Covert Warriors

by W. E. B Griffin

  “And Mrs. Salazar had a problem?” Secretary Cohen asked. “She didn’t want her husband interred in Arlington?”

  Castillo nodded.

  “She told me that General Naylor had telephoned her—and now I know where that order came from—and fed her a line about the great honor it was for Danny to be interred in Arlington, with the President himself attending.

  “When she told him thank you but no, thank you—that she wanted Danny buried in San Antonio, where she could visit and tend his grave—Naylor told her that the arrangements had been made, that they were sending a plane to Bragg to pick up her and the kids, and that the President would be embarrassed if she refused his kind offer to plant Danny in Arlington. So she went along.

  “But after she thought it over, she went to see General McNab. General McNab told her—out of school; he’s part of the family I mentioned—that he had been ordered by General Naylor not to talk to her about it, and also, incidentally, that he had been ordered to stay away from Arlington himself.”

  “And then that sonofabitch told her to call you, right?” Montvale said.

  “No, he didn’t,” Castillo said evenly. “And that was the last question you get to ask, Mr. Montvale. If you open your mouth again, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

  “You can’t do that!” Montvale flared.

  “It’s his apartment, Charles,” Secretary Cohen said. “He has the right to ask you to leave.”

  “And if you’re thinking about your Secret Service guys,” Castillo added, “a scrap between them and the guys outside would be very interesting. It would also make a hell of a story for Wolf News: ‘Vice President’s Protection Detail Gets Their Ass Kicked in Lobby of Mayflower.’ ”

  Cohen said: “All right, Charley. Enough. So what happened when Mrs. Salazar called you?”

  “Well, my first reaction to what she told me was to call my beloved Uncle Allan and tell him to butt the hell out of something that was none of his business. But then calm reason prevailed . . .”

  The Vice President snorted.

  “. . . I realized that as much as I would love to embarrass the sonofabitch . . .”

  “You’re speaking of the President, Charley,” Cohen said.

  “. . . who tried to turn me over to the SVR.”

  He met her eyes for a long moment, and then went on: “I realized there would be unacceptable collateral damage to Maria Salazar and their kids. They didn’t need microphones being shoved in their faces, which would have happened if I told her she didn’t have to go along with the . . . the President’s using Danny’s funeral to get himself reelected. So I told her it was indeed an honor to be buried in Arlington, as it’s for national heroes. And I told her I’d see her at the interment.

  “As I was telling her this, I remembered it’s also an honor to be buried in the national cemetery in San Antone. My father’s buried there. And then I wondered if anyone had thought to invite Colonel Ferris’s wife to the interment. I knew she would want to be there.

  “So I called her, and she hadn’t been invited.

  “So I spent the next hour or so on the telephone, setting things up. Jake Torine and Dick Miller, who are almost as pissed about this as I am, have been flying around the country picking up people who want—and have every right—to watch Danny get his military funeral. The guys—and several women—are scattered between here and the Willard.

  “Mrs. Ferris and their kids are also in the Willard, about to get in the limousine that will take them out to Arlington. After the interment, they’ll come here. We’re going to have a few drinks, and then, later, dinner.

  “So, Madam Secretary, as much as I really hate to tell you no to anything you ask of me, I’m going to be at Arlington when Danny’s buried.”

  “I’ll have you stopped at the gate to Arlington,” Montvale said.

  “Shut up, Charles,” Secretary Cohen said. She looked thoughtful for a moment, then said, “I think it’s possible that Mr. McCarthy may have considered the possibility that there are some people the President would rather not come to Arlington . . .”

  “That would be another great story for Wolf News and The Washington Times-Post,” Castillo said. “‘Brawl Mars Funeral at Gate to Arlington.’ Some enterprising journalist might even dig into what it was all about.”

  “How are you going to move your friends out there?” she asked.

  “We have four stretch limousines,” Castillo replied. “In case some other friends of Danny show up out there and need a ride back here.”

  “And you’re paying for all this?” she asked. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked that.”

  “The LCBF Corporation is paying for everything. We just turned a tidy profit selling an airplane we got for a bargain to the CIA for a lot of money.”

  She smiled at him.

  “May I ask you a question I probably shouldn’t ask?” Castillo asked.

  She nodded.

  “What ever happened to that Mexican police Black Hawk that was ‘found at sea’ and then unloaded on the dock at Norfolk? Dare I hope you showed it to the Mexican ambassador and asked him how he thought it got there?”

  She shook her head.

  “You know I couldn’t do anything like that, Charley,” she said.

  “So what happened to it?”

  “That’s not any of your business, and you know it.”

  “But you’re going to tell me anyway, right? Is it still there?”

  “Frank Lammelle wanted it for the CIA. I okayed it, but I don’t know whether he’s done anything about it. It’s probably still covered up on the dock or in a hangar somewhere.” She paused, then asked, “Charley, did you ever consider the consequences if you had been caught stealing that helicopter from the Mexican police?”

  “I didn’t steal it. Didn’t Frank tell you?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “That the Mexicans reported that the helicopter had crashed—total loss—in their unrelenting war against the drug trade?”

  “No,” she said simply. “Then . . . how was it ‘found at sea’?”

  “You mean how did I get it?”

  She nodded.

  “I bought it from an officer of the Policía Federal. I think he thought I was in the drug trade and was going to use it to move drugs around.” He paused. “That’s the question I hoped you were going to ask the Mexican ambassador. ‘I thought you told us this helicopter had been totally destroyed. How do you explain its miraculous resurrection?’ ”

  “I didn’t know anything about how you acquired that helicopter,” she said. “But even if I had—what I am doing is trying to build better relations with Mexico—I wouldn’t have confronted him with something like that.” She thought for a moment, then said, “Why in the world did you buy it?”

  “I needed it to go after the Congo-X and the Tupelov,” Castillo said matter-of-factly.

  “I thought you used Special Operations helicopters for that,” Montvale said.

  Castillo gave him a dirty look, then saw on Cohen’s face that she was worried he was going to throw Montvale out. He decided that would be nonproductive.

  “I did. But Jake Torine and I flew the Mexican bird onto the island.”

  “You and Torine? Why?” Cohen asked.

  “Because on an assault like that, the lead bird generally takes fire. My original idea, presuming that happened, was just to leave it on the island, which would then have had Hugo Chavez angrily asking the Mexicans how come one of their Policía Federal choppers was on his island.”

  “Devious,” Montvale said admiringly.

  “But then the Night Stalkers suppressed the antiaircraft, and the Mexican bird didn’t get hurt, so I decided to fly it back out to the Bataan, and told her captain to take it to Norfolk.”

  “Where I would ask the Mexican ambassador to the U.S., ‘I thought you reported this aircraft was totally destroyed’?” Cohen asked.

  Castillo looked at her, smiled, and nodded.

  “You�
��re right, Charles, he is devious. Maybe he should have been a diplomat, or a politician.”

  “Devious and dangerous,” Montvale said, smiling.

  What happened? Castillo thought. Have we kissed and made up?

  No. That smile is the smile of mutual admiration one shark gives to another.

  “Turning to the problem at hand,” Secretary Cohen said, “which is that Charley cannot be dissuaded from going out to Arlington with all his friends, how do we deal with that?”

  “Where are those limousines you mentioned, Charley?” Montvale asked.

  “In the hotel garage, waiting for me to call them. Which I am going to do in the next sixty seconds or so.”

  “I think you’re right, Natalie,” Montvale said. “McCarthy—and/ or Mulligan—probably has people at the gate of Arlington to keep out people who might embarrass the President. But I think they’ll just wave our convoy through.”

  “So we put Charley’s limousines in our convoy?” she asked. “That makes sense.”

  Montvale walked to the bedroom door. He opened it and then looked around until he found Tom McGuire.

  “Tom, may I see you for a moment?”

  After the secretary of State had disappeared into the lobby elevator, nothing much happened in the next ten minutes.

  Herb Kramer announced he was going to stretch his legs.

  “I’ll go with you,” Bob Dabney said.

  “Stay out of the bar,” Delores said. “You don’t want to go to the Ways and Means Committee smelling of alcohol.”

  “I’m going to go outside and have a puff on a cigarette,” Herb said. “You can’t smoke in here.”

  He pointed to a NO SMOKING sign to make his point, and then he and Bob walked down the lobby toward Connecticut Avenue.

  They had just about reached the revolving door when two things happened almost at once. A burly man in a business suit stepped in front of the door to keep them from using it, and another burly man came out of one of the elevators and quickly walked down the lobby toward Connecticut Avenue.

  He looked as if he were talking to his lapel.

  “I’m going down there,” Delores said to Kate. “Something’s going on!”

  The burly man who had been talking to his lapel went through the revolving door, but when Delores and Kate approached it, the burly man who had kept Herb and Bob from going outside stepped into their path.

  He flashed some sort of credentials in their face. “United States Secret Service. Would you ladies please stand over there for just a minute?”

  He pointed to where Herb and Bob were standing, looking through a window beside the revolving door onto the sidewalk. Kate and Delores moved beside them. After a moment, Kate tapped Herb on the shoulder, and he politely let her move in front of him so that she could get a better look.

  There was a taxi stand on Connecticut Avenue with four cabs lined up in it. A uniformed policeman gestured impatiently for them to move. When they had done so, a Yukon with red and blue lights flashing behind its grille pulled up, not into the space just vacated, but into the lane—the street—just outside it.

  Then another Yukon with flashing lights pulled into what had been the taxi lane, followed by two limousines, which also had flashing red and blue lights behind their grilles.

  What had been the taxi lane was now filled.

  Next came another limousine, this one a stretch limousine without flashing lights. It pulled into the space reserved for vehicles discharging or picking up passengers.

  A burly man spoke into his lapel, and then opened the rear door of the limousine. A moment later, a line of men came through the revolving door and quickly entered the limousine.

  “There’s ten of them,” Delores announced. “I counted them.”

  “I wonder who they are,” Bob mused aloud.

  The burly man closed the door and the stretch limousine pulled away from the curb.

  What happened next occurred so quickly that no one but Delores could keep up with it. Limousines and Yukons kept pulling up to the curb, and then backing out of it—or going forward onto Connecticut Avenue and then backing up as passengers—some of them women and some of them carrying submachine guns—got into the various vehicles, and then sometimes out of them.

  “You know what that looks like, Herb?” Bob said. “That automated package-distribution machine FedEx showed us in Kansas City. Except this is for people.”

  “You know, Bob, it does,” Herb said thoughtfully.

  He then gestured with his hands, miming FedEx’s automated system, which had apparently impressed him with its ability to move a lot of things in different directions at the same time.

  The Vice President came through one of the revolving doors and was hustled into one of the limousines with the flashing lights, and then the secretary of State came through the revolving door and was hustled into hers.

  There was a wail of sirens and then it was suddenly all over. All the vehicles were gone, and so were all the Secret Service people.

  “I will be damned,” Herb said. “That was something!”

  “And you didn’t want to stay here,” Delores said. “You said it was too expensive.”

  [THREE]

  The President’s Study

  The White House

  1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.

  Washington, D.C.

  1430 15 April 2007

  “When the Vice President’s car reached where we were standing, Mr. President, just outside the main gate,” Secret Service Special Agent Mark Douglas reported, “it stopped and the rear window went down. Vice President Montvale said, ‘The four limousines are with me.’ So I let them pass.”

  “Did you see who was in them?” President Clendennen asked.

  “Yes, Mr. President. To double-check, so to speak, I stopped each one and opened the door and had a look.”

  “And?” the President asked impatiently.

  “There were eight men, mostly Caucasian—mostly Latinos, I judged—and some Afro-Americans, in each of the first two limousines. The third one had Mr. Danton—the reporter from The Washington Times-Post—and Mr. Parker in it. Just them. The last limo was empty.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “The convoy moved directly to the grave site, to the road near it. And everybody got out.”

  “And?”

  “The Vice President and the secretary of State got out and walked to where you and the other dignitaries were standing—where you were waiting for the whatchamacallit, the caisson with the casket, to come down the road.”

  “And the people in the limousines?”

  “Mr. Danton followed the Vice President and Secretary Cohen.”

  “And Mr. Parker?” the President asked softly.

  “I didn’t see him there anymore. I guess he didn’t get out of the limousine. I did see him later—”

  “Get to later, later,” the President interrupted him. “What about the people in the limousines?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. President. Well, they got out of the limos and arranged themselves in a line where they could watch what was going to happen at the grave. While they were doing that, a woman with a couple of kids walked up to them. They all knew her, and gathered around her.”

  “And did you learn who this woman was?”

  “Yes, sir. When I told Supervisory Agent Mulligan about the limousines, he told me to find out who they were, I went there, and asked, and they said they were . . .”

  He interrupted himself to consult a notebook.

  “. . . from the American Legion. From China Post Number One of the American Legion. The guy who told me that showed me his American Legion card.”

  “And did you have a chance to . . . overhear . . . any of their conversations?”

  “No, sir. I mean, I stuck around to do that, but they weren’t speaking English. Chinese, probably, I guess. But they called the woman ‘Mrs. Ferris’ and I put that together. She’s the wife of the officer who was kidnapped in Mexico when t
he guy they buried got shot.”

  “They all spoke Chinese?”

  “I’m not sure if it was Chinese, Mr. President. But it certainly wasn’t English. A couple of them started speaking Spanish . . . Supervisory Agent Mulligan’s orders to me were to stick around, find out where they went . . . but one of them—a guy they called ‘Colonel’—pointed to me and they stopped speaking that and went back to Chinese or whatever it was.”

  “And when the interment was over, what happened?”

  “As soon as you gave Mrs. Salazar the flag, they got in the limousines and left. Mrs. Ferris and the kids went with them.”

  “They didn’t stay for my remarks?”

  “No, sir. They got in the limousines and left. Like Supervisory Agent Mulligan told me to do, I got in one of our Yukons and followed them.”

  “Where did they go?”

  “To the Mayflower Hotel, sir. That was where I saw Mr. Parker again. He and Mr. Danton were with them.”

  “And did you follow them into the hotel?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. President. They went to the tenth floor. After a while—I didn’t want them to know I was following them—I went up there. They were in room—I guess suite—1002. When a couple of waiters started rolling in carts of food, I got a look in. It was them, all right.”

  “Did you manage to learn who was registered in suite 1002?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. President, I got that from the waiters.”

  Special Agent Douglas consulted his notebook again.

  “Suite 1002 is registered to a German guy. His name is Karl von und zu Gossinger. The waiters told me he lives there. I mean, he keeps the suite all the time.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Like Supervisory Agent Mulligan told me to, I got him on the radio, and he said to come here. That you wanted to talk to me.”

  “And I did indeed. You did very well, Agent . . . what did you say your name was?”

  “Douglas, Mr. President. Special Agent Mark Douglas.”