Black Ops

by W. E. B Griffin

  “With your permission, sir, I’d prefer to use this,” Colonel Hamilton said.

  He took a cellular telephone from his trousers pocket and walked out onto the balcony, closing the sliding door after him. They saw him punch a long number into the phone.

  “Memorized,” Dmitri Berezovsky said. “Not autodial.”

  “I noticed,” McNab said.

  “You were joking about the fingernails, right?” Sandra Britton asked.

  McNab looked at her. “If I thought that would work, he would now look as if he was wearing Red Passion nail polish.”

  “That is a very interesting man,” Svetlana said.

  “That has just earned you the award for Understatement of the Week, Sweaty.”

  “ ‘Sweaty’?” she repeated with some obvious displeasure.

  “Isn’t that what our Carlos calls you?”

  “He calls me ‘Svet.’ That is short for—”

  “He got you, Sweaty!” Delchamps said.

  “I’m good at that,” McNab said, smiling. “Didn’t our Carlos tell you?”

  “He’s spending longer on that telephone than setting up a callback,” Berezovsky said.

  “Yeah,” Darby said.

  Colonel Hamilton put his cellular telephone back in his pants, slid the door open, and came back into the room.

  “They will call me back,” he announced. “But I’m afraid they are going to insist on a secure telephone.”

  “While we’re waiting,” McNab said, “why don’t you tell us how you got all those degrees, Colonel?”

  Hamilton nodded. “Yes, sir. Well, right after I graduated from the Point, I was a Rhodes Scholar. I went to Oxford—Mansfield College—with the idea of taking the equivalent of an American master’s degree in biochemistry. It was supposed to be for a year.

  “It all came surprisingly easy to me, and when they told me I could probably earn a doctorate if I spent another year, I asked the Army for another year.

  “And when that was over, I went through the Officer Basic Course at Benning, then applied for and was accepted for jump training. I went through that and was given command of a chemical platoon in the 82nd Airborne at Bragg.”

  Castillo met Uncle Remus’s eyes. Both had the same mental image of the faces of the platoon when they learned their new commander was a tall, skinny, black guy with a Ph.D. who spoke with an English accent and who had graduated from jump school just last week.

  “While I was at Bragg,” Hamilton went on, “I took some correspondence courses from MIT—”

  He stopped when his telephone buzzed.

  “Yes?” he said into it, and then, a little surprised, “Very well.”

  He handed the telephone to McNab, who—causing a momentary look of shock to appear on Hamilton’s face—pushed the SPEAKERPHONE button.

  “General McNab?” a voice said.

  “Yes. Who is this?”

  “Under the circumstances, General, I think we can dispense with a secure line.”

  “Your call.”

  “I have just instructed Colonel Hamilton to cooperate in every way but one in your current project.”

  “Thank you.”

  “He is not authorized to tell you anything about us.”

  “Okay.”

  “We really wish you well in this project, General.”

  McNab held the telephone at arm’s length and looked at it.

  “Sonofabitch hung up on me!” He then looked around the room and asked, “Anybody recognize that voice? I’ve heard it before. Goddamn it!”

  He slowly walked back and forth in front of the sliding glass doors for thirty seconds or so, obviously searching his audio memory.

  Then he turned, put his hands on his hips, and said, “Okay, children. Fun-and-games time is over. Let’s get this show on the road! Hubba hubba!”

  “Hoo-rah!” Castillo called.

  Lieutenant Colonel Woods laughed.

  “You’ll pay for that, Peter!” McNab said, and without another word marched out of the room.

  XVI

  [ONE]

  Double-Bar-C Ranch

  Near Midland, Texas

  2305 7 January 2006

  The runway lights at the Double-Bar-C were lit as the result of a somewhat less-than-loving, not to mention less-than-civil, conversation between cousins—one Lieutenant Colonel Charley Castillo and one Mr. Fernando Manuel Lopez—some thirty minutes previously:

  “Hello?”

  “Mr. Fernando Lopez, please. The White House is calling.”

  “Yeah, sure it is.”

  “Are you Mr. Lopez?”

  “Guilty.”

  “I have Mr. Lopez for you, Colonel.”

  “Fernando?”

  “Damn it, Gringo. I just this moment fell asleep.”

  “Thank you for sharing that with me.”

  “What won’t wait until the morning? Or is it already morning?”

  “I need the runway lights turned on at the Double-Bar-C.”

  “Then what you should do is call the ranch and say, ‘Turn on the runway lights.’ ”

  “I don’t have the number handy.”

  “You’re on your way to the ranch?”

  “No. But I thought it would be fun to wake you up and have you turn on the lights to scare hell out of the rattlesnakes keeping warm on it.”

  “You’re not only a wiseass, Gringo, you’re a pain in the ass, you know that?”

  “I’m thirty minutes out, Fat Boy. Now call the fucking ranch and have the fucking lights lit. And don’t let anybody know I’m there.”

  “Why am I not surprised?”

  “If the lights aren’t on when I get there, I will tell María you have been chasing blond cocktail waitresses again.”

  “And you would, you miserable prick. So hang up so I can call.”

  “It’s never a pleasure to talk to you, Lard Ass. Break it down.”

  When the conversation had been concluded, Svetlana Alekseeva, who was sitting in the co-pilot seat of the Learjet, inquired, “Carlos! Who were you talking to?”

  “My cousin, Fernando. He’s actually more like my brother. He’s a really good guy.”

  And then he had activated his microphone and politely requested permission from the air traffic controller to close out his flight plan to Midland and instead land at a private field in the vicinity.

  Two GMC Yukons were waiting at the hangar for them.

  Castillo was the last person off the airplane. When he had closed the stair door, put chocks under the wheels, and slid the heavy hangar doors shut, a short, massive, swarthy woman got out from behind the wheel of one of the Yukons and rushed up to him. She called him “Carlos,” took his face in her hands, and kissed him affectionately.

  “Svet,” Castillo said, “this is Estella. She has been running this place since . . . forever. Estella, these are my friends Susan Barlow and her brother, Tom.” He motioned at Davidson and Bradley. “You know Jack and Lester. They’ll all be staying with us for a couple of weeks, and we don’t want anyone to know.”

  She didn’t seem surprised at the announcement. She wordlessly and formally shook everybody’s hands.

  “Well,” she then said, “come on up to the house, and I’ll get you something to eat. Ernesto will get your luggage.”

  “I’m sorry there wasn’t more,” Estella, hands on her hips and surveying the table, said after the group had gorged themselves on ham steaks, eggs, and Caesar salad. “But Fernando only called a little while ago.”

  “It was wonderful,” Svetlana said.

  “I put Lester and Sergeant Davidson in their usual rooms,” Estella announced, “and the gentleman in the last room on the right, and the lady in the room next to him.”

  To hell with it, Castillo thought. Bite the bullet.

  I am not going to sneak around my own house.

  Besides, Abuela’s not here.

  He said, “Estella, the lady will be staying with me.”

  Estella looked at hi
m in disbelief, then crossed herself.

  “Estella,” Dmitri Berezovsky offered, “I am her brother and, like you, a Christian. I know what that might look like. But I have found some comfort in the Scripture that enjoins us to judge not, lest we be judged.”

  Estella looked between them.

  “We will make sure Doña Alicia does not find out,” she said somewhat anxiously. “Or Fernando. Or, God forbid, María!”

  “Okay,” Castillo said twenty minutes later. “The AFC is up and running. Starting first thing in the morning, it gets monitored twenty-four/seven. And that means we will have to teach Dmitri and Svet how to use it.”

  “Just Dmitri, my Carlos. Sweaty already knows how to operate it.”

  “Dmitri, then, will require instruction,” Castillo said. “And we’ll have to come up, Sergeant Major, with a duty roster.”

  Davidson nodded.

  “And after breakfast tomorrow, having come up with a necessary equipment list—printers, scanners, tape recorders, etcetera—and having submitted same to Corporal Bradley for his approval, either Davidson or Bradley or both will drive into Midland and find an office supply or something similar to acquire what’s needed.

  “We’ll then set up a CP in the library. That being accomplished, we can then all sit around with our thumbs in our . . . ears, waiting for the AFC to go off reporting how others are doing what I’d really prefer to be doing myself.”

  “Come on, Charley,” Davidson said. “You heard what Phineas said. If we went over there we’d wind up in some cannibal’s pot.”

  “You can really be stupid sometimes, my Carlos,” Svetlana said.

  Castillo raised an eyebrow at her. After a moment, he said, “And on that romantic note, I’m going to bed.”

  “Is this the place where I am not supposed to sleep?” Svetlana asked five minutes later.

  Castillo didn’t reply. He went into the bathroom. When he came out ten minutes later, Svetlana walked wordlessly past him into the bathroom.

  When she hadn’t returned ten minutes later, Castillo considered the pros and cons of going in after her.

  He had just about decided that that would not be a very good idea when she suddenly appeared nude—then rushed across the room and jumped in beside him in the bed.

  “This place is like Siberia. I am freezing. If you were a gentleman, you would make me warm.”

  That, Romeo, is as close to a peace offering as I’m going to get. . . .

  He hugged her.

  “Don’t let this go to your head,” she said a moment later, “but you were an adorable little boy.”

  “I know.”

  “That’s not what you were supposed to say.” She momentarily laid an icy hand on his crotch.

  He squirmed. “Jesus!”

  “You’re going to have to learn not to blaspheme,” she said.

  “What was I supposed to say?”

  “ ‘How do you know?’ And then I would say, ‘I was looking at your pictures on the wall.’ ”

  “What is this leading up to?”

  “Does it always shrink when it is cold?”

  “Why don’t you try putting a warm hand on it and see what happens?”

  Svetlana vigorously rubbed her hands together, then did so.

  After a moment, she declared, “Ah. Is much better.”

  “Yeah.”

  “When you were a little boy, did you ever think you would lie here one day with a beautiful woman putting her warmed hand on your you-know-what?”

  “Every night from the time I was thirteen.”

  She squeezed. “When I was thirteen, I wanted to be a nun. I wanted to marry Christ.”

  “And then you turned fourteen, and that didn’t seem like such a good idea?”

  She made a soft grunt and after a long moment said, “Why is your farm in the middle of an oil field?”

  “It’s a ranch, not a farm. You raise cattle on ranch. And things like corn on a farm. Unless you have milk cows; then it’s a dairy farm.”

  “And then they found oil on it?”

  “Actually, my great-grandfather found the oil. It was there all the time, but he didn’t know about it until he put down the first hole. They call it the Permian Basin. You really want to talk about this?”

  “You have some income from this oil?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then it is your oil? Not the government’s?”

  “They call that the concept of private property. It goes hand in hand with capitalism. And speaking of hand in hand . . .”

  “Stop that! What do you think you’re doing?”

  “At least I warmed my hands first.”

  “And what I heard about those newspapers in Europe—somebody said you own them?”

  “Did they?”

  “Oh, God, don’t do that! They’ll hear us all over the house.”

  “Let jealousy eat their hearts out.”

  “You’re rich, my Carlos?”

  “We say ‘comfortable.’ ”

  “Oh, I am glad!”

  “And I’m pleased you’re glad.”

  “Now I’ll never have to worry that you say you love me only because of my money.”

  “Actually, you have certain other attributes that attract me.”

  “Oh, God, when you do that, I go crazy!”

  “I’ve noticed.”

  [TWO]

  Double-Bar-C Ranch

  Near Midland, Texas

  0715 8 January 2006

  Svetlana decided to let her Carlos sleep. She knew that he was exhausted both emotionally and physically, maybe especially physically. And not only because he’d done all that flying all over in such a short period of time.

  My God, I love that man!

  After their last romp—whenever that had been; three, three-thirty, four in the morning—he had rolled onto his back, closed his eyes, and not moved since.

  He hadn’t even stirred when the airplane landed, making enough noise to wake her from her sound sleep.

  Svetlana did not know what time it was. She had been confused by the one-hour time difference between Fort Lauderdale and Pensacola, which were both in the same state. And then, when they had flown west in the Lear—which Carlos had said was even faster than his bigger Gulfstream—she had been confused again, because they had covered far more distance than inside Florida—and logically that would indicate several time zones—yet Midland and Pensacola shared the same time.

  The only thing she knew for sure was that she desperately needed a cup of tea and maybe a piece of toast or something. Then she would come back to bed and go to sleep again, curled up against her Carlos.

  Carefully curled up, so as not to wake him.

  In this situation, not only would taking a shower be unnecessary, but the noise it would make would almost certainly wake him. When the water closet flushed, it sounded like a fire hydrant exploding.

  That then raised the question of dress. It simply made no sense to get dressed to sneak quietly into the kitchen and make a cup of tea and maybe some toast, then come back to the bedroom only to get undressed again.

  She went snooping, and the solution she found pleased her.

  In the first closet she came to, she found a bathrobe hanging from a hook. It was old, well-worn and frayed, but it was wonderfully soft to the touch, and when she held it up and examined it she saw that it was clean, too. And then she was even more pleased to finally recognize it for what it was—from Carlos’s military college. It read “USMA” in large letters on the back, and there was an insignia, sort of a coat of arms, on the breast.

  She put it on, and smiled warmly at the thought of wearing Carlos’s military college bathrobe.

  Is nice.

  Intimate. . . .

  She did not put on any underwear. She disliked putting on underwear once she’d taken it off, and it really didn’t make much sense to put on fresh linen without showering first, only to have to take it off ten minutes later.

  She opened the
bedroom door and looked and listened before finally going into the corridor. Then, barefoot, she ran down it until she reached the kitchen.

  She listened at the door to make sure no one was inside, then quickly stepped inside, quietly clicking the door closed behind her.

  Then she turned—and came face-to-face with three unfamiliar people who were sitting at the kitchen table.

  One was a very large, swarthy man. The other two were women—a dark, attractive Latina a little younger than the man and an erect, silver-haired lady who appeared to be in her late sixties, maybe a little older.

  Svetlana smiled awkwardly and nodded.

  The older lady stood and smiled back. “Well, my dear. I see that Randy was right on the money. He said you were ‘a real looker.’ ”

  Svetlana said nothing.

  “I’m Alicia Castillo, my dear. Carlos’s grandmother.”

  Svetlana said nothing.

  Doña Alicia gestured. “And this is my other grandson, Fernando, and his wife, María.”

  “You talked to Randy?” Svetlana suddenly said.

  “As soon as he got back to Fort Rucker, he called me. He was quite excited to report that Carlos ‘has a girlfriend. A real looker.’ ”

  Svetlana said nothing.

  “He said your name was Svetlana—what a pretty name!—and he told me that my grandson was no longer alone, and wasn’t that great?”

  “Randy is a nice boy, a very nice boy,” Svetlana said. “And you’re his great-grandmother?”

  “He calls me Abuela.”

  Svetlana sighed. “The bull is out of the pen, or whatever Carlos is always saying. I stupidly let it out when I met Randy. But now that I think about it, I am glad that I did.”

  “The cow is out of the barn?” Fernando said.

  “Yes,” Svetlana said.

  “Randy knows?” Fernando pursued.

  Svetlana nodded.

  “Oh, my,” Doña Alicia said. “How did that go?”

  “Very well. They had a long talk, and agreed to keep the secret.”

  Fernando grunted. “It was bound to come out. It’s hardly going to be a ‘secret’ long.”