Black Ops

by W. E. B Griffin

  “How do we know he already hasn’t?”

  “As of three minutes ago—according to Inspector Doherty; I called him before I called you—they haven’t. Doherty said this was probably because they need something called a warrant before they can throw you on the ground and slap on the handcuffs.”

  “At the risk of repeating myself, let me think about it. I’ll call you back. Castillo out.”

  Aloysius Casey put down his cards, faceup. “All I have is three jacks and a pair of fours,” he said, mock innocently. “What do they call that, a full house?”

  As he pulled the money in the center of the table to him, he said, “You want to talk to this Montvale guy, Charley?”

  “I don’t want to, but I would if I could figure out how to do it without having him find out where I am.”

  “Ask and you shall receive.” He turned toward the AFC radio. “White House, via the Venetian.”

  “Right away, Dr. Casey,” Sexy Susan said.

  “What this does is activate a cellular in a suite we keep at the Venetian,” Casey said. “Not encrypted—I’m working on that—but what it does is tell the phone company—and Meade, Langley, anyone who’s curious—that the call is being made on a cellular in Vegas. That’s all. I don’t know how many rooms there are in the Venetian, a couple of thousand, anyway . . .”

  “You are a genius, sir.”

  “White House.”

  “Colonel Castillo for Ambassador Montvale.”

  “On a regular line?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Ambassador Montvale’s line.”

  “Lieutenant Colonel Castillo for Ambassador Montvale,” Sexy Susan announced. “The line is not secure.”

  “It’s Castillo,” they heard Truman C. Ellsworth, Montvale’s deputy, say.

  “On the White House line?” Montvale then said, and then the director of National Intelligence came on the line. “Good evening, Colonel Castillo.”

  “Burning the late-night oil, are you, Mr. Ambassador?”

  “Where are you, Charley? We’ve been looking all over for you.”

  “So I have been led to believe by Major Miller.”

  “He told me he didn’t know where you are.”

  “Did he? Well, I don’t always tell him where I am.”

  “Are you aware of what happened in Vienna this morning?”

  “What?”

  “The Austrian foreign minister called the American ambassador and asked him if, in the spirit of international mutual cooperation, he would be willing to have Miss Eleanor Dillworth, his consul, answer a few questions the police had for her.”

  “That’s the same lady who accused me of stealing some Russians from her? What did she do, go further off the deep end? What did the Viennese cops think she did?”

  “You’re not going to make me lose my temper, Castillo, so you can knock it off.”

  “Yes, sir. I’m deeply sorry, sir.”

  Castillo saw Casey shaking his head, but he was smiling.

  “What the police wanted to know was if she could shed some light on why her business card was found on the chest of a man by the name of Kirill Demidov. He was found sitting with a garrote around his neck in a taxi just down the street from the American embassy.”

  “I just can’t believe that Miss Dillworth could have anything to do with anything like that, even if the bastard was the Russian rezident who ordered the garroting of the Kuhls.”

  “Who told you that?” Montvale snapped.

  “I have some Russian friends, you know. They tell me all kinds of interesting things.”

  They heard Ellsworth trying to mask his voice in the background, then Montvale said into the phone, “What the hell are you doing in Las Vegas?”

  Casey smiled again and gave Castillo a thumbs-up.

  “Who told you I was in Las Vegas?”

  “I’m beginning to think Miss Dillworth and a growing number of other people, including General McNab, are right.”

  “About what?”

  “That you really have lost it.”

  “No. That’s just a story you cooked up to convince C. Harry Whelan, Jr., of The Washington Post that a fruitcake like me could not possibly have stolen two Russian defectors from her, as Miss Dillworth alleges. Remember?”

  “I think I should tell you that Miss Dillworth has told the Vienna police, the State Department, and of course Mr. Whelan, that if they are looking for the persons responsible for the Demidov murder, they should start with you and your crony Mr. Edgar Delchamps.”

  “Is that what they call loyalty to your co-workers? I thought agency types never ratted on one another.”

  “I don’t suppose you know where that dinosaur is, do you?”

  “He could be in Budapest, I suppose—”

  “Budapest?”

  “—Or Buenos Aires. Or just about any place in between.”

  “He’s not with you in Las Vegas?”

  “I never said I was in Vegas. You did.”

  “Wherever you are, the FBI will inevitably find you.”

  “I’ll bet there’ll be a lot of volunteers to look for me in Las Vegas. Who did you say told you I was here—I mean, there?”

  Casey and Berezovsky grinned widely.

  “All right, Castillo, enough. I have told the DCI I want a separate investigation of the allegations your Russian friends have made about a secret factory in the Congo. You have accomplished that much, if they are not making a fool of you. And now, it seems to me, it’s time for you to put up or shut up.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Berezovsky and Alekseeva should step forward and tell the agency what they know.”

  “That’s unlikely. They trust the agency a little less than even I do.”

  “Charley, I don’t care where in the world you have them hidden. You tell me where, and I’ll have a plane there in a matter of hours.”

  “Which will transport them to one of those nice houses the agency has in Maryland? I don’t think so, Mr. Ambassador. But I’ll tell you what I will do: In a couple of days, when I get it all together, I will send you everything they have told me about what the agency thinks is a harmless fish farm. Plus what I’ve managed to dig up myself.”

  Montvale didn’t reply for a long moment.

  “I’m surprised. I thought there was nothing you could do that would surprise me. But I should have thought that you would be doing something like this.”

  “Something like what?”

  “You still want to go over there yourself, don’t you, John Wayne? Jump on your goddamn horse and gallop off to fight the fucking Indians. You think if you can put before the President enough of your bullshit, mixed with the bullshit your fucking Russian friends are feeding you, the President will say, ‘Sure, hotshot. Go over there and show up the agency. Have Montvale set it up.’ All the while ignoring whatever damage you can do to the President if you fuck it up—when you fuck it up.”

  “I thought you weren’t going to lose your temper.”

  “Mark my fucking words, Castillo, you will go to Africa and embarrass the President and the country and me over my dead body. You will not have access to any assets over which I have control—”

  “Well, it’s always a pleasure to talk to you, Mr. Ambassador,” Castillo said. “Break it down, White House.” When he heard the click, he said, “Castillo out.”

  “In about a minute,” Casey said, “I suspect a cell phone will start to ring in the Venetian. No one will hear it, because the ringer’s been muted. And I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if, shortly thereafter, lots of gun-toting guys in bad suits with emission detectors in their ears will start prowling the miles of Venetian corridors. That won’t work, as I thought of that and came up with a fix. But was that smart, Charley?”

  Castillo looked at him but said nothing.

  “Thank you, Carlos,” Berezovsky said.

  “For what? I told you I’d never turn you over to the agency, and that was before—”

>   “Before Cupid’s arrow struck? No. Thank you for not backing down from that assault. You reminded me of David and Goliath.”

  Castillo pointed his finger at him. “You shut up.” Then he pointed at Casey. “And you deal.”

  Doña Alicia and Svetlana came into the library fifteen minutes later. They had been watching an old Paul Newman movie on television in the ranch house’s main living room. They joined the game.

  When they quit playing—just before midnight, when Lester Bradley came in for his watch duty with the AFC—Doña Alicia had won almost twenty dollars and Sweaty had shown that she was a lousy loser by twice throwing her cards angrily on the table and uttering thirty-second recitations of Russian expletives that Castillo was glad Doña Alicia didn’t understand. As Castillo stood, he noted on the monitors that the countdown read 50:45:15.

  [EIGHT]

  0900 13 January 2006

  Castillo walked into the library carrying a mug of coffee.

  Davidson shook his head and said, “Not a fucking peep, Charley.”

  Castillo sat at the table.

  “I think what you were supposed to say was, ‘Good morning, sir. I hope the colonel slept well. I beg to report there have been no reports from any of the reconnaissance parties, sir.’ ”

  Davidson gave him the finger. “Uncle Remus said seventy-two hours, Colonel, sir.”

  He pointed at the countdown. Castillo saw that it read 41:40:40.

  “I think we have a surfeit of precision. Why the hell are we counting in seconds?”

  “I don’t know. Because we can?”

  “Let’s wake up the Air Force and see what they’re doing to earn all the money the taxpayers are throwing at them,” Castillo said. “C. G. Castillo for Colonel Torine. Encryption Level One.”

  Sexy Susan said: “One moment, please, Colonel.”

  Davidson’s fingers attacked his keyboard.

  The monitor Castillo was watching changed its data display. It now showed a three-dimensional picture of the terminal building at Kilimanjaro International Airport, Tanzania. A lightning bolt at the top of the screen began to flash, then the screen showed the local date and time at the airport: 1701 13 JAN 06.

  “Back that up, Jack,” Castillo said. “Let’s have a look at the Congo.”

  Sexy Susan said: “I have Colonel Torine for you, Colonel. Encryption Level One.”

  “What’s up, Charley?” Jake Torine asked.

  “Hold one, Jake,” Castillo said.

  The screen showed the last known positions of 5-Leverette, C and 6-DeWitt, P. They were now inside the Congo, eighty-some kilometers northeast of Kisangani. Their symbols were nearly superimposed on each another, which could have meant that they were together, or in the same area just a klick or two apart.

  “Speaking of precision,” Castillo said.

  “That’s it, Charley,” Davidson replied. “It won’t go any closer. What they did was turn on the AFC just long enough for the computer to get a GPS position.”

  Castillo’s fingers flew over the keyboard of his laptop.

  “Jake, I’ve got a last-known position on Uncle Remus. He’s in the Congo.”

  “He told me that’s where he was going. Anything a little closer than that? The Congo is a great big place, Charley.”

  “You have a pencil or something to write this down?”

  “The Lorimer Fund bought me the latest and greatest laptop computer just before I came over here. I thought maybe it would come in handy.”

  Castillo read from his laptop screen: “One point zero six north latitude; twenty-five point nine east latitude. That’s eighty-odd klicks northeast of Kisangani.”

  “Let me have those coordinates again. Slowly.”

  Castillo read them again slowly.

  “Got it. Where the hell did you get that?”

  “We Army special operators try to stay on top of things,” Castillo said. “I think this place we’re interested in is another fifty or sixty klicks farther northeast of Uncle Remus’s LKP.”

  “That would fit,” Torine said thoughtfully.

  “It’s possible, repeat possible, that we’ll get position updates, and I thought that while we’re waiting maybe we might consider what we could do if this place turns out to be what it is, and where we think it is.”

  “The Air Force, as usual, is way ahead of you. There’s a number of options, ranging from nuking it from a B-1 through having Uncle Remus sneak up and throw a spear at it.”

  “And you’ve been thinking about them?”

  “If you had to make an educated guess, Charley, would you say the target would be within a fifty- or sixty-klick radius of Uncle Remus’s LKP?”

  “I’d be happier with seventy-five klicks, but you could probably narrow it down some from a radius. I have an educated guesstimate that it’s not farther than ten klicks either side of National Route 25, and no more than that from the Ngayu River.”

  “That will narrow it down a lot. I’ll work on it. Give me an hour or so, Charley, and I’ll send you my thoughts.”

  [NINE]

  1150 13 January 2006

  Two hours and thirty-two minutes passed before Sexy Susan announced that Colonel Torine wanted to speak with Colonel Castillo, and when Castillo went on the AFC, she announced, “Commencing data transmission, Encryption Level One-D.”

  Moments later, the printer began to spit out sheets of paper—and then kept spitting them out. After four minutes, it stopped suddenly and Sexy Susan announced: “Partial failure of data transmission to file and printer. Printer paper supply, or printer toner supply, possibly exhausted. Transmission to file will resume momentarily. Check printer paper supply and or printer toner supply, replenish as necessary, and enter RESUME PRINT FILE.”

  Doing that consumed another seven minutes.

  And it was another five minutes before Sexy Susan announced, “Transmission of data, Encryption Level One-D, to file and printer verified complete.”

  As Svetlana helped Castillo stack the printer’s output, he noticed the countdown, no longer reflecting seconds, was down to 37:16.

  When he had finished glancing at the information Torine had sent, he was surprised at how little time Torine had spent detailing the options, not how long.

  There were eight separate “Proposed Operational Order: Congo Chemical Complex” papers. A quick glance showed they called for the use of aerial weaponry ranging from missiles, through the B-1 Stealth bomber, to the F-15E fighter bomber, and the aerial tankers needed to refuel them, and two involved U.S. Navy F/A-18C fighter bombers operating from carriers in the South Atlantic and Indian oceans.

  And there was a ninth paper: “Proposed Operational Order: Bomb Damage Assessment, Congo Chemical Complex.” It suggested this could be done by satellite overfly; a U-2 high-altitude photoreconnaissance aircraft; Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicle; return to the bombing site by bomber or low-flying fighter aircraft, or by “clandestine entry into the Congo of U.S. Air Force or U.S. Army Special Operations personnel to make such evaluation on the ground.”

  The ninth was the only one Lieutenant Colonel Castillo, himself a military aviator with a good deal of experience, felt he more or less understood.

  But he was going to have to try to understand the strengths and limitations of the various things Torine was proposing. He was going to have to show them to the President, and he didn’t want to look or sound like a goddamn fool when inevitably the President asked him a question and he didn’t have the answer.

  He collected everything that Torine had sent him, plus the draft of the report Two-Gun Yung had prepared from his own notes and from what had come from Fulda and what he’d gotten from Dmitri and Svetlana. And he went to his old desk in his old bedroom, where he hoped he would have a little privacy.

  Yung’s draft would have to be modified when Yung had a chance to review what had just started coming in from Budapest—Delchamps had finally shown up there—but Yung had put it to him that now was the time to have “a quick lo
ok” to make sure it was what he wanted, rather than have him continue “to break his ass on what might well be a waste of everybody’s time.”

  He had just made himself comfortable at his old desk and poured himself a cup of coffee when Svetlana came into the room. He was convinced he’d pissed her off by telling her that he didn’t need help or company right now, thank you very much.

  She simply replied, “Joel Isaacson is on the radio.”

  [TEN]

  1150 13 January 2006

  The countdown on his laptop read 36:58 when Castillo sat down at the desk and reached for the AFC handset.

  “C. G. Castillo.”

  Sexy Susan said: “I have Colonel Castillo for you, Mr. Isaacson.”

  I don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out this has something to do with the President, Joel having been in charge of his Security Detail.

  Confirmation of that came immediately when Isaacson began the conversation by announcing, “Charley, I had a call five minutes ago from the President.”

  Castillo waited for him to go on.

  “He wanted to know if I knew where you were,” Isaacson said. “When I told him I honestly didn’t know, he asked if I could find you. I said—I don’t lie to the President, Charley—‘I think I can, Mr. President.’

  “To which he replied, ‘Do so, Joel. If you can, tell him to call me. If you can’t, call me back within ten minutes.’

  “To which I replied, ‘Yes, Mr. President.’ He hung up. I then called Jack Doherty, who said to get on the AFC. Jack is not capable of lying to the President, either, even secondhand.”

  “I understand, Joel. I’m sorry you got in the middle of this.”

  “So am I, Charley. What do I tell him?”

  “You won’t have to tell him anything. I’ll call right now.”

  “White House.”

  “C. G. Castillo for the President on a secure line, please.”

  “Hold one, Colonel, please. I have special instructions . . .”

  What “special instructions”?

  “The President’s private line,” an executive secretary to the President answered.