W Griffin - Hunters

"At four o'clock in the morning?"

"It would not be your first drink at four in the morning," D'Allessando said.

"True," Castillo said. "What the hell, why not? There's wine?"

"There's a whole bin full of it behind the bar," D'Allessando said.

"You want something to drink, Bradley?" Castillo asked.

"I'm a little hungry, sir," Bradley said.

"So'm I," Castillo said. "There's round-the-clock room service, right, Vic?"

"Indeed."

Castillo picked up the telephone and punched a button on the base.

"What kind of steak can I have at this unholy hour?" he said into the phone.

He was told.

"New York strip sounds fine."

Castillo looked at Bradley, who smiled and nodded, and then at D'Allessando, who said, "Why not? I can think of it as breakfast. Get mine with eggs."

"Three New York strips, medium rare. With fried eggs. Either home fries or French fries. And whatever else seems appropriate for two starving men and an old fat Italian who really shouldn't be eating at all."

D'Allessando gave him the finger as he hung up the phone.

"So tell me, Marine," D'Allessando said to Bradley, "how did this evil man worm his way into your life?"

"He saved my life, Vic," Castillo said.

D'Allessando looked at Bradley.

"Not to worry," he said. "You're a young man. In time, you'll be forgiven."

Castillo shook his head.

"You going to have a drink before or after you tell me what's going on, Charley?"

"Yes," Castillo said and went behind the bar in search of wine.

"If you promise not to tell your mother, Marine, you may also have a little taste," D'Allessando said.

"Leave him alone, Vic," Castillo said. "I wasn't kidding when I said he's a friend of mine."

"You also said he saved your life," D'Allessando said.

"He did."

"And how-not to get into 'Why in the name of all the saints?'-did he do that?"

"He took out two bad guys who were shooting submachine guns at me. With two headshots."

"I have this very odd feeling that you're not pulling my chain," D'Allessando said. "Forgive me, son, if I say you do not look much like the ferocious jarhead of fame and legend."

"Says the Special Operations poster boy," Castillo said.

"You always have had a cruel streak in you, Carlos," D'Allessando lisped as he put his hand on his hip.

Bradley chuckled.

"I have an idea, Charley," D'Allessando said. "Take it from the top."

Castillo held up a wineglass to Bradley.

"No, thank you, sir. Is there any beer?"

"Half a dozen kinds. Come over here and help yourself."

"And while you're doing that, Major Castillo is going to take it from the top."

"Okay," Castillo said. "Vic, this is Top Secret Presidential."

"Okay," D'Allessando said, now very seriously.

"You remember I told you here that Masterson had been whacked to make the point to his wife that these bastards were willing to kill to get to her brother?"

D'Allessando nodded. "The UN guy in Paris."

Castillo nodded. "What I didn't tell you is that there is a Presidential Finding, in which an organization called the Office of Organizational Analysis is founded-"

"C and c?" D'Allessando interrupted.

Castillo nodded.

"Covert and clandestine," he went on, "and charged with, quote, rendering harmless, end quote, those responsible for whacking Masterson, Sergeant Markham, kidnapping Mr. Masterson, and wounding Special Agent Schneider."

"I figured there was something like that in the woodpile," D'Allessando said. "Who's running that?"

"I am."

D'Allessando considered that and nodded, then asked, "And you found out who these people are, huh?"

"I don't have a clue who they are."

"You're losing me, Charley."

"I figured the best way to find these people was to find Lorimer first. So we went looking for him. We found him in Uruguay."

"Uruguay?"

"Uruguay," Castillo confirmed. "We also found out that Mr. Lorimer was the bagman-the bagman-for the guys who got rich on the Iraqi oil-for-food scam. He knew who got how much, and what for."

"And they wanted to silence him," D'Allessando said. "But what's with Uruguay?"

"Uruguay and Argentina are now the safe havens of choice for ill-gotten gains."

"I knew Argentina and Paraguay, but this is the first I've heard about Uruguay."

"I really don't know what I'm talking about here, Vic. I always heard Argentina and Paraguay, too. But Uruguay is where we found Lorimer. He had a new identity-Jean-Paul Bertrand-a Lebanese passport, a Uruguayan residence permit, and an estancia. Everybody thought he was in the antiquities business."

"Clever," D'Allessando said.

"He also ripped off nearly sixteen million from these people."

"You never said who these people are."

"I don't have a fucking clue, Vic," Castillo said. "Anyway, once we found Lorimer I staged an operation to repatriate him."

"McNab sent people down there? I didn't hear anything about that. Who'd he send?"

"He didn't send anybody. I didn't have time to wait for anybody from the stockade. I went with what I had."

"Which was?"

"Kranz and Kensington were already down there, as communicators. So I used them. Plus two Secret Service guys, a DEA agent, an FBI agent, and Bradley."

D'Allessando pointed at Bradley, who was now sucking at the neck of a Coors beer bottle, and raised his eyebrows.

"Yeah. That Bradley," Castillo said and then went on: "The CIA station chiefs in Buenos Aires helped and I had an Argentine-ex-SIDE-with me. I thought it was, do it right then or don't do it all. If I could find Lorimer, so could the bad guys."

"Yeah. So what were you going to do with Lorimer when you found him?"

"Get him to the States."

"How?"

"I had the Lear-you saw it here?"

"You took that to South America?"

"By way of Europe," Castillo said.

"Across the Atlantic twice?" D'Allessando asked, incredulously.

"That was interesting," Castillo said. "But Jake Torine said we could do it and we did. I borrowed a JetRanger in Uruguay…"

"The last time you 'borrowed' a helicopter, you nearly went to Leavenworth," D'Allessando said. "Is Interpol looking for you, Charley?"

"No. I really borrowed this one from a friend."

"And he will keep his mouth shut when people start asking him questions?"

"It's in his interest to keep his mouth shut."

D'Allessando shrugged, suggesting he hoped this would be the case but didn't think so.

"The plan was to snatch Lorimer at his estancia, chopper him, nap of the earth, to Buenos Aires, put him on the Lear, and bring him to the States. The ex-SIDE guy had arranged for us get the Lear out of Argentina without questions being asked."

"But something went wrong, right? The best-laid plans of mice and special operators, etcetera?"

"We had just gotten him to open his safe when somebody stuck a Madsen through the window and let loose. Lorimer took two hits to the head and the SIDE guy took one in the arm. And then Bradley took the shooter out with a head shot from Kranz's Remington and then took out the shooter's pal. Both head shots. He saved my ass, Vic."

D'Allessando looked at Bradley.

"Consider all my kind thoughts about your touching innocence withdrawn," he said.

"Just doing my job, sir," Corporal Bradley said.

D'Allessando's eyebrow rose but he didn't say anything.

"And when Bradley was popping these people with Seymour's rifle, where was Seymour?"

"Getting himself garroted," Castillo said, softly.

"No shit? How the hell did that happen? Kranz was no amateur."

"Neither, obviously, were the bad guys. It was a stainless steel garrote, with handles."

"Well, who the hell were they?"

"I don't know, Vic. There ensued a brief exchange of small-arms fire, during which three more of the bad guys met their fate. Kensington found the last of them, number six, lying on the ground near Kranz. Seymour had gotten a knife into him before going down."