“I’d say you have a dangerously loose mouth and have been smoking an illegal substance. What the hell is this all about?”
“I thought you liked Natalie and trusted her.”
“I like her very much. Do I think she wants to help? No. If she knows what I’m doing and wants to talk to me, it’s to talk me out of what I’m doing. And goddamn you, Frank, if you did tell her.”
There was a buzzing sound.
Cohen and Lammelle looked at each other until they realized the buzzing was coming from the secretary of State’s Brick.
“Hold one, Charley,” Lammelle said.
Cohen opened the leather attaché case and took out the handset. She saw which number was illuminated, and mouthed, “Crenshaw.”
“See what he wants,” Lammelle said.
“See what who wants?” Castillo demanded impatiently. “Who are you talking to, Frank?”
Lammelle cut the connection.
“Natalie Cohen,” she said.
“If there was ever any question in your mind that the President is acting irrationally, forget it,” the attorney general said.
“What are you talking about?”
“Schmidt and I just left the Oval Office,” Crenshaw said. “The President just decided to send three Black Hawks loaded with Gray Fox operators to the Oaxaca State Prison to exchange Abrego for Ferris. And from his attitude, I don’t think he cares if there’s a firefight with the Policía Federal. In fact, I think he’s hoping for one.”
“Why would he want . . . oh.”
“The word is ‘irrational,’ Natalie, and that’s a euphemism.”
“Let me get this straight, he’s going to send Gray Fox to deal with this Policía Federal officer?”
“Juan Carlos Pena,” Crenshaw said.
“That’s going to take him at least twenty-four hours, maybe forty-eight, before they can leave, right?”
“McNab is in Afghanistan, so Clendennen sent for McNab’s deputy, General O’Toole. And for Beiderman and Naylor. That’ll take some time, of course.”
“Let me get back to you, Stanley,” she said. She met Lammelle’s eyes and added, “I realize this is a desperate situation, requiring desperate measures. Let me see what I can do.”
She broke the connection.
“You say this no longer works to talk to Castillo?”
“You still can talk to him on it. You just won’t know what’s being said on what we’re calling Net Two.”
She punched a number on her handset.
“Hello, Madam Secretary,” Castillo’s voice came over the loudspeaker.
“Charley, what do you know about a Policía Federal officer named Pena? Juan Carlos Pena.”
“Rude question, but necessary,” he replied. “Why do you want to know?”
“Because the President is about to send three Black Hawks loaded with Gray Fox special operations to exchange Abrego for Ferris at the prison this man operates in Oaxaca State.”
“He doesn’t operate the prison. He’s the head of the Policía Federal for Oaxaca State.”
“So you do know him?”
“Yeah, I know him,” Castillo said. “Why don’t you go back to the beginning with this, so I know what you’re talking about.”
“All right,” she said. “This is the problem.”
[ONE]
Andrews Air Force Base
Prince George’s County, Maryland
1125 20 April 2007
General Allan B. Naylor was walking from the VIP waiting room in the Base Operations building towards his C-37A—the military designation for the Gulfstream V—when Colonel J. D. Brewer, his senior aide-de-camp, who was walking beside him, took his Signal Corps Brick from his tunic pocket.
He glanced at it to see who was calling, and then handed it to Naylor.
“Secretary Beiderman, General,” he announced.
Naylor stopped walking and put the device to his ear.
“General Naylor, Mr. Secretary.”
“Where are you, Allan?”
“At Andrews, about to get on my plane.”
“Brussels and NATO are going to have to wait,” Beiderman said. “Mulligan called me just now, and said the President wants to see you and me right away.”
“Okay,” Naylor said.
“He also wanted to know when McNab will be back from Afghanistan. I told him I’d have to ask you.”
“As I recall, we told McNab to get out of Dodge and stay there until the President got his temper under control. Does this mean that hasn’t happened?”
“I don’t know,” Beiderman confessed.
“Well, if the President has ordered him back . . . Do you want me to handle that?”
“I already have. He’ll be leaving over there as soon as he can get on a plane.”
“You realize, I hope, that he was dead serious when he said if he is relieved over that nonsense at Arlington, he’ll demand a court-martial?”
“Can he do that? Demand a court-martial? He’s not going to be punished, reduced in rank, or anything like that; just relieved.”
“I don’t know. It would depend on the circumstances. What he could do—what he probably will do—is go to Roscoe Danton and argue his case in the court of public opinion. In other words, on the front page of The Washington Times-Post and the television sets tuned to Wolf News. And the President will lose that battle; Danton loathes the President and thinks McNab walks on water.”
The secretary of Defense grunted, and then said, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could say, ‘Screw him. Let him make an ass of himself like that!’”
“But we can’t, can we? We’re in the uncomfortable position of having to defend the presidency against the luna—”
Naylor heard what he was about to say and stopped midword.
“You can say it, Allan,” Beiderman said. “We have to defend the presidency against the lunacy of the President.”
“Have you got any good ideas on how we can do that?”
“No. But I’ll try to think of some on my way over there.”
“There? Where’s there? The White House?”
“Andrews. I’ll pick you up in ten, fifteen minutes.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“What I don’t want to do is walk into the Oval Office all by myself.”
“Are you going to have room for my people? Colonel Brewer and—”
“Mulligan said the President wants to see you and me only,” Beiderman said.
“I’ve got a car. Why don’t I just meet you at the White House?”
Beiderman considered that, then said, “Okay. But if I get there before you, I’ll wait. Come now.”
“Done,” Naylor said, and broke the connection.
[TWO]
The President’s Study
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C.
1225 20 April 2007
When Secret Service Agent Mark Douglas showed Beiderman and Naylor into the room, Supervisory Special Agent Robert J. Mulligan, Press Secretary Clemens McCarthy, and the President were standing before a map board. It held a map of Mexico.
“What the hell is McNab doing in Afghanistan?” the President greeted them less than warmly. “I need him here now.”
“As you know, Mr. President,” Naylor responded, “a substantial portion of General McNab’s command is in Afghanistan. He spends a good deal of his time there.”
“What about this other Special Forces guy, McCool? Is he any good?”
“If you are referring to General McNab’s deputy, General O’Toole, Mr. President—”
“Okay. O’Toole. Is this O’Toole any good?”
“General O’Toole is a fine officer, Mr. President,” Naylor said.
The President looked between Beiderman and Naylor, and said, “I’d rather have McNab, but you go with what you’ve got, right?”
“Yes, sir,” Naylor and Beiderman said almost simultaneously.
“He should already have landed at Andrews, Mr. President,” McCarthy said.
“Well, while we’re waiting for him, let me bring you up to speed on what’s going on around here and how I’m going to deal with it,” the President said.
The sound of helicopter rotors penetrated the sound-insulated walls of the White House.
“That has to be him,” the President decided out loud. “We’ll wait. I hate to explain things over and over.”
Major General Terrence O’Toole was shown into the President’s study. He was wearing a somewhat mussed camouflage-pattern battle-dress uniform.
He saluted and said, “Pardon my appearance, sir.”
“You look, General,” the President said, “as if you’re ready to go to work. No apologies are necessary.”
“So that’s the plan, gentlemen,” the President said. “What do you think?”
“Mr. President, I think it’s brilliant,” Clemens McCarthy promptly said.
“What you think, McCarthy,” the President immediately shot him down, “is irrelevant. You’re a press agent. What is it they say? ‘You might want to write that down.’”
“Mr. President,” General Naylor said, “with all possible respect, sir, I have a few questions. Possibly because I missed some things as you laid out your plan.”
“I expected you and McCool here to have questions, General. I’m the Commander in Chief, but I’m not a soldier. What didn’t you understand?”
“As I understand the situation, Mr. President, there are two sites for the exchange of this fellow Abrego for Colonel Ferris.”
“No. There’s only one. At the Oaxaca State Prison.”
He turned to the map. Using a ruler as a pointer, he aimed it at the map.
“Here,” Clendennen said. “It’s apparently in the middle of goddamn nowhere.”
Naylor said: “Excuse me, sir, but I thought I understood you to say that there has been a message from the kidnappers stating they wanted the exchange to take place at the Juárez International Airport.”
“And I thought I had made it perfectly clear that if we did that, we’d play right into their hands. The helicopter would land there, the two U.S. Marshals on it would find themselves outnumbered by Mexican banditos, who would take this man Abrego from them, and then either wave bye-bye or kill them, too.” As he looked around the room at everyone, he added, “The exchange will take place at the Oaxaca State Prison. Clear?”
“Yes, sir,” Naylor pursued, “but may I respectfully suggest that these people do expect the helicopter to appear at the Juárez airfield at oh-nine-hundred tomorrow. If—when—it does not, then what?”
“Then they will figure out that they haven’t made a sucker out of Joshua Ezekiel Clendennen.”
“That may put Colonel Ferris at risk, Mr. President,” Naylor said, carefully.
“He’s already at risk, isn’t he, General?” Clendennen responded. “You ever hear what Patton said, General? Or was it MacArthur?”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow you, Mr. President.”
“‘Never take counsel of your fears’ is what one of them—now that I think about it, it was MacArthur—said. You never heard that?”
“I’m familiar with it, sir,” Naylor said.
“Mr. President, may I make a suggestion?” General O’Toole asked.
“That’s what you’re here for, General,” the President said.
“As I understand your plan, sir, it is your intention to send U.S. Marshals to establish contact with the Mexican police chief Pena.”
The President nodded, and gestured for O’Toole to get to his point.
“I think it might be best to send a special operator to do that, sir. In addition to setting up the schedule for the exchange, he would be able to reconnoiter the terrain. That would be valuable in case there was trouble.”
“Presumably, you have a specific special operator in mind, General?”
“Yes, sir,” O’Toole said, looked at Naylor, then went on: “I don’t know if General Naylor would agree with sending a special operator, or with my recommendation of who that should be.”
“That’s moot, General,” the President said. “I’m making the decisions here. I think sending a special operator instead of a Marshal is a good idea—hell, send in all of Gray Fox. Now what you have to do is convince me that the man you want to send is the right one.”
“I was thinking of Mr. Victor D’Alessandro, Mr. President.”
“Mister D’Alessandro? That sounds as if he’s a civilian. I don’t want anybody from the goddamn CIA involved in this. Or from the DEA or any other place like that.”
“He’s a retired chief warrant officer, Mr. President, now a DAC—a Department of the Army civilian employee—working for SPECOPSCOM.”
“And in your opinion he would be the best man to send?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I concur, Mr. President,” Naylor said.
“Well, that’s nice to know,” the President said, sarcastically. “We’ve really had entirely too much dissension in the ranks around here lately.”
Clendennen let that sink in, and then went on: “Okay. Then this guy D’Alessandro goes. Mulligan, get Secretary Cohen on the phone. Tell her . . . Hell, tell her to get over here. She can’t be kept out of this; she already knows too much.”
Mulligan picked up the red presidential circuit telephone.
“But that’s all,” the President said. “I don’t want every idiot and his twin brother involved in this. Nobody else is to learn of it unless I personally clear it.” He looked around the room again. “Everybody got that?”
“Mr. President,” Naylor said, “do I correctly infer that you don’t plan to tell the DCI what you’re going to do?”
“Correct.”
“And the director of National Intelligence, Mr. Ellsworth?” Naylor pursued.
“Correct.”
“And Vice President Montvale?”
“Especially not Montvale!” Clendennen flared. “And you damn well know why.”
“I’m afraid, sir, that I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Naylor said.
“The hell you don’t!” the President snapped.
“Sir, I don’t.”
Both Naylor and Beiderman were about convinced that Naylor had just pushed the President over the edge.
Clendennen’s face tightened and whitened, and he opened his mouth as if to speak and then changed his mind. When he finally spoke, he apparently had himself under control.
“I don’t know why I’m arguing with you about this, General,” the President said. “The decision whether to involve the Vice President in this is mine—and mine alone—to make. I have decided not to tell him. Clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“There is a precedent,” Clendennen then said, reasonably. “I don’t think anyone would argue that my trying to get Colonel Ferris back from those who hold him captive is anywhere near as important as the atomic bomb. Still, President Roosevelt didn’t think Vice President Truman had the need to know we had the atom bomb and elected not to tell him. And I don’t think Vice President Montvale has the need to know about what we’re about to do, and I have elected not to tell him. Any questions, General?”
“No, sir,” Naylor said.
“Okay. Now let’s get to the nuts and bolts of this operation. How are we going to get this civilian, what’s his name again?”
“D’Alessandro, Mr. President,” O’Toole furnished. “Victor D’Alessandro.”
“How are we going to get this man D’Alessandro from where he is—and by the way, where is he? Shouldn’t he be here?—to the Oaxaca State Prison?”
After a moment, O’Toole realized the President’s question was not rhetorical.
“Sir, I would recommend the use of a Black Hawk to get Mr. D’Alessandro from where he is—E
l Paso—to the prison,” O’Toole said.
“Why not fly him there in a regular airplane?” the President challenged. “There’s an airport right by it.”
He picked up the ruler again and pointed at the map with it. “Right here. How the fuck do you pronounce that again?”
Clemens McCarthy correctly pronounced Xoxocotlán for the President.
“What is that, Inca? Incan?” the President asked.
“That’s certainly what it sounds like, Mr. President,” McCarthy said.
The President turned to O’Toole.
“I’m waiting, General.”
“Sir?”
“For you to tell me why Whatsisname is better off flying to the prison in a helicopter instead of using an airplane to fly to the airport with the unpronounceable name.”
“Yes, sir. Sir, for the same reason I gave before. It will permit him to reconnoiter the area; he can do that better in a Black Hawk.”
“Yeah, I suppose he can,” the President conceded. “Now, where are we going to get the helicopter?”
“I would suggest, sir, that since we’re going to use Night Stalker birds to carry the Gray Fox—”
“‘Night Stalker birds’?” the President interrupted. “What the hell are they? Is that?”
“It’s how we refer to the rotary wing aircraft—the helicopters—assigned to the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, sir.”
“I see that I’m going to have to get used to the terminology you people use. I’m the Commander in Chief, and I should know it, but sometimes I think you and General Naylor are speaking a foreign language.”
“I can see where it might be a little confusing, sir,” O’Toole said.
“Okay. I’ve got several questions. What kind of a helicopter are we talking about?”
“UH-60Fs, sir. They’re specially modified Black Hawks for missions like this.”
“And they have the range to fly to this prison from El Paso?”
“Yes, sir. I believe they do.”
“You believe they do? Don’t you know?”
“I always like to consult the experts, Mr. President,” O’Toole said.
“Who would that be?”
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