W. Griffin - Covert Warriors

With warm regards,

Your friend

Ramon

“Well?” the President asked when she had finished.

“Mr. President, what is it you wish me to do with this?” Secretary Cohen asked.

“I told you. Get it to McCann and have him take it to President Martinez.”

“Mr. President,” Attorney General Crenshaw said, “the long-standing policy of the United States has been never to negotiate with terrorists.”

“Who’s negotiating with terrorists?” Clemens McCarthy replied for the President. “What President Clendennen is going to do is send a convicted criminal for interrogation in Mexico, which has the added benefit of permitting a terminally ill woman to see her son for the last time. If that also results in the release of Colonel Ferris, what’s wrong with that?”

“It’s bullshit, McCarthy, that’s what’s wrong with it,” Crenshaw said.

“There’s a lady present, Mr. Attorney General,” the President said. “Watch your mouth!”

“I beg your pardon, Madam Secretary,” Crenshaw said.

“Obviously, Mr. Attorney General,” the President said, “you have some objections to my plan to secure the release of Colonel Ferris.”

“Yes, sir, I have a number of-”

“I’m not interested in what they might be, Mr. Attorney General. This is the plan of action your Commander in Chief has decided upon. My question is whether your objections will keep you from carrying out my orders to see that what I want done is done.”

“That would depend, Mr. President, on what orders you give me.”

“Fair enough,” the President said. “If I ordered you to have this fellow Abrego moved from his present place of confinement to the La Tuna Federal Correctional Institution, would your conscience permit you to carry out that order?”

“Mr. President, are you aware that Abrego has been adjudicated to be a very dangerous and violent prisoner requiring his incarceration in the Florence maximum-security facility?”

“So Clemens has told me.”

“And that La Tuna is a minimum-security facility? What they call a country club for the incarceration of nonviolent white-collar offenders?”

“Are you going to be able to obey my orders or not?”

The attorney general looked at the secretary of State and saw on her face and in her eyes that she was afraid he was going to say no.

“Mr. President, if you order me to move Abrego from Florence ADMAX to the La Tuna minimum-security facility, I’ll have him moved.”

“Good. I like what the military calls ‘cheerful and willing obedience’ to my orders to my loyal subordinates.”

President Clendennen turned to Secretary of State Cohen.

“I presume that you are also going to cheerfully and willingly obey my orders to you, Madam Secretary, vis-a-vis having Ambassador McCann deliver Clemens’s brilliant letter to President Martinez?”

“I will take the letter to Ambassador McCann, Mr. President, but I’m not sure he will be willing to take it to President Martinez, and I have no idea how President Martinez would react to it if he does.”

“McCann will do it because he works for you, Madam Secretary-although actually, since I appointed him, he’s my ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary and knows who butters his bread-and Martinez will go along with it. What my good friend Ramon wants to do is not antagonize the drug cartels any more than he has to. And to keep the tourists and retirees-and all those lovely U.S. dollars- going to Acapulco and those other places in sunny Mexico. My plan will allow him to do both.”

He turned to Defense Secretary Beiderman and General Naylor.

“Now, as far as you two are concerned, I presume that you two, as loyal subordinates of your Commander in Chief, will both cheerfully and willingly obey this direct order: I don’t want any involvement by the military in this. Period. None. Either of you have any problems with that?”

“No, sir,” Beiderman said.

“No, Mr. President,” Naylor said.

“Okay,” the President said. “That’s it. Thank you for coming in. Douglas, show them out.”

“Yes, Mr. President,” Special Agent Douglas said.

Attorney General Crenshaw caught up with Secretary of State Cohen as she was about to get into her limousine in the driveway.

“Natalie, we’re going to have to talk.”

“Not now,” she replied as she slid onto the backseat. “I tend to make bad decisions when I am so upset that I feel sick to my stomach.”

“We can’t pretend this didn’t happen,” he insisted.

“Give me twenty-four hours to think it over,” she said, and then pulled the limousine door closed.

United States Post Office 8401 Boeing Drive El Paso, Texas 1005 18 April 2007

A very short, totally bald, barrel-chested man in a crisp tan suit leaned against the post office wall, puffing on a long, thin black cigar while reading El Diario de El Paso.

A man in filthy clothing-with an unshaven and unwashed face, and sunken eyes-sidled up to the nicely dressed man. If profiling was not politically incorrect, he might have caused many police officers and Border Patrol officers to think of him as possibly an undocumented immigrant or someone suffering from substance abuse or both.

The wetback junkie looked around as if to detect the presence of law enforcement officers, and then inquired, “Hey, gringo, you wanna fook my see-ster?”

“Your wife, maybe,” the well-dressed man replied. “But the last time I saw your sister, she weighed three hundred pounds and needed a shave.”

The junkie then shook his head, smiled, and with no detectable accent said, “You sonofabitch!”

“There’s a Starbucks around the corner,” the well-dressed man said.

“Dressed like this? Where’s your car?”

“In the next parking lot,” the well-dressed man said, and nodded across the street. “Walk down the street. I’ll pick you up.”

The well-dressed man walked away to the left, and the junkie to the right.

Five minutes later, sitting with the junkie in a rented Lincoln parked five blocks from the post office on Boeing Drive, Vic D’Alessandro punched the appropriate buttons on his Brick, and fifteen seconds later was rewarded with the voice of A. Franklin Lammelle, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

“And how, Vic, are things in scenic El Paso?”

“Pics coming through all right?”

“I’m looking at them now,” Lammelle said. “Who am I looking at?”

“That’s the guy who dropped a letter addressed to Box 2333 into the slot in the post office.”

“The FBI told you that?” Lammelle asked.

“No,” the junkie offered. “But when, thirty seconds after this guy dropped his envelope into the slot, half a dozen FBI guys inside the lobby started baying and going on point like so many Llewellin setters, we took a chance.”

“Hey, Tommy, how are you?” Lammelle said.

“Very well, Mr. Director, sir,” CIA Agent Tomas L. Diaz replied. “How are things in the executive suite, Mr. Director, sir?”

“You don’t want to know,” Lammelle said. “So what happened next?”

“He walked back to his car, more or less discreetly trailed by the aforementioned Llewellins and a dozen unmarked vehicles, including, so help me God, Frank, a Model A hot rod.”

“Jesus,” Lammelle said. “So he cleverly deduced he was being followed?”

“I’m sure he expected it,” Diaz said. “He didn’t try to lose anybody until he was in Mexico, and then he became professional. He didn’t have to. The FBI stopped at the border.”

“But you didn’t lose him?”

“It’s been a long time since I did this, Frank, but it’s like riding a bicycle. Once you learn how. .”