Hazardous Duty - PA 8

by W. E. B Griffin

  MAJOR CARLOS G. CASTILLO, SPECIAL FORCES, U.S. ARMY, IS HEREWITH APPOINTED CHIEF, OFFICE OF ORGANIZATIONAL ANALYSIS, WITH IMMEDIATE EFFECT.

  PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  SECRETARY OF STATE

  TOP SECRET—PRESIDENTIAL

  “You carry this around, Charley, in case the cops stop you for speeding, right?” Damon asked, as he handed it back.

  “I’ve been carrying it around in the false cover of my laptop until I decide what to do with it,” Castillo said, and then continued, “When I told the President what Mrs. Masterson had told me, he told me to find the brother and find out what was going on.

  “Mrs. Masterson had told me he was living in Paris, so I went there. The CIA station chief was a guy named Edgar Delchamps, a dinosaur who knew so many embarrassing things about the Agency they were happy he was happy with the Paris assignment.

  “He told me that it wouldn’t surprise him if Dr. Lorimer had been cut in little pieces and tossed in the Seine River. He said the word he had was that Jean-Paul had been the bagman for the Oil-for-Food people, had gotten greedy and walked off with sixteen million dollars and was either in the Seine or somewhere in South America.

  “So I went back to South America, specifically here. And got lucky. I asked one of the so-called ‘legal attachés’ in the embassy if he had ever heard of Jean-Paul, and showed him his picture. He said he knew who it was, an antiquities—not antiques—dealer named Jean-Paul Bertrand; he had been watching him launder money.

  “The simplest way to have him properly interrogated, I decided, was to get him to the States and let the FBI or IRS have at him. It wouldn’t be a problem, I thought. He was living here in the middle of nowhere. So I set up a quick, simple op to snatch him and get him on a C-37 I had waiting at Jorge Newbery.

  “I stupidly decided I didn’t need Delta or Gray Fox, since I had a team consisting of myself, a very good sergeant named Jack Kensington—”

  “This is the quick, simple op in which Jack got blown away?” Damon asked.

  “Unfortunately, and my fault. I really fucked up. I really thought I could do it with just Jack and me, and some amateurs.

  “Like Alfredo Munz, the former head of SIDE; Alex Darby, the CIA guy in Buenos Aires; Tony Santini and Jack Britton, of the Secret Service in Buenos Aires; Dave Yung, the FBI money-laundering guy from the Montevideo embassy; and last and least, I thought, nineteen-year-old Corporal Lester Bradley of the Marine guard at the Buenos Aires embassy.

  “In addition to the C-37, I borrowed a chopper—”

  “‘Borrowed,’ Charley? Or stole?”

  “Aleksandr Pevsner owed me a favor. He loaned me a Bell.”

  “Aleksandr Pevsner as in ‘notorious arms dealer’? That Aleksandr Pevsner?”

  “That one. Don’t be so judgmental, Greg,” Castillo said. “Remember what it says in the Good Book: ‘Judge not…’”

  “So, what the hell went wrong?”

  “I flew the chopper here, and refueled it. Corporal Bradley had driven over with two fifty-five-gallon barrels in the back of a Yukon. Then I left Bradley with the bird and Jack Kensington’s rifle, telling him to guard the bird.

  “All Jack and I had to do then was get in the house under a simple pretense, bag Jean-Paul, and convince him to come home with us. The worst scenario was that he would be reluctant to do so, which would mean that Jack would have had to stick him with a needle. Then we would load him into the Bell, fly back across the River Plate to Jorge Newbery, and get wheels up in the C-37. A piece of cake.

  “We got as far as introducing ourselves to Dr. Lorimer when there came—what did MacArthur call it?—‘the rattle of musketry.’ Some of it came from Corporal Bradley’s musket but most of it came from the fully automatic weapons of eight guys in black coveralls aimed at us.”

  “Who were they?”

  “At the time we didn’t know, so we called them the Ninjas; they looked like characters in a comic book. Later we found out they were ex–Államvédelmi Hatóság being run by a major from the Cuban Dirección General de Inteligencia named Alejandro Vincenzo.”

  “And the kid from the Marines actually got in the firefight?”

  “The kid from the Marines took out two of them with head shots fired offhand from at least a hundred yards. What the Ninjas were after was Dr. Lorimer dead and the sixteen million he’d stolen back. They got him, but we got the money. When we got back to the States, and I told the President about the money—actually, it was in bearer bonds—he told me I hadn’t mentioned bearer bonds, but apropos of nothing at all, if I happened to find some, they would make a nice source of funding for OOA.

  “He also gave me permission to keep Lester the Marine and Yung, the FBI’s money-laundering expert—actually permission to recruit, draft, anybody I wanted.”

  “At this point the ambassador and I got in the picture,” Leverette put in. “I was running Camp McCall, and all of a sudden this teenaged Marine showed up. Superb judge of military men that I am, I immediately decided that he was wholly unfit to be a Special Operator and put him to work on a computer ordering laundry supplies, and that sort of thing.

  “Then McNab choppers into McCall with the announcement he’s there to take Lester to Arlington for Jack Kensington’s funeral, and that, since Jack and I had been around the block together on several occasions, I was welcome to come along if I wanted to.

  “I was so shocked by this that I momentarily forgot my military courtesy and asked the general what the hell the boy Marine had to do with Jack and his funeral.

  “‘I can’t imagine why nobody told you,’ the general replied, ‘that Corporal Bradley put a 7.62-millimeter slug in the ear of the bad guy who put Jack down and another in the back of the head of the bad guy who was shooting at Charley.’

  “He went on to explain that Lester now worked for Charley, and that Charley had sent him to McCall—to me—so he could get a quick run-through of the Qualification Course. Just the highlights. None of the psychological harassment to give us an idea how he’d behave when someone was shooting at him. We already knew that.

  “By the time we came back from Washington, I knew all about the OOA and by prostrating myself before McNab and weeping piteously, got him to let me go work for Charley.”

  “I put Dave Yung in charge of the money,” Castillo said, “reasoning that if he was so good in finding out who was laundering money, he’d probably be just as good at hiding our sixteen million from prying eyes. And thus was born the Lorimer Charitable and Benevolent Fund.”

  “That’s when I met Mr. Yung and Mr. Leverette,” Ambassador Lorimer said. “They came to Louisiana, where Jack’s father and mother had graciously taken me in after Hurricane Katrina had destroyed my home in New Orleans.

  “Secretary Cohen knew what had happened here at Shangri-La, and of my son’s shameful behavior. And she knew Mr. Yung, who had been working for her, sub rosa, in his money-laundering investigations in Uruguay before he had met Charley.

  “She knew that Mr. Yung would be familiar with the Uruguayan inheritance laws, as indeed he was. I was now the owner of Estancia Shangri-La. Charley sent Mr. Leverette with him because he’s a fellow New Orleanian, and also to tell me that he felt I was also entitled to the bearer bonds from my son’s safe.”

  “The ambassador wanted neither,” Leverette picked up the story. “It was only after Yung told him that he either took Shangri-La or it would wind up in the possession of some highly deserving Uruguayan politician that he agreed to take it. And he said he could think of no better use for the sixteen million than where it was, funding the OOA.”

  “Turning ill-gotten gains into something constructive, so to speak,” Ambassador Lorimer clarified. “And I frankly had a second motive. If I came here to examine my inheritance, I would have an excuse to leave the Mastersons’ home, where I
strongly suspected my extended stay was beginning to strain even their extraordinarily gracious hospitality.

  “So I came down here accompanied by Mr. Yung and the man I had by then become close enough to so as to have the privilege of addressing him as ‘Uncle Remus’ without, in his charming phraseology, ‘being handed my ass on a pitchfork.’”

  “Natalie Cohen is one of the ambassador’s many admirers, Greg,” Castillo said. “And as I am one of hers, when she said she was a little worried about his coming down here alone, I told Uncle Remus and Two-Gun to pack their bags.”

  “For me, it was love at first sight,” Uncle Remus said.

  “You’ve got a crush on Secretary Cohen?” Damon asked.

  “Greg,” Leverette said patiently, “try turning on your brain before you open your mouth. How many times have you heard one of us with a few belts aboard say, ‘I’ve had enough of this Special Operations bullshit. What I’m going to do is retire and buy a chicken farm’?”

  “Not more than two or three hundred times, now that you mention it,” Damon said.

  “I took one look at this place,” Uncle Remus said, gesturing at the verdant pasturelands of Estancia Shangri-La and the cattle roaming them, “and said, ‘Fuck the chickens; this is what I want when I retire.’

  “So I struck a partner deal with the ambassador right then, Two-Gun drew it up, and got the LCBF to make me a little loan for my ante. And then when the President—the sane one, not Clendennen—pulled the plug on OOA, I retired and came down here.”

  “Good story, Uncle Remus,” Damon said. “It almost, but not quite, makes me yearn for the good old days. But it doesn’t answer my question, ‘What’s the reason for this Southern Cone meeting of the NAACP—plus two honkies, no offense, Colonels—all about?’”

  “You tell him, Colonel Naylor,” Castillo said. “If I tell him, I’d have to shoot him, and I really would hate to do that. Every time he gets shot, he sounds like Madonna having a baby.”

  Colonel Naylor explained what they were doing at Estancia Shangri-La.

  “Even with your brain in neutral, Damon, you can see why Charley is recruiting those of African heritage, right?” Uncle Remus asked. “That he and Colonel Naylor would have just a little bit of trouble in Mogadishu trying to pass themselves off as native Somalians?”

  “I don’t know why,” Damon said, “I know Charley speaks Af-Soomaali and Arabic… Oh!”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, count me in, Uncle Remus,” Damon said.

  “Count you in where?”

  “If Charley’s going to Mogadishu, I’m going.”

  “You weren’t listening, Greg,” Castillo said. “I’m not going to Mogadishu. Uncle Remus is going to Mogadishu with Dick and Master Sergeant Phineas DeWitt, Retired—and now gainfully employed by Sparkling Water Due Diligence, Inc.—and Jack Britton.”

  “Who?”

  “He used to be an undercover cop in Philadelphia, specializing in infiltrating would-be rag-head terrorist groups,” Castillo clarified. “He is also now associated with Sparkling Water.”

  “And what we are going to do in picturesque Mogadishu,” Dick Miller said, “is take photographs of each other standing in front of easily recognizable landmarks—”

  “Which I will send to POTUS as visual proof that we are carrying out his orders,” Castillo said, finishing the sentence for him.

  “Which are, specifically?” Damon asked.

  “To assess the situation and make recommendations vis-à-vis the solution of the problems known as the Mexican drug cartels and Somalian pirates.”

  “What are you going to suggest?” Damon asked.

  “Ambassador Lorimer suggests that following the motto of Special Forces—‘Kill Them All and Let God Sort It Out’—would be one solution, but I don’t think the President would go along with it. He doesn’t stand a chance of reelection without the Somali-American vote.”

  “Charley,” Ambassador Lorimer said, laughing, “that’s not what I said and you know it. What I said was that President Clendennen is going to have a harder problem with the pirates than President Thomas Jefferson did. The law then—I said the law then, Charley—permitted Jefferson to hang pirates from the nearest yardarm. Now they have to be tried in a court of law.”

  “Well, maybe President Clendennen doesn’t know that,” Castillo said, “or I’ll have to think of some other suggestion to make.”

  “And what are you going to be doing, Charley, while Uncle Remus is in picturesque Mogadishu, besides thinking of another suggestion to make to the President?” Damon asked.

  “Hoping he has another nutty idea that will make him forget this one.”

  “And where are you going to do that?”

  “We were discussing that when you drove up in that car with the ‘I can park anywhere, I’m a diplomat’ license plates. There were two possibilities for a location for my command post. One was the Danubius Hotel Gellért in Budapest. The advantages of that would be that I could talk to my Uncle Billy Kocian…” He stopped, said, “I have now stopped pulling your chain, Greg,” and then went on, “about the pirates. He has amazing contacts. And also it has a foreign-intrigue sound to it that I suspect will appeal to the President. The other option was the Grand Cozumel Beach and Golf Resort in Mexico. That would probably make the President think that we’re all sunning ourselves on a beach while sucking on bottles of Dos Equis instead of investigating the bad guys. But I have a friend, a lifelong friend, a Mexican cop—an honest Mexican cop—who knows all about the cartels and will have some practical ideas about how to deal with them the President should hear.”

  “So, what did you decide?” Damon asked.

  “My fiancée just told me we’re going to Mexico first, and then Budapest.”

  “Your fiancée? You’re back to pulling my leg?”

  “Not at all.”

  “You have a fiancée?”

  “Indeed, I do. You’ll meet Sweaty on our way to Cozumel.”

  “On our way to Cozumel?”

  “Sweaty said the smart way to do this is to go to Mexico, get organized there, see my cop friend Juan Carlos Pena, then go to Budapest, and then sneak you tourists into Mogadishu on Air Bulgaria. So that’s what we’re going to do.”

  “I’m going to have to come up with some story to tell the ambassador. I can’t just disappear, Charley.”

  “When you get back to Montevideo,” Uncle Remus said, “the ambassador will tell you he’s just had a call from the secretary of State ordering you to Washington immediately for an indefinite period to assist her in some unspecified task.”

  “You can do that?”

  “It’s already done.”

  VI

  [ONE]

  The Oval Office

  The White House

  1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.

  Washington, D.C.

  0905 10 June 2007

  Supervisory Secret Service Agent Robert J. Mulligan held open the door to the Oval Office and Truman C. Ellsworth, the director of National Intelligence, and CIA Director A. Franklin Lammelle came through it.

  “Good morning, Mr. President,” Ellsworth said. He took from his briefcase a brown manila envelope and handed it to him.

  “We have heard from Colonel Castillo, Mr. President,” Ellsworth said.

  President Joshua Ezekiel Clendennen quickly glanced at what it contained:

  TOP SECRET

  URGENT

  DUPLICATION FORBIDDEN

  TO: POTUS

  SUBJECT: REPORT

  VIA SECRETARY OF STATE

  MAKE AVAILABLE (EYES ONLY) TO:

  DIRECTOR, CIA

  SECRETARY OF DEFENSE

  DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE

  C IN C CENTRAL COMMAND
>
  OOR SITREP #1

  US EMBASSY BUENOS AIRES 2020 ZULU 9 JUNE 2007

  1- WITHIN TWENTY-FOUR (24) HOURS AFTER ARRIVAL IN ARGENTINA OF MR. ROSCOE J. DANTON, OPERATION OBSERVE AND REPORT (OOR) WILL PROCEED TO AS YET UNDETERMINED LOCATION IN MEXICO FOR FOLLOWING PURPOSES:

  A. ASSEMBLE OOR OPERATIONAL TEAM

  B. WHEN A. ABOVE ACCOMPLISHED DETERMINING BEST METHOD OF MEETING REQUIREMENTS OOR AS ORDERED BY POTUS.

  C. INITIAL CONTACT WITH MEXICAN POLICE AUTHORITIES.

  2-TRAVEL WILL BE BY AIRCRAFT LEASED FROM PANAMANIAN EXECUTIVE AIRCRAFT AND BILLED TO CIA.

  3-ROSTER OF PERSONNEL INVOLVED FOR DURATION OF POTUS MISSION:

  A. CASTILLO, LTC C.G. RETD.

  B. NAYLOR, LTC ALLAN B. USA

  C. D’ALESSANDRO, MR. VICTOR DA CIV GS-15

  D. CIVILIAN CONTRACT PERSONNEL OF PANAMANIAN EXECUTIVE AIRCRAFT:

  (1) TORINE, JACOB (PILOT)

  (2) MILLER, H. RICHARD, JR (CO-PILOT)

  E. THE FOLLOWING PERSONNEL HAVE BEEN EMPLOYED ON A CONTRACT BASIS FROM SPARKLING WATER DUE DILIGENCE, INC., AND BILLED TO THE CIA. UNLESS ADVISED TO THE CONTRARY, POTUS MAY ASSUME THEY HAVE JOINED OOR AT THE TO-BE-DETERMINED LOCATION IN MEXICO. IT SHOULD BE NOTED THAT OTHER PERSONNEL, IN ADDITION TO THOSE LISTED HEREIN, MAY BE REQUIRED TO ACCOMPLISH THE MISSION OF OOR AS SPECIFIED BY POTUS.

  (1) LEVERETTE, COLIN (TEAM CHIEF)

  (2) BRADLEY, LESTER (SECURITY TECHNICIAN)

  (3) LORIMER, EDMUND (COMMUNICATIONS TECHNICIAN)

  (4) BRITTON, JOHN (SECURITY TECHNICIAN)

  (5) BRITTON, DR. SANDRA (LINGUIST)

  (6) SIENO, PAUL (INTELLIGENCE ANALYST)

  (7) SIENO, SUSANA (INTELLIGENCE ANALYST)

  (8) DAMON, C. GREGORY (DIPLOMATIC ANALYST)

  RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED.

  CASTILLO, LTC RETD

  TOP SECRET

  The President handed the report to presidential spokesperson Robin Hoboken and then demanded, “Where’s Cohen? Isn’t she supposed to deliver this?”

  “I have no idea where the secretary of State is, Mr. President,” Hoboken said. “But I’m sure the Secret Service could find her for you.”