W. Griffin - Covert Warriors

“And he’s going to do this?”

“Martinez said contact should be established with this man Pena.”

“And you want to send Vic to make contact?”

“Yes. Now, where is he?”

Lammelle was quiet a moment, then said: “I don’t think you’re telling me everything, Allan. Why should Clendennen be worried about me knowing about something as simple as sending Vic to see this cop?”

“That’s all I can tell you,” Naylor said. “I’ve already told you more than I should.”

“But not as much as you’re going to tell me if you want me to put you in touch with Vic.”

“So you do know where he is?” Naylor snapped.

“I’m the head of the CIA, Allan. I know everything. What else have you got to tell me?”

Lammelle could hear Naylor exhaling audibly before Naylor said, “When Abrego is taken to the prison, after we establish that Ferris is there, the President is sending three Black Hawks loaded with Gray Fox operators with him. They will free Ferris.”

“Gray Fox?” Lammelle asked, incredulously.

“He’s set up a command post in his study,” Naylor said. “General O’Toole is there with him. Colonel Kingsolving has been sent for.”

“And once they grab Ferris, how are they going to get him out of Mexico? That prison is in southern Mexico, almost to the Guatemalan border.”

“Why do I think you know more than you’re telling me?”

“Allan, Vic is in the El Paso Marriott, on Airport Boulevard, registered as Jose Gomez. If you’ve got a pencil, I’ll give you the number.”

“If you know something I should, Frank. .”

“The area code is 915. .”

“Hold one,” Naylor said. “Okay. Give me that number again.” Lammelle gave it to him, and then said, “Give me five minutes, Allan, and I’ll call him and tell him you’ll be calling.”

“What have you got him doing down there?”

“It’s always a pleasure to talk to you, Allan,” Lammelle said, and hung up.

Hacienda Santa Maria Oaxaca Province, Mexico 1345 20 April 2007

“Well, Frank, life is full of surprises, isn’t it?” Castillo said over the speakerphone of his Brick. “The last I remember is Clendennen trying to think of some way to stand Gray Fox against a wall for walking out on his speech at Arlington.”

“I’m having a little trouble remembering who knows what,” Lammelle said. “What did you tell Natalie Cohen about your pal Pena?”

“I told her that Juan Carlos Pena wasn’t too smart, but from what I heard, he was reasonably honest.”

That caught the attention of Juan Carlos Pena. He was sitting opposite Castillo and Svetlana on the veranda of the Big House. He had a bottle of Dos Equis resting on his stomach. He turned to Castillo and gave him the finger.

“And what should I tell Vic?”

“That Juan Carlos is not too smart but may be honest. The one thing we can’t afford is for anybody to even suspect we’re pals. You may have heard that the more people that know something, the sooner everybody does.”

“You got the satellite photos of the prison?”

“Yeah. Thanks. I wouldn’t like to be a guest of that place. We just flew over it. Juan Carlos and I have been talking about grabbing Abrego and Ferris. Conclusion: Make sure Ferris is there, then grab him quick before anybody knows what’s happening.”

“What about Abrego?”

“In the best of all possible worlds, getting the both of them would be nice. And if we can’t get Ferris, then we’ll grab Abrego and see who that brings out of the woodwork. In addition to his drug cartel pals, I mean.”

“You can do that with only a dozen ex-Spetsnaz?” Lammelle asked, doubtfully.

“Plus Uncle Remus,” Castillo said. “It’ll be like old times.”

“When I talked to Vic just now, he told me your China Post guys have lost Jose Rafael Monteverde.”

“How lost?”

“They were sitting on his apartment in Mexico City. They saw him go in, saw the lights go out when he presumably went to bed, sat on all possible points of egress and access to the place all night, and waited for him to go to work in the morning. When he didn’t appear, they went and had a look. He was not in his apartment, and there were no signs of anything that looked suspicious.”

“I don’t like that, Frank,” Castillo said.

“Well, nobody I know has ever accused the Cuban Direccion General de Inteligencia-or former members thereof-of being incompetent.”

“It sounds as if he knew he was being surveilled,” Castillo said.

“Yeah,” Lammelle said. “It does.”

“So, what are they doing about it? Did anybody think about the Venezuelan embassy?”

“According to Vic, they were of course sitting on the Venezuelan embassy. I will not tell Vic that you asked that question.”

Castillo grunted. “I guess what I’m supposed to say now is, ‘Well, these things happen. .’”

“Yeah, you are. So, what happens now is that Naylor is en route to Fort Bliss-El Paso-to give Vic his marching orders. At least one-redundancy, you know-Black Hawk is by now en route from Fort Campbell to El Paso to take Vic to meet Pena. And as soon as Natalie gets to the White House, I think it reasonable to presume she will be ordered to have Ambassador McCann ask where that meeting will take place. Or will be told to do that herself.”

“Yeah,” Castillo agreed. “And what’s going to happen tomorrow morning when Abrego doesn’t show up at Juarez International?”

“I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see.”

“I was asking: ‘What do you think they’ll do to Ferris?’”

“Same answer. Except that, dealing with these people, he may already be dead. We could demand proof of life before the exchange.”

“I don’t think he is,” Castillo said. “And as long as he’s alive, he’s a bargaining chip in what they are really after, whacking Pevsner.”

“And C. Castillo and his girlfriend,” Lammelle said. “We’ll just have to wait and see. Speaking of Pevsner, where is he?”

“So far as I know, hunkering down on the shores of beautiful Lake Nahuel Huapi.”

“That doesn’t sound like him,” Lammelle said.

“Well, the one thing you can safely say about Aleksandr Pevsner is that you never know what he’s up to.”

“That brings us back to ‘we’ll just have to wait and see,’ doesn’t it? I’ll be in touch, Charley,” Lammelle said, and broke the connection.

Castillo looked at Svetlana.

“Frank’s right, my darling,” she said. “Doing nothing is not how Aleksandr operates.”

“But he promised to do nothing without asking me first,” Castillo said.

“What he promised was to do nothing without telling you,” she countered. “There’s a big difference.”

Castillo raised an eyebrow. “Well, baby, at the risk of repeating the phrase, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?”

The President’s Study The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 1930 20 April 2007

“General Naylor called while you were gone, Mr. President,” Clemens McCarthy said as the President led Colonel Arthur Kingsolving and Secret Service Supervisory Special Agent Mulligan into his study.

The President held up his hand to silence him as he walked to the window, pushed the drape aside, and watched as the MH-60K Black Hawk lifted off from the White House lawn.

“You seem perfectly comfortable in turning your ‘Night Stalker bird’ over to your co-pilot, Colonel,” the President said.

Kingsolving recognized the statement as a question.

“Every 160th pilot is fully qualified as an MH-60 pilot-in-command, sir,” Kingsolving said.