W. Griffin - The shooters

Castillo looked at Gilmore.

"So what have you got?"

"I don't know if it's what you're looking for, Colonel," Gilmore said. "But there is a very strange setup on the river a couple of miles downstream from the hotel. You have a laptop, sir?"

"What are you going to do, Google Earth it?"

"Yes, sir. I've got the coordinates on this, sir." He held up a USB flash memory device that recorded data. It was the size of a small disposable butane lighter. "I thought I'd start with the big picture."

Within a minute, everyone was looking at the laptop computer screen, which now showed a composite aerial photograph of the river south of Asuncion as it would appear from an airplane at five thousand feet.

"What exactly are we looking at?" Castillo asked.

"I finally learned how to add my own data to the imagery, Colonel. Hold one, sir."

He plugged the flash memory device into one of the USB ports on the side of the laptop. An icon of it immediately popped up on the screen. Thirty seconds later, after he touched several keys, a more or less circular ring of tiny flashing spots appeared on the map on the Paraguayan side of the river.

"I still don't know what I'm looking at," Castillo said.

"Bustamante found it, sir. We were fishing."

"Fishing?"

"Yes, sir, I even caught a couple," Gilmore said with a grin, then sighed. "We had covered a lot of water before we came across it. We noticed something wasn't right."

"How's that?" Castillo said.

"There was something about the riverbank, sir," Bustamante offered.

"What?" Castillo said, gesturing Give it to me with the fingers of his right hand.

Bustamante, anticipating the reaction his answer was going to cause, shrugged. "The grass was too green, Colonel. Twelve feet or so of green grass. The rest was all brown."

"Suggesting?" Castillo asked.

"I didn't know, sir. Maybe it was near a stream. Maybe somebody was watering it. But I figured it was worth a look, so we took one as soon as it was dark."

"How?

"He swam, sir," Gilmore said.

"You brought wet suits with you?"

"No, sir. We have night goggles."

"It was a little chilly," Bustamante admitted.

"Why Bustamante?"

"He found the green fucking grass, Colonel," Gilmore said, reasonably.

"And what did you find?"

"It was planted," Bustamante said. "Plastic boxes, maybe three feet by a foot, four of them, and all mounted on a heavy timber, so they could be moved out of the way and put back easy. I figured somebody wanted access to the river and didn't want anybody to see it."

"And farther inland?"

"Well, there was also a motion sensor on the boxes of grass-I almost set it off-so I went kind of slow. I called Gilmore and told him he ought to have a look, so he came in with the boat."

"You have radios?"

"We bought throwaway cell phones in the airport," Gilmore said. "They work fine."

"And?"

"Well, we reconnoitered, Colonel," Bustamante said. "The place is crawling with detection devices, and put in by somebody who knows what he's doing." After a moment, he added: "Damned near got caught."

Castillo turned quickly and looked at him.

"'Caught'?" Castillo parroted. "By who?"

Bustamante shrugged. "I don't know, sir."

"Some big sonofabitch moving like a cat," Gilmore offered. "At least one guy, maybe more." He shrugged. "If he was a perimeter guard, he sure as hell didn't act like one."

Oh, shit! Castillo thought. Is this a repeat of our run-in at Estancia Shangri-La?

Who the fuck can this guy be-another ex-Stasi?

Or…maybe one of Duffy's goons going in ahead of us?

Who the hell knows?

With drugs and money, anything is fucking possible.

"I swam the hell out of there just the same," Bustamante said. "I was more afraid this guy was going to trigger one of the sensors."

Gilmore moved the cursor on the screen to one of the blinking dots, the one closest to the river. An inset appeared, a photo.

"You can barely see the device," Bustamante said, "but if I had stepped over the grass boxes-or even touched them-it would have gone off."

Gilmore moved the cursor to another of the flashing dots and another inset photo appeared, this one of a trip wire.

"I couldn't tell if it would do anything but set off a Claymore," Bustamante said. An inset of a concealed, barely visible Claymore mine appeared. "But I guess that would be like an alarm bell, right, a Claymore going off?"

"That's about all we were able to do, Colonel," Gilmore said. "We worked our way around their perimeter. I figure there's probably five, six acres of protected terrain. We just didn't have the stuff to try to penetrate it. Sorry."

"You couldn't penetrate it?" Castillo asked, in mock shock. "A couple of trip wires and some Claymores and you just quit? Turn in your Ranger tabs. You're a disgrace to the Hurlburt School for Boys." Then he smiled and finished: "Great job, guys. I never expected anything like this."

"You think that's the place you're looking for, sir?"

"Unless it's some pig farmer worried about piglet rustlers," Castillo said. "What else could it be?"

"The Claymore was made in East Germany," Bustamante said. "I thought that was sort of interesting."

"Roads?"

"One. A couple of clicks from this highway," Gilmore said, pointing. "You want us to have another shot at penetration, Colonel?"

"Absolutely not," Castillo said. "As clumsy as you two are, that would let them know we plan to do terrible things to them."

Both smiled. Neither spoke, but there was a question in their eyes.

"Are we up, Lester?"

"Yes, sir."

"Get me Major Miller."

"Aye, aye, sir."

"Put the GPS coordinates on the screen so I can read them," Castillo ordered.

The legend on the handset read: AGNES FORBISON.

"I was beginning to worry that you'd been stolen by gypsies," she said as she opened the conversation. "Where are you, Charley?"

"In Paraguay. Where's Dick?"

"He's arranging Ambassador Lorimer's trip down to the estancia. Oh, hell, I cannot tell a lie, Charley. He decided he's up to flying the Gulfstream as copilot, and in the absence of the only one who could have told him no, that's what he authorized himself to do. Shall I call him and tell him you said no? They probably are still in the country."

Castillo considered that for a moment.

"No. He would know you ratted on him. It'll be all right; all he'll have to do is work the radios. But it poses a problem right now."

"What do you need?"

"Continuous satellite surveillance starting yesterday-using every sensing technique they have-of a small piece of Paraguayan real estate."

"You found where they have this guy? God, that was quick."

"Where we strongly believe he is," Castillo said. "Two very good shooters from the stockade did it. I was going to have Dick set up the surveillance-"

"You don't think I can?"

"I think we have to go through Montvale, and I'm not at all sure that Montvale will produce what he promises to produce. I was going to send Dick to Fort Meade or Langley-wherever this stuff will come in-to watch what he does and make sure that it doesn't slip through the cracks and that no copies are passed around the intelligence community. I can't afford any tracks, either."

"I can go to Meade or Langley and do that as well as Dick could. And he's not here. Unless you don't want me to…"

"With profound apologies for not remembering that you are, of all of the merry band, the best one to deal with the ambassador, Agnes, get the SOB on the line. And listen in, of course."

"You're forgiven," Agnes said.

"White House."

"Colonel Castillo needs Ambassador Montvale on a secure line, please."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Ambassador Montvale's line, Truman Ellsworth."