W. Griffin - Covert Warriors

“Two-Gun, you have the CIA’s Whiz Bang Super Duper air pistol?” Castillo asked.

Yung went into his attache case and came out with what looked like a Glock semiautomatic pistol, except that the slide was perhaps twice as large.

“Got it,” Yung said.

“You’re not actually going to threaten me with that gun,” Danton said.

“Two-Gun, shoot Porky,” Castillo ordered.

Yung raised the pistol and squeezed the trigger.

There was a pfffffft sound.

John David Parker suddenly screamed: “Ouch! Shit!”

He looked down at his shirtfront. A plastic thumb-size dart had penetrated the shirt pocket and then his skin. The dart’s feathers hung limply on his chest.

“Sorry, Porky,” Castillo said. “Don’t worry. You’ll wake up in about fifteen minutes. I had to make the point to Roscoe that I am about as serious as I ever get, and I just don’t have the time to get into an esoteric philosophical argument about journalistic ethics with him.”

John David Parker, now with a dazed look on his face, suddenly slumped forward, his upper torso landing on the kitchen table with a thump .

Two-Gun Yung bent over Porky and removed a slice of pizza from under Parker’s forehead.

“We’re not playing games here, Roscoe,” Castillo said evenly. “Am I getting through to you on that?”

“Jesus Christ, Castillo!”

“Do you understand what you’re to do when either the attorney general, or Clendennen’s press agent, or maybe Clendennen himself calls?”

“Yeah, I understand.”

“Good. Now, back to my original question: Who told you about Abrego getting moved by the attorney general? It’s important that I know.”

“And if I refuse to reveal my source?”

“Then I will be very disappointed in you, and you will wake up in the basement of Lorimer Manor, where Edgar will sooner or later get you to tell us. I need the name.”

Danton didn’t immediately reply.

“I presume, Two-Gun, that you’re locked and cocked?” Castillo said. It was more an order than a question.

“Two-Gun,” Delchamps put in helpfully, “wait until I move the rest of the pizza out of the way.”

Danton’s eyes widened considerably.

“Willy the Lion Leon,” he said quickly.

“Who the hell is he?” Castillo said.

“Warden of Florence ADMAX.”

“Why did he tell you?”

“One of the three DEA guys Abrego shot was his nephew.”

“Did he know why Abrego was being transferred?”

“No.”

“Roscoe, when the White House calls, you can get on your journalist’s high horse and refuse to divulge your source. Let’s keep them guessing.”

“Yes, sir,” Danton said sarcastically.

“That’s more like it,” Castillo said. “Once you take the king’s shilling, you’re supposed to ‘yes, sir’ to the man in charge.”

“King’s shilling? What the hell are you talking about?”

“You took a lot more than a shilling, Roscoe,” Edgar Delchamps said. “Don’t tell me you forgot.”

Danton looked at Delchamps and thought, Jesus Christ!

When he and Two-Gun waltzed in here, past the famed impenetrable security of the Watergate the day of the presidential press conference at Langley, they said I was going to get a million dollars in combat pay for going to the island with them.

I thought it was more of their bullshit, and then completely forgot about it.

How the fuck could I forget a million dollars?

No wonder they’re pissed.

“Would you believe I completely forgot about that?”

“That would be a stretch for me,” Castillo said.

“For me, too,” Delchamps said, “even though I’m willing to believe just about anything about someone in your line of work.”

“I believe him,” Two-Gun said.

“Tell me why,” Castillo said.

“There was a stack of mail on a little table by the door when he came in. My FBI training took over. One envelope, which Roscoe had not yet opened, was his bank statement.”

“And there’s a million-dollar deposit?” Danton asked.

“It shows that deposit and a wire transfer to the IRS of three hundred ninety-five thousand dollars. Taxes. I thought it best to take care of that for him. Prompt payment of one’s taxes tends to keep the IRS off one’s back.”

“Your call, Edgar,” Castillo said. “Do we scratch up Roscoe’s initial lack of cooperation to his being an ungrateful prick, or consider him a bona fide outlaw with a mind-boggling disdain for a million dollars?”

After what Roscoe considered a very long moment, Delchamps said, “My sainted mother always told me even the worst scoundrel deserves a second chance.”

“Okay, stick around until the White House, or Crenshaw calls, and then let me know how he handled it.”

“You got it, Ace,” Delchamps said as he looked at the passed-out Porky Parker, then glanced at his watch. “We’ve even got time to order a couple more pizzas. Porky’s no doubt going to wake up more than a little groggy and hungry.”

The President’s Study The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 1735 18 April 2007

“Somehow that doesn’t reassure me,” the President said. “So tell me what you have on this sonofabitch Danton.”

“Excuse me?”

“Schmidt, I am in no mood to hear a recitation about the purity of the goddamn FBI. As you damn well know, J. Edgar Hoover was the most powerful man in this town because he kept dossiers on the character flaws of everybody of importance. Don’t ask me to believe that the FBI has stopped doing that. Now, tell me what you know that we can hold over the head of this goddamn Roscoe J. Danton to keep him off Wolf News tonight.”

The director of the FBI looked uncomfortable for a full thirty seconds.

“As a matter of fact, Mr. President, just before I came over here, I asked to see what we know about Mr. Danton. .”

“And?”

“Actually, sir, Mr. Danton doesn’t seem to have many character flaws. He’s not homosexual, so far as we have been able to learn, and the affairs he does have are with single women.”

“I don’t believe that sonofabitch is a saint, Schmidt.”

“There is only one thing, and I don’t know what to make of it,” the FBI director said.

“Tell me what it is, and I’ll decide what can be made of it.”

“The day of your press conference at Langley, Mr. President, there was an unusual deposit to his bank account.”

“How unusual?”

“It was a wire deposit, Mr. President, of one million dollars.”

“Who wired it?”

“The LCBF Corporation, Mr. President.”

“Who are they?”

“I don’t know, Mr. President. The wire was from their account in Liechtenstein. And the same day of the deposit, there was a wire transfer to the IRS of three hundred ninety-five thousand dollars.”

“And what do you make of this?”

“The wire transfer to the IRS was a tax payment, Mr. President. It suggests to me that he wants to keep the IRS from getting curious.”

“I can run with that, Mr. President,” Crenshaw said. “I’ll get Mr. Danton on the phone, and tell him that unless he wants the IRS investigating not only this suspicious million dollars but everything else, to stay off Wolf News tonight.”

“Why don’t you give Mr. Danton a call, Mr. Attorney General?” the President ordered.

Hacienda Santa Maria Oaxaca Province, Mexico 0930 20 April 2007

The two brown Policia Federal Suburbans drove rapidly up the road through the grapefruit orchard to the big house. Two policemen got out of the lead vehicle, carrying Kalashnikov rifles at the ready. They looked around suspiciously and, seeing nothing more threatening or suspicious than el jefe’ s gringo friend, the gringo’s girlfriend, and several other gringos on the veranda, signaled that it was safe for el jefe to get out of the second Suburban.