W Griffin: Hunters

Britton shook his head.

"It's like a tomb out there," he said. And then, "Is that what they call an unfortunate choice of words?"

He scrambled to his feet.

"Let's get Seymour on the chopper," Castillo said, as he squatted beside the corpse.

The garrote which had taken Sergeant Kranz's life was still around his neck. Castillo tried to loosen it. It took some effort, but finally he got it off and then examined it carefully.

It was very much like the nylon, self-locking wire-and-cable binding devices enthusiastically adopted by the police as "plastic handcuffs." But this device was blued stainless steel and it had handles. Once it was looped over a victim's head and then tightened around the neck, there was no way the victim could get it off.

Castillo put the garrote in his suit jacket pocket.

"Okay, spread the sheets on the ground," Castillo ordered. "You have the tape, right?"

"Yes, sir," Corporal Bradley responded.

He laid the sheets, stripped from Jean-Paul Lorimer's bed, on the ground. Castillo and Britton rolled Sergeant Kranz onto them. One of his eyes was open. Castillo gently closed it.

"Sorry, Seymour," he said.

They rolled Kranz in the sheets and then trussed the package with black duct tape.

Then he squatted beside the body.

"Help me get him on my shoulder," Castillo ordered.

"I'll help you carry him," Britton said.

"You and Bradley get him on my shoulder," Castillo repeated. "I'll carry him. He was my friend."

"Yes, sir."

Castillo grunted with the exertion of rising to his feet with Kranz on his shoulder, and, for a moment, he was afraid he was losing his balance and bitterly said, "Oh, shit!"

Bradley put his hands on Castillo's hips and steadied him.

Castillo nodded his thanks and then started walking heavily toward where the helicopter was hidden, carrying the body of SFC Seymour Kranz over his shoulder. [THREE] Aeropuerto Internacional Jorge Newbery Buenos Aires, Argentina 2345 31 July 2005 When the Bell Ranger helicopter called Jorge Newbery Ground Control, announced that he was at twenty-five hundred feet over the Unicenter Shopping Mall on the Route Panamericana on a VFR local flight from Pilar and wanted permission to land as near as possible to the JetAire hangar, Ground Control immediately cleared the pilot to make a direct approach.

"You're number one to land. There is no traffic in the area. Report when you are at five hundred feet over the threshold. Visibility unlimited. Winds are negligible."

There is not much commercial late-night activity at Jorge Newbery, which is commonly thought of as Buenos Aires's downtown airport. The airport is separated by only a highway from the river Plate and is no more than-traffic permitting-a ten-minute drive from downtown Buenos Aires. Very late at night, the tarmac in front of the terminal is crowded with the Boeing 737s of Aerolineas Argentina, Austral, Pluna, and the other airlines which will, starting very early in the morning, take off for cities in Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil.

The informality of the radio exchange between the Bell Ranger and Newbery Ground Control would have driven an American FAA examiner to distraction, but in practical terms there was nothing wrong with it.

Ground Control had not bothered to identify the runway by number. There is only one, about seven thousand feet long. And since he had given the helicopter pilot permission to make a direct approach, and the winds were negligible, there wasn't much chance the pilot would misunderstand where he was supposed to go.

"Newbery, Ranger Zero-Seven at five hundred over the threshold."

"Zero-Seven, you are cleared to make a low-level transit of the field to the right, repeat right of the runway for landing at the JetAire hangar."

"Mucho gracias."

"Report when you land."

"Will do." As the Bell Ranger came down the field, over the grass to the right of the runway, the doors of the JetAire hangar began to slide open.

A sleek, small, glistening white jet airplane-a Bombardier/Learjet 45XR with American markings-sat, nose out, behind one of the doors. It was connected to ground power and there were lights visible in both the cockpit and cabin.

Four men pushing a trundle bed, which would attach to the skids of the helicopter-the Ranger does not have wheels-and permit it to be rolled into the hangar, came out and waited for the helicopter to land. "Newbery, Ranger Zero-Seven on the ground. Mucho gracias."

"You're welcome. Have a nice time."

"I'll try."

The Ground Control operator had assumed-not without reason-that the Bell Ranger was owned by a wealthy estanciero who had flown into the city for a night on the town. That happened three or more times every night. Sometimes the tarmac in front of JetAire was as crowded with private airplanes and helicopters as the terminal tarmac was with airliners. As soon as the Ranger had been trundled into the hangar, the doors began to slide closed again.

Three men came down the Lear's stair door and approached the helicopter as the pilot pushed the cockpit door open.

The larger of them was Fernando Lopez, Castillo's cousin. He was a dark-skinned man in his midthirties, six feet two inches tall and weighing well over two hundred pounds.

Lopez saw something he didn't like on Castillo's face. "You okay, Gringo?"

Castillo nodded.

"Solez?" Fernando Lopez asked.

Ricardo Solez was a special agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration assigned to the U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires. He had been drafted from the DEA by Castillo for the Estancia Shangri-La operation.

"He's driving the Yukon back here," Castillo said. "He's all right."

"I thought the kid was going to do that," Lopez said.

"Bradley's in there," Castillo said, indicating the helicopter.

"How did it go, Charley?" Colonel Jacob Torine, USAF, a tall, slim redhead in a sports coat, asked.

"Not well," Castillo replied. "Lorimer is dead. And Kranz bought the farm."

"Oh, shit! What happened?"

"And Munz took a hit," Castillo went on. He looked at the third man, who was slim, in his early forties, with shortly cropped thinning hair and wearing a light brown single-breasted suit.

"Well, hello, Howard," he said, not kindly. "Your boss send you to see how badly I bent his chopper?"

Howard Kennedy had spent most of his adult life as an FBI agent. Two years before, he had abruptly abandoned his prestigious duties in the FBI's Ethical Standards-read Internal Affairs-Division to go to work for Aleksandr Pevsner, a Russian national, who, it was alleged in warrants issued for his arrest by nearly a dozen countries, had committed an array of crimes ranging from being an international dealer in arms and drugs all the way down to murder.

"I came because he thought I might be useful," Howard Kennedy said.

"What happened, Charley?" Colonel Torine asked again.

"There were some other people at the estancia. Six of them…"

"Who?" Kennedy said.

"…all dressed in black and armed with Madsens," Castillo finished.

"Who were they?" Kennedy pursued.

"I wish to hell I knew," Castillo said, and turned to Torine. "How soon can we go wheels-up?"

"All I have to do is file the flight plan. It shouldn't take long this time of night."

"Howard, can you take care of Colonel Munz?" Castillo asked.

"Does he need a hospital?"

"The bullet's out, and he's been given antibiotics. Unless he develops an infection, no."

"Who took the bullet out?" Kennedy asked.

Castillo ignored the question.

"Take him home, Howard. Right now, he's still in la-la land, but that should wear off in no more than an hour. Then he'll start to hurt."

"Can he walk?"

Castillo nodded.

"I don't like this," Kennedy said.

"Howard, didn't your mother ever tell you when you go somewhere uninvited, you're likely to find something at the party you won't like?"