“Nice places, aren’t they?”
The drug chieftains were growing increasingly security-conscious. The hilltops around the city were all being cleared of trees. Clark counted over a dozen new homes already. Homes, he thought with a snort. Castles was more like it. Walled fortresses. Enormous dwelling structures surrounded by low walls, surrounded in turn by hundreds of yards of clear, steep slopes. What people found picturesque about Italian villages and Bavarian castles was always the elegant setting. Always on the top of a hill or mountain. You could easily imagine the work that went into such a beautiful place—clearing the trees, hauling the stone blocks up the slopes, and ending up with a commanding view of the countryside that extended for miles. But the castles and villages hadn’t been built in such places for fun, and neither had these houses. The heights meant that no one could approach them unobserved. The cleared ground around those houses was known in terse military nomenclature as a killing zone, a clear field of fire for automatic weapons. Each house had a single road up to a single gate. Each house had a helipad for a fast evacuation. The wall around each was made of stone that would stop any bullet up to fifty caliber. His binoculars showed that immediately inside each wall was a gravel or concrete path for guards to walk. A company of trained infantrymen would have no easy time assaulting one of these haciendas. Maybe a helicopter assault, supported by mortars and gunships ... Christ, Clark thought to himself, what am I thinking about?
“What about house plans?”
“No problem. Three architectural firms have designed these places. Security isn’t all that good there. Besides, I’ve been in that one for a party—just two weeks ago, as a matter of fact. I guess that’s one area they’re not too smart in. They like to show their places off. I can get you floor plans. The satellite overheads will show guard strength, vehicle garaging, all that sort of thing.”
“They do.” Clark smiled.
“Can you tell me exactly what you’re here for?”
“Well, they want an evaluation of the physical characteristics of the terrain.”
“I can see that. Hell, I could do that easy enough from memory.” Larson’s question was not so much curiosity as his slight offense at not being asked to do this job himself.
“You know how it is at Langley,” was the statement Clark used to dismiss the observation.
You’re a pilot, Clark didn’t say. You’ve never humped a field pack in the boonies. I have. If Larson had known his background, he could have made an intelligent guess, but what Clark did for the Agency, and what he’d done before joining, were not widely known. In fact, they were hardly known at all.
“Need-to-know, Mr. Larson,” Clark said after another moment.
“Roger that,” the pilot agreed over the intercom.
“Let’s do a photo pass.”
“I’ll do a touch-and-go at the airport first. We want to make it look good.”
“Fair enough,” Clark agreed.
“What about the refining sites?” Clark asked after they headed back to El Dorado.
“Mainly southwest of here,” Larson answered, turning the Beech away from the valley. “I’ve never seen one myself—I’m not in that part of the business, and they know it. If you want to scout them out, you go around at night with imaging IR equipment, but they’re hard to track in on. Hell, they’re portable, easy to set up, and easy to move. You can load the whole assembly on a medium truck and set it up ten miles away the next day.”
“Not that many roads....”
“What you gonna do, search every truck that comes along?” Larson asked. “Besides, you can man-pack it if you want. Labor’s cheap down here. The opposition is smart, and adaptable.”
“How much does the local army get involved?” Clark had been fully briefed, of course, but he also knew that a local perspective might not agree with Washington’s—and might be correct.
“They’ve tried. Biggest problem they have is sustaining their forces—their helicopters don’t spend twenty percent of their time in the air. That means they don’t do many ops. It means that if anyone gets hit he might not get medical attention very fast—and that hurts performance when they do run ops. Even then—you can guess what the government pays a captain, say. Now imagine that somebody meets that captain at a local bar, buys him a drink, and talks to him. He tells the captain that he might want to be in the southwestern corner of his sector tomorrow night—well, anywhere but the northeastern sector, okay? If he decides to patrol one part of his area, but not another, he gets a hundred thousand dollars. Okay, the other side has enough money that they can pay him up front just to see if he’ll cooperate. Seed money, kind of. Once he shows he can be bought, they settle down to a smaller but regular payment. Also, the other side has enough product that they can let him do some real seizures once in a while, once they know he’s theirs, to make him look good. Someday that captain grows up and becomes a colonel who controls a lot more territory.... It’s not because they’re bad people, it’s just that things are so fucking hopeless. Legal institutions are fragile down here and—hell, look at the way things are at home, for Christ’s sake. I—”
“I’m not criticizing anybody, Larson,” Clark said. “Not everybody can take on a hopeless mission and keep at it.” He turned to look out the side window and smiled to himself. “You have to be a little crazy to do that.”
5.
Beginnings
CHAVEZ AWOKE WITH the headache that accompanies initial exposure to a thin atmosphere, the sort that begins just behind the eyes and radiates around the circumference of one’s head. For all that, he was grateful. Throughout his career in the Army, he’d never failed to awaken a few minutes before reveille. It allowed him an orderly transition from sleep to wakefulness and made the waking-up process easier to tolerate. He turned his head left and right, inspecting his environment in the orange twilight that came through the uncurtained windows.
The building would be called a barracks by anyone who did not regularly live in one. To Chavez it seemed more of a hunting camp, a guess that was wholly accurate. Perhaps two thousand square feet in the bunk room, he judged, and he counted a total of forty single metal-frame bunks, each with a thin GI mattress and brown GI blanket. The sheets, however, were fitted, with elastic at the corners; so he decided that there wouldn’t be any of the bouncing-quarter bullshit, which was fine with him. The floor was bare, waxed pine, and the vaulted ceiling was supported by smoothed-down pine trunks in lieu of finished beams. It struck the sergeant that in hunting season people—rich people—actually paid to live like this: proof positive that money didn’t automatically confer brains on anyone. Chavez didn’t like barracks life all that much, and the only reason he’d not opted for a private apartment in or near Fort Ord was his desire to save up for that Corvette. To complete the illusion, at the foot of each bed was a genuine Army-surplus footlocker.
He thought about getting up on his elbows to look out the windows, but knew that the time for that would come soon enough. It had been a two-hour drive from the airport, and on arrival each man had been assigned a bunk in the building. The rest of the bunks had already been filled with sleeping, snoring men. Soldiers, of course. Only soldiers snored like that. It had struck him at the time as ominous. The only reason why young men would be asleep and snoring just after ten at night was fatigue. This was no vacation spot. Well, that was no surprise either.
Reveille came in the form of an electric buzzer, the kind associated with a cheap alarm clock. That was good news. No bugle—he hated bugles in the morning. Like most professional soldiers, Chavez knew the value of sleep, and waking up was not a cause for celebration. Bodies stirred around him at once, to the accompaniment of the usual wake-up grumbles and profanity. He tossed off the blanket and was surprised to learn how cold the floor was.
“Who’re you?” the man in the next bunk said while staring at the floor.
“Chavez, Staff Sergeant. Bravo, 3rd of the 17th.”
“Vega. Me, too. Headqu
arters Company, lst/22nd. Get in last night?”
“Yep. What gives here?”
“Well, I don’t really know, but they sure did run us ragged yesterday,” Staff Sergeant Vega said. He stuck his hand out. “Julio.”
“Domingo. Call me Ding.”
“Where you from?”
“L.A.”
“Chicago. Come on.” Vega rose. “One good thing about this place, you got all the hot water you want, and no Mickey Mouse on the housekeeping. Now, if they could just turn the fucking heat on at night—”
“Where the hell are we?”
“Colorado. I know that much. Not much else, though.” The two sergeants joined a loose trail of men heading for the showers.
Chavez looked around. Nobody was wearing glasses. Everybody looked pretty fit, even accounting for the fact that they were soldiers. A few were obvious iron-pumpers, but most, like Chavez, had the lean, wiry look of distance runners. One other thing that was so obvious it took him half a minute to notice it. They were all Latinos.
The shower helped. There was a nice, tall pile of new towels, and enough sinks that everyone had room to shave. And the toilet stalls even had doors. Except for the thin air, Chavez decided, this place had real possibilities. Whoever ran the place gave them twenty-five minutes to get it together. It was almost civilized.
Civilization ended promptly at 0630. The men got into their uniforms, which included stout boots, and moved outside. Here Chavez saw four men standing in a line. They had to be officers. You could tell from the posture and the expressions. Behind the four was another, older man, who also looked and acted like an officer, but ... not quite, Chavez told himself.
“Where do I go?” Ding asked Vega.
“You’re supposed to stick with me. Third squad, Captain Ramirez. Tough mother, but a good guy. Hope you like to run, ’mano.”
“I’ll try not to crap out on ya’,” Chavez replied.
Vega turned with a grin. “That’s what I said.”
“Good morning, people!” boomed the voice of the older one. “For those of you who don’t know me, I am Colonel Brown. You newcomers, welcome to our little mountain hideaway. You’ve already gotten to your proper squads, and for everyone’s information, our TO and E is now complete. This is the whole team.”
It didn’t surprise Chavez that Brown was the only obvious non-Latino to be seen. But he didn’t know why he wasn’t surprised. Four others were walking toward the assembly. They were PT instructors. You can always tell from the clean, white T-shirts and the confidence that they could work anyone into the ground.
“I hope everyone got a good night’s sleep,” Brown went on. “We will start our day with a little exercise—”
“Sure,” Vega muttered, “might as well die before breakfast.”
“How long you been here?” Ding asked quietly.
“Second day. Jesus, I hope it gets easier. The officers musta been here a week at least—they don’t barf after the run.”
“—and a nice little three-mile jog through the hills,” Brown ended.
“That’s no big deal,” Chavez observed.
“That’s what I said yesterday,” Vega replied. “Thank God I quit smokin’.”
Ding didn’t know how to react to that. Vega was another light infantryman from the 10th Mountain, and like himself was supposed to be able to move around all day with fifty pounds of gear on his back. But the air was pretty thin, thin enough that Chavez wondered just how high they were.
They started off with the usual daily dozen, and the number of repeats wasn’t all that bad, though Chavez found himself breaking a slight sweat. It was the run that told him how tough things would get. As the sun rose above the mountains, he got a feel for what sort of country it was. The camp was nestled in the bottom of a valley, and comprised perhaps fifty acres of almost flat ground. Everything else looked vertical, but on inspection proved to be slopes of less than forty-five degrees, dotted with scruffy-looking little pine trees that would never outgrow the height for Christmas decorations. The four squads, each led by an instructor and a captain, moved in different directions, up horse trails worn into the mountainside. In the first mile, Chavez reckoned, they had climbed over five hundred feet, snaking their way along numerous switchbacks toward a rocky knoll. The instructor didn’t bother with the usual singing that accompanied formation running. There wasn’t much of a formation anyway, just a single-file of men struggling to keep pace with a faceless robot whose white shirt beckoned them on toward destruction. Chavez, who hadn’t run a distance less than three miles, every day for the last two years of his life, was gasping for breath after the first. He wanted to say something, like, “There isn’t any fuckin’ air!” But he didn’t want to waste the oxygen. He needed every little molecule for his bloodstream. The instructor stopped at the knoll to make sure everyone was there, and Chavez, jogging doggedly in place, had the chance to see a vista worthy of an Ansel Adams photograph—all the better in the full light of a morning sun. But his only thought on being able to see over forty miles was terror that he’d have to run it all.
God, I thought I was in shape!
Hell, I am in shape!
The next mile traced a ridgeline to the east, and the sun punished eyes that had to stay alert. This was a narrow trail, and going off it could involve a painful fall. The instructor gradually picked up the pace, or so it seemed, until he stopped again at another knoll.
“Keep those legs pumpin’!” he snarled at those who’d kept up. There were two stragglers, both new men, Chavez thought, and they were only twenty yards back. You could see the shame on their faces, and the determination to catch up. “Okay, people, it’s downhill from here.”
And it was, mostly, but that only made it more dangerous. Legs rubbery from the fatigue that comes from oxygen deprivation had to negotiate a downward slope that alternated from gradual to perilously steep, with plenty of loose rocks for the unwary. Here the instructor eased off on the pace, for safety as everyone guessed. The captain let his men pass, and took up the rear to keep an eye on things. They could see the camp now. Five buildings. Smoke rose from a chimney to promise breakfast. Chavez saw a helipad, half a dozen vehicles—all four-wheel-drives—and what could only be a rifle range. There was no other sign of human habitation in sight, and the sergeant realized that even the wide view he’d had earlier hadn’t shown any buildings closer than five or six miles. It wasn’t hard to figure out why the area was sparsely settled. But he didn’t have time or energy for deep thoughts at the moment. His eyes locked on the trail, Ding Chavez concentrated on his footing and the pace. He took up a position alongside one of the erstwhile stragglers and kept an eye on him. Already Chavez was thinking of this as his squad, and soldiers are supposed to look out for one another. But the man had firmed up. His head was high now, his hands balled into tight, determined fists, and his powerfully exhaled breaths had purpose in them as the trail finally flattened out and they approached the camp. Another group was coming in from the far side.
“Form up, people!” Captain Ramirez called out for the first time. He passed his men and took the place of the instructor, who peeled off to let them by. Chavez noted that the bastard wasn’t even sweating. Third Squad formed into a double line behind their officer.
“Squad! Quick-time, march!” Everyone slowed to a regular marching pace. This took the strain off lungs and legs, told them that they were now the custody of their captain, and reminded them that they were still part of the Army. Ramirez delivered them in front of their barracks. The captain didn’t order anyone to sing a cadence, though. That made him smart, Chavez thought, smart enough to know that nobody had enough breath to do so. Julio was right, probably. Ramirez might be a good boss.
“Squad, halt!” Ramirez turned. “At ease, people. Now, that wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“Madre de Dios!” a voice noted quietly. From the back rank, a man tried to vomit but couldn’t find anything to bring up.
“Okay.” Ramirez gr
inned at his men. “The altitude is a real bitch. But I’ve been here two weeks. You get used to it right quick. Two weeks from now, we’ll be running five miles a day with packs, and you’ll feel just fine.”
Bullshit. Chavez shared the thought with Julio Vega, knowing that the captain was right, of course. The first day at boot camp had been harder than this ... hadn’t it?
“We’re taking it easy on you. You have an hour to unwind and get some breakfast. Go easy on the chow: we’ll have another little run this afternoon. At 0800 we assemble here for training. Dismissed.”
“Well?” Ritter asked.
They sat on the shaded veranda of an old planter’s house on the island of St. Kitts. Clark wondered what they’d planted here once. Probably sugarcane, though there was nothing now. What had once been a plantation manor was obviously supposed to look like the island retreat of a top-drawer capitalist and his collection of mistresses. In fact it belonged to CIA, which used it as an informal conference center, a particularly nice safe house for the debriefing of VIP defectors, and other, more mundane uses—like a vacation spot for senior executives.
“The background info was fairly accurate, but it underestimated the physical difficulties. I’m not criticizing the people who put the package together. You just have to see it to believe it. It’s very tough country.” Clark stretched in the wicker chair and reached for his drink. His personal seniority at the Agency was many levels below Ritter’s, but Clark was one of a handful of CIA employees whose position was unique. That, plus the fact that he often worked personally for the Deputy Director (Operations), gave him the right to relax in the DDO’s presence. Ritter’s attitude toward the younger man was not one of deference, but he did show Clark considerable respect. “How’s Admiral Greer doing?” Clark asked. It was James Greer who’d actually recruited him, many years before.