Black Ops

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Yes, sir. I am.”

  “Well, Colonel, unless the course of instruction at our alma mater has dramatically changed since you and I last marched across our beloved plain above the Hudson, they are still teaching that he who is senior is in command.”

  No shit, Hamilton!

  And no one is more senior than the commander in chief.

  And the President is my senior—but I damn well can’t say that.

  I’ve got to somehow beat this sonofabitch at his own game . . . but how?

  “Sir, with respect, I don’t think that applies when one of the officers is of the combat arms and the other in the medical corps. In that situation, the senior combat arms officer is in command.”

  “Good God, Castillo! You didn’t think I was going to go into the Congo wearing a Red Cross and caduceus—caduci? Is that the plural? I never seem to remember—and claiming the protection of the Geneva and other applicable conventions, did you? I’m not out of my mind. I’m going in armed as heavily as I can arrange. Mr. D’Allessando is taking me out and teaching me to fire the Mini Uzi as soon as we finish this conversation.”

  Berezovsky saw the look on Castillo’s face.

  He first laid a gentle hand on Castillo’s wrist, and when Castillo looked at him, Berezovsky signaled Slow down, calm down, take it easy all with one motion of his hand and a gentle, understanding smile.

  “That’s very good of Mr. D’Allessando, sir.”

  D’Allessando’s voice, his tone very serious, came over the speaker: “I always try to be helpful, Colonel Castillo. You know that.”

  Hamilton went on: “So let’s clear the air between us, Castillo. My view of our relationship is this: When my people . . .”

  You can stick “your people” up your ass, Hamilton!

  I’ve had enough of your secret “protectors”!

  “. . . authorized my participation in this operation, it was understood between us that General McNab was in command. Now that the other calls upon his time have taken him out of the picture, command thus falls to the next senior officer, which happens to be me. I will, of course, defer to your judgment in those areas of your expertise and seek your counsel. Now, Colonel, do you have any trouble with that?”

  Berezovsky touched Castillo’s wrist again and shook his head.

  “No, sir, I do not.”

  Berezovsky gave Charley a thumbs-up.

  Charley looked at Svetlana. He couldn’t tell if she felt sorry for him or thought what was going on was just short of hilarious.

  “Fine, Colonel Castillo. On reflection, I’m glad this came up when it did, rather than later. Now, as to what has to be done.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Mr. DeWitt and I have to go to Washington. My people have arranged for visas for us—it usually takes weeks, I was told—for not only Tanzania but for Rwanda and Burundi, and—this should please you, Castillo—for the Democratic Republic of the Congo as well. But they cannot get around the requirement that the passport must be presented by the holder—or is that the holdee?—personally.

  “Then I have to go to Fort Dietrich to pick up my equipment.”

  “Your equipment, sir?”

  “Yes. It will be taken, Mr. D’Allessando assures me, to Africa aboard your airplane with the ‘shooters.’ I had never heard that term before, but, especially after what I saw at Camp Mackall just now, I’m rather assured by what it connotes.”

  “Sir, what sort of equipment are we talking about?”

  “My testing equipment. There are three rather large soft-sided suitcases. Getting them through customs would have posed a major problem, but your shooter’s airplane has solved that. Getting them from Fort Dietrich here is the instant problem.”

  “Sir, I can—”

  “Mr. D’Allessando suggests that Mr. DeWitt and I leave Bragg and fly to Washington today. There is a Delta flight at 1620 to Washington, via Atlanta.”

  Castillo thought quickly, then said, “As usual, Colonel, Mr. D’Allessando knows what should be done. And I’ll have Major Miller—you remember him, sir?”

  “Yes. The officer with the injured knee.”

  “I’ll have Major Miller meet your plane, sir.”

  “That’s very kind of you, Colonel, but I can make it from Reagan to my home without assistance, and I’ll be happy to have Mr. DeWitt’s company. It’ll give us a chance to get to know one another, so to speak, before our trip.”

  “Sir, with respect, this is my area of expertise.”

  Hamilton was silent a moment, and apparently remembered his offer to listen to suggestions. “Go on, Colonel.”

  “I will have Major Miller meet you, sir. We have a house in Alexandria—for that matter, we keep a suite at the Mayflower Hotel—where I’m sure you would be comfortable. It’s central—”

  “I know where it is, Colonel,” Hamilton interrupted. “In some circles, it’s known as the Motel Monica Lewinsky.”

  “Yes, sir, I’d heard that. Major Miller can take you to the various embassies, and then out to Fort Dietrich for your equipment.”

  “How are we going to get that back here to Fort Bragg, Castillo? Have you given that any thought?”

  “If you’ll bear with me a moment, sir?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Major Miller will then take the equipment to Baltimore, where a plane will be waiting to bring you and Mr. DeWitt—and, of course, your equipment—back to Bragg.”

  “Is there some reason that I don’t know why Mr. DeWitt and I should come back to Fort Bragg?”

  Shit.

  “No, sir. I didn’t think that through.”

  “Obviously.” He paused dramatically. “Now, once we have our visas, we can be on our way.”

  “Yes, sir. Major Miller will also arrange your transportation to Africa.”

  “That would be helpful.”

  “Mr. D’Allessando will inform Miller of your ETA at Reagan,” Castillo said.

  There was a long pause as both men thought. Finally, Colonel Hamilton broke it: “That would seem to be it, wouldn’t you say, Castillo?”

  “I can’t think of anything else, sir.”

  “We’ll be in touch, of course.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How does one hang this thing up, Mr. D’Allessando?”

  [SIX]

  0940 8 January 2006

  “I know what you’re thinking, Carlos,” Dmitri Berezovsky said after Castillo had set things up with Miller. “But that could have gone wrong and it didn’t.”

  “I thought you done good, Charley,” Davidson said, then added admiringly: “He is one starchy sonofabitch, ain’t he?”

  “Starch melts in hot water. Like in a cannibal’s pot?”

  Berezovsky chuckled but said: “I have the feeling the colonel knows how to handle the cannibals.”

  Castillo looked at him and shook his head. “Well, now that your boundless optimism has removed that weight from my shoulders, we can turn to Bradley’s shopping list.” He looked at him. “What did you come up with, Les?”

  “Sir, while I know what we should have in terms of equipment capability, I’m afraid I haven’t been able to convert that into what we need in terms of specific equipment that might—or might not—be available in an Office Depot or Radio Shack store.”

  “Which, off the top of my head, Les, means that you don’t get to go to bed until after you’ve gone shopping. Sorry about that. Let me see what you have.”

  Bradley handed him a sheet of paper. Castillo looked at it a moment, then tossed it onto the table.

  “I don’t know what I’m looking at, and it just occurred to me—some of you may have noticed that I am not functioning too well in the I’m-on-top-of-everything department—that when you don’t know something it usually helps to ask somebody who does.”

  He leaned forward and touched a button on the AFC handset.

  “C. G. Castillo. Dr. Casey. Encryption Level One.”

  “One moment, please, Colonel,” a
sultry, electronically generated voice replied. “I will attempt to connect you.”

  The voice of Aloysius Francis Casey, Ph.D.—in an interesting mixture of the accents of a Boston Irish “Southie” and a Southwesterner—came over the speaker ten seconds later.

  “Hey, Charley. What the hell are you doing twenty-two-point-five miles outside of Midland, Texas?”

  How the hell does he know that?

  “Good morning, Dr. Casey.”

  “You call me that one more time, and I’ll not only hang up but will make the handset blow up in your ear.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You’re forgiven. I know you can’t handle the booze. I can’t detonate the handset—but that’s a thought; I may work on that—but that GPS function works all right, doesn’t it? Providing you are twenty-two-point-five miles from Midland, Texas.”

  “That’s where I am.”

  “I can whittle down that tenth-of-a-mile indicator some—probably to within a couple of meters—when I have more time to fiddle with it. What can I do for you, Charley?”

  “I’m about to send Lester shopping in Radio Shack or someplace—”

  “The Boy Jarhead is there? Semper Fi, Les!”

  “Good morning, Dr. Casey,” Bradley said.

  “You can call me that. You Gyrenes should always show a little respect for people like me.”

  Bradley grinned at the term Marines normally took some offense at. “Yes, sir.”

  “Charley, you’re sending Les shopping for what?”

  “We need storage devices to receive a lot of data from a long way away from one AFC to another—maybe multiple more AFCs. So they’ll have to be high speed.”

  “And portable? Self-powered and/or uninterruptible battery powered for at least a couple of hours?”

  “All of the above.”

  “And what else?”

  “High-speed printers with lots of resolution for photos and maps. And a similar scanner or three, ditto. I need to keep in contact with one—or two—teams of shooters and a couple of people maybe running around by themselves.”

  “Charley, the limiting factor is the speed of the relay in the satellites. I have to run them a lot slower than their capacity because of the equipment on the ground—equipment I didn’t make. I’m getting the idea you’re about to run an op?”

  “Yes, we are. Operation Fish Farm.”

  “I think I know what you need, Charley. No problem.”

  There was a long silence. Then Castillo said, “You are going to tell me what it is, right, Aloysius?”

  “You’ll see what it is when I get there. If it doesn’t work, we’ll work on it until we get it right.”

  “I called to ask you to tell me what we need, not with my hand out.”

  “Is there an airport any closer to where you are than Midland? Where do I tell the pilot to go?”

  “Home. You go home after you tell me what we need. Then Les will go buy it.”

  “Like hell he will. Now, where do I tell the pilot to go?”

  Castillo shook his head, but he was smiling. “You have my coordinates?”

  “Yeah. Like I told you, within a tenth of a mile and maybe five hundred feet altitude.”

  “There’s a strip three-tenths of a mile to the south.”

  “Will it take a Gulfstream V, or should I bring something smaller?”

  “It’ll take a G-Five, but I can’t get something that big in my hangar, and if you park it here, people might get curious.”

  “That kind of an op, huh? No problem. I’ll just have them drop me off—not to worry, they won’t remember where—and worry about getting back to Vegas later. It’s seven hundred nautical miles. Figure an hour to get to the airport and off the ground and an hour and three-quarters in the air. Add all that up, Charley, and I’ll see you then. Casey out.”

  Castillo pushed a button, turning off the AFC speakerphone function.

  “You really have such interesting friends, Carlos,” Svetlana said. “That was the Casey of the AFC Corporation?”

  “You know about him, huh, Svet? What that was was a very lonely man—his wife just died—who I think I just made very happy. He’s sitting all alone in a house about twice the size of the one in Golf and Polo, or vice versa, that you like so much, on several hundred hectares of very expensive real estate overlooking Las Vegas and of course the AFC labs and plants.”

  “I don’t understand,” Berezovsky said.

  “When Aloysius was a kid, Colonel,” Davidson offered, “he was in the Vietnam War, the commo—communications—sergeant on a Special Forces A-Team operating black in Cambodia and other places. When he gets here, you will learn how he almost won that war all by himself. He never really took off the suit.”

  “What does that mean?” Svetlana asked.

  “He still thinks of himself as a special operator,” Castillo said.

  “And Charley just told him he could come out and play. No, not play. This is for real, and that makes it better; he can tell us young guys how to do an operation the right way. For Aloysius, that’s better than Christmas, his birthday, and Saint Patrick’s Day all rolled into one.”

  “He’s stopped talking to Billy Waugh,” Castillo said. “Did you hear that?”

  Davidson nodded. “Uh-huh.”

  “Isn’t that the fellow who caught Carlos the Jackal?” Berezovsky asked.

  “One and the same,” Davidson said. “Aloysius and Billy were young green beanies together, and Billy’s still out there—the last I heard he was in Afghanistan again—going after the bad guys. Meanwhile, Aloysius is behind a desk—and can’t stand that Billy isn’t pushing a walker rather than making HALO jumps.”

  “How old are they?” Castillo mused. “Seventy-five, anyway. Pushing eighty.”

  “Then they ought to have enough sense to stand down,” Svetlana said. “If they’re that old.”

  “And do what?” Berezovsky said. “The American general Patton said it, Svet. The only good death for a soldier is to die from the last bullet fired in the last battle.”

  Castillo said, “How about me having a heart attack on the ninth green, or whatever they call it, of Golf and Polo, and then you having one trying to load me into the golf cart? That way, we could go out together and wouldn’t have to look for a job. Or play golf.”

  “I think I’d rather take that last bullet,” Berezovsky said. “Even though it no longer seems we have that option.”

  “Or we could go fishing in that lake with Aleksandr, fall out of the boat and drown,” Castillo said.

  “Your William Colby went out that way,” Berezovsky said.

  “Who?” Svetlana said.

  “He was a director of Central Intelligence,” Berezovsky said.

  “And he fell out of his canoe,” Castillo said. “And drowned.”

  “I think I’d prefer the bullet,” Berezovsky said.

  “Me, too,” Castillo said. “All things considered. God knows I can’t see myself on a golf course.”

  “The both of you make me sick!” Svetlana said furiously. “May God forgive you both!”

  She stormed out of the library.

  “What the hell’s the matter with her?” Castillo asked.

  “She’s a woman,” Berezovsky said. “I suspect your learning about women is going to be an interesting experience for you. Painful, but interesting.”

  [SEVEN]

  1250 8 January 2006

  Casey’s Gulfstream V—which Castillo thought was both beautiful and probably carried the most advanced avionics in the world—touched smoothly down, turned at the end of the strip, and taxied back to the hangar.

  The stair door opened and Aloysius Francis Casey, Ph.D., came down the steps carrying an open laptop computer. He was wearing clothing not often seen in South Boston: a Stetson hat, Western World ostrich-skin boots, a sheepskin-lined denim jacket, and matching trousers.

  He saluted. Castillo returned it.

  “We cheated death again,” Casey announced tr
iumphantly, then nodded at the computer. “This little sonofabitch was right on the money.”

  He handed the laptop to Lester Bradley.

  “You can carry this. I wouldn’t want a Marine to rupture himself trying to carry anything heavier.”

  “Yes, sir,” Bradley said. He looked at the screen. “Dr. Casey, why does this show we’re in Dallas?”

  Casey took a quick, shocked look at the screen.

  “You little sonofabitch, you got me!” Casey said approvingly.

  A man wearing the shoulder boards of a first officer came down the stairs carrying a large cardboard box, followed by a man wearing the four-stripe shoulder boards of a captain and also carrying a large cardboard box.

  “That’s the delicate stuff,” Casey barked. “Be careful with it.”

  “Yes, sir,” they said in unison as they headed for one of the Yukons. Bradley went to the nearest and opened the rear door.

  “Where’d you get the cowboy suit?” Castillo asked.

  “Weren’t you paying attention in the Q course when they said you should always try to blend into the native population? And this is Texas, right? At least Dallas, if one were to believe the Boy Marine.”

  Castillo chuckled.

  “Well, hello,” Casey said, having spotted Svetlana.

  “I like your cowboy suit,” Svetlana said. “Carlos, I want one just like that.”

  “Aloysius, this is Susan Barlow,” Castillo said. “And her brother, Tom.”

  “You don’t sound like a Texan,” Casey said. “But as pretty as you are, you can sound like anything you want.”

  “My grandmother’s in the house, setting up lunch,” Castillo said.

  “Your grandmother?”

  “We need all the help we can get,” Castillo said.

  “And here I am,” Casey said. “Let’s get this crap off the airplane.”

  The “crap off the airplane” nearly filled both Yukons.

  Less than an hour after it touched down, Casey’s Gulfstream went wheels-up.

  “What we’re going to need before too long are a couple of large, very large, monitors,” Casey announced. “Better, three. Better yet, four. That’s presuming the Marine Corps doesn’t smash everything taking it out of the boxes.”