The shooters pa-4

by W. E. B Griffin

  Confirmation of that wild theory came immediately.

  "It would then be credible, if your helicopters somehow made their way to a field somewhere in Uruguay, for me to find them and announce that they probably had been in the use of drug dealers. Criminals who arrived at the field to refuel them, found no fuel, and had to abandon them."

  "Whereupon they would enter the service of the Policia Nacional?" Castillo said.

  Ordonez nodded, then asked, "Parts would be available for them?"

  "Ordonez, if you let me refuel the choppers at Shangri-La, I'll fly them anywhere in Uruguay you say when I'm finished my operation. Even if I have to fly them there myself."

  When Ordonez didn't immediately reply, Castillo added: "And I will get you all the parts you need for them. Either through government channels, or black."

  "This 'black' would be better," Ordonez said. "It would continue to keep Ambassador McGrory out of the picture. Also, it would be better if you had someone other than yourself bring them back into Uruguay, Colonel."

  "Then we have a deal?" Castillo asked.

  Ordonez nodded and exhaled audibly.

  "But let me clarify it, Colonel. I don't think it's quite what you're thinking. You haven't bribed me with a gift of helicopters for which you will no longer have a need and which in fact give you a disposal problem. What they represent is a sugar pill for me to accompany the bitter one I have to swallow-that of assisting you in an operation which is really none of my business and which I am really afraid is going to end in a disaster.

  "I realized that I was going to have to help you, not because I want to, but because I have no choice but to hope-even pray-that you are successful. Your failure would be a disaster for me. Do we understand each other?"

  Castillo nodded.

  Ordonez went on, "You mentioned the Buquebus. Why don't you fly back to Buenos Aires?"

  Castillo pointed at Max, who was lying beside him with his head between his paws, and said, "Yung told me that taking him on Austral or Aerolineas would be very difficult."

  Ordonez considered that, then said: "And even if I helped you overcome the difficulties, it would still attract attention. Let me make a suggestion: If you could arrange to have someone meet you at the customs house at the International Bridge at Fray Bentos-Gualeguaychus, I'll fly you there in one of the Policia Nacional Hueys. We have four very old ones, two of which are flyable. It will perhaps make you understand why I am so interested in yours."

  "That's very kind of you, Jose," Munz said.

  "You, Alfredo, and your animal. Anyone else?"

  "My communicator."

  "Give me an hour to set it up," Ordonez said. "Call me when you're ready to go." He stood up. "I presume Alfredo will keep me advised of what's happening?"

  Castillo nodded.

  "Thank you for your hospitality," Ordonez said, offering Castillo his hand. He embraced Munz, went through the hug-and-kiss rite, and walked out of the room.

  [THREE]

  Embassy of the United States of America

  Lauro Miller 1776 Montevideo, Republica Oriental del Uruguay 1835 9 September 2005 The Honorable Michael A. McGrory, the ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of the President of the United States to the Republic of Uruguay, was a small and wiry, well-tailored man of fifty-five with a full head of curly gray hair. His staff referred to him as "Napoleon" and "Senor Pomposo." McGrory looked across his highly polished wooden desk at Special Agent David W. Yung, who sat beside Colin Leverette. Robert Howell, the embassy's cultural attache, stood near the door.

  McGrory smiled and said to Yung, "If you'll be good enough to give me a minute alone with Mr. Howell-I need to speak with him on another matter-you can be on your way."

  "Thank you, Mr. Ambassador," Yung said.

  "And it's been a pleasure meeting you, Mr. Leverette. If you need something for Ambassador Lorimer-anything at all-that either Mr. Yung or Mr. Howell can't arrange, please feel free to come see me at any time."

  "Thank you very much, sir," Leverette said.

  Yung and Leverette stood up, shook the ambassador's hand, and walked out of the ambassador's office, closing the door behind them.

  "Well, Howell, what do you think?" McGrory asked.

  "What do I think about what, Mr. Ambassador?" Howell replied.

  While officially the cultural attache of the embassy, Howell was in fact the CIA's Uruguay station chief.

  "What do we really have here?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "You don't see anything odd in Lorimer's father coming down here to live on that estancia in the middle of nowhere? With a butler?"

  "I thought that was pretty well explained when Yung told us the ambassador lost his home in Hurricane Katrina, sir."

  "And the presence of Yung? That didn't strike you as unusual?"

  "I can think of a likely scenario, sir."

  "Let's have it."

  "It could very well be that the secretary, who I think has known the ambassador a long time, went out of her way to do what she could for the ambassador. She knows he has a heart condition. His son-in-law was murdered, and right after Mr. Masterson's remains were repatriated, the hurricane struck and destroyed the ambassador's home."

  "Huh!" the ambassador snorted.

  "And Yung, who was on the secretary's personal staff-"

  "We learned after the fact," McGrory interrupted. "Nobody knew that when he was here."

  "Yes, sir. Well, he was available. He was still accredited diplomatically down here. Yung probably struck her as the obvious choice to come here and set things up."

  "Traveling in a private Gulfstream jet airplane. I wonder what that cost?"

  "I don't like to think, Mr. Ambassador. But on the other hand, we know the ambassador's daughter came into her husband's money. And we know how much of that there is. It poses no financial strain on her to charter airplanes. Or, for that matter, to pay for the private security people who will be coming here with the ambassador."

  "And none of this strikes you as suspicious?"

  "I don't know what to suspect, Mr. Ambassador."

  "Years ago, Howell, there was a terribly racist saying to the effect that one suspected an African-American in the woodpile."

  "I'm familiar with the expression, sir, but I don't know what Ambassador Lorimer could be concealing."

  "I'm not referring to Ambassador Lorimer," Ambassador McGrory said impatiently, stopping himself just in time from finishing the sentence with you idiot!

  "You're referring to the butler, sir? Leverette?"

  McGrory stared at Howell and thought, I can't believe this. This man works for the Central Intelligence Agency?

  If he's typical, and I suspect he is, they should call it the Central Stupidity Agency.

  "No," Ambassador McGrory said carefully, aware he was on the edge of losing his temper. After a moment, hoping his contempt wasn't showing, he went on, "That was a figure of speech, Howell, a figure of speech only. I was suggesting that there's something about this whole sequence of events that doesn't seem…"-he stopped himself just in time from saying kosher-"…quite right."

  "And what is that, Mr. Ambassador?" Howell asked.

  "If you've been in this business as long as I have, Howell, you develop a sense, a feeling," McGrory explained somewhat smugly.

  "I understand," Howell said. "How may I help, Mr. Ambassador?"

  "You can keep a close eye on Yung and that man Leverette. See if they do anything suspicious; see who they talk to."

  "Yes, sir."

  "I think the best way to handle this is just report everything you see or hear."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Any time of the day or night."

  "Yes, sir."

  Ambassador McGrory dismissed Howell with a wave of his hand, then rose from his desk and walked to the window. It provided a view of the Rambla, the road that ran along the Atlantic Ocean beach.

  The water was muddy because it bore all the silt-and God only knows what e
lse-from the River Plate. It didn't become clear-really become the Atlantic Ocean-until Punta del Este, a hundred-odd kilometers north.

  McGrory stood at the window for perhaps three minutes, debating whether or not to call his brother-in-law. He really didn't like Senator Homer Johns. While McGrory admitted that his brother-in-law had had a lot to do with his being named ambassador to Uruguay, it was also true that Homer not only reminded him of this entirely too often, but accompanied the reminder with some snide observation about McGrory's slow movement up the ranks of the foreign service.

  McGrory didn't know why Homer bitterly hated the director of National Intelligence, Ambassador Charles W. Montvale, but he suspected it was because Montvale and not Homer had gotten that job when it was created after 9/11. Homer was on the Senate intelligence committee and thought the job should have been his.

  Homer hadn't been at all sympathetic when McGrory had called him and told him how the deputy foreign minister, Alvarez, had as much as called him a liar in his own office when he had told him that there were no Special Forces teams operating in Uruguay; that anything like that could not take place without his permission.

  And the senator hadn't been at all impressed when McGrory told him that he had figured out what had really happened with Lorimer at his estancia-that Lorimer had been a big-time drug dealer on the side, using his United Nations diplomatic passport whenever that helped.

  The first time he'd told that to the senator, the senator's reply had been "Mike, that's the most absurd bullshit you've ever tried to hand me."

  And Homer hadn't even apologized when McGrory had called him to report (a) the Uruguayan cops had finally figured out what had happened, a drug deal gone bad, just as McGrory had said, and (b) that he had gotten this from Deputy Foreign Minister Alvarez, together with an apology for what Alvarez had said to him in the beginning.

  He'd gotten back a little at Homer-he didn't want to go too far with that, of course; there were more important diplomatic posts than Uruguay, and his brother-in-law could be helpful again in that regard-the last time Homer had called.

  Homer said he'd just gotten word from a good source-a woman who had been canned by the CIA and was highly pissed-that Montvale had indeed sent a Special Forces team to Uruguay to keep Lorimer from running off at the mouth. Homer said she'd also supplied the name of the guy in charge: Castillo.

  McGrory had smiled knowingly at the purported news.

  "Homer," he'd said, "I know all about Castillo. He works for the Department of Homeland Security, and he just happened to be in Argentina and was put in charge of protecting the Masterson family until they could get out of Argentina. That's all. He's a lousy major, is all. I think your source is full of shit."

  "You know about this Castillo, do you?"

  "Yes, I do. Lorimer was killed by drug people, not by Special Forces."

  "I don't know, Mike, my source sounded pretty sure of herself."

  "Why did she come to you, Homer? As an outraged citizen? Or a disgruntled employee trying to make trouble for the CIA? Why'd she get fired?"

  "She didn't tell me that," Homer had said, and then added: "She does have a reputation around town for sleeping around."

  "Well, there you have it, Homer."

  "Maybe. But what I want you to do anyway, Mike, is keep your eyes and ears open. I want to hear of anything at all that happens down there that's out of the ordinary. Let me decide whether or not it's important."

  Okay, Ambassador McGrory thought, still looking out his window at the muddy waters of the River Plate, on the one hand, while Ambassador Lorimer coming down here is a little odd, it is true that New Orleans is under water, and that his daughter, Masterson's widow, now has her hands on that sixty million dollars Jack the Stack got when that beer truck ran over him. So having a butler and flying around in a chartered jet airplane isn't so strange.

  What the hell could a retired old ambassador with a heart condition be into but waiting to die?

  And on the other hand, Homer said he wants to hear anything out of the ordinary; to let him decide what's important.

  So I'll call him and tell him about this.

  And he can run it past his source, the lady with the round heels reputation who got canned from the CIA, and see what she has to say.

  And when some other post-Buenos Aires, for example-comes open, he can remember how useful I have been to him whenever he asked for something.

  McGrory went to his desk, picked up the telephone, and told the operator to get Senator Homer Johns-and not anyone on Johns's staff-on a secure line.

  [FOUR]

  Suite 2152 Radisson Montevideo Victoria Plaza Hotel Plaza Independencia 759 Montevideo, Republica Oriental del Uruguay 1915 9 September 2005 "How'd it go, Dave?" Castillo asked as Yung, Howell, and Leverette came into the room.

  "I didn't tell McGrory that Jake and Sparkman were from the Presidential Flight Detachment-"

  "Jesus Christ!" Robert Howell suddenly said as Max walked toward him. "Where'd that dog come from?"

  "I keep him around to eat people who don't do what I tell them," Castillo said. "Why didn't you, Dave?"

  "I thought it would be better to let him think the Gulfstream was a charter."

  Castillo considered that a moment.

  "Good thinking. You were right and I was wrong," he said. "And he bought that?"

  Yung nodded. "But after that, I wondered if he was going to wonder why I had sent the pilots of a chartered aircraft out to my apartment and not to a hotel."

  "And you think he will?"

  "I don't know. But it's too late to do anything about it."

  "Even if he actually comes looking for them, it's not a problem," Munz said. "While you were telling the manager about your seizure problem, Jake gave them his credit card for this room; it's in his name."

  "'Seizure problem'?" Howell asked.

  "Don't ask," Yung said. "It will make you question the sanity of our leader."

  "I asked how it went," Castillo said.

  "I don't think there's a problem," Howell said. "So how'd you make out with Ordonez?"

  "We get to use the estancia…Dave told you what's going down?"

  Howell nodded.

  "Ordonez gets the choppers when we're through with them. But, and this is important, he gets them-what did he say?-as a sugar pill to accompany the bitter one he has to swallow of helping us to help Duffy in something that's none of his business. In other words, it wasn't a bribe."

  Howell nodded.

  "So what happens now?" he asked.

  "How are you planning to go to the estancia, Dave?" Castillo said.

  "My car is fixed. I really can't believe it. The last time I saw it, it was full of double-aught buckshot holes."

  "Okay. That means you can take the radio with you. Colin'll need communication, but not a communicator, right, butler?"

  Leverette replied with a thumbs-up gesture.

  "I don't see any need for you to drive all the way out there and then back, do you, Bob?"

  Howell shook his head.

  "Ordonez is going to chopper us to the international bridge at-what's the name of that place, Alfredo?"

  "Gualeguaychu," Munz furnished, making it sound like Wally-wha-chew.

  "Where someone-one of us-will meet us and drive us into Buenos Aires."

  "Not to the safe house?"

  "I'm going to the Four Seasons, where I will entertain Comandante Duffy at breakfast. But on the way to…wherever the international bridge is."

  "Gualeguaychu," Munz repeated.

  "How do you spell it?"

  Munz spelled Gualeguaychu.

  "No wonder I can't pronounce it," Castillo said. "On the way to Wally-wha-chew I'm going to suggest to Ordonez that he go home by way of the estancia. A couple of words from him to the local cops who are sitting on the place will make Colin's job easier and get them accustomed to helicopters dropping in unannounced."

  Yung nodded.

  "You seem to be in pretty g
ood spirits, Charley."

  "Compared to this morning, you mean?"

  Yung nodded.

  "This morning, after meeting with the Evil Leprechaun, I thought this operation had no chance at all of succeeding. Now I think the odds are one in, say, eight or ten that we can carry it off. That's a hell of an improvement, wouldn't you say?"

  XI

  [ONE]

  Presidente de la Rua Suite

  The Four Seasons Hotel

  Cerrito 1433

  Buenos Aires, Argentina 0700 10 September 2005 "Fuck it," Castillo said, more or less to himself. "We can either carry this off or we can't. And I don't think the Evil Leprechaun would be dazzled by uniforms. Yours or mine or both of ours. So it's civvies, Pegleg. Go change back."

  Wrapped in a plush, ankle-length, terry-cloth robe with the Four Seasons logo embroidered on the chest, Castillo was in the large sitting room, standing by the plateglass windows that offered a view of the Retiro railway station and, at a distance, the River Plate.

  First Lieutenant Eddie Lorimer, wearing a Class A uniform complete to green beret and ribbon decorations-and there was an impressive display of ribbons-stood between Castillo and the others in the room, the latter seated on couches and chairs and at the dining table.

  Edgar Delchamps, reclined in one of the armchairs with his legs stretched straight before him, cleared his throat.

  "For what it's worth, Ace," he began, "I agree with you. But that leaves unanswered the question of how do we dazzle the bastard?"

  "Looking at the beautiful Mrs. Sieno just now, I realized how," Castillo said, and gestured at Susanna Sieno, who was sitting at the dining table. Her husband was on one of the couches, seated beside Tony Santini.

  "Why do I think I'm not going to like this?" Susanna Sieno asked.

  "Females are masters of deception," Castillo said. "They're born with the ability, which is why they run the world."

  Mrs. Sieno gave Lieutenant Colonel Castillo an unladylike gesture, extending her center finger from her balled fist in an upward motion.

  Castillo gestured dramatically toward her.

  "Exactly! Right there the lady proves my point. Complete control. And how do they do that? They wing it, that's how. And that's what we're going to do."