W. Griffin - Covert Warriors

“Wrong again, Abuela,” Castillo said. “From now on, you don’t go anywhere without people from Gladiator. One of them will drive your car.” He paused, and then added, “Which will probably cause your insurance company to heave a huge sigh of relief.”

She frowned at him and looked as if she were going to reply. But then her expression changed to a smile as Lester Bradley walked into the breakfast room. He was carrying a Brick.

“Good morning, Lester,” Dona Alicia said. “Did you sleep well?”

“Good morning,” Bradley replied.

“Of course he slept well,” Castillo said. “Nobody was snoring in his room.”

This triggered a thirty-second explosion in Russian from Sweaty, which Dona Alicia could not translate but obviously understood.

Castillo put up his hands in a gesture of surrender, but did not really look very remorseful.

“Sit down, dear,” Dona Alicia said, “and have some breakfast.”

“Yes, ma’am, thank you,” Lester said, then turned to Castillo. “Colonel, can I see you a moment?”

“Lester, we’re both retired. That means I don’t call you sergeant anymore, and you don’t call me colonel.”

“Yes, sir,” Lester replied.

“Try ‘Your Majesty’ on for size. If that doesn’t work, how about ‘Charley’?”

Bradley smiled.

“I. . uh. .” Bradley said, and looked at Dona Alicia.

“What’s up, Les?” Castillo said.

“Mr. Casey called a couple of minutes ago,” Bradley said, “to tell me Net Two is up and running. If you want to use it, punch two forward slashes and then the other numbers.”

“What’s ‘Net Two’?” Castillo asked.

“Mr. Casey said when you asked, I was to tell you to call Mr. D’Alessandro.”

He laid the Brick in front of Castillo and opened it.

Castillo took out the handset.

“Two forward slashes, and then the number,” Bradley repeated.

Castillo did so.

“What’s up, Vic?”

“Put it on loudspeaker,” Sweaty ordered.

Castillo either didn’t hear her or chose to ignore her.

Their conservation was brief, essentially one-sided, with Castillo doing most of the listening and replying with short answers. Finally, he said, “We’ll be in touch,” and replaced the handset in the Brick.

“What is ‘Net Two’?” Sweaty demanded immediately.

It took him a moment to frame his reply.

“The reason we now have two Casey networks is because we have to cut Natalie Cohen out of the original net, and we don’t want her to know that she’s been cut.”

“That requires an explanation,” Sweaty said.

“Let me tell you what she told Frank Lammelle,” Castillo said. “Natalie Cohen said that President Clendennen thinks we tried, we’re trying, to stage a coup d’etat. First we get him to appoint Montvale as Vice President, then we get rid of Clendennen.”

“My God!” Dona Alicia said.

“That never entered my mind,” Castillo said. “Maybe it should have. But that’s moot. Montvale and Natalie and Frank no longer have the threat of impeachment to hold Clendennen in line. So now it’s his turn to get rid of people. That circus at Langley-Clendennen’s press conference-was his first move. He not only got rid of Porky Parker, but he made the point to the others that he was coming after them just as soon as he could find a reason.

“Once they get the message, he hopes they will resign. They can leave his service with their reputations intact, instead of getting fired for incompetence, as Parker was. It’s clear to both Lammelle and Cohen that he plans to use this mess in Mexico as the way to do it.

“So Natalie told Frank their only defense against this is to not give him any excuse at all to accuse them of either incompetence or disloyalty.

“Making matters worse, Lammelle says that Cohen-keep in mind that it was her idea to send Ferris, Danny Salazar, and the other Special Forces people down there in the first place-will go ballistic if she even suspects what Aleksandr Pevsner plans to do in Mexico.”

“Which is?” Dona Alicia asked softly.

“Pevsner has decided that the best defense against what Putin has in mind for us is a good offense.”

“And you, Carlos?” she asked. “How do you feel about that?”

Castillo hesitated just perceptibly before replying, “Abuela, taking into consideration both that Putin has proved-Herr Friedler was not the only man he had assassinated-that he’s willing and capable of murdering everybody he thinks is in his way, I’m afraid Pevsner is right.”

“You said, ‘taking into consideration both.’”

“Abuela, Putin’s already tried, several times, to assassinate me. There’s no question that he’s coming after Svetlana, and I can’t let that happen. I won’t let that happen.”

Dona Alicia sighed. “Oh, my. We have a very bad situation on our hands, don’t we?”

Castillo didn’t reply for a long moment. Then he said, “We thought-naively thought-that we had bloodied his nose when we grabbed the Tupelov and turned General Sirinov over to the CIA. We offered him an armistice; he didn’t accept it. So what we have to do now is bloody it again, hard enough this time so that he gets the message.”

She considered that for a moment.

“And so what do we do now?”

“‘So what do we do now’?” Castillo parroted, lightly sarcastic.

His grandmother stared at him icily.

“Until you lower me into my grave, Carlos, I will continue to run this family. Never forget that!”

“Sorry,” he said.

He saw Sweaty looking at her with a smile of approval.

“And what I am going to do now is have a word with Senor Medina,” Dona Alicia said.

She turned to Sweaty.

“Senor Medina has been running Hacienda Santa Maria for us for thirty years. And before that, his father ran it. And before him, his father.”

She paused, then looked at Lester. She pointed at the Brick on the side table.

“That device, you told me, Lester, prohibits people from eavesdropping on conversations?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And Fernando has one?”

Lester nodded.

“And you told me, Carlos, that Fernando is at the hacienda?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Lester, would you bring that to me and show me again how to use it?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Lester,” Castillo said, “before the head of the family talks to him, you better get him on the horn and explain Net Two to him.”

“Yes, sir.”

Castillo looked at Dona Alicia. “And when you get Fernando on the Brick, then what?”

“I told you, I want a word with Senor Medina.”

“About what?”

“I’m going to ask him to get in his car right now and go see Senor Torres. .”

“Who is?”

“I told you before, an old and trusted friend who is commandant of the Policia Federal in Acapulco.”

“Then he’s probably in up to his ears with the Sinaloa drug cartel,” Castillo said.

“I’ll admit that possibility,” she replied. “But we don’t know that, Carlos. And he will believe me when I tell him that unless Colonel Ferris is released safely and immediately, there will be much trouble.”

“You’re going to threaten this guy?” Castillo asked incredulously.

“I’m going to explain the situation to him. It can’t do any harm, Carlos. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll think of something else.”

Castillo glanced at Svetlana and saw that she was once again smiling approvingly at his grandmother.

The Situation Room The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 1105 14 April 2007

Supervisory Secret Service Agent Robert J. Mulligan, who in addition to being appointed chief of the Secret Service Presidential Protection Team now also seemed to be functioning as President Clendennen’s personal assistant, had telephoned Vice President Charles W. Montvale, Secretary of State Natalie Cohen, Secretary of Defense Frederick K. Beiderman, Director of National Intelligence Truman Ellsworth, CIA Director A. Franklin Lammelle, Attorney General Stanley Crenshaw, and FBI Director Mark Schmidt summoning them all to a 10:45 A.M. meeting with the President in the Situation Room.