The Shooters

by W. E. B Griffin

  “I’m surprised you don’t know. It goes to Meade, then is linked to Langley.”

  “Okay…”

  “Do you have any idea what you’re asking? How difficult it will be to shift satellites? How much it will cost?”

  “I didn’t think it would be easy, Mr. Ambassador. And I’m sure it will be expensive. Would you rather I ask the President to authorize it?”

  “What’s in the back of my mind…are you interested? And can I say what I have to say without you taking offense?”

  “Of course.”

  “If you have found Timmons and if those helicopters you’re trying to send down actually get there and you can stage a successful operation, fine. But you’re not sure you’ve found Timmons. And something—God knows, anything—can interfere with those helicopters getting down there—”

  “I’d love to have them, the helicopters, of course, but I have a Plan B in case something goes wrong. And didn’t you get Colonel Torine onto the Ronald Reagan to ensure that everything possible is being done, will be done, to get them to me?”

  “Yes, I did. But to continue, if something goes awry, questions will be asked, especially about the satellite surveillance. People are going to know that happened.”

  “I have a Plan B for that, too, Mr. Ambassador.”

  “Do you really?”

  “When you order the surveillance, I want you to have the analysts at Meade taken off all other duties until this is over. I want them told this is classified Top Secret Presidential. And I want the automatic link to Langley cut off.”

  “What are you going to do with the data at Meade?”

  “Mrs. Forbison will be there. She will forward to me what the analysts tell her.”

  “Your office manager?”

  “Actually, she’s the deputy chief of OOA for administration,” Castillo said. “And she’s been cleared for the Finding.”

  “You’re going to send her to Meade?” Montvale asked, incredulously.

  “And by the time she gets there, I hope you’ll have ordered that no one but she—or whichever of my men with a Finding clearance she designates—is to get any of the material generated by the surveillance.”

  “When is she going to Meade?”

  “Just as soon as we get off the phone. Right, Agnes?”

  “Yes, sir,” Mrs. Forbison said.

  “Good evening, Mrs. Forbison,” Montvale said, icily. “I wasn’t aware you were on the line.”

  “Standard office procedure, Mr. Ambassador,” Agnes said, sweetly. “Whenever the chief is speaking with you or the President. You didn’t know?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Unless you’ve got something for me, Mr. Ambassador, that’s all I have,” Castillo said.

  “I’ll get right on this, of course,” Montvale said. “And you will keep me up to speed, right, Colonel?”

  “Absolutely,” Castillo said. “Break it down, Lester.”

  “It’s broken down, Lester?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Get Agnes back for me, please.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  “Yes, Chief?”

  “Who won that one, Agnes?”

  “You did. Hands down. You couldn’t tell?”

  “I thought I did. So why am I worried?”

  “What happens now?” she asked.

  “I’m going to Buenos Aires first thing in the morning. There’s a lot to be done. I’m going to leave Lester’s radio here, so you’ll be able to send the data to the shooters here. How do I get them into the voice-recognition circuit?”

  “You identify yourself—it has to be you, me, or Miller—and say, ‘Adding voice-recognition personnel.’ Then you have them give their names and say a few words.”

  “Stand by,” Castillo said, and motioned for Sergeants Bustamante and Gilmore to join him.

  “You heard that?” he asked, and they nodded.

  “Colonel Castillo. Adding voice recognition personnel. Master Sergeant Gilmore.”

  He looked at Gilmore and said, “Repeat after me: ‘Master Sergeant Gilmore.’”

  “Master Sergeant Gilmore,” Gilmore said.

  Castillo nodded and went on: “‘When I failed reconnoitering as a Ranger, I had to become a Green Beanie.”

  Gilmore automatically began, “‘When I failed’…” Then he paused. “With all possible respect, Colonel, sir, screw you.”

  An artificial voice joined the conversation: “Sufficient data. System recognizes”—the voice now changed to Gilmore’s—“Master Sergeant Gilmore.”

  Castillo nodded appreciatively.

  “Colonel Castillo,” he went on. “Adding voice-recognition personnel. Technical Sergeant Bustamante.”

  He looked at Bustamante, and said, “Repeat after me, ‘Technical Sergeant Bustamante.’”

  “Technical Sergeant Bustamante,” Bustamante began, then quickly added, “Thank you, Colonel, for all those very kind things you have said about me. While I’m normally a modest—”

  “Sufficient data,” the artificial voice broke in. “System recognizes”—and Bustamante’s voice added—“Technical Sergeant Bustamante.”

  “Wiseass,” Castillo said.

  “Okay, Agnes, they’re on. The communicator will be able to help you pick what data to send down.”

  “I wasn’t going over there by myself.”

  “If they say something about the radio, tell them to check with Montvale. But don’t let it out of your hands. Entirely separate from this, those NSA guys would really like a look at the encryption circuits.”

  “I will guard it as I would my virtue.”

  “That’s the best you can do?” Castillo said with mock shock.

  There was a moment’s silence, then Agnes said, with laughter in her voice, “Screw you, Charley!”

  “Break it down, Lester.”

  “Okay,” Castillo said. “In the morning, Lester, Max, and I are going to go to Buenos Aires. Lorimer and Mullroney are going to go to the embassy and nose around, half for show, half to see if they can come up with something.”

  Lorimer and Mullroney nodded.

  Castillo went on: “Colonel Munz will do whatever he thinks makes the most sense. You two will start writing the ops order, based on what you know and what intel we get from the satellite or anybody else. Number them. Whenever one is complete, based on what you have, send it to me. To the safe house. There’s a radio there, and probably some others have caught up with us by now. Between now and oh dark hundred—I want to leave as early as possible; it’s a long way to Buenos Aires—Lester will check you out on the radio and procedures. Any questions?”

  Heads shook.

  “Good. Let’s go.”

  [THREE]

  Nuestra Pequeña Casa

  Mayerling Country Club

  Pilar, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina

  1345 12 September 2005

  “Duffy and D’Elia just came in the gate,” Susanna Sieno announced as she hung up a telephone in the quincho.

  “If I were not a modest man, I would say we are about to blow the comandante’s mind,” Castillo said.

  “This is pretty impressive stuff, Charley,” Susanna said.

  “I meant with our drapes,” he said, gesturing toward drapes now closed over the plateglass windows. “Lavender and pink stripes, with gold highlights. Really chic!”

  She gave him the finger.

  “Next time, you buy them,” she said. “More important, you look soulfully into the eyes of the drapes-hanger, or whatever the hell he’s called, to get him to hang them right now, not mañana sometime.”

  The lavender-and-pink-striped drapes—with gold highlights—were thick enough to shut out all light from the outside and, of course, ensured that no one could see into the quincho.

  The quincho was now the command post, at least for the time being, for what had been jokingly dubbed Operation GGT—Go Get Timmons.

  Four sixty-four-inch flat-screen LCD television monitors
sat on a low table against the new drapes.

  One was tuned to the Fox News Channel, with the sound barely audible.

  Another monitor was connected to the AFC console and showed the data coming in from Fort Meade as it arrived. The encryption system was fast, but there was an enormous amount of data being sent. The result of this was that the screen first filled with what looked like snowlike static, which then began to take form, until the entire image was clear.

  The third monitor was connected both to a large computer server and to Castillo’s laptop computer. He could call up any of the satellite images to the flat-screen by pushing a key or two on the laptop. Now, since the decryption process was over, the images appeared almost instantaneously.

  The fourth monitor was connected both to the server and to a laptop computer being operated by Sergeant Major Jack Davidson, who Castillo had announced was “going to be our map guy.”

  His job was to prepare and continuously update the maps that would be issued—either in printed copies or as a computer file—to everyone who would have need of one.

  Like Castillo, Davidson could instantly call up on his laptop screen, and the monitor, any of the maps and any other data stored in the database. The difference was that Davidson—and he alone—could change the data.

  They were both devout believers in the adage—one that went back to the dark ages, when maps were printed, hung on a wall, covered with a sheet of acetate, and corrections and additions made with a grease pencil—that, “If more than one man can make changes to a map, said map invariably will soon be fucked up beyond all repair.”

  They had worked together before, and they worked together now with a smoothness born of practice.

  The first satellite imagery had arrived in Nuestra Pequeña Casa an hour before Castillo and Bradley. It was the first photography of the site, and about all it was good for was to enable Davidson to set up the system he knew Castillo would want to use.

  By the time Castillo and Bradley walked into the quincho, the refining data had begun to come in. The first imagery had been much like the imagery provided by Google Earth, but in far greater resolution. It hadn’t shown anything but suggestions of human activity.

  The “refining data” that began to come in about the time Castillo and Bradley walked in used a number of sensing techniques, at first primarily infrared. It sensed differences in temperature between objects in the target area. Computer analyses of these defined what they were.

  The easiest to identify were human beings. Their normal temperature was a given. The ambient temperature of the area was known. A difference of so many degrees determined with a great deal of certainty that that moving blob was a human being. And that one a cow. And that one a dog.

  Similarly, the heat generated by such things as open fires, stoves, internal combustion engines—making the distinction between gasoline, diesel, and size—was recognized by the computers at Fort Meade and transferred as “refined data.”

  The blobs were replaced with a symbol—an outline of a truck, for example, or of a man—in which was a number estimating how confident, on a scale of 1 to 5, the computer was of its interpretation.

  There would be more refining data as more satellites passed over the target area and the results of more sensing techniques were fed to the computers at Fort Meade. But after Davidson had “laid” the first refining data on top of the aerial photographs, what they had was enough for Castillo to make a decision.

  “Bingo!” he said. “That has to be it.”

  “What that is, Charley, is some sort of a hidden operation,” Davidson said, reasonably. “A fairly large one, to judge by the bodies, and probably a refinery, to judge by the large unknown infrared blobs.” He paused. “But none of this data has Timmons’s name on it.”

  “So what do we do, Jack?” Castillo had asked. “Send Bustamante or someone else back to penetrate? Running the risk that they get caught? In which case, the best scenario would be that they would move Timmons and the gendarmes someplace we couldn’t find them. Or cut their throats and toss them in the river?”

  “Don’t forget giving them an overdose,” Davidson said. He made a face of frustration. “That’s why they pay you the big bucks, Charley, to make decisions like that.”

  “Or we just go in,” Castillo went on, “and if Timmons isn’t there, we kidnap a couple of them and arrange a swap.”

  “I don’t think you want to do that,” Susanna said. “Do you?”

  “No, I don’t want to do that.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Is that the same as ‘No, I won’t do that’?”

  “No.”

  “Come on in, gentlemen,” Castillo called cheerfully as Comandante Duffy and Captain D’Elia appeared in the quincho door. “And I’ll…oops!”

  A third man—stocky, nearly bald, dark-skinned, and in his thirties—had followed them in. Castillo had no idea who he was, and was already phrasing how he would tell Duffy he was not to bring any of his gendarmes to the safe house without prior permission when the man saluted very casually and, in English, introduced himself:

  “Captain Urquila, Colonel,” he said. “I ran into D’Elia at the embassy, and he said—since I hadn’t actually reported in to you—that I probably should come out here and do it; that you were either here or would be shortly.”

  Castillo returned the salute as casually.

  “What were you doing at the embassy, Captain Urquila?” Castillo asked, very softly and politely.

  Davidson, who knew what it often meant when Castillo spoke very softly and politely, looked concerned.

  “I wanted to ask Mrs. Sieno, sir, when I could expect you to be in country.”

  “And how long have you been in country, Captain?” Castillo asked again, softly and politely.

  Urquila did the math in his head before replying.

  “A week, sir. I got here the morning of the fifth. My team was up when General McNab laid this on us. I appointed myself and my medic the advance party, and we were on the LAN Chile flight out of Miami that night.”

  “You’ve been here a week, Captain—correct me if I’m wrong—and today you went looking for Mrs. Sieno at the embassy?”

  “That’s right, sir.”

  “And—curiosity frankly overwhelms me, Captain—how have you passed the time since you arrived in beautiful Argentina?”

  “I’ve been nosing around Asunción, sir, looking for someplace where these people could be holding this DEA guy.”

  “You and your medic,” Castillo said, his tone making it more a question than a statement.

  “Just he and I at first, sir. But now my whole team is up there.”

  “And why did you do that?”

  “General McNab briefed me on the problem, sir, and when I came to see Mrs. Sieno before…”

  Is he saying he saw Susanna before?

  Castillo looked at Susanna. She nodded.

  “…right after I got here, and she said she didn’t really know where you were, and to hang loose, I figured the best thing to do was start nosing around looking for this place.”

  “Tony’s found something very interesting, Colonel,” D’Elia offered.

  “Really?” Castillo said. “And what would that be, Captain?”

  “Well, there’s a sort of hidden compound on the Paraguayan side of the river—right on the river—protected by some really heavy anti-intrusion stuff. Including Claymores. Now, I’ve never seen this Timmons guy, but these people have three guys chained together to a pole. Two of them are Latinos, wearing some kind of brown uniform. The third is in a suit; he’s got light skin, and I’d say the odds are he’s Timmons or whatever his name is.”

  Jesus Christ!

  “You’ve penetrated this compound?” Castillo asked, suddenly very serious.

  “Not me, sir. My intel sergeant. Master Sergeant Ludwicz—”

  “Skinhead Ludwicz?” Castillo interrupted. “That Master Sergeant Ludwicz?”

  “Yes, sir. He said you two
had been around the block a couple times.”

  Maybe that’s who Bustamante saw on his intrusion!

  I’ll be a sonofabitch!

  “Indeed we have,” Castillo said.

  “Well, he’s one hell of a penetrator, as you probably know, so he went in. Alone. I didn’t want to take any more chances than I had to, until I knew what was coming down.”

  “And Skinhead says he saw two brown-uniformed Latinos and a gringo in a suit, all chained to a pole?”

  “Yes, sir. Sir, he said they have two bowls. One with water, one with food. And that they…this is what Ludwicz said, sir…and that they looked stoned, sir.”

  “As if, for example, they had been injected with heroin?”

  Captain Urquila shrugged.

  “Personally, sir, I don’t know that I’d recognize the signs of someone on heroin, what they’d look like. And Ludwicz didn’t say anything about seeing a needle, sir. Just that they looked stoned.”

  “Put the composite on the monitor, Jack,” Castillo ordered.

  “Why don’t you have a look at this, Comandante?” Castillo said.

  The composite appeared a second later.

  Duffy’s eyes widened.

  “What is that?” he asked.

  “Your compound look anything like this, Captain?” Castillo asked.

  Urquila examined the composite very carefully and shook his head.

  “That’s not it?” Castillo asked, incredulously.

  “Oh, that’s it,” Urquila said. “I should have known you’d be way ahead of me. Colonel, I hope I haven’t fucked anything up by sending Ludwicz in there…”

  “Come here, Captain,” Castillo said, gesturing with his hands for Urquila to move in very close. When he had, Castillo grabbed both of Urquila’s ears and kissed him wetly on the forehead.

  “Captain Urquila, I love you. I love Skinhead Ludwicz and I love you!”

  Captain Urquila and Comandante Duffy both looked somewhat dazed.

  “Corporal Bradley!” Castillo called.

  “Sir?”

  “There is a bottle of Famous Grouse single-malt in my room. I have been saving it for a special occasion. This is it! Go get it!”