25.
The ODYSSEY File
MURRAY HAD A senior agent drive to Andrews immediately, of course, and he got there just in time to watch the small jet taxi off to the end of runway One-Left. The agent used his ID to get himself into the office of the colonel who commanded the 89th Military Airlift Wing. That got the agent the flight plan for the aircraft that had just taken off. He used the colonel’s phone to call Murray, then admonished the colonel that he, the agent, had never been there, had never made an official inquiry; that this was part of a major criminal investigation and was code-word material. The code-word for the case was ODYSSEY.
Murray and Shaw were together within a minute of taking the call. Shaw had found that he could handle the duties of acting Director. He was sure that it was not a permanent job, and after the proper political figurehead was found, he’d revert to Executive Assistant Director (Investigations). Part of him thought that too bad. What was wrong with having a career cop running the Bureau? Of course, that was politics, not police work, and in over thirty years of police work he’d discovered that politics was not his cup of tea.
“We gotta get somebody there,” Shaw observed. “But how, for God’s sake?”
“Why not the Panama legal attaché?” Murray asked. “I know him. Solid guy.”
“He’s out doing something with DEA. Won’t be back in the office for a couple of days. His number-two’s not up to it. Too inexperienced to run this himself.”
“Morales is available in Bogotá—but somebody’d notice.... We’re playing catch-up again, Bill, and that guy is flying down there at five hundred miles per hour.... How about Mark Bright? Maybe he can steal a jet from the Air Guard.”
“Do it!”
“Special Agent Bright,” he said as he picked up the phone.
“Mark, this is Dan Murray. I need you to do something. Start taking notes, Mark.” Murray kept talking. Two minutes later Bright muttered a mild obscenity and pulled out his phone book. The first call went to Eglin Air Force Base, the second to the local Coast Guard, and the third to his home. He sure as hell wouldn’t be home for dinner. Bright grabbed a few items on his way out the door and had another agent drive him to the Coast Guard yard, where a helicopter was already waiting. It took off a minute after he got aboard and headed east to Eglin Air Force Base.
The Air Force had only three F-15E Strike-Eagles, all prototypes for a ground-attack version of the big, twin-engined fighter, and two of those were at Eglin for technical tests while Congress decided if the service would actually put the aircraft into serial production. Aside from some training birds located elsewhere, this was the only two-seat version of the Air Force’s prime air-superiority fighter. The major who’d be flying him was standing at the side of the aircraft when Bright stepped out of the helicopter. A couple of NCOs assisted the agent into his flight suit, parachute harness, and life vest. The helmet was sitting on the top of the rear ejection seat. In ten minutes the aircraft was ready to roll.
“What gives?” the pilot asked.
“I need to be at Panama, just as fast as you can arrange it.”
“Gee, you mean you’re going to make me fly fast?” the major responded, then laughed. “Then there’s no rush.”
“Say again?”
“The tanker took off three minutes ago. We’ll let him get up to thirty thousand before we lift off. He’ll top us off up there, and we go balls to the wall. Another tanker is taking off from Panama to meet us—so we’ll have enough fuel to land, sir. That way we can go supersonic most of the flight. You did say you were in a hurry?”
“Uh-huh.” Bright was struggling to adjust his helmet. It didn’t fit very well. It was also quite warm in the cockpit, and the air-conditioning system hadn’t taken hold yet. “What if the other tanker doesn’t show up?”
“The Eagle is a very good glider,” the major assured him. “We won’t have to swim too far.”
A radio message crackled in Bright’s ears. The major answered it, then spoke to his passenger. “Grab your balls, sir. It is now post time.” The Eagle taxied to the end of the runway, where it sat still for a moment while the pilot brought the engines to full, screaming, vibrating power, and then slipped his brakes. Ten seconds later Bright wondered if a catapult shot off a carrier could be more exciting than this. The F-15E held a forty-degree angle of climb and just kept accelerating, leaving Florida’s gulf coast far behind. They tanked a hundred miles offshore—Bright was too fascinated to be frightened, though the buffet was noticeable—and after separating, the Eagle climbed to forty thousand feet and the pilot punched burners. The aft cockpit was mainly concerned with delivering bombs and missiles on target, but did have a few instruments. One of them told the agent that they had just topped a thousand miles per hour.
“What’s the hurry?” the pilot asked.
“I want to get to Panama ahead of somebody.”
“Can you give me some details? Might help, you know.”
“One of those business jets—G-Three, I think. Left Andrews eighty-five minutes ago.”
The pilot laughed. “Is that all? Hell, you can check into a hotel ’fore he gets down. We’re already ahead of him. We’re wasting fuel going this fast.”
“So waste it,” Bright said.
“Fine with me, sir. Mach-2 or sittin’ still, they pay me the same. Okay, figure we’ll get in ninety minutes ahead of your guy. How do you like the ride?”
“Where’s the drink cart?”
“Should be a bottle down by your right knee. A nice domestic vintage, good nose, but not the least pretentious.”
Bright got it and had a drink out of sheer curiosity.
“Salt and electrolytes, to keep you alert,” the pilot explained a few seconds later. “You’re FBI, right?”
“Correct.”
“What gives?”
“Can’t say. What’s that?” He heard a beeping sound in his headphones.
“SAM radar,” the major said.
“What?”
“That’s Cuba over there. There’s a SAM battery on that point that doesn’t like American military aircraft. I can’t imagine why. We’re out of range anyway. Don’t sweat it. It’s normal. We use them to calibrate our systems, too. Part of the game.”
Murray and Shaw were reading over the material Jack had dropped off. Their immediate problems were, first, to determine what was supposed to be going on; next, to determine what was actually going on; next, to determine if it was legal or not; next, if not, then to take appropriate action, once they could figure what appropriate action was. This wasn’t a mere can of worms. It was a can of poisonous snakes that Ryan had spilled over Murray’s desk.
“You know how this might end up?”
Shaw turned away from the desk. “The country doesn’t need another one.” Not by my hands, he didn’t say.
“We got one whether we need it or not,” Murray said. “I admit, part of me says, ‘Right on!’ about why they’re doing it, but from what Jack tells me, we have at the very least a technical violation of the oversight laws, and definitely a violation of the Executive Order.” .
“Unless there’s a classified codicil that we don’t know about. What if the AG knows?”
“What if he’s part of it? The day Emil got hit, the AG flew to Camp David along with the rest of ’em, remember?”
“What I want to know is, what the hell our friend is going to Panama for?”
“Maybe we’ll find out. He’s going down alone. No security troops, everybody sworn to secrecy. Who’d you send over to Andrews to choke it out of ’em?”
“Pat O’Day,” Murray answered. That explained matters. “I want him to handle the liaison with the Secret Service guys, too. He’s done a lot of work with them. When the time comes, that is. We’re a mile away from being ready for that.”
“Agreed. We have eighteen people working ODYSSEY. That’s not enough.”
“We have to keep it tight for the moment, Bill. I think the next step is getting somebody over from Justice to cover our asses for us. Who?”
“Christ, I don’t know,” Shaw replied in exasperation. “It’s one thing to run an investigation that the AG knows about but is kept out of, but I can’t remember ever running one completely unknown to him.”
“Let’s take our time, then. The main thing right now is to figure out what the plan was, then branch out from there.” It was a logical observation from Murray. It was also wrong. It was to be a day of errors.
The F-15E touched down at Howard Field right on time, eighty minutes before the scheduled arrival of the flight from Andrews. Bright thanked the pilot, who refueled and took off at once for a more leisurely return to Eglin. The base intelligence officer met Bright, along with the most senior agent from the legal attaché’s office in Panama City, who was young, sharp, but too new in his post for a case of this sensitivity. The arriving agent briefed his two colleagues on what little he knew and swore both to secrecy. It was enough to get things going. His first stop was the post exchange, where he got some nondescript clothing. The intelligence officer supplied a very plain automobile with local tags that they left outside the gate. On base they’d use an anonymous blue Air Force sedan. The Plymouth sat near the flight line when the VC-20A landed. Bright pulled his Nikon out of the bag and attached a 1000mm telephoto lens. The aircraft taxied to a stop at one of the hangars, and the stairs folded down with the hatch. Bright snugged his camera in and started shooting close-ups from several hundred yards away as the single passenger stepped out of the plane and into a waiting car.
“Jesus, it’s really him.” Bright rewound and removed the film cassette. He handed it to the other FBI agent and reloaded another thirty-six-frame spool.
The car they followed was a twin to their Air Force sedan. It drove straight off post. Bright and the rest barely had time to switch cars, but the Air Force colonel driving had ambitions to race the NASCAR circuit and took up a surveillance position a hundred yards behind it.
“Why no security?” he asked.
“He generally doesn’t bother, they told me,” Bright told him. “Sounds odd, doesn’t it?”
“Hell, yes, given who he is, what he knows, and where the hell he happens to be at the moment.”
The trip into town was unremarkable. The Air Force sedan dropped Cutter off at a luxury hotel on the outskirts of Panama City. Bright hopped out and watched him check in, just like a man on a business trip. The other agent came in a few minutes later while the colonel stayed with the car.
“Now what?”
“Anybody you can trust on the local PD?” Bright asked.
“Nope. I know a few, some of them pretty good guys. But trust? Not down here, man.”
“Well, there’s always the old-fashioned way,” Bright observed.
“’kay.” The assistant legal attaché reached for his wallet and walked to the registration desk. He came back two minutes later. “The Bureau owes me twenty bucks. He’s registered as Robert Fisher. Here’s the American Express number.” He handed over a crumpled carbon sheet that also had the scrawled signature.
“Call the office and run it. We need to keep an eye on his room. We need—Christ, how many assets do we have?” Bright waved him outside.
“Not enough for this.”
Bright’s face twisted into an ugly shape for a moment. This was no easy call to make. ODYSSEY was a code-word case, and one thing that Murray had impressed on him was the need for security, but—there was always a “but,” wasn’t there?—this was something that needed doing. So he was the senior man on the scene and he had to make the call. Of such things, he knew, careers were made and broken. It was murderously hot and humid, but that wasn’t the only reason Mark Bright was sweating.
“Okay, tell him we need a half-dozen good people to help us with the surveillance.”
“You sure—”
“I’m not sure of anything right now! The man we’re supposed to be shadowing—if we suspect him—Christ Almighty, if we suspect him—” Bright stopped talking. There wasn’t much else to say, was there?
“Yeah.”
“I’ll hang out here. Tell the colonel to get things organized.”
It turned out that they needn’t have hurried. The subject—that’s what he was now, Bright told himself—appeared in the lobby three hours later, looking fresh and scrubbed in his tropical-weight suit. Four cars waited outside for him, but Cutter only knew about the small, white Mercedes into which he climbed and which drove off to the north. The other three kept it in visual contact.
It was getting dark. Bright had shot only three frames on his second roll of film. He ejected that one and replaced it with some super-high-speed black and white film. He shot a few pictures of the car just to make sure that he got the license number. The driver at this point wasn’t the colonel, but a sergeant from the criminal-investigation detachment who knew the area and was impressed as hell to be working a code-word case with the Bureau. He identified the house the Mercedes pulled into. They ought to have guessed it.
The sergeant knew a place that overlooked the house, not a thousand yards away, but they were too late getting there and the car couldn’t stay on the highway. Bright and the local FBI representative jumped out and found a wet, smelly place to lie down and wait. The sergeant left them a radio with which to summon him and wished them luck.
The owner of the house was away attending to matters of state, of course, but he had been kind enough to give them free use of it. That included a small but discreet staff which served light snacks and drinks, then withdrew, leaving the tape recorders, both men were sure, to record events. Well, that didn’t matter, did it?
The hell it doesn’t! Both men realized the sensitivity of the conversation that was about to take place, and it was Cortez who surprised his guest by graciously suggesting that they speak outside, despite the weather. Both men dropped off their suitcoats and went through the French doors to the garden. About the only good news was the impressive collection of blue bug-lights which crackled and sparkled as they attracted and electrocuted thousands of insects. The noise would make hash out of most recording attempts, and who would have expected either of them to eschew the house’s air conditioning?
“Thank you for responding to my message,” Cortez said pleasantly. It was not a time for bluster or posturing. It was time for business, and he’d have to appear appropriately humble before this man. It didn’t bother him. Dealing with people of his rank required it, and it was something he’d have to get used to, Félix expected. They needed deference. It made surrendering all the easier.
“What do you want to talk about?” Admiral Cutter asked.
“Your operations against the Cartel, of course.” Cortez waved toward a cane chair. He disappeared for a moment, then returned with the tray of drinks and glasses. For tonight, Perrier was the drink of choice. Both men left the alcohol untouched. For Félix, that was the first good sign.
“What operations are you talking about?”
“You should know that I had nothing personally to do with the death of Mr. Jacobs. It was an act of madness.”
“Why should I believe that?”
“I was in America at the time. Didn’t they tell you?” Cortez filled in some details. “An information source like Mrs. Wolfe,” he concluded, “is worth far more than stupid, emotional revenge. It is more foolish still to challenge a powerful nation in so obvious a way. Your response was quite well done. In fact, the operations you are running are most impressive. I didn’t even suspect your airport-surveillance operations until after they were terminated, and the way you simulated the car bomb—a work of art, if I may say so. Can you tell me what the strategic objective of your operation is?”
“Come now, Colonel.”
“Admiral, I have the power to expose the totality of your activities to the press,” Félix said almost sadly. “Either you tell me or you tell the members of your own Congress. You will find me far more accommodating. We are, after all, men of the same profession.”
Cutter thought for a moment, and told him. He was greatly irritated to see his interlocutor start laughing.
“Brilliant!” Cortez said when he was able to. “One day I would wish to meet this man, the one who proposed this idea. Truly he is a professional!”
Cutter nodded as though accepting the compliment. For a moment Félix wondered if that might be true ... it was easy enough to find out.
“You must forgive me, Admiral Cutter. You think I am making light of your operation. I say to you honestly that I am not. You have, in fact, accomplished your goal.”
“We know. We know that somebody tried to kill you and Escobedo.”
“Yes,” Félix replied. “Of course. I would also like to know how you are developing such fine intelligence on us, but I know that you will not tell me.”
Cutter played the card for all he thought it was worth. “We have more assets than you think, Colonel.” It wasn’t worth that much.
“I am sure,” Cortez allowed. “I think we have an area of agreement.”
“What might that be?”
“You wish to initiate a war within the Cartel. So do I.”
Cutter betrayed himself by the way he stopped breathing. “Oh? How so?”
Already Cortez knew that he had won. And this fool was advising the American President?
“Why, I will become a de facto part of your operation and restructure the Cartel. That means eliminating some of the more offensive members, of course.”
Cutter wasn’t a total fool, but made the further mistake of stating the obvious as a question: “With yourself as the new head?”
“Do you know what sort of people these ‘drug lords’ are? Vicious peasants. Barbarians without education, drunk with power, yet they complain like spoiled children that they are not respected. ” Cortez smiled up at the stars. “They are not people to be taken seriously by men such as ourselves. Can we agree that the world will be better when they have left it?”
“The same thought has occurred to me, as you have already pointed out.”
“Then we are in agreement.”
“Agreement on what?”
“Your ‘car bombs’ have already eliminated five of the chieftains. I will further reduce the number. Those eliminated will include all who approved the murder of your ambassador and the others, of course. Such actions cannot go unpunished or the world is plunged into chaos. Also, to show good faith, I will unilaterally reduce cocaine shipments to your country by half. The drug trade is disordered and overly violent,” the former DGI colonel said judiciously. “It needs restructuring.”
“We want it stopped!” Even as he said it, Cutter knew that it was a foolish thing to say.
Cortez sipped at his Perrier and continued to speak reasonably. “It will never be stopped. So long as your citizens wish to destroy their brains, someone will make this possible. The question, then, is how do we make the process more orderly? Your education efforts will eventually reduce the demand for drugs to tolerable levels. Until then, I can regularize the trade to minimize the dislocation of your society. I will reduce exports. I can even give you some major arrests so that your police can take credit for the reductions. This is an election year, is it not?”
Cutter’s breathing took another hiatus. They were playing high-stakes poker, and Cortez had just announced that the deck was marked.
“Go on,” was all he managed to say.
“Was this not the objective of your operations in Colombia? To sting the Cartel and reduce drug trafficking? I offer you success, the sort of success to which your President can point. Reduction in exports, some dramatic seizures and arrests, an intramural war within the Cartel for which you will not be blamed, yet for which you will also take credit. I give you victory,” Cortez said.
“In return for ... ?”
“I, too, must have a small victory to establish my position with the chieftains, yes? You will withdraw support for the Green Berets you have climbing those horrible mountains. You know—the men you are supporting with that large black helicopter in Hangar Three at Howard Air Force Base. You see, those chieftains whom I wish to displace have large groups of retainers, and the best way for me to reduce their numbers is to have your men kill them for me. At the same time, unfortunately, in order to gain standing with my superiors”—this word was delivered with Richter-scale irony—“my bloody and costly operation must ultimately be successful. It is a regrettable necessity, but from your point of view it also eliminates a potential security problem, does it not?”
My God. Cutter looked away from Cortez, out past the bug lights into the jungle.
“What do you suppose they’re talking about?”
“Beats the hell out of me,” Bright replied. He was on his last roll of film. Even with the high-speed setting, to get a good shot he had to bring the shutter speed way down, and that meant holding the camera as still as a hunting rifle on a distant prong-horn.
What was it the President said? Close the operation out, and I don’t care how....
But I can’t do that.
“Sorry,” Cutter said. “Impossible.”
Cortez made a helpless, shrugging gesture with both hands. “In that case we will inform the world that your government has invaded Colombia and has committed murder on a particularly epic scale. You are aware, of course, of what will probably happen to you, your President, and many senior members of your government. It took so long for you to get over all those other scandals. It must be very troubling to serve a government that has so many problems with its own laws and then uses them against its own servants.”
“You can’t blackmail the United States government.”
“Why not, Admiral? Our mutual profession carries risks, does it not? You nearly killed me with your first ‘car bomb,’ and yet I have taken no personal offense. Your risk is exposure. Untiveros’s family was there, you know, his wife and two little ones, eleven domestic servants, I believe. All dead from your bomb. I will not count those who were carrying guns, of course. A soldier must take a soldier’s chance. As did I. As must you, Admiral, except that yours is not a soldier’s chance. Your chance will be before your courts and television reporters, and congressional committees.” What was the old soldier’s code? Cortez asked himself. Death before dishonor. He knew that his guest had no stomach for either.
“I need time to—”
“Think? Excuse me, Admiral, but I must be back in four hours, which means I must leave here in fifteen minutes. My superiors do not know that I am gone. I have no time. Neither do you. I offer you the victory for which you and your President hoped. I require something in return. If we cannot agree, then the consequences will be unpleasant for both of us. It is that simple. Yes or no, Admiral?”
“What do you suppose they just shook hands about?”
“Cutter doesn’t look real happy about it. Call the car! Looks like they’re buggin’ out.”
“Who the hell was he meeting with, anyway? I don’t recognize him. If he’s a player, he’s not a local one.”
“I don’t know.” The car was late getting back, but the backup followed Cutter right back to his hotel. By the time Bright got back to the airfield, he learned that the subject was planning a good night’s sleep for himself. The VC-20A was scheduled for a noon departure right back to Andrews. Bright planned to beat it there by taking an early commercial flight to Miami and connecting into Washington National. He’d arrive half dead from fatigue, but he’d get there.
Ryan took the call for the Director—Judge Moore was finally on his way back, but was still three hours out of Dulles. Jack’s driver was ready as the executive elevator opened onto the garage, and they immediately left for Bethesda. They got there too late. Jack opened the door to see the bed covered with a sheet. The doctors had already left.
“I was there at the end. He went out easy,” one of the CIA people told him. Jack didn’t recognize him, though he gave the impression that he’d been waiting for Jack to appear. “You’re Dr. Ryan, right?”
“Yes,” Jack said quietly.
“About an hour before he faded out, he said something about—to remember what you two talked about. I don’t know what he meant, sir.”
“I don’t know you.”
“John Clark.” The man came over to shake Ryan’s hand. “I’m Operations, but Admiral Greer recruited me, too, long time ago.” Clark let out a breath. “Like losing a father. Twice.”
“Yeah,” Ryan said huskily. He was too tired, too wrung out to hide his emotions.
“Come on, I’ll buy you a cup of coffee and tell you a few stories about the old guy.” Clark was sad, but he was a man accustomed to death. Clearly Ryan was not, which was his good luck.
The cafeteria was closed, and they got coffee from a waiting-room pot. It was reheated and full of acid, but Ryan didn’t want to go home just yet, and was late remembering that he’d driven his own car in. He’d have to drive himself home tonight. He was too tired for that. He decided to call home and tell Cathy that he’d be staying over in town. CIA had an arrangement with one of the local Marriotts. Clark offered to drive him down, and Jack dismissed his driver. By this time both men decided that a drink wasn’t a bad idea.
Larson was gone from the room. He’d left a note saying that Maria would be coming in later that night, and he was going to pick her up. Clark had a small bottle of bourbon, and this Marriott had real glasses. He mixed two and handed one over to Jack Ryan.
“James Greer, the last of the good guys,” Clark said as he raised his glass.
Jack took a sip. Clark had mixed it a little strong, and he nearly coughed.
“If he recruited you, how come—”
“Operations?” Clark smiled. “Well, sir, I never went to college, but Greer spotted me through some of his Navy contacts. It’s a long story, and parts of it I’m not supposed to tell, but our paths have crossed three times.”
“Oh?”
“When the French went in to bag those Action Directe folks you found on the satellite photos, I was the liaison officer in Chad. The second time they went in, after the ULA people who took that dislike to you, I was on the chopper. And I’m the fool who went on the beach to bring Mrs. Gerasimov and her daughter out. And that, sir, was all your fault. I do the crazy stuff,” Clark explained. “All the field work that the espionage boys wet their pants over. Of course, maybe they’re just smarter than I am.”
“I didn’t know.”
“You weren’t supposed to know. Sorry we missed on bagging those ULA pukes. I’ve always wanted to apologize to you for that. The French were really good about it. They were so happy with us for fingering Action Directe that they wanted to give us the ULA heads on plaques. But there was this damned Libyan unit out on maneuvers, and the chopper just stumbled on them—that’s a problem when you go zooming in low—and it turned out that the camp was probably empty anyway. Everybody was real sorry it didn’t work out as planned. Might have saved you a little grief. We tried, Dr. Ryan. We surely tried.”
“Jack.” Ryan held out his glass for a refill.
“Fine. Call me John.” Clark topped both drinks off. “The Admiral said I could tell you all that. He also said that you tumbled to what was happening down south. I was down there,” Clark said. “What do you want to know?”
“You sure you can tell me that?”
“The Admiral said so. He‘s—excuse me, he was a deputy director, and I figure that means I can do what he told me to do. This bureaucratic stuff is a little confusing to a humble line-animal, but I figure you can never go far wrong by telling the truth. Besides, Ritter told me that everything we did was legal, that he had all the permission he needed for this hunting expedition. That permission had to come from one place. Somebody decided that this drug stuff was a ‘clear and present danger’— that’s a quote—to the security of the United States. Only one man has the power to say that for-real, and if he does, he has the authority to do something about it. Maybe I never went to college, but I do read a lot. Where do you want me to start?”
“At the beginning,” Jack replied. He listened for over an hour.
“You’re going back?” Ryan asked when he was finished.
“I think a chance at bagging Cortez is worth it, and I might be able to help with the extraction of those kids up in the mountains. I don’t really like the idea, but it is what I do for a living. I don’t suppose your wife likes all the things she has to do as a doc.”
“One thing I gotta ask. How did you feel about guiding those bombs in?”
“How did you feel about shooting people, back when you did it?”
Jack nodded. “Sorry—I had that coming.”
“I joined up as a Navy SEAL. Lot of time in Southeast Asia. I got orders to go and kill people, and I went and killed ‘em. That wasn’t a declared war either, was it? You don’t go around braggin’ about it, but it’s the job. Since I joined the Agency I haven’t done very much of that—there have been times when I wished I could have done more of it, ’cause it might have saved a few lives in the long run. I had the head of Abu Nidal in my gunsights, but I never got permission to take the fucker out. Same story with two other people just as bad. It would have been deniable, clean, everything you want, but the lace-panty section at Langley couldn’t make up their minds. They told me to see if it was possible, and it’s just as dangerous to do that as it is to pull the trigger, but I never got the green light to complete the mission. From where I sit, it’s a good mission. Those bastards are the enemies of our country, they kill our citizens—taken out a couple Agency people, too, and not real pretty how they did it—but we don’t do anything about it. Tell me that makes sense. But I follow orders like I’m supposed to. Never violated one since I joined up.”
“How do you feel about talking to the FBI?”
“You gotta be kidding. Even if I felt like it, which I don’t, my main concern is those kids up in the hills. You hold me up on that, Jack, and some of them might get killed. Ritter called me earlier this evening and asked if I was willing to go back. I leave eight-forty tomorrow morning for Panama, and I stage from there back into Colombia.”
“You know how to get in touch with me?”
“That might be a good idea,” Clark agreed.
The rest had done everyone good. Aches had eased, and all hoped that the remaining stiffness would be worked out by the first few hours of movement. Captain Ramirez assembled his men and explained the new situation to them. He’d called in via his satellite link and requested extraction. The announcement was met with general approval. Unfortunately, he went on, the request had to be booted upstairs—with a favorable endorsement, VARIABLE had told him—and in any case the helicopter was down for an engine change. They’d be in-country at least one more night, possibly two. Until then, their mission was to evade contact and head for a suitable extraction point. These were already identified, and Ramirez had indicated the one he was heading for. It was fifteen kilometers away to the south. So the job for tonight was to skirt past the group that had been hunting for them. That would be tricky, but once past them it should be clear sailing through an area already swept. They’d try to cover eight or nine klicks tonight and the rest the following night. In any case the mission was over and they were pulling out. The recent arrivals from Team BANNER would form a third fire-team, augmenting KNIFE’S already formidable firepower. Everyone still had at least two-thirds of his original ammo load-out. Food was running short, but they had enough for two days if nobody minded a few stomach rumbles. Ramirez ended his briefing on a confident note. It hadn’t been cheap, and it hadn’t been easy, but they had accomplished their mission and put a real hurtin’ on the druggies. Now everybody had to keep it together for the trip out. The squad members exchanged nods and prepared to leave.
Chavez led off twenty minutes later. The idea was to keep as high on the mountain as they could. The opposition had shown a tendency to camp out lower down, and this way they stood the best chance of keeping clear. As always he was to avoid anything that looked like habitation. That meant giving a wide berth to the coffee plantations and associated villages, but that was what they had been doing anyway. They also had to move as fast as caution allowed, which meant that caution was downgraded. It was something often done in exercises, always with confidence. Ding’s confidence in that sort of thing had also been downgraded by his experience in the field. The good news, as far as he was concerned, was that Ramirez was acting like an officer again. Probably he’d just been tired, too.
One nice thing about being close to the coffee plantations was that the cover wasn’t so thick. People went into the woods to get fuel for their fires, and that thinned things out quite a bit. What effects it had on erosion wasn’t Chavez’s concern. That helped him to go faster, and he was covering nearly two kilometers per hour, which was far faster than he’d expected. By midnight his legs were telling him about every meter. Fatigue, he was learning again, was a cumulative factor. It took more than one day’s rest to slough off all of its effects, no matter what sort of shape you were in. He wondered if the altitude wasn’t also to blame. In any case he was still fighting to keep up the pace, to keep alert, to remember the path he was supposed to follow. Infantry operations are far more demanding intellectually than most people realize, and intellect is ever the first victim of fatigue.
He remembered a small village on the map, about half a klick from where he was at the moment, downhill. He’d taken the right turn at a landmark a klick back—he’d rechecked it at the rally point where they’d rested forty minutes earlier. He could hear noise from that direction. It seemed odd. The local peasants worked hard on the coffee plantations, he’d been told. They should have been asleep by now. Ding missed the obvious signal. He didn’t miss the scream—more of a pant, really, the sort of sound made when—
He switched on his night scope and saw a figure running toward him. He couldn’t tell—then he could. It was a girl, moving with considerable skill through the cover. Behind her was the noise of someone running after her with less skill. Chavez tapped the danger signal on his radio. Behind him everyone stopped and waited for his all-clear.
There wouldn’t be one. The girl tripped and changed directions. A few seconds later she tripped again and landed right at Chavez’s feet.
The sergeant clamped his left hand across her mouth. His other hand put a finger to his lips in the universal sign to be quiet. Her eyes went wide and white as she saw him—or more properly, didn’t see him, just a melange of camouflage paint that looked like something from a horror movie.
“Señorita, you have nothing to fear from me. I am a soldier. I do not molest women. Who is chasing you?” He removed his hand and hoped that she wouldn’t scream.
But she couldn’t even if she had wanted to, instead gasping out her reply. She’d run too far too fast. “One of their ‘soldiers,’ the men with guns. I—”
His hand went back on her mouth as the crashing sound came closer.
“Where are you?” the voice crooned.
Shit!
“Run that way,” Chavez told her, pointing. “Do not stop and do not look back. Go!”
The girl took off and the man made for the noise. He ran right past Ding Chavez and precisely one foot farther. The sergeant clasped his hand across the man’s face and took him down, pulling the head back as he did so. Just as both men hit the ground, Ding’s combat knife made a single lateral cut. He was surprised by the noise. Escaping air from the windpipe combined with the spurting blood to make a gurgling sound that made him cringe. The man struggled for a few futile seconds, then went limp. The victim had a knife of his own, and Chavez set it in the wound. He hoped the girl wouldn’t be blamed for it, but he’d done all that he could as far as she was concerned. Captain Ramirez showed up a minute later and was not very pleased.
“Didn’t have much choice, sir,” Chavez said in his own defense. Actually he felt rather proud of himself. After all, protecting the weak was the job of the soldier, wasn’t it?
“Move your ass outa here!”
The squad moved especially fast to clear the area, but if anyone came looking for the amorous sleepwalker, no one heard anything to suggest it. It was the last incident of the night. They arrived at the preplanned stopover point just before dawn. Ramirez set up his radio and called in.
“Roger, KNIFE, we copy your position and your objective. We do not as yet have confirmation for the extraction. Please call back around eighteen hundred Lima. We ought to have things set up by then. Over.”
“Roger, will call back at eighteen hundred. KNIFE out.”
“Shame about BANNER,” one communicator said to the other.
“These things do happen.”
“Your name Johns?”
“That’s right,” the colonel said without turning at once. He’d just come back from a test flight. The new—actually rebuilt five-year-old—engine worked just fine. The Pave Low III was back in business. Colonel Johns turned to see to whom he was talking.
“Do you recognize me?” Admiral Cutter asked curtly. He was wearing his full uniform for a change. He hadn’t done that in months, but the three stars on each braided shoulder board gleamed in the morning sun, along with his ribbons and surface-warfare officer’s badge. In fact, the general effect of the undress-white uniform was quite overpowering, right down to the white buck shoes. Just as he had planned.
“Yes, sir, I do. Please excuse me, sir.”
“Your orders have been changed, Colonel. You are to return to your stateside base as soon as possible. That means today,” Cutter emphasized.
“But what about—”
“That will be taken care of through other means. Do I have to tell you whose authority I speak with?”
“No, sir, you do not.”
“You will not discuss this matter with anyone. That means nobody, anywhere, ever. Do you require any further instructions, Colonel?”
“No, sir, your orders are quite clear.”
“Very well.” Cutter turned and walked back to the staff car, which drove off at once. His next stop was a hilltop near the Gaillard Cut. There was a communications van there. Cutter walked right past the armed guard—he wore a Marine uniform but was a civilian—and into the van, where he made a similar speech. Cutter was surprised to learn that moving the van would be difficult and would require a helicopter, since the van was too large to be pulled down the little service road. He was, however, able to order them to shut down, and he’d see about getting a helicopter to lift the van out. Until then they would stay put and not do anything. Their security was blown, he explained, and further transmissions would only further endanger the people with whom they communicated. He got agreement on that, too, and left. He boarded his aircraft at eleven in the morning. He’d be home in Washington for supper.
Mark Bright was there just after lunch. He handed his film cassettes over to a lab expert and proceeded to Dan Murray’s busy office, where he reported what he had seen.
“I don’t know who he met with, but maybe you’ll recognize the face. How about the Amex number?”
“It’s a CIA account that he’s had access to for the past two years. This is the first time he’s used it, though. The local guy faxed us a copy so we could run the signature. Forensics has already given us a handwriting match,” Murray said. “You look a little tuckered.”
“I don’t know why—hell, I must have slept three hours in the past day and a half. I’ve done my D.C. time. Mobile was supposed to be a nice vacation.”
Murray grinned. “Welcome back to the unreal world of Washington.”
“I had to get some help to pull this off,” Bright said next.
“Like what?” Murray wasn’t smiling anymore.
“Air Force personnel, intel and CID types. I told ‘em this was code-word material, and, hell, even if I had told them everything I know, which I didn’t, I don’t know what the story is myself. I take responsibility, of course, but if I hadn’t done it, I probably wouldn’t have gotten the shots.”
“Sounds to me like you did the right thing,” Murray said. “I don’t suppose you had much choice in the matter. It happens like that sometimes.”
Bright acknowledged the official forgiveness. “Thanks.”
They had to wait five more minutes for the photographs. Decks had been cleared for this case, but even priority cases took time, much to the annoyance of everyone. The technician—actually a section chief—arrived with the moist prints.
“I figured you’d want these babies in a hurry.”
“You figured right, Marv—Holy Christ!” Murray exclaimed. “Marv, this is code-word.”
“You already told me, Dan. Lips are zipped. We can enhance them some, but that’ll take another hour. Want me to get that started?”
“Fast as you can.” Murray nodded, and the technician left. “Christ,” Murray said again when he reexamined the photos. “Mark, you take a mean picture.”
“So who the hell is it?”
“Félix Cortez.”
“Who’s that?”
“Used to be a DGI colonel. We missed him by a whisker when we bagged Filiberto Ojeda.”
“The Macheteros case?” That didn’t make any sense.
“No, not exactly.” Murray shook his head. He spoke almost reverently, thought for a minute, and called for Bill Shaw to come down. The acting Director was there within a minute. Agent Bright was still in the dark when Murray pointed his boss to the photographs. “Bill, you ain’t going to believe this one.”
“So who the hell is Félix Cortez?” Bright asked.
Shaw answered the question. “After he skipped out of Puerto Rico, he went to work for the Cartel. He had a piece of Emil’s murder, how much we don’t know, but he sure as hell was involved. And here he is, sitting with the President’s National Security Adviser. Now what do you suppose they had to talk about?”
“It’s not with this batch, but I got a picture of them shaking hands,” the junior agent announced.
Shaw and Murray just stared at him when he said that. Then at each other. The President’s head national-security guy shook hands with somebody who works for the drug Cartel ... ?
“Dan,” Shaw said, “what the hell is going on? Has the whole world just gone crazy?”
“Sure looks that way, doesn’t it?”
“Put a call in to your friend Ryan. Tell him ... Tell his secretary that there’s a terrorism thing—no, we can’t risk that. Pick him up on the way home?”
“He’s got a driver.”
“That’s a big help.”
“I got it.” Murray lifted his phone and dialed a Baltimore number. “Cathy? Dan Murray. Yeah, we’re fine, thanks. What time does Jack’s driver usually get him home? Oh, he didn’t? Okay, I need you to do something, and it’s important, Cathy. Tell Jack to stop off at Danny’s on the way home to, uh, to pick the books up. Just like that, Cathy. This isn’t a joke. Can you do that? Thanks, doc.” He replaced the phone. “Isn’t that conspiratorial?”
“Who’s Ryan—isn’t he CIA?”
“That’s right,” Shaw answered. “He’s also the guy who dumped this case in our laps. Unfortunately, Mark, you are not cleared for it.”
“I understand, sir.”
“Why don’t you see how quick you can fly home and find out how much that new baby’s grown. Damned nice work you did here. I won’t forget,” the acting Director promised him.
Pat O‘Day, a newly promoted inspector working out of FBI Headquarters, watched from the parking lot as a subordinate stood on the flight line in the soiled uniform of an Air Force technical sergeant. It was a clear, hot day at Andrews Air Force Base, and a D.C. Air National Guard F-4C landed right ahead of the VC-20A. The converted executive jet taxied to the 89th’s terminal on the west side of the complex. The stairs dropped and Cutter walked out wearing civilian clothes. By this time—through Air Force intelligence personnel—the Bureau knew that he’d visited a helicopter crew and a communications van in the morning. So far no one had approached either of them to find out why, because headquarters was still trying to figure things out, and, O’Day thought, failing miserably—but that was headquarters for you. He wanted to go back out to the field where the real cops were, though this case did have its special charm. Cutter walked across to where his personal car was parked, tossed his bag in the back seat, and drove off, with O’Day and his driver in visual pursuit. The National Security Adviser got onto Suitland Parkway heading toward D.C., then, after entering the city, onto I-395. They expected him to get off at the Maine Avenue exit, possibly heading toward the White House, but instead the man just kept going to his official residence at Fort Myer, Virginia. A discreet surveillance didn’t get more routine than that.
“Cortez? I know that name. Cutter met with a former DGI guy?” Ryan asked.
“Here’s the photo.” Murray handed it over. The lab troops had run it through their computerized enhancement process. One of the blackest of the Bureau’s many forensic arts, it had converted a grainy photographic frame to glossy perfection. Moira Wolfe had again verified Cortez’s identity, just to make everyone sure. “Here’s another.” The second one showed them shaking hands.
“This’ll look good in court,” Ryan observed as he handed the frames back.
“It’s not evidence,” Murray replied.
“Huh?”
Shaw explained. “High government officials meet with ... with strange people all the time. Remember the time when Kissinger made the secret flight to China?”
“But that was—” Ryan stopped when he realized how dumb his objection sounded. He remembered a clandestine meeting with the Soviet Party chairman that he couldn’t tell the FBI about. How would that look to some people?
“It isn’t evidence of a crime, or even a conspiracy, unless we know that what they talked about was illegal,” Murray told Jack. “His lawyer will argue, probably successfully, that his meeting with Cortez, while appearing to be irregular, was aimed at the execution of sensitive but proper government policy.”
“Bullshit,” Jack observed.
“The attorney would object to your choice of words, and the judge would have it stricken from the record, instruct the jury to disregard it, and admonish you about your language in court, Dr. Ryan,” Shaw pointed out. “What we have here is a piece of interesting information, but it is not evidence of a crime until we know that a crime is being committed. Of course, it is bullshit.”
“Well, I met with the guy who guided the ‘car bombs’ into the targets.”
“Where is he?” Murray asked at once.
“Probably back in Colombia by now.” Ryan explained on for a few minutes.
“Christ, who is this guy?” Murray asked.
“Let’s leave his name out of it for a while, okay?”
“I really think we should talk to him,” Shaw said.
“He’s not interested in talking to you. He doesn’t want to go to jail.”
“He won’t.” Shaw rose and paced around the room. “In case I never told you, I’m a lawyer, too. In fact, I have a J.D. If we were to attempt to try him, his lawyer would throw Martinez-Barker at us. You know what that is? A little-known result of the Watergate case. Martinez and Barker were Watergate conspirators, right? Their defense, probably an honest one, was that they thought the burglary was sanctioned by properly constituted authority as part of a national-security investigation. In a rather wordy majority opinion, the appeals court ruled that there had been no criminal intent, the defendants had acted in good faith throughout, and therefore no actual crime had been committed. Your friend will say on the stand that once he’d heard the ‘clear and present danger’ pronouncement from his superiors, and been told that authorization came from way up the chain of command, he was merely following orders given by people who had sufficient constitutional authority to do so. I suppose Dan already told you, there really isn’t any law in a case like this. Hell, the majority of my agents would probably like to buy your guy a beer for avenging Emil’s death.”
“What I can tell you about this guy is that he’s a serious combat vet, and as far as I could tell, he’s a very straight guy.”
“I don’t doubt it. As far as the killing is concerned—we’ve had lawyers say that the actions of police snipers come awfully close to cold-blooded murder. Drawing a distinction between police work and combat action isn’t always as easy as we would like. In this case, how do you draw the line between murder and a legitimate counterterrorist operation? What it’ll come down to—hell, it will mainly reflect the political beliefs of the judges who try the case, and the appeal, and every other part of the proceeding. Politics. You know,” Shaw said, “it was a hell of a lot easier chasing bank robbers. At least then you knew what the score was.”
“There’s the key to it right there,” Ryan said. “How much you want to bet that this whole thing started because it was an election year?”
Murray’s phone rang. “Yeah? Okay, thanks.” He hung up. “Cutter just got in his car. He’s heading up the G.W. Parkway. Anybody want to guess where he’s going?”