by Tom Clancy
“You Cubans ought to know better. We warned you not to come snooping into our exercise last time, but you had to come bother us again, didn’t you?” the captain observed.
“I’m not a Cuban—I’m an American. And I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the pilot finally managed to say.
“You got some ID?” the captain asked.
Bert Russo started moving his hand toward his wallet, but then the dog really let loose a snarl.
“Don’t scare the dog,” the captain warned. “They’re a little high-strung, y’know?”
“Fuckin’ Cuban spies,” Gunny Black observed. “We could just waste them, sir. I mean, who really gives a damn?”
“Hey, Gunny!” a voice called from the airplane. “This ain’t no spy-bird. It’s full of drugs! We got us a drug runner!”
“Son of a bitch!” The gunny sounded disappointed for a moment. “Fuckin’ druggie is all? Shit!”
The captain just laughed. “Mister, you really picked the wrong place to drive that airplane tonight. How much, Corp?”
“A whole goddamned pisspot full, sir. Grass and coke both. Plane’s like full of it, sir.”
“Fuckin’ druggie,” the gunny observed. He was quiet for a moment. “Cap’n?”
“Yeah?”
“Sir, all the time, sir, these planes land, and the crew just bugs the hell out, and nobody ever finds ’em, sir.”
As though on cue, they all heard a guttural sound from the swamp that surrounded the old airstrip. Albert Russo came from Florida and knew what the sound was.
“I mean, sir, who’d ever know the difference? Plane landed, and the crew ran off‘fore we could catch up, and they got into the swamp over yonder, and like we heard some screams, y’know ... ?” A pause. “I mean, they’re just druggies. Who’s really gonna care, sir? Make the world a better place, y‘know? Hell, it even feeds them ’gators. They sound right hungry to me, sir.”
“No evidence ...” the captain mused.
“Ain’t nobody gonna give a good goddamn, sir,” the sergeant persisted. “Just us be out here, sir.”
“No!” the copilot screamed, speaking for the first time and startling the dog at the back of his neck.
“Y’all be quiet now, we be talking business here,” the gunny observed.
“Gentlemen, I find that the sergeant makes a pretty good case,” the captain said after a moment’s contemplation. “And the ‘gators do sound hungry. Kill ’em first, Sergeant. No sense being cruel about it, and the ’gators don’t care one way or the other. Be sure you take all their IDs, though.”
“Aye aye, skipper,” the gunnery sergeant replied. He and the remainder of the duty section—there were only eight of them—came from the Special Operations Center at MacDill. They were Recon Marines, for whom unusual activities were the rule rather than the exception. Their helicopter was half a mile away.
“Okay, sport,” Black said as he bent down. He hoisted Russo to his feet with one brutal jerk. “You sure did pick the wrong time to run drugs, boy.”
“Wait a minute!” the other one screamed. “We didn’t—I mean, we can tell you—”
“You talk all you want, boy. I got my orders. Come on, now. Y’all want to pray or something, now be the time.”
“We came in from Colombia—”
“That’s a real surprise, ain’t it?” Black observed as he frog-marched the man toward the trees. “You best be doing your talking to the Lord, boy. He might listen. Then again, He might not....”
“I can tell you everything,” Russo said.
“I ain’t int’rested!”
“But you can’t—”
“Sure I can. What do you think I do for a livin’, boy?” Black said with amusement. “Don’t worry. It’ll be quick and clean. I don’t make people suffer like your kind does with drugs. I just do it.”
“I have a family ...” Russo was whimpering now.
“Most people do,” Black agreed. “They’ll get along. You got insurance, I ’spect. Lookie there!”
Another Marine pointed his flashlight into the bushes. It was as large an alligator as Russo had ever seen, over twelve feet long. The large eyes blazed yellow in the darkness, while the rest of the reptile’s body looked like a green log. With a mouth.
“This is far enough,” Black judged. “Keep them dogs back, goddammit!”
The alligator—they called him Nicodemus—opened his mouth and hissed. It was a thoroughly evil sound.
“Please ...” Russo said.
“I can tell you everything!” the copilot offered again.
“Like what?” the captain asked disgustedly. Why can’t you just die like a man? he seemed to ask instead.
“Where we came from. Who gave us the load. Where we’re going. Radio codes. Who’s supposed to meet us. Everything!”
“Sure,” the captain noted. “Get their IDs. Pocket change, car keys, everything. As a matter of fact, just strip ‘em naked before you shoot ’em. Let’s try to be neat.”
“I know everything!” Russo screamed.
“He knows everything,” Gunny Black said. “Isn’t that nice? Take off your clothes, boy.”
“Hold it a minute, Gunny.” The captain came forward and shined his light right in Russo’s face.
“What do you know that would interest us?” It was a voice they hadn’t heard before. Though dressed in fatigues, he was not a Marine.
Ten minutes later it was all on tape. They already knew most of the names, of course. The location of the airstrip was new information, however, as were the radio codes.
“Do you waive the right to counsel?” the civilian asked.
“Yes!”
“You willing to cooperate?”
“Yes!”
“Good.” Russo and the copilot, whose name was Bennett, were blindfolded and led to a helicopter. By noon the next day they’d be taken before a U.S. Magistrate, then a judge of the Federal District Court; by sundown to a remote part of Eglin Air Force Base, a newly built structure with a high fence. It was guarded by serious-looking men in uniform.
They didn’t know that they were the lucky ones. Five downed planes qualified a pilot as an ace. Bronco was well on his way there.
10.
Dry Feet
MARK BRIGHT CHECKED in with Deputy Assistant
Director Murray, just as a matter of courtesy, before going in to see the Director.
“You must have caught the first bird out. How’s the case coming?”
“The Pirates Case—that’s how the papers are treating it—is just fine. I’m up here because of what spun off of it. The victim was dirtier than we thought.” Bright explained on for several minutes, pulling one of the ring binders from his briefcase.
“How much?”
“We’re not sure. This one’s going to take some careful analysis by people with expertise in the world of high finance, but ... well, probably on the order of seven hundred million dollars.”
Murray managed to set down his coffee without spilling any. “Say that again?”
“You heard right. I didn’t know that until day before yesterday, and I didn’t finish reading this until about twenty-four hours ago. Christ, Dan, I just skimmed it. If I’m wrong, I’m off on the low side. Anyway, I figured the Director needed to see this PDQ.”
“Not to mention the AG and the President. What time you going in to see Emil?”
“Half an hour. Want to tag along? You know this international shuffle better than I do.”
The Bureau had a lot of deputy assistant directors, and Murray’s post had a vague definition that he jokingly called “utility outfielder.” The Bureau’s leading authority on terrorism, Murray was also the agency’s in-house expert on how various international groups moved people, arms, and money from point to point. That, added to his wide experience as a street agent, gave him the brief of overseeing certain important cases for the Director or for Bill Shaw, the executive assistant director (Investigations). Bright hadn’t walked
into this office entirely by accident.
“How solid is your information?”
“Like I said, it’s not all collated yet, but I got a bunch of account numbers, transaction dates, amounts, and a solid trail all the way back to the point of origin.”
“And all of this because that Coast Guard—”
“No, sir.” Bright hesitated. “Well, maybe. Knowing the victim was dirty made us search his background a little more thoroughly. We probably would have gotten this stuff eventually anyway. As it was, I kept going back to the house. You know how it is.”
“Yeah.” Murray nodded. One mark of a good agent was tenacity. Another was instinct. Bright had returned to the home of the victims for as long as his mind kept telling him that something else had to be there. “How’d you find the safe?”
“The guy had one of those Rubbermaid sheets for his swivel chair to ride on. You know how they tend to drift away when you move your chair back and forth? I must have sat at that desk for an hour, all told, and I noticed that it had moved. I rolled the chair away, so I could slide the mat back, and then it hit me—what a perfect hiding place. I was right.” Bright grinned. He had every right to do so.
“You should write that one up for The Investigator”—that was the Justice Department’s in-house newsletter—“so everybody’ ll know to look for it.”
“We have a good safe-man in the office. After that, it was just a matter of cracking the code on the disks. We have a guy in Mobile who helps us out on that—and, no, he doesn’t know what’s on the disks. He knows not to pay close attention, and he’s not all that interested anyway. I figure we’ll want to keep this one pretty tight until we move to seize the funds.”
“You know, I don’t think we’ve ever owned a shopping mall. I remember when we seized that topless bar, though.” Murray laughed as he lifted his phone and tapped in the number for the Director’s office. “Morning, Moira, this is Dan Murray. Tell the boss that we have something really hot for him. Bill Shaw will want to come in for this, too. Be there in two minutes.” Murray hung up. “Come on, Agent Bright. It’s not often that you hit a grand slam on your first major-league at-bat. You ever meet the Director?”
“Just to say hi to him twice at receptions.”
“He’s good people,” Murray assured him on the way out the door. It was a short walk down the carpeted corridor. Bill Shaw met them on the way.
“Hi, Mark. How’s your dad?”
“Catching a lot of fish.”
“Living down in the Keys now, isn’t he?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re going to love this one, Bill,” Murray observed as he opened the door. He led them in and stopped cold when he saw the Director’s secretary. “My God, Moira, you’re beautiful!”
“You watch that, Mr. Murray, or I’ll tell your wife!” But there was no denying it. Her suit was lovely, her makeup was perfect, and her face positively glowed with what could only be new love.
“I most humbly beg your pardon, ma’am,” Murray said gallantly. “This handsome young man is Mark Bright.”
“You’re five minutes early, Agent Bright,” Mrs. Wolfe noted without checking the appointment calendar. “Coffee?”
“No, thank you, ma’am.”
“Very well.” She checked to see that the Director wasn’t on the phone. “You can go right in.”
The Director’s office was large enough for conferences. Emil Jacobs had come to the Bureau after a distinguished career as a United States Attorney in Chicago, and to take this job he’d declined a seat on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals there. It went without saying that he could have held a partner’s chair in any criminal-law firm in America, but from the day he’d passed the bar exam, Emil Jacobs had dedicated his life to putting criminals in jail. Part of that resulted from the fact that his father had suffered during the beer wars of Prohibition. Jacobs never forgot the scars his father bore for once having talked back to a South Side Gang enforcer. A small man, like his father, Emil Jacobs viewed his mission in life as protecting the weak from the evil. He pursued that mission with a religious fervor that hid behind a brilliant analytical mind. A rare Jew in a largely Irish-Catholic agency, he’d been made an honorary member of seventeen Hibernian lodges. While J. Edgar Hoover had been known in the field as “Director Hoover,” to the current crop of agents, Director Jacobs was “Emil.”
“Your dad worked for me once,” Jacobs said as he extended his hand to Agent Bright. “He’s down on Marathon Key, isn’t he? Still fishing for tarpon?”
“Yes, sir. How’d you know?”
“Every year he sends me a Chanukah card.” Jacobs laughed. “It’s a long story. I’m surprised he hasn’t told you that one. So what’s the story?”
Bright sat down and opened his briefcase, handing out the bound copies of his documents. He started talking, awkwardly at first, but in ten minutes he was fully warmed to the subject. Jacobs was flipping rapidly through the binder, but didn’t miss a spoken word.
“We’re talking over half a billion dollars,” Bright concluded.
“More than that from what I see here, son.”
“I haven’t had time to give it a detailed analysis, sir. I figured you’d want to see this right quick.”
“You figured right,” Jacobs replied without looking up. “Bill, who’s the best guy at Justice to get in on this?”
“Remember the guy who headed the savings-and-loan thing? He’s a whiz for following money from place to place. Marty something,” Shaw said. “Young guy. He has a real nose for it. I think Dan ought to be involved also.”
Jacobs looked up. “Well?”
“Fine with me. Shame we can’t get a commission on what we seize. We’re going to want to move fast on this. The first inkling they have ...”
“That might not matter,” Jacobs mused. “But there’s no reason to drag our feet. This sort of loss will sting them pretty good. And with the other things we’re ... excuse me. Right, Dan, let’s set this up to move fast. Any complications on the piracy case?”
“No, sir. The physical evidence is enough for a conviction. The U.S. Attorney tossed the confession entirely when the defense lawyer started grumbling about how it had been obtained. Says he smiled when he did it. Told the other guy no deals of any kind, that he had enough evidence to fry them, which is exactly what he plans to do. He’s pressing for an early trial date, going to try the case himself. The whole thing.”
“Sounds like we have a budding political career on our hands,” Jacobs observed. “How much show and how much substance?”
“He’s been pretty good to us down in Mobile, sir,” Bright said.
“You can never have too many friends on The Hill,” Jacobs agreed. “You’re fully satisfied with the case?”
“Yes, sir. It’s solid. What’s spun off of it can stand pretty much on its own.”
“Why was there so much money on the boat if they just planned to kill him?” Murray asked.
“Bait,” Agent Bright answered. “According to the confession that we trashed, they were actually supposed to deliver it to a contact in the Bahamas. As you can see from this document, the victim occasionally handled large cash transactions himself. That’s probably the reason he bought the yacht in the first place.”
Jacobs nodded. “Fair enough. Dan, you did tell that captain—”
“Yes, sir. He learned his lesson.”
“Fine. Back to the money. Dan, you coordinate with Justice and keep me informed through Bill. I want a target date to start the seizures—give you three days for that. Agent Bright and the Mobile Field Office are to get full credit for turning this one—but, this one is code-word until we’re ready to move.” Code-word meant that the case would be classified right up with CIA operations. It wasn’t all that unusual for the Bureau, which ran most of America’s counterintelligence operations. “Mark, pick a code-word.”
“Tarpon. Dad always has been crazy about chasing after them, and they’re good fighters.”
“I’m going to have to go down there and see. I’ve never caught anything bigger than a pike.” Jacobs was quiet for a moment. He was thinking about something, Murray thought, wondering what it was. Whatever it was, it gave Emil a very crafty look. “The timing couldn’t be better. Shame I can’t tell you why. Mark, say hi to your dad for me.” The Director stood, ending the meeting.
Mrs. Wolfe noted that everyone was smiling when they came out of the room. Shaw even gave her a wink. Ten minutes later she’d opened a new file in the secure cabinet, an empty folder with the name TARPON typed on the paper label. It went in the drug section, and Jacobs told her that further documentation would follow in a few days.
Murray and Shaw walked Agent Bright down to his car and saw him off.
“What’s with Moira?” Dan asked as the car pulled out.
“They think she’s got a boyfriend.”
“About time.”
At 4:45, Moira Wolfe placed the plastic cover over her computer keyboard and another over her typewriter. Before leaving the office, she checked her makeup one last time and then walked out with a spring in her step. The oddest thing was that she didn’t realize that everyone else in the office was rooting for her. The other secretaries and executive assistants, even the Director’s security detail, had avoided comment for fear of making her self-conscious. But tonight had to be a date. The signs were clear, even though Moira thought that she was concealing it all.
As a senior executive secretary, Mrs. Wolfe rated a reserved parking space, one of many things that made her life easier. She drove out a few minutes later onto 10th Street, Northwest, then turned right onto Constitution Avenue. Instead of her normal southward course toward Alexandria and home, she headed west across the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge into Arlington. It seemed as though the rush-hour traffic was parting before her, and twenty-five minutes later she pulled up to a small Italian restaurant in Seven Corners. Before going in she checked her makeup again in the rearview mirror. Her children would be getting dinner from McDonald’s tonight, but they understood. She told them that she’d be working very late, and she was sure that they believed her, though she ought to have known that they saw through her lies as easily as she had once seen through theirs.