Ghosts of Panama by Mark Harmon

Author:Mark Harmon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harper Select
Published: 2024-08-30T00:00:00+00:00

PORT OF BALBOA, PANAMA

OCTOBER 1989

“Go right in, Mr. Espinosa,” the security man at the gate said to Ted Fahy. “You’re expected.”

The NIS agent nodded vaguely and walked through the security perimeter of the Panamanian Port of Balboa as if he belonged there on his own at 10:00 p.m. Fahy ignored the armed PDF soldiers milling around the entrance and followed his memorized directions, heading for an administrative building where his informant, Manny, was waiting on the fifth floor.

From there, the pair scanned the entire port with binoculars, counting the ships in the water and noting any progress on the ones being repaired in dry dock. “Then we’d walk the area, every pier. Not right up to the ships, but close enough to say we saw all of them,” he recalls. “We could see when guards were doing patrols, particularly the boat patrols that were being done through the piers.”

Infiltrating a Panamanian facility was the kind of espionage operation that Fahy was hoping for when assigned here. With all of the military activity in Panama City, there was no wonder that war planners would want fresh information about the PDF’s Navy. The port was a hive of commercial activity, making any potential attack confusing without specific guidance.

Fahy wanted to make sure he could describe the port’s activity on different days of the week. This was the third night of his scouting operation.

Fahy imagined that the Army was planning some contingency to seize the port if shooting broke out. Maybe the Air Force would sink the warship floating here. No one bothered to tell Fahy why the information on the port was needed—he wouldn’t recognize the phrase “Blue Spoon” as anything but gibberish—but he knew from the reactions to initial reports that the ship they were most interested in was an American-made Swift Boat, the prize of the Panamanian Navy.

It was the same warship he heard about in New Orleans, the one whose report got him sucked into Panama to begin with: the Presidente Porras.

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