By Order of the President

by W. E. B Griffin

  I would expect Miller to go with Castillo. They’re like brothers.

  But Joel and Tom, too?

  Jesus Christ! I just finished convincing the mayor that the National Security Agency’s satellites found the airplane in Suriname, that the CIA verified on the ground that it’s the airplane we’ve been looking for, and the president has ordered “all necessary steps be taken” to neutralize it, that that operation is already under way and the situation is under control and there’s no reason for further concern.

  And now I’m supposed to go back in there and tell him, “Sorry, a little problem has come up”?

  The first thing he’s going to do is order an evacuation of Center City and go on television to tell the people there is a genuine threat of an airliner crashing into the Liberty Bell.

  “Sir, are you still there?” Castillo asked.

  “Hang on a minute, Charley, while I think,” Secretary Hall said.

  He looked at Sergeant Betty Schneider again.

  “You believe this Philadelphia connection, Sergeant?”

  “Yes, sir. It seems to fit.”

  “I’m going back in the mayor’s office and tell him and Commissioner Kellogg that I have to go back to Washington immediately,” Hall said, carefully. “To the White House.”

  She nodded.

  “Tom, have them get the airplane ready,” Hall ordered.

  McGuire turned his back and spoke softly into a microphone in the lapel of his jacket.

  “Inasmuch as I still believe the situation is under control, that we will be able to neutralize the airplane, I am not going to tell the mayor of this development,” Hall said. He let that sink in a moment. “Sergeant, I would like an escort to the airport. I have to get there as quickly as possible.”

  “I’ll be happy to give you an escort, Mr. Secretary,” Betty Schneider said.

  “If on the way to the airport, Sergeant, I told you I thought it would be helpful if you went to Washington with me, what would your reaction be? Please take a moment to think over your answer.”

  Betty Schneider pursed her lips and exhaled audibly.

  “You understand, I think, what I’m asking, and why,” Hall added.

  She nodded.

  “Major Castillo does have a way of upsetting the apple cart, doesn’t he?” she asked, softly. “Just when you think things are under control, up he pops.”

  Joel Isaacson chuckled.

  “Mr. Secretary,” Sergeant Schneider said, “my orders from Chief Inspector Kramer are to provide you with any support you asked for. If you asked me to go with you to Washington, I’m sure I would go.”

  “Thank you,” Secretary Hall said.

  He put the secure telephone to his ear again.

  “Charley?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “You don’t know where in Costa Rica?”

  “No, sir. But according to Colonel Torine there are only two airports in the country that’ll take a 727 . . . hold one, sir.”

  “Now what?” Hall snapped, impatiently.

  “Sir, Mr. . . . my friend tells me that he is working on a positive location and should have it shortly. He said to tell you he’s doing the very best he can.”

  “Tell him thank you,” Hall said, and then went on: “Charley, I’m on my way to the White House. Stay close by the phone. I strongly suspect that our boss is going to want to talk to you.”

  “Sir, I was about to head for Costa Rica.”

  “And while you’re doing that, you’ll be out of touch?”

  “It’s about seven hundred miles from here. Figure an hour and a half in the air and thirty minutes to shut down the radio here and get to the airport. I’ll be out of touch for a little over two hours, sir.”

  “You really think you have to go there yourself? Can’t we get the CIA or Meade to find the airplane for us?”

  “I think it would be best if I went myself, sir.”

  Yeah, and so do I. When the CIA learns that based on flawed information from them, Gray Fox is about to violate the sacred territory of Suriname and neutralize—probably blow up—a perfectly legitimate airplane, Langley’s first reaction is going to be denial, and, way down the pike, taking action—maybe—to fix the problem.

  “Get back in touch as soon as you can.”

  “Yes, sir. Of course.”

  Secretary Hall put the handset back in its cradle.

  “Miller, I want you to come with us,” he ordered.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Hall started for the door to the mayor’s office.

  “I won’t be long,” he said.

  [TWO]

  Penthouse “B” The Grande Cozumel Beach and Golf Resort Cozumel, Mexico 1022 10 June 2005

  “Okay, Sherman, get General McNab again,” Castillo ordered.

  Five seconds later, Sherman reported, “The link is down, Major.”

  “Oh, shit!” Castillo said. “Get Bragg and see if they know why.”

  “Already working on it, sir,” Sherman said, and almost immediately, “I’m getting some green LEDs on General McNab, Major . . . Okay, sir, we’re all up.”

  “General McNab, please,” Castillo said into the headset.

  “And now what, Major Castillo?” McNab himself answered.

  “General, we have confirmation of what I told you before. It’s now almost certain that the stolen airplane has been repainted with the color scheme of Costa Rican Air Transport, which regularly flies into Philadelphia with flowers from Costa Rica, and they intend to . . .”

  “You did say,” McNab interrupted, “did you not, Major, ‘flies into Philadelphia with flowers from Costa Rica’?”

  “Yes, sir, that’s what I said. Flowers grown in Costa Rica and sold in supermarkets in the States. They go through customs in Tampa . . .”

  “How convenient for General Naylor and CentCom. They can just hop in a couple of Humvees, drive over to Tampa International, and neutralize it there.”

  “Please, sir, let me finish.”

  “Why not?”

  “Where they can top off the tanks and then file a flight plan—a domestic flight plan—to Philadelphia.”

  “And how are they going to explain to the customs people in Tampa why they are carrying so much fuel in U.S. Army fuel bladders?”

  “I don’t know, sir,” Castillo confessed.

  “What was Secretary Hall’s reaction to this fascinating scenario? You did tell him?”

  “Yes, sir. He told me he’s on his way to Washington. To the White House.”

  “And?”

  “That’s all, sir.”

  “You probably won’t have a security clearance much longer so I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but, for auld lang syne, with warm memories of happier times, I will. I have received further orders from General Naylor. I am immediately to proceed to a field near Kwakoegron, Suriname, there to hold myself in readiness to neutralize an Air Suriname 727 when ordered to do so. In compliance with these orders, I am presently, I would estimate, about forty or fifty miles south of Hurlburt Field, over the Gulf of Mexico.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Keep in touch, Charley. McNab out.”

  “It would appear, Charley,” Alex Pevsner said as Castillo laid the headset on the table, “that no one seems willing to call off the plan to neutralize the wrong airplane in Suriname. ”

  “Once something like that is started, it’s hard to call it off,” Castillo said. “The only one who can overrule General Naylor is the secretary of defense. He’s not going to take what I think over the CIA . . .”

  “Especially since the source of your information is an infamous Russian criminal?” Pevsner asked.

  “Secretary Hall doesn’t feel that way,” Castillo said. “You heard what he said. And he’s going to see the president ..."

  “And you think the president, looking at NSA photographs of an Air Suriname 727 on the field at Zandery, and with confirmation from a CIA man on the ground, is liable to decide that—how did
that general describe you earlier? —‘an Army officer assigned to Special Operations at Central Command’—is right and they’re wrong? Especially since he knows I’m the source of your information?”

  “When I get on the radio and say, ‘I’m in Zippity Do Dah, Costa Rica’—or wherever the hell it is—‘looking at the airplane,’ they’re going to have to pay attention.” He touched Sergeant Sherman’s shoulder. “Pack it up, Sergeant. We’re going to Costa Rica.”

  “Hold it a minute, Castillo,” Colonel Torine said. “Before you shut down the link. What if I got on there to General McFadden and tell him I think—I’m sure—you’re right?” He paused, and added, “We go back a long way.”

  Castillo met his eyes.

  “The most probable thing that would happen if we contacted anybody at MacDill would be that you would be ordered to place me under arrest and bring me to MacDill. I don’t want to put you in that spot. But thank you, sir.” He paused, and added, “Colonel, I think the best thing for you to do is escape from this drunk-out-of-his-mind-with-authority -he-doesn’t-have lunatic, go to the airport, and hop on a commercial flight to Tampa.”

  “Well, you’re right about authority you don’t have, Castillo. You’re a major, as General McNab pointed out. You can’t give a colonel orders,” Colonel Torine said. “And General McNab said two other things. He ordered me to go with you, saying you needed a 727 expert.”

  “As I recall, sir, you volunteered,” Castillo said.

  “That was my last order, which I intend to obey,” Torine said. “And the second thing General McNab said that struck me as appropriate was, ‘In for a penny, in for a pound.’ ” He met Castillo’s eyes for a moment, then turned to Sergeant Sherman. “Is there any way I can help you tear that thing down, Sergeant?”

  “I’ve got it pretty much under control, sir,” Sherman said. “Major, do you want me to sign out of the net?”

  “Just turn it off, Sergeant,” Castillo said. “Before it occurs to General Naylor to get on there and order us all to the States.”

  Sergeant Sherman leaned slightly forward, pulled the power cord from the wall, and reported, “The link is down, sir.”

  Aleksandr Pevsner picked up the hotel telephone.

  “Have the vehicles prepared to go immediately to the airport, ” he ordered, in Spanish. “We will be in the garage immediately. ”

  “Thank you,” Castillo said. “Thank you for everything, Alex.”

  “On the contrary, my friend,” Pevsner said, “it is I who am grateful to you. You have made every effort to live up to your side of our arrangement. It’s not your fault that emperors, czars, and high-ranking generals have the tendency to want to kill the messenger bearing news they don’t want to hear.”

  “And somewhere down the road, Charley,” Howard Kennedy said, “no matter what happens, someone—possibly even one of my former colleagues—is going to say, ‘That’s what Pevsner was trying to tell us.’ And it’s even possible this will be said with the right people listening.”

  He offered his hand and Charley shook it, and then shook hands with Pevsner, and, as he did, thought it would be a long time before he saw Pevsner again. If he ever saw either of them again.

  He was surprised when Pevsner went to the basement garage with them and even more surprised when Pevsner got behind the wheel of one of the Yukons, obviously intending to drive to the airport.

  As they were driving down the beach road to the airport, Pevsner turned to Howard Kennedy, who was riding in the second seat beside Fernando, and ordered, “Write down the San José numbers—all three of them—and give them to Charley, Howard.”

  “Yes, sir,” Kennedy said.

  “What San José numbers?” Castillo asked.

  “There are three,” Pevsner said. “I really hope you don’t have occasion to use any of them. The one with the 533 pre fix almost always knows how to get in touch with me quickly. The other two are those who will have what information I can come up with about where in Costa Rica you will find the plane. I hope to get that information to you as an in-flight advisory, but, if that doesn’t work, call either of the other two numbers, ask for yourself . . .”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Ask for Charley Castillo. Better yet, ask for Karl Gossinger . . . you getting this, Howard?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Ask for Karl Gossinger and they’ll give you what information they have. If I’m unsuccessful, they will not know who Herr Gossinger is and say so.”

  “Thank you,” Castillo said.

  “Please don’t call any of them unless it proves necessary. And if the first two have no information for you, that means I haven’t been able to do as much as I would really like to have done,” Pevsner said. “In other words, there would be no point in your trying to call me.”

  “I understand,” Charley said.

  Castillo felt a hand on his shoulder and turned his head. Howard Kennedy was extending a sheet of notebook paper to him. He took it.

  “Try not to lose that, Charley,” Kennedy said. “And when the time passes and you know you’re not going to use any of them, why don’t you burn that? I’d really hate to have those numbers fall into the wrong hands.”

  “You think your former associates would be interested in them, do you?”

  “Oh, would they ever,” Kennedy said.

  Ten minutes later, Aleksandr Pevsner and Howard Kennedy stood by the hood of one of the white Yukons and watched as the Learjet took off.

  [THREE]

  Aboard USAF C-17 036788 25.418 degrees North Latitude 86.136 degrees West Longitude Above the Gulf of Mexico 1115 10 June 2005

  “Miami Center, Air Force Sixty-Seven-Eighty-Eight,” Major Ellwood C. Tanner, USAF, said into his microphone.

  “Go ahead, Eighty-Eight.”

  “Reporting my position. I’m at flight level three-three-zero, estimating six hundred knots, on a course of one-two- five true.”

  “I have you on radar, Eighty-Eight. Be advised, any eastward deviation from your present course may put you in Cuban airspace.”

  “Acknowledge advisory. Air Force Eighty-Eight clear,” Major Tanner said and made a note of the conversation on a knee notepad.

  “Got a chart I can look at, Major?” a voice asked, and Tanner turned to see Lieutenant General Bruce J. McNab standing in the cockpit between the pilot and copilot positions.

  “Yes, sir, of course,” Tanner said. “We’re a hundred miles off the Florida coast, about even with Miami.”

  “I saw that,” McNab said, gesturing in the vague direction of a cathode-ray tube that showed the C-17’s position and then holding his hand out for the chart.

  Tanner handed it to him and McNab studied it for a moment, then held it out to Tanner.

  “See where I’m pointing?” McNab asked.

  Tanner looked.

  “Yes, sir. Costa Rica.”

  “Specifically, Juan Santamaria International Airport in Costa Rica,” General McNab said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now, what you are going to do, Major, as soon as you think Cuban radar has lost interest in us, is get on the horn and make an announcement that to avoid turbulence you would like to change your course to about one-seventy-two degrees.”

  “Which will put us on a course to Juan Santamaria, sir?”

  “If there are any questions about why you’re changing course, I don’t want Juan Santamaria to enter the conversation, understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “If I told you that we’re probably going to experience mechanical problems when Juan Santamaria is the closest alternate, then you would think I was prescient, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes, sir, I guess I would.”

  “Good. It is valuable for junior officers to believe their seniors have mysterious abilities and know things they don’t.”

  Major Tanner smiled at Lieutenant General McNab. This was not the first Gray Fox mission he had flown for Special Operations, but it was the first on
e he’d flown on which McNab was being carried. Knowing this, Colonel Jake Torine had briefed Major Tanner and two other pilots on what they might expect from the legendary Special Forces officer. The two cogent points of the briefing were to expect the unexpected and don’t ask any questions or express an opinion unless asked to do so.

  Major Tanner elected to violate one of the teachings of the briefing.

  “Sir, is that where the 727 we missed in Chad is?” McNab looked at him coldly.

  “There is an old saying in the Army, Major, that lieutenants should not marry, captains may marry, and majors should be very careful about being prescient. It probably has an application for the Air Force.”

  “Yes, sir,” Tanner said. “We usually stop getting pinged by Cuban radar about here.” He pointed at the chart. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if we started to encounter some upper-level turbulence a few miles south of that point.”

  “You’ve been warned about premature prescience, Major, ” McNab said and smiled at him.

  General McNab then climbed down from the cockpit and went into the cargo bay. Despite the size of the enormous aircraft, it was crowded. Six Little Birds, their rotors folded, took up much of the space. There were four five-hundred-gallon fuel bladders lashed to the floor. There were crates of ammunition and rockets and rations and perhaps thirty plastic coolers that bore the bright red legend:

  BASE EXCHANGE

  HURLBURT FIELD

  HOME OF AIR FORCE SPECIAL OPERATIONS

  Scattered throughout the cargo bay, sitting on whatever they could find to sit on except the uncomfortable aluminum-pipe-and-nylon-sheeting standard seats, were thirty Gray Fox special operators—six officers, twelve senior enlisted men, and the twelve Little Bird pilots. One of the pilots was a captain, one a lieutenant, and the others chief warrant officers, two of whom were CWO-5s whose pay was only slightly less than that of a lieutenant colonel. All the pilots, in addition to being carefully selected and highly trained Army aviators with a minimum of a thousand hours in the air as pilot in command, were also fully trained and qualified as Special Forces soldiers. Their mission, once they had delivered the Gray Fox team to the ground, was to switch roles from helicopter pilots to what everybody called “shooters.”