One nice thing about being close to the coffee plantations was that the cover wasn't so thick. People went into the woods to get fuel for their fires, and that thinned things out quite a bit. What effects it had on erosion wasn't Chavez's concern. That helped him to go faster, and he was covering nearly two kilometers per hour, which was far faster than he'd expected. By midnight his legs were telling him about every meter. Fatigue, he was learning again, was a cumulative factor. It took more than one day's rest to slough off all of its effects, no matter what sort of shape you were in. He wondered if the altitude wasn't also to blame. In any case he was still fighting to keep up the pace, to keep alert, to remember the path he was supposed to follow. Infantry operations are far more demanding intellectually than most people realize, and intellect is ever the first victim of fatigue.
He remembered a small village on the map, about half a klick from where he was at the moment, downhill. He'd taken the right turn at a landmark a klick back--he'd rechecked it at the rally point where they'd rested forty minutes earlier. He could hear noise from that direction. It seemed odd. The local peasants worked hard on the coffee plantations, he'd been told. They should have been asleep by now. Ding missed the obvious signal. He didn't miss the scream--more of a pant, really, the sort of sound made when--
He switched on his night scope and saw a figure running toward him. He couldn't tell--then he could. It was a girl, moving with considerable skill through the cover. Behind her was the noise of someone running after her with less skill. Chavez tapped the danger signal on his radio. Behind him everyone stopped and waited for his all-clear.
There wouldn't be one. The girl tripped and changed directions. A few seconds later she tripped again and landed right at Chavez's feet.
The sergeant clamped his left hand across her mouth. His other hand put a finger to his lips in the universal sign to be quiet. Her eyes went wide and white as she saw him--or more properly, didn't see him, just a melange of camouflage paint that looked like something from a horror movie.
"Senorita, you have nothing to fear from me. I am a soldier. I do not molest women. Who is chasing you?" He removed his hand and hoped that she wouldn't scream.
But she couldn't even if she had wanted to, instead gasping out her reply. She'd run too far too fast. "One of their 'soldiers,' the men with guns. I--"
His hand went back on her mouth as the crashing sound came closer.
"Where are you?" the voice crooned.
Shit!
"Run that way," Chavez told her, pointing. "Do not stop and do not look back. Go!"
The girl took off and the man made for the noise. He ran right past Ding Chavez and precisely one foot farther. The sergeant clasped his hand across the man's face and took him down, pulling the head back as he did so. Just as both men hit the ground, Ding's combat knife made a single lateral cut. He was surprised by the noise. Escaping air from the windpipe combined with the spurting blood to make a gurgling sound that made him cringe. The man struggled for a few futile seconds, then went limp. The victim had a knife of his own, and Chavez set it in the wound. He hoped the girl wouldn't be blamed for it, but he'd done all that he could as far as she was concerned. Captain Ramirez showed up a minute later and was not very pleased.
"Didn't have much choice, sir," Chavez said in his own defense. Actually he felt rather proud of himself. After all, protecting the weak was the job of the soldier, wasn't it?
"Move your ass outa here!"
The squad moved especially fast to clear the area, but if anyone came looking for the amorous sleepwalker, no one heard anything to suggest it. It was the last incident of the night. They arrived at the preplanned stopover point just before dawn. Ramirez set up his radio and called in.
"Roger, KNIFE, we copy your position and your objective. We do not as yet have confirmation for the extraction. Please call back around eighteen hundred Lima. We ought to have things set up by then. Over."
"Roger, will call back at eighteen hundred. KNIFE out."
"Shame about BANNER," one communicator said to the other.
"These things do happen."
"Your name Johns?"
"That's right," the colonel said without turning at once. He'd just come back from a test flight. The new--actually rebuilt five-year-old--engine worked just fine. The Pave Low III was back in business. Colonel Johns turned to see to whom he was talking.
"Do you recognize me?" Admiral Cutter asked curtly. He was wearing his full uniform for a change. He hadn't done that in months, but the three stars on each braided shoulder board gleamed in the morning sun, along with his ribbons and surface-warfare officer's badge. In fact, the general effect of the undress-white uniform was quite overpowering, right down to the white buck shoes. Just as he had planned.
"Yes, sir, I do. Please excuse me, sir."
"Your orders have been changed, Colonel. You are to return to your stateside base as soon as possible. That means today," Cutter emphasized.
"But what about--"
"That will be taken care of through other means. Do I have to tell you whose authority I speak with?"
"No, sir, you do not."
"You will not discuss this matter with anyone. That means nobody, anywhere, ever. Do you require any further instructions, Colonel?"
"No, sir, your orders are quite clear."
"Very well." Cutter turned and walked back to the staff car, which drove off at once. His next stop was a hilltop near the Gaillard Cut. There was a communications van there. Cutter walked right past the armed guard--he wore a Marine uniform but was a civilian--and into the van, where he made a similar speech. Cutter was surprised to learn that moving the van would be difficult and would require a helicopter, since the van was too large to be pulled down the little service road. He was, however, able to order them to shut down, and he'd see about getting a helicopter to lift the van out. Until then they would stay put and not do anything. Their security was blown, he explained, and further transmissions would only further endanger the people with whom they communicated. He got agreement on that, too, and left. He boarded his aircraft at eleven in the morning. He'd be home in Washington for supper.
Mark Bright was there just after lunch. He handed his film cassettes over to a lab expert and proceeded to Dan Murray's busy office, where he reported what he had seen.
"I don't know who he met with, but maybe you'll recognize the face. How about the Amex number?"
"It's a CIA account that he's had access to for the past two years. This is the first time he's used it, though. The local guy faxed us a copy so we could run the signature. Forensics has already given us a handwriting match," Murray said. "You look a little tuckered."
"I don't know why--hell, I must have slept three hours in the past day and a half. I've done my D.C. time. Mobile was supposed to be a nice vacation."
Murray grinned. "Welcome back to the unreal world of Washington."
"I had to get some help to pull this off," Bright said next.
"Like what?" Murray wasn't smiling anymore.
"Air Force personnel, intel and CID types. I told 'em this was code-word material, and, hell, even if I had told them everything I know, which I didn't, I don't know what the story is myself. I take responsibility, of course, but if I hadn't done it, I probably wouldn't have gotten the shots."
"Sounds to me like you did the right thing," Murray said. "I don't suppose you had much choice in the matter. It happens like that sometimes."
Bright acknowledged the official forgiveness. "Thanks."
They had to wait five more minutes for the photographs. Decks had been cleared for this case, but even priority cases took time, much to the annoyance of everyone. The technician--actually a section chief--arrived with the moist prints.
"I figured you'd want these babies in a hurry."
"You figured right, Marv--Holy Christ!" Murray exclaimed. "Marv, this is code-word."
"You already told me, Dan. Lips are zipped. We can enhance them some, but that'll t
ake another hour. Want me to get that started?"
"Fast as you can." Murray nodded, and the technician left. "Christ," Murray said again when he reexamined the photos. "Mark, you take a mean picture."
"So who the hell is it?"
"Felix Cortez."
"Who's that?"
"Used to be a DGI colonel. We missed him by a whisker when we bagged Filiberto Ojeda."
"The Macheteros case?" That didn't make any sense.
"No, not exactly." Murray shook his head. He spoke almost reverently, thought for a minute, and called for Bill Shaw to come down. The acting Director was there within a minute. Agent Bright was still in the dark when Murray pointed his boss to the photographs. "Bill, you ain't going to believe this one."
"So who the hell is Felix Cortez?" Bright asked.
Shaw answered the question. "After he skipped out of Puerto Rico, he went to work for the Cartel. He had a piece of Emil's murder, how much we don't know, but he sure as hell was involved. And here he is, sitting with the President's National Security Adviser. Now what do you suppose they had to talk about?"
"It's not with this batch, but I got a picture of them shaking hands," the junior agent announced.
Shaw and Murray just stared at him when he said that. Then at each other. The President's head national-security guy shook hands with somebody who works for the drug Cartel ... ?
"Dan," Shaw said, "what the hell is going on? Has the whole world just gone crazy?"
"Sure looks that way, doesn't it?"
"Put a call in to your friend Ryan. Tell him ... Tell his secretary that there's a terrorism thing--no, we can't risk that. Pick him up on the way home?"
"He's got a driver."
"That's a big help."
"I got it." Murray lifted his phone and dialed a Baltimore number. "Cathy? Dan Murray. Yeah, we're fine, thanks. What time does Jack's driver usually get him home? Oh, he didn't? Okay, I need you to do something, and it's important, Cathy. Tell Jack to stop off at Danny's on the way home to, uh, to pick the books up. Just like that, Cathy. This isn't a joke. Can you do that? Thanks, doc." He replaced the phone. "Isn't that conspiratorial?"
"Who's Ryan--isn't he CIA?"
"That's right," Shaw answered. "He's also the guy who dumped this case in our laps. Unfortunately, Mark, you are not cleared for it."
"I understand, sir."
"Why don't you see how quick you can fly home and find out how much that new baby's grown. Damned nice work you did here. I won't forget," the acting Director promised him.
Pat O'Day, a newly promoted inspector working out of FBI Headquarters, watched from the parking lot as a subordinate stood on the flight line in the soiled uniform of an Air Force technical sergeant. It was a clear, hot day at Andrews Air Force Base, and a D.C. Air National Guard F-4C landed right ahead of the VC-20A. The converted executive jet taxied to the 89th's terminal on the west side of the complex. The stairs dropped and Cutter walked out wearing civilian clothes. By this time--through Air Force intelligence personnel--the Bureau knew that he'd visited a helicopter crew and a communications van in the morning. So far no one had approached either of them to find out why, because headquarters was still trying to figure things out, and, O'Day thought, failing miserably--but that was headquarters for you. He wanted to go back out to the field where the real cops were, though this case did have its special charm. Cutter walked across to where his personal car was parked, tossed his bag in the back seat, and drove off, with O'Day and his driver in visual pursuit. The National Security Adviser got onto Suitland Parkway heading toward D.C., then, after entering the city, onto I-395. They expected him to get off at the Maine Avenue exit, possibly heading toward the White House, but instead the man just kept going to his official residence at Fort Myer, Virginia. A discreet surveillance didn't get more routine than that.
"Cortez? I know that name. Cutter met with a former DGI guy?" Ryan asked.
"Here's the photo." Murray handed it over. The lab troops had run it through their computerized enhancement process. One of the blackest of the Bureau's many forensic arts, it had converted a grainy photographic frame to glossy perfection. Moira Wolfe had again verified Cortez's identity, just to make everyone sure. "Here's another." The second one showed them shaking hands.
"This'll look good in court," Ryan observed as he handed the frames back.
"It's not evidence," Murray replied.
"Huh?"
Shaw explained. "High government officials meet with ... with strange people all the time. Remember the time when Kissinger made the secret flight to China?"
"But that was--" Ryan stopped when he realized how dumb his objection sounded. He remembered a clandestine meeting with the Soviet Party chairman that he couldn't tell the FBI about. How would that look to some people?
"It isn't evidence of a crime, or even a conspiracy, unless we know that what they talked about was illegal," Murray told Jack. "His lawyer will argue, probably successfully, that his meeting with Cortez, while appearing to be irregular, was aimed at the execution of sensitive but proper government policy."
"Bullshit," Jack observed.
"The attorney would object to your choice of words, and the judge would have it stricken from the record, instruct the jury to disregard it, and admonish you about your language in court, Dr. Ryan," Shaw pointed out. "What we have here is a piece of interesting information, but it is not evidence of a crime until we know that a crime is being committed. Of course, it is bullshit."
"Well, I met with the guy who guided the 'car bombs' into the targets."
"Where is he?" Murray asked at once.
"Probably back in Colombia by now." Ryan explained on for a few minutes.
"Christ, who is this guy?" Murray asked.
"Let's leave his name out of it for a while, okay?"
"I really think we should talk to him," Shaw said.
"He's not interested in talking to you. He doesn't want to go to jail."
"He won't." Shaw rose and paced around the room. "In case I never told you, I'm a lawyer, too. In fact, I have a J.D. If we were to attempt to try him, his lawyer would throw Martinez-Barker at us. You know what that is? A little-known result of the Watergate case. Martinez and Barker were Watergate conspirators, right? Their defense, probably an honest one, was that they thought the burglary was sanctioned by properly constituted authority as part of a national-security investigation. In a rather wordy majority opinion, the appeals court ruled that there had been no criminal intent, the defendants had acted in good faith throughout, and therefore no actual crime had been committed. Your friend will say on the stand that once he'd heard the 'clear and present danger' pronouncement from his superiors, and been told that authorization came from way up the chain of command, he was merely following orders given by people who had sufficient constitutional authority to do so. I suppose Dan already told you, there really isn't any law in a case like this. Hell, the majority of my agents would probably like to buy your guy a beer for avenging Emil's death."
"What I can tell you about this guy is that he's a serious combat vet, and as far as I could tell, he's a very straight guy."
"I don't doubt it. As far as the killing is concerned--we've had lawyers say that the actions of police snipers come awfully close to cold-blooded murder. Drawing a distinction between police work and combat action isn't always as easy as we would like. In this case, how do you draw the line between murder and a legitimate counterterrorist operation? What it'll come down to--hell, it will mainly reflect the political beliefs of the judges who try the case, and the appeal, and every other part of the proceeding. Politics. You know," Shaw said, "it was a hell of a lot easier chasing bank robbers. At least then you knew what the score was."
"There's the key to it right there," Ryan said. "How much you want to bet that this whole thing started because it was an election year?"
Murray's phone rang. "Yeah? Okay, thanks." He hung up. "Cutter just got in his car. He's heading up the G.W. Parkway. Anybody
want to guess where he's going?"
26.
Instruments
of State
INSPECTOR O'DAY THANKED his lucky stars--he was an Irishman and believed in such things--that Cutter was such an idiot. Like previous National Security Advisers he'd opted against having a Secret Service detail, and the man clearly didn't know the first thing about countersurveillance techniques. The subject drove right onto the George Washington Parkway and headed north in the firm belief that nobody would notice. No doubling back, no diversion into a one-way street, nothing that one could learn from watching a TV cop show or better yet, reading a Philip Marlowe mystery, which was how Patrick O'Day amused himself. Even on surveillances, he'd play Chandler tapes. He had more problems figuring those cases out than the real ones, but that was merely proof that Marlowe would have made one hell of a G-Man. This sort of case didn't require that much talent. Cutter might have been a Navy three-star, but he was a babe in the woods as far as conspiracy went. His personal car didn't even change lanes, and took the exit for CIA unless, O'Day thought, he had an unusual interest in the Federal Highway Administration's Fairbanks Highway Research Station, which was probably closed in any case. About the only bad news was that picking Cutter up when he left would be tough to do. There wasn't a good place to hide a car here--CIA security was pretty good. O'Day dropped his companion off to keep watch in the woods by the side of the road and whistled up another car to assist. He fully expected that Cutter would reappear shortly and drive right home.
Clear and Present Danger (1989) Page 68