“And what does Lammelle think?”
“Sir, that’s a development I don’t quite understand.”
“What development don’t you understand?”
“Sir, the GPS transmitter in Lammelle’s shoe places him aboard the Queen of the Caribbean, a cruise ship, which is now in the Caribbean bound for Málaga. There has been nothing from him.”
“And the GPS transmitter in Castillo’s laptop places him aboard a river steamer on the Danube between Budapest and Vienna, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And now you’re telling me General Naylor thinks he’s found Castillo in Mexico?”
“I am making that inference, sir. I can’t imagine why else General Naylor has—”
“Well,” the President interrupted, “one possibility is that Lammelle has suddenly decided he needs a vacation, and taking a cruise is the way to do that. But, sitting around here, Jack, with nothing to occupy my mind, I have been thinking of all the bad spy movies I’ve seen over the years to see if anything in them might be useful.”
“Sir?”
“For example, do you think it’s possible that somebody shot Lammelle with that whiz-bang dart gun of his and then loaded him onto the cruise ship?”
“Why would anyone want to do that, sir? You’re suggesting that Castillo—”
“I’m suggesting General Naylor might have done it. Or more likely, now that I think about it, General McNab.”
“Why would they want to do that, sir?”
“To keep him from fucking up what they’re doing to put Castillo and the traitors in the bag.”
“I don’t think that’s likely, Mr. President.”
“Tell me about Castillo on the river steamer. You sent people over there, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And what have they found out?”
“The ship is called Stadt Wien,” Powell said. “It plies the Danube back and forth between Budapest and Vienna.”
“I already know that. The question is, is Castillo—and maybe the Russians—on it or not?”
“We’ve learned that Castillo never made a reservation on it.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“We don’t know, Mr. President.”
“Did it occur to your people to go aboard the damned ship and look for him?”
“They couldn’t get a ticket, Mr. President. And without a ticket you can’t get on the Stadt Wien. Apparently, sir, you have to make reservations at least two weeks in advance.” Powell hesitated and then went on: “What the Stadt Wien is, Mr. President, is somewhere the Viennese and the Budapesters take their romantic interests for an overnight trip. Not always their wives, if you take my meaning. It’s very popular.”
“Jesus Christ, Jack! Castillo hasn’t been over there two weeks. How the hell could he have made a reservation on this Hungarian Love Boat?”
“Mr. President, all I can tell you is that’s where Casey’s GPS locator shows he is.”
“Presumably fucking the woman traitor as they cruise up and down the Danube? Jack, listen closely: I don’t think Castillo is anywhere near Europe. I think Naylor and McNab have found him in Mexico. And presuming neither the CIA nor Ambassador Stupid get involved and fuck things up for them—the more I think about it, Naylor or McNab did shoot Lammelle with that dart gun and load him on that cruise ship to get rid of him—”
President Clendennen interrupted himself, took a deep breath, and then went on: “Jack, what I want you to do is get in touch with all your Clandestine Service officers who are running around chasing their tails looking for Castillo and the Russians and get them back to Langley. And then lock them in. Naylor is going to bag Castillo if you don’t get in the way. You understand me?”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“The next time you walk in that door, Jack, I want you to tell me that you’ve just learned from General Naylor that he’s dealt with the problem. And I don’t want to see you until you can do that.”
[THREE]
Cozumel International Airport
Isla Cozumel
Quintana Roo, Mexico
1010 12 February 2007
Dick Miller and Dick Sparkman had flown the Policía Federal Preventiva UH-60 from Drug Cartel International to Cozumel. They had carried with them all but two of the ex-Spetsnaz special operators and all the weapons and other equipment that would be needed.
Both pilots had been more than a little pissed—and vocally so—with their assigned tasks in the operation. Miller had wanted to fly with Castillo in the UH-60 in the assault, and Sparkman had simply presumed until the last minute that he would be Jake Torine’s co-pilot when the Tu-934A was flown out of La Orchila.
Uncle Remus Leverette had similarly taken for granted that he would be in on the assault and was more than displeased with his assigned role: He was now to “hold the fort” at Laguna el Guaje. It was more than a figure of speech. There was a small but real chance that some members of the drug cartel—either not having heard, or not caring that Drug Cartel International was closed—would drop in.
If this should happen, Uncle Remus would politely suggest to them that they come back another day—say, in a week—and if that didn’t work, he would take the appropriate measures. The drug runners would, if possible, be disarmed, placed in plastic handcuffs, and confined.
If the disarmament option didn’t work, they would be eliminated.
To assist him in this task, in addition to the two ex-Spetsnaz operators, Uncle Remus had Mr. Vic D’Allessando, former Gunnery Sergeant Lester Bradley, and Lieutenant “Peg-Leg” Lorimer (Retired). Former Special Forces Sergeant Aloysius F. Casey and Generals Naylor and McNab were to be the reserve force.
General McNab had voiced no objection to this, but everyone knew if there was shooting, McNab would be in the middle of it.
Lieutenant Colonel (Designate) Naylor—having been told that he would be useless on the actual assault due to the fact that he (a) was a tank driver, (b) had no Special Operations training, and (c) spoke no Russian—first pleaded to be taken along. Then, when his pleas fell on deaf ears, he said very unkind things to Colonel Castillo.
Colonel Castillo forgave the outburst, kissed him on the forehead, and charged him with sitting—literally, if that became necessary—on the deputy director of the CIA, Mr. Lammelle.
All of those remaining at Drug Cartel International had come to see—if very reluctantly—that there was no valid argument against Castillo’s logic in making the assignments. The more the operation was polished, the more it became apparent how much success would depend upon Dmitri Berezovsky’s ability to dazzle—or at least substantially confuse—General Sirinov’s Spetsnaz until they had a pistol up the general’s nose.
Castillo didn’t plan to open his mouth, but if he had to, his Russian was so fluent that people thought he came from Saint Petersburg. None of those being left to hold the fort spoke the language so well. And although Uncle Remus’s Russian was nearly as good as Castillo’s, there were very few Russians as black as God had made Uncle Remus.
Colonel Jake Torine’s Russian was very limited, but he could read the lettering they would find on the instrument panel of the Tu-934A. Navigation of the airplane would be by the Casey GPS system installed on their laptops.
Max, as he was wont to do, suspected his master intended to leave him behind. So, when Castillo, Sweaty, Dmitri, and Roscoe J. Danton got into the Cessna Mustang for the flight to Cozumel, they found Max already lying in the aisle looking at Castillo with melancholy eyes that melted his master’s heart.
What the hell! When we leave Cozumel, I’ll chain him to the seat. Sparkman will be flying this back. He and Sweaty can deal with him; he likes them.
That did not come to pass.
When the Policía Federal Preventiva UH-60 had been refueled at Cozumel, and after Castillo had spent an hour explaining the cockpit specifically and the aircraft generally to Colonel Torine, he had climbed out to see how the loading of th
e Spetsnaz was going.
He found that everybody had changed into their combat uniforms, which were in fact commercially available summer-weight camouflage-pattern hunting jackets and trousers. They and the khaki trousers/yellow polo shirts everyone wore at Laguna el Guaje had been purchased at three Walmarts in Mexico City, Distrito Federal, by Peg-Leg Lorimer, who had charged them to his LCBF Corporation American Express card.
Peg-Leg reported, on his return from his shopping trip, that his purchases had just about wiped out the stocks in all three Walmart stores.
“When that information is sent by the Walmart computers to Walmart headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas,” Peg-Leg said, “the company will rush to replace the deleted stocks. This in turn will result in a gross overstock of khaki trousers, yellow polo shirts, and summer-weight camouflage-pattern hunting clothes in Mexico City. Walmart executives will be baffled.
“But I strongly suspect that Ol’ Jack Walton,” Peg-Leg concluded, “will be smiling down at us from that Great Watering Hole in the Sky, pleased that we outfitted this operation from his daddy’s store.”
John Walton—son of the founder of Walmart, and at his death the eleventh-richest man in the world—had earlier in his life been awarded the nation’s third highest award for valor, the Silver Star, while a Special Forces sergeant in Vietnam.
Among those donning their Walmart combat uniforms was former Lieutenant Colonel Svetlana Alekseeva of the SVR, who was rolling up the sleeves of hers when Castillo came around the nose of the Black Hawk. Max was lying on the floor of the Black Hawk’s cabin, watching with his head between his legs.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Castillo demanded.
“Carlos, I don’t like it when you use that tone to me.”
“You and Max are going back to the lake on the Mustang!”
She pointed at the runway. Castillo looked. The Mustang was beginning its takeoff roll.
“Well, Svet, you got that past me. But now you can wait here. You’re not going.”
“Of course I’m going. Wherever did you get this idea I wasn’t?”
“Honey, for Christ’s sake, we don’t know what’s going to happen at La Orchila. People are likely to get hurt.”
“Did you ever think, Generalissimo Carlitos,” she snapped, “you poor man’s von Clausewitz, what would happen if one of Sirinov’s Spetsnaz takes Dmitri out the moment we land? When you speak Russian, you sound like a Saint Petersburg poet.” She wet her finger and ran it over her eyebrow, the gesture’s meaning unmistakable. “You’d make the Spetsnaz giggle. I was a podpolkovnik of the SVR and I sound like one. I know how to deal with Spetsnaz and I’m going!”
After a moment’s reflection, Castillo asked, “And Max? You want to take him too, I suppose, Podpolkovnik Alekseeva?”
“Absolutely! You get Max to show his teeth to Yakov Sirinov the way you did to Lammelle and he’ll wet his pants. I may not even have to hurt him.”
Castillo considered that a moment, and then asked, “Have you got a weapon?”
“Of course I’ve got a weapon,” she snapped, still angry. “I’ve always got a weapon. You should know that. You’ve been looking up my dress from the day we met.”
Castillo had an immediate, very clear mental image of that day.
Svetlana’s skirt had risen high as she nimbly jumped from the tracks of Vienna’s Sudbahnhof onto the platform, revealing that she was wearing red lace underpants with a small pistol—he later learned it was a Colt 1908 Pocket Model .32 ACP—holstered on her inner thigh just under them.
Roscoe J. Danton walked up.
“Not to worry, Charley,” he said. “I understand Colonel Alekseeva was speaking off the record.”
“Roscoe, sometimes he makes me very, very angry,” Sweaty said.
Jake Torine walked up.
“I didn’t hear that either,” Torine said, and then went on: “It’s about time for us to get going, Charley.”
[FOUR]
The USS Bataan (LHD 5)
North Latitude 14.89, West Longitude 77.86
The Caribbean Sea
1255 12 February 2007
Almost as soon as he spotted the Bataan, Castillo saw that four black 160th SOAR UH-60M helicopters were already sitting on her deck, their rotors folded.
“I think I should tell you, First Officer, that the Bataan has a very impressive array of weaponry—including four forty-millimeter Gatling guns—with which to discourage strange and possibly hostile aircraft from approaching.”
Torine gave him the finger and activated his microphone.
“Bataan, this is Keystone Kop.”
“Keystone Kop, Bataan, be advised we have you in sight. Go ahead.”
Castillo said, “What he meant to say, First Officer, was ‘gun-sights.’”
“Well, Bataan,” Torine spoke into the microphone, “if you have us in sight, then I guess I don’t have to tell you I estimate we are at one thousand feet about two klicks off your stern. Request permission to land.”
“Keystone Kop, are you carrier-qualified?”
Torine looked at Castillo.
“Lie, Jake. We don’t have enough fuel to go back to Cozumel.”
“Affirmative, we are carrier-qualified.”
“Keystone Kop, be advised that Bataan is headed into the wind. The wind down the deck is at twenty knots. Acknowledge.”
“Bataan, Keystone Kop understands wind down the deck is at twenty, and Bataan is headed into the wind.”
“Keystone Kop, you are cleared to land. Be advised a rescue helicopter is to port.”
“I think he knows we were lying,” Torine said. “You really have never done this before?”
“Only as a passenger,” Castillo said. “And what I think the pilot told me that day was that if the wind across the deck is at, say, twenty knots, and you’re indicating twenty knots, that means you’re in a hover over the deck, which, relatively speaking, has an air speed of zero.”
As Castillo very carefully lowered the Black Hawk onto the deck—I am really in a ground effect hover, even if I’m indicating that I’m making twenty knots. How can that be?—he found it easier to look at the “ground,” which was to say the deck, of the USS Bataan out the left window of the cockpit rather than the deck forward of the helo. That way he could tell, relatively speaking, if the Bataan ’s island was moving—in which case he was in trouble—or not.
And when he did, he saw that he knew several of the 160th’s Night Stalker pilots. They were standing, arms folded, waiting for him to crash, on the deck next to the superstructure that was the island.
One of them—a tall, graying, hawk-featured man wearing, like the others, the black flight suits favored by the 160th—he knew well. And he knew that hanging from the zipper of Arthur Kingsolving’s black flight suit was the “subdued” insignia of his rank. Castillo couldn’t see it, but knew it was the black eagle of a full colonel.
The Black Hawk touched down.
“You can exhale now, Jake,” Castillo said as he reached for the rotor brake control. “We’re on the ground. More or less.”
“Art Kingsolving’s here.”
“I noticed. I hope you are going to tell me you outrank him.”
“No, I don’t. But your question is moot. Active duty officers always outrank retired old farts.”
“I don’t know about you, but I think of myself as a prematurely retired young fart,” Castillo said.
“And there is a welcoming delegation,” Torine said.
“Why don’t you go deal with them while I finish shutting this thing down?”
The Navy delegation consisted of the officer of the deck, a chief petty officer, and two petty officers, one of them the master-at-arms and the other a medic.
They quite naturally had decided that the senior person aboard the helicopter with Mexican police markings would be riding with his staff in the passenger compartment, and lined up accordingly.
The first person—more accurately, the
first living thing—to exit the helicopter was an enormous black dog, closely followed by a redheaded woman in battle dress who was screaming angrily at the dog in what sounded like Russian. Close on her heels came a man holding a camera who began to snap pictures of the Navy delegation, the helicopters on the deck, and the dog, who was now wetting down the front right wheel of the helicopter.
The co-pilot’s door opened and, for a moment, decorum returned as Colonel Jake Torine, USAF (Retired), came out, popped to rigid attention, faced aft, and crisply saluted the national ensign.
Then he did a crisp left-face movement, raised his hand to his temple, and holding the salute, politely announced, “I request permission to come aboard, sir, in compliance with orders.”
“Very well,” the officer of the deck said, returning the salute. Then he said, “Sir, the captain’s compliments. The captain requests the senior officer and such members of his staff as he may wish attend him ...”
At that point, protocol broke down.
The Army pilots who had been standing next to the island came trotting across the deck, including the one that the officer of the deck knew to be a full colonel.
“I’ll be a sonofabitch if Charley didn’t steal another one,” one of the Night Stalkers shouted.
“This time from the Mexican cops,” another of them clarified.
“Zip your lips,” Colonel Kingsolving snapped. He then turned to the officer of the deck. “Mister, I need a word with Colonel Castillo before he attends the captain on the bridge.”
“Colonel, when the captain requests—”
“This time he’s just going to have to wait,” Kingsolving said, and then turned to Castillo, who, having exited the helicopter, was now exchanging hugs, pats on the back, and vulgar comments with the pilots.
“Colonel Castillo,” Colonel Kingsolving called sternly. “I need a word with you right now.”
Castillo freed himself, marched up to Kingsolving, came to attention, and saluted.
The Outlaws Page 48
