It was unlike Culler to be on hand to personally greet him. They knew each other well, having worked together the better part of the past decade, but their relationship wasn’t particularly cordial. If Culler was there waiting to see him, it meant he already had another job lined up, and the presence of the senior DEA agent not only served as confirmation but indicated it was in-country. Slayton ran the American end of Operation Phoenix and was the man to whom Culler had essentially subcontracted Avery, since the Special Activities Division and Latin American Division chiefs at the National Clandestine Service, CIA’s operations arm, unequivocally refused to authorize sending a paramilitary operator on a black mission into Venezuela at the request of the DEA. The Drug Enforcement Administration was essentially the US’s primary intelligence collector for all things Colombian or FARC. Avery had worked with DEA the previous year, running security for one of their teams in El Salvador.
