel. You enjoy a status of power, with the respect that goes along with it, you have food to eat, clothes to wear, a place to live and some money to help support your family. Sure, there is risk - you could get "deceased" in cross-cartel warfare, or possibly even through DEA and other enforcement actions, or just because someone higher up didn't like your breath. But, for many in the fray you are just another pawn, a necessary but not critical player in a much greater drama. Someone whose body you step over when their utility is done.

Local people of means, typically generational wealth, turned a blind eye to cartel activities for too many reasons. Retribution was just one danger to dodge, meaning even the appearance of siding with opposition, whether another cartel, Mexican drug enforcement, or US DEA agents, was the cause of the early demise of many prominent Mexican businessmen and women. As honest people showed their true colors and were taken out, a weaker populace emerged. You either were helping the smugglers or you kept your nose out of it. Both had their risks, but neither was as potentially deadly as appearing too interested or being suspected of aiding the sworn enemies of the cartel.

Cuba was a fascinating window into an often poorly understood world. The lack of a legitimate economy made it a natural place for drugs, sex, and other tawdry parts of the underside of life to flourish.

Cuba was also very visible, with an assortment of nefarious underworld activities in a shadow economy. The fact that it was an island made supplies and transportation more visible - there were only so many ways on and off the island. The greater benefit was distance. Cuba's shoreline is 3,570 miles, providing innumerable 'ports' through which to move 'merchandise' of all sorts.

I was a little surprised that Santiago de Cuba was my new assignment.

That assignment - being the handler for my TJ charge, Tangelo Cooler. His mission? Infiltrate the fentanyl factories and distribution network to identify the most vulnerable places and ways to take it down.

I liked Santiago immediately. An apartment had been procured for me in El Salao, a neighborhood with a history of violence and crime. My 3-room accommodations are in the second story of a concrete building that also has shops on the ground level, a lot of coming and going that helps mask illegal activity.

I settled in, becoming a familiar face in the neighborhood. Three months after my arrival, TC showed up at my door at 11:30 at night.

"Yo, dude, you're a sight for sore eyes," I said in Spanish as his face appeared through the peephole.

He returned with "Tus ojos deben estar muy jodidos" ("Your eyes must be really fucked up") as I let him in the door.

What followed were two weeks of clandestine meetings and an introduction to the cartel by a Cuban informant to the DEA. That meeting brought Tangelo Cooler a small connection and easy assignment.

His job was to work to improve product packaging. No one was worried about carcinogens in the packages, but several shipments had split bags, a problem that made their detection much easier.

TC and two people in DEA labs studied the materials and mechanisms and made two subtle changes that corrected the problem. That bought a layer of credibility and legitimacy to the crew and TC, which resulted in a better assignment.

The Santiago de Cuba operation had been marked by a poor success rate in transfer. Every day a different plane carried passengers and a stash of fentanyl from the airport to various locations in the southern US. Every week, a ship in the port would be loaded with packages of the drug in the engine rooms, marked as mechanical parts.

During plane transportation the packages would get jostled and the friction would sometimes burst one or more packages. This created a hazard to the passengers and crew, resulting in at least one plane crash a month with a total loss of life.

Aboard ship, typically with less physical movement, the only challenge was the occasional rough seas. One ship recently landed at the South Florida Container Terminal in Miami, with two dead crew and a contaminated engine room. Port authorities called the DEA whose agents quickly determined the cause of death as fentanyl poisoning.

The ship was quietly cleaned and sent on its way by a DEA team who wore the uniforms of a local marine service firm. The team had clandestinely brought in hazmat suits in large cleaning containers which they donned to quickly and quietly handle the cleanup operation. The ship's crew was barred from the engine room with the explanation that there were gaseous fumes in the room that were extremely dangerous.

The cartel factored in loss of product and loss of life into their metrics, but the loss of millions of dollars of income from these lost shipments was a hole they needed to plug.

Working from their previous research into packaging, TC and his crew found new packaging materials that were relatively impervious to friction and other potential damage, changing the financial dynamic instantly.

In fact, TC used the resources of the DEA for the research and, like many initiatives, this was a "give to get" scenario. The DEA helped in order to nudge Tangelo Cooler even deeper into the operation.

I was getting along okay in my flat, with the routines I had built up. Every morning about 10 am I would go down on the street, have breakfast in my favorite paladar, Alo Cubano, drink two cups of cafe cubano, and read the day's edition of Sierra Maestra.

In keeping with company protocol, I kept largely to myself and only offered the occasional "gracias" or other perfunctory communication with other patrons or staff.

My cover was as a correspondent for a magazine in Spain, a CIA operation that produced a monthly print edition as well as an online one. A talented operative did online research and ghost-wrote an article under my byline every other month. I read every article draft in order to be as knowledgeable as possible of my own "work" and also so I could inject a little local color of Santiago.

TC and I checked in weekly, usually using drops, to avoid being seen together. Among many things the cartel does well, it spies on its own.

In six months, TC had worked his way up the ladder and was now in charge of managing the loading of product onto the small aircraft that served as the cartel's secondary distribution method. Ships had increasingly come under surveillance after the Miami incident, resulting in the loss of two shipments. Gross revenues were taking a hit because of the smaller payloads of the aircraft.

Few people outside of Springfield, VA know that DEA actually helps cartels deliver drugs. With a hidden agenda, of course.

Agents had studied the Santiago de Cuba shipments for two years and with the help of contractors had devised a better way to ship product by air. It was by creating packaging that could slip in and out of the passenger seats in the aircraft. Handlers simply unzipped the seat covers opening up the seat cavities for packages made to exacting dimensions. Tucked in and zipped up, the seat's padding and contours provided comfortable seating for passengers traveling to the Florida FBO for business or pleasure.

The new seat design was an easy install. At the FBO destination, the seat cover was unzipped, the fentanyl package removed, and an exact "inert" duplicate package in weight, dimension and strength inserted back into the seat "envelope" for the next leg of the trip, typically carrying passengers to other parts of the US, sans drugs. This part was critical because planes were subject to search at any destination. The key to the success of the new approach was the cleanliness and disinfection that was part of the process. No fumes, no powder, no residue, no evidence.

When TC first suggested this approach, his superiors in the cartel had laughed at him. "Stupid idea," "we'll get busted right away" was how Guilherme reacted. TC quietly offered that maybe it was worth a try and De Juan, a lieutenant, agreed. Guilherme just shrugged as if to say, "not my worry if everyone gets busted with this stupid idea."

Like all new ideas this packaging and delivery system had to pass a few tests. After five flights with no problems, this new method helped restore the financial pipeline and also bought TC some street cred, with De Juan credited with greenlighting the approach.

The cartel falcons kept their eyes and ears open for any appearance of problems, but after six months the system was still working perfectly with no failures.

TC had detailed as many aspects of the Santiago operation as he could, given his place in the hierarchy. This coupled with the other DEA intel provided a pretty clear picture of the operation that was now grossing $125 million per year.

In September, a Category 3 hurricane named Madrigal, tore through the island, doing major damage to the production and staging facilities.

TC and other falcons were put to work rebuilding and fortifying the operation. This created a two-month disruption in drug deliveries to the states with the resulting financial hit to the cartel.

De Juan was the lieutenant over the rebuild. After TC's recommendation on transporting drugs proved so successful, the reflection on De Juan and then on TC gave each of them, in their own position, more credibility.

Two months after cleanup from the hurricane damage, the order came from senior DEA officials to penetrate the higher ranks of the cartel. TC was the agent assigned to the task, having gained somewhat of a reputation as a falcon.

Two things happened to move the process along.

One, I was given daily assignments to pass along to TC, which made both of us more vulnerable. Our clandestine meetings became a series of changing arrangements with drops around the city.

The second was the optimizing of the process following the hurricane. We had managed to improve the operation through TC's suggestions so that there were fewer human interactions required. This made decision-making quicker and presumably made the operation much less vulnerable to external policing.

A month after the improvements were in place, TC was called into a meeting with De Juan at a cartel hangout. Not knowing what the meeting was about TC was a bit on edge as he walked into the little cafe.

"Que esta pasando, senor?" TC said as he walked up to De Juan, sitting at a small, formica-topped table.

"Hey cabrone," came the snarky retort. "We have much to talk about. How did you get here?

"I walked two blocks, caught a maquina, walked another couple of blocks, caught a guagua and then walked the last block to here. The usual mix."

"Good, good. You're a good man, cabrone. Here's the deal. We need to make a major shipment to help stabilize our monetary position. We're going to use both ships and aircraft. I need you to scale our aircraft seat operation for higher quantity and we need to have a similar, safe and secure method for ship transport. We need to do this within two weeks. Got it?"

"No problem, mi lider. How many resources do I have?"

"We have been given as many resources as we need. Be discrete, use only approved cartel resources, and follow all protocol for secrecy."

"Yes, sir. I will need some monies to get started."

"No, just tell each resource to see me and I will make sure you are greenlighted."

"I will handle it."

And that was the end of the conversation. TC knew better than to ask any personal questions. Those were the kind of mistakes that put lucky gringos in caskets and unlucky ones in unmarked graves.

My meeting with TC later that day was quick after which I immediately passed things up the chain for review, approval to proceed and identification of resources.

We set up a small operation in a TJ leather shop to produce the seats. The shop was grateful to get the business and no one except the cartel knew the purpose to which the seats would be put.

It wasn't too challenging. TJ has a large garment industry and the maquiladoras for US businesses are easily contracted for small orders of seats and packages. Aircraft seats were relatively straightforward. The larger containers for ocean transport were more challenging.

Seats were essentially a box within a box. The outer box had identification on the contents, a bottom layer of "product" was put on the bottom with spacers and pedestals on the bottom, and a second, slightly smaller box placed on top of those to create a false bottom. In the empty space on each side of the smaller box more product packages were slid in, making the inner container totally surrounded by fentanyl packages.

TC showed the boxes to his handler who then showed them to her bosses. Angelina had been around drugs, cartel and smuggling for most of her life. Her father was a mule, her mother a stay-at-home mom, and her brother had worked his way up the cartel to lower-level management. Make no mistake, cartels are a business. Despotic. Corrupt. But with certain rules that everyone in the organization follows. Angelina was very good at implementation and her reputation helped sell the new box-in-box idea.

The first transport plan changed three times in three hours. There wasn't any good reason, just cartel caution.

The final date for ship and plane transport was decided.

TC was responsible for the transport of all seats and packages to three aircraft and two ships. I provided coordination between DEA stateside and operatives in Cuba.

Three days before the first shipment a factory fire in TJ destroyed 20 seats. Fortunately, there were enough parts to quickly build 20 more seats, just in time.

The day of ship departure the cargo was loaded and invisibly secured.

The day of air departures, planes were loaded with seats.

There were uneventful departures for each.

DEA met the ship and the planes at each destination and detained them. Intercepted messaging from previous deliveries helped construct the good news with the coded "all received" message to the cartel handlers.

After two days with no product coming out of the deliveries, the shipments finally got to their intended destinations, resulting in busting all players on the receiving end with the merchandise now in DEA possession.

On the third day, De Juan and an escort of armed men in three cartel jeeps approach TC at an agreed-upon meeting place. TC is aware of the US busts of deliveries and has prepared for a confrontation. He also has backup.

A face-to-face encounter between De Juan and TC results in gunfire. De Juan is killed, as are two of his henchmen, as TC escapes out the side door of the meeting place.

TC meets up with me and as we meet, three narco tanks pull up outside and start spraying the paladar with lead.

A chase ensues through the city with narco tanks following TC and me in my 1943 Cadillac that has been modified with armor and bullet-proof windows and driven by another undercover agent.

We separate from the Cadillac after which our driver continues to evade the narco tanks through the city as the sun sets.

A DEA drone has been circling at 1,000 feet, locked in on the two narco tanks.

Two ATGM's (anti-tank guided missiles) send both vehicles into the sky in massive explosions. The resulting fires around the city are quickly extinguished by local fire brigades as TC and I meet at a safe house.

"Another successful chapter in the battle for civilization, amigo."

"Yeah, one more for the good guys. Let's do this again sometime."

And after a clink of glasses and a quick shot of Santiago de Cuba rum we both disappear into the night.

So that's what happened. Just a routine job in our world, right?