Backlash

by Don Pendleton

  The guard shook his head. "Sorry, señor" he said, looking at Rivera.

  "It's all right, Carlos. Give him his weapon. He'll have ample opportunity to kill me, if that's what he wants to do. And I suspect he doesn't need a gun to do it."

  Grudgingly Carlos jerked the .44 from a cubbyhole in the wall and handed it to Bolan, muzzle first. The warrior got the point, and he didn't like it. "Next time you do that you better pull the trigger, Carlos."

  "Perhaps I will, señor," the guard replied.

  Bolan holstered the Desert Eagle and followed Rivera outside. The general walked swiftly, as if he were anxious to get away from the house. He turned a corner of the building and waited for Bolan under an archway carved in a thick hedge. When Bolan caught up to him, he led the way through the arch into the garden, which was lit more dimly than the rest of the grounds.

  "I find it restful here," he said.

  Bolan didn't comment.

  "All right, Mr. Belasko, you seem to be a man who values plain speaking. Since I also appreciate unflinching honesty, perhaps we should indulge the one trait we seem to have in common. I know my reputation. I also know that much of it is unjustified. I'm a military man, and I took orders. That's what a military man does. I know you can appreciate that, because it's obvious to me that you wouldn't be here if the choice were strictly left to you. But you must realize that a soldier doesn't always agree with his orders. If he was permitted the luxury of conscience, the army, any army, would come to a screeching halt."

  "There's a limit to how far a man should go, no matter how dedicated," Bolan reminded him.

  "That's true. But if you read the files carefully, you know that I separated myself from Somoza before he was deposed. That was conscience, Mr. Belasko, my conscience. I didn't have to do that. In fact, I did so at a considerable risk."

  "Then why do you run cocaine into this country?"

  "That's a lie. I don't. I know who does, and I also know that some people in your government benefit from the traffic."

  "You could stop it."

  "How?"

  "Turn them in."

  Rivera laughed. "You're not only honest, you're naive, as well. Do you think one man could accomplish what dozens, hundreds, even thousands, have been unable to do?"

  "Every little bit helps."

  "Perhaps…" Rivera paused thoughtfully. He seemed to be considering Bolan's remark. He reached up to scratch his cheek. The rasp of his nails on the leathery skin was the only sound in the garden. "Do you want to know why I'm planning to go back to Nicaragua?"

  "For the power."

  "No, Mr. Belasko. For the money. Unlike many of my superiors, I never had the luxury of a Swiss account. I wasn't adept at pillaging the treasury. In fact, I never had access to the conduits, which, by the way, your government knew about and even protected. But I know where a considerable fortune has been hidden in the currency of several countries and more in gold and jewels."

  "Are you offering me a cut?"

  "Would you like to take it? Don't bother to answer that. I already know. But I've become a practical man. Your country wishes to restore a palatable order to my country. I'm willing to do what I can to assist that restoration, but I'm equally interested in my own well-being. If participating in this little adventure is the price, then I'll pay it. By the way, you needn't think this is our little secret. I have said as much to Mr. Bartlett, and I'm sure he's told anyone else who might need to know."

  "So, you're a statesman after all, General Rivera."

  "Touché. But I…" Bolan knocked him to the ground before he could finish.

  He held a hand over Rivera's mouth and whispered into his ear. "Quiet." He removed his hand. Pointing to the far edge of the garden, he whispered, "Over there… two men."

  "Guards," Rivera replied, trying to sit up against the pressure of Bolan's arm.

  "Your guards don't wear black, General. Wait here."

  Bolan crawled off among a tangle of azaleas. A moment later a burst of automatic weapons fire chewed at the shrubbery, and the warrior heard a shout. He tugged at his coat to get at the Desert Eagle and pushed a clump of bushes aside. One of the two gunmen was struggling to get over a low fence all but hidden by the tangled greenery. His pants were caught on the sharp wire. Bolan called to him to stop, but the assassin tore free and plunged over the fence. Bolan charged toward the fence, keeping his head below the line of shrubs. He heard another shout, in Spanish, and took the fence at a leap, landing on his shoulder and rolling back into the crouch in one fluid motion.

  He could just make out the shadow of the fleeing gunman. Bracing his wrist he fired twice. The gunman stumbled, and Bolan charged after him, zigzagging through the wild greenery beyond the fence. The gunman clawed his way through thickening undergrowth, and the warrior fired again. This time he knew by the groan that his shot had found its mark. He'd aimed low, hoping to take the gunman alive.

  Another shout, this one more distant, was unintelligible. Behind him, the compound was in an uproar as men poured out of the house and rushed toward the garden. Bolan found the gunman, sprawled on his back, his head twisted at a queer angle against the trunk of a tree. Blood flowed down the man's chin. In the dim light Bolan could just make out the sticky gleam of the blood soaking into the gunman's black cotton turtleneck. Despite the warrior's intentions, the bullet had hit him squarely in the chest.

  Bolan felt for a pulse, but the thickly muscled neck was still. He heard footsteps behind him and turned to see Rivera charging toward him, a borrowed rifle clutched in his right hand, his left warding off the clinging branches of the undergrowth.

  "He's dead," Bolan said as Rivera ran up. The general wasn't even breathing hard. He must have been in better shape than Bolan imagined.

  "Who is he?" Rivera asked, leaning forward to get a better look at the dead man's face.

  "I was hoping you could tell me."

  Rivera shook his head slowly. "Never saw him before."

  Bolan checked the man's clothing but, as he expected, found the pockets few and empty.

  "It seems our association hasn't gone unnoticed," Rivera said.

  "It could just be a coincidence," Bolan replied. "A man like you has more enemies than most."

  "Perhaps…"

  Chapter Eighteen

  Winston Bartlett was famous for his love of horses. He raised quarter horses on a five-thousand-acre farm in the Virginia hills. As a deputy director of the CIA, he couldn't afford such an expensive hobby. But it was no trouble at all for the son of the senior partner of the prestigious Wall Street law firm of Bartlett, Dean and Eccles.

  Bartlett was also a member of a syndicate that had made millions in Thoroughbred stud fees. Langley was full of rumors that horses were Bartlett's life, and the Agency was someplace to go when the weather was too wet to ride. Bartlett knew the rumors, had even fed them deliberately, in his cold-blooded, humorless way. It was the kind of revenge that could be appreciated only by a man rich enough to take a hike anytime he felt like it.

  Lately Bartlett had started to wonder whether that time might not be far off. The world was no longer the civilized place it used to be. Henry Stimson, secretary of war under Roosevelt, had once put a stop to U.S. intelligence gathering with the observation that "gentlemen do not read each other's mail." Well, it might have been true in 1935, but it was no longer even close to the truth. This was a world in which a gentleman like Henry Stimson would have been hard-pressed to find a trace of civility.

  There was too much ugliness in the modern world for a man like Winston Bartlett to feel comfortable. It was a world where heavy metal had taken the place of light verse. Poetry was dead, or at the very least, breathing its last gasp. The piano had been electrified and mass destruction institutionalized. The have-nots of the planet no longer wanted charity; they wanted revenge — the bloodier the better.

  In short, Winston Bartlett was a man without a planet. He no longer belonged on earth. At sixty-four he had already seen more than h
e could bear of human cruelty. It was no longer possible to measure a man's thought by his conduct. Dissembling and hypocrisy were the hallmarks of the era. If people were unwilling, or perhaps even unable, to tell the truth, then there was no such thing as truth. Every man had his own, and even if he didn't, he'd make himself a truth he could live with.

  Trying to be the voice of reason in the lunatic asylum that was Central American politics was slowly corroding him. At night Bartlett would sit in a chair, his unlit pipe dangling from a clenched fist, trying to make sense of it all. So far it had been a losing battle. This morning he had to be by himself, get away from everything that confused him. It was a morning to clear the air, and his head, try one last time to see a truth that, for everyone he knew, was right in front of their noses, but slipped away from his eager fingers like quicksilver. No matter how he tried to grasp it, the truth kept darting away from him, leaving him bewildered and angry. A ride in the country would be just the thing, perhaps the only thing, to clear his head.

  But there would be no ride in the country today. There hadn't been one for weeks, and unless things took a turn for the better, something he didn't really expect, there would be none for a while. Bartlett closed his briefcase with a loud snap, a gesture that was as close as he came to swearing in public. He closed his study door behind him and walked across the hardwood floor, careful to keep his heels from cracking on it and waking his wife.

  Outside, in front of the house, the car was already waiting. A fine mist was drifting through the air, and Bartlett glanced at the sky for a moment, frowned at the thick, swirling gray, then ducked his head to climb in.

  The driver closed the door after him, then climbed into the front seat. He glanced in the rearview mirror. "All set, Mr. Bartlett?"

  Bartlett shook his head absently. "Go ahead, Mr. Perry."

  Taking the obvious hint, Perry closed the privacy glass before starting the engine. The big car, an unfashionable Cadillac, so determinedly out of step with the Mercedes-Benz favored by many of the younger bigwigs around the capital, purred softly, its huge tires rolling easily over the clean, freshly raked gravel drive. It was an hour's drive, traffic permitting, and Perry checked the clock on the dash as he always did to see how close to schedule he could keep. It was 6:32. If their luck held, he'd make the final turn into the long approach to the Dulles Building by 7:25. Mr. Bartlett liked to be in the office by 7:30.

  Staring at the muted green of the meadows, Bartlett thought with distaste of the day ahead. His schedule was all arranged, as it always was, but unlike most days, this one promised to be anything but routine. The midnight phone call from the DC1 had guaranteed that. Charles Gardner had been nearly apoplectic. He'd spluttered so much that Bartlett had been unable to decipher what he was saying. He was angry, and he was frightened, but about what Bartlett hadn't a clue. But he was certain to find out first thing. Gardner was going to see him at eight o'clock.

  Bartlett was a team player, but working for Charles Gardner was rapidly forcing him to reconsider the wisdom of loyalty. Gardner was a political hack, whose only claim on the directorship had been the pivotal role he'd played in the last presidential election. He'd been the point man for the President's campaign committee, a job in which he had served more as a lightning rod than a strategist.

  Like most longtime Company men, Bartlett thought of the CIA as a club rather than an arm of government. It was a place of soft voices and expensive suits. Oh, there had always been a few cowboys, and they had had a role to play, but even the cowboys had known just how far to push their luck.

  Unfortunately, as Bartlett saw it, this was a new age, and a new breed of cowboy. It was fast cars and shiny suits now; hair triggers had replaced the hair shirts. Instead of biting your tongue and climbing back on board for another go, the new fashion was to second-guess your superiors and see just how much you could do without anyone knowing. Free-lancers at heart, if not in fact, the younger men had no patience for careful planning. It was as if they had all grown up on James Bond or Bonnie and Clyde. Instead of measuring their net worth by reference to bank accounts, they were more inclined to calculate firepower, megatons instead of mutual funds.

  At the worst of it was that Charles Gardner, whether he realized it or not, was just like them. Fattened on his own rhetoric, Gardner had swaggered into town like a drunken gunslinger and started picking fights with every Third World movement to the left of Attila the Hun. It was useless warning him that the world was too volatile a place for Dodge City theatrics. Gardner wanted action, and action meant covert operations. He'd pushed Bartlett from day one, despite repeated warnings that caution was not only desirable, it was necessary.

  Bartlett had wanted to quit early on, but he'd allowed himself to be talked out of it by longtime friends, both in and outside the Agency. If he left, they'd told him, Gardner would have a free hand. If he stayed, he could mitigate the walking disaster. Maybe not totally, but at least enough to salvage something of the Company. Hacks came and went, they insisted. No fewer than four former DCIs had separately implored him. In the end he had caved in. He had done the right thing, made the noble sacrifice. He only hoped it was worth it.

  His office was already lit. Allison Hodges, his administrative assistant for seventeen years, seemed to live in the office. She was there when he got in every morning, and she said good-night to him when he left. This morning she waited for him as usual, standing guard over a mound of files, all with the distinctive blue stripe. He glanced at the stack before smiling at her.

  "Good morning, Allie."

  "Morning, Mr. Bartlett. The director has been calling. He wants to see you as soon as possible."

  "I thought the meeting was scheduled for eight?"

  "It was, but I gather something's come up."

  "I suppose it would be too much to hope it's his IQ?"

  Allison smiled indulgently. "Now, Mr. Bartlett…"

  "I know, but I can't help it." Bartlett placed his briefcase on the floor beside his chair, reached for the pipe on his desk, already packed by Miss Hodges, and lit it. Through a cloud of blue smoke, he said, "You know where I'll be."

  The walk was longer every time he took it. At nights he sometimes dreamed that the building was stretching and stretching, and in the dream he started walking the hall. As Gardner's office receded faster and faster, he began to run. Every time, he woke up with his heart pounding, a cold sweat on his brow.

  And every time he took the walk, he relived the dream.

  But he made it, and Gardner was there, waiting. Bartlett stepped in, resolving to maintain his customary calm and knowing he would break that resolve in short order. "Morning, Charlie," he said.

  "Sit down, Winston, please." Gardner was using his most statesmanlike delivery. "We have a serious problem on our hands. I suppose you know about the screw-up already."

  "You mean the plane?"

  "What else?"

  "You don't really want the full menu, do you?"

  "Not today, Win, please. I need you with me on this one, not against me."

  "Of course, sorry. Go ahead, Charlie."

  "The Venezuelans have delivered a message from Ortega. It seems they have the pilot."

  "Impossible!" Bartlett bolted from his chair. "You don't believe that?"

  "Oh, but it's true." Gardner picked up an envelope from his desk. It was bulky, but seemed rather light. He tapped it against the opposing palm for a moment. "There's proof, you see. A videotape."

  "It's genuine?"

  "No question. Tech Services confirms it's the real thing."

  Bartlett sat back as if the wind had been knocked out of him. "I see." He sucked thoughtfully on the pipe for nearly a minute. "What do they want?" he asked.

  "They don't want anything. They plan to put him on trial. His name's Gregory, I believe, and he's already confessed. That's what the tape is, his confession."

  "Coercion, of course."

  "I don't think so."

  "What do you want to do?"<
br />
  "I want to nuke the smug little bastards, that's what I want to do. Let SAC finish what the earthquake started. Send Managua back into the fucking Stone Age. But that's one option I don't have. What I need to know are the options I do have. We're going to hash this out. We aren't leaving until we've got a proposal I can send to the President."

  Bartlett took another pull on the pipe. "Tall order."

  "I know." Gardner ran a hand through his already unruly hair. "You've really dug us a deep hole on this one, Win."

  "I have? What do you mean I have? I've been telling you for four years that we ought to pull the plug on this one. Pagan was a bad choice, but you insisted. Times have changed, Charlie. Times have changed, and we haven't kept up with them."

  "What the hell does one thing have to do with the other?"

  "Everything." Bartlett stood and walked around Gardner's desk. He sat on the end of the desk and riffled a stack of papers in Gardner's in tray. "Look at this, Charlie. You know what this is? This is garbage. It's smoke. It's hot air, damn it. And you sit here and you read it and you believe it. People are telling you what you want to hear, and by God you eat it up."

  "We're in the intelligence business, Win. You can't argue with the need for information."

  "I don't. What I argue with is the use of partial information. Case in point — Guillermo Pagan. We've given this man the benefit of every doubt. We've given him money, we've given him access to information, we've given him material support. And he thumbs his nose at us, Charlie. Gives us the old bird. But you don't want to see it because this paper here tells you he's anti-Communist."

  "Well, he is, damn it." Gardner was getting hot. His cheeks already had the telltale rosy glow. His neck had begun to turn red. "I gave you the go-ahead on Rivera. What the hell else do you want?"

  "I want Pagan out of the picture. If you don't disavow him, we lose credibility."

  "Handle it, then, damn it."

  "You'll stay out of it?"