Chavez reactivated his night goggles. At the far end of the runway, people were lighting cigarettes. The faint images on his display flared white with the heat energy. That would kill their night vision, Ding knew. He could tell from the way they moved that they were just bullshitting around now. Their day‘s—night’s—work was complete. The truck drove off, leaving two men behind. These, it would seem, were the security troops for this airstrip. Only two, and they smoked at night. Armed or not—they seemed to be carrying AK-47s or a close copy thereof—they were not serious opposition.
“What do you suppose they’re smoking?” Vega asked.
“I didn’t think about that,” Chavez admitted with a grunt. “You don’t suppose they’re that dumb, do you?”
“We ain’t dealing with soldiers, man. We coulda moved in and snuffed those fuckers no sweat. Maybe ten seconds’ worth of firefight.”
“Still gotta be careful,” Chavez whispered in reply.
“Roge-o,” Vega agreed. “That’s where you get the edge.”
“KNIFE, this is Six,” Ramirez called on the radio net. “Fall back to the rally point.”
“Move, I’ll cover,” Chavez told Vega.
Julio stood and shouldered his weapon. There was a slight but annoying tinkle from the metal parts as he did so—the ammo belt, Ding thought. Have to keep that in mind. He waited in place for several minutes before moving out.
The rally point was a particularly tall tree close to the stream. Again, people replenished their canteens at Olivero’s persistent urging. It turned out that one man had had his face slashed by a low branch, requiring attention from the medic, but otherwise the squad was fully intact. They’d camp five hundred meters from the airfield, leaving two men at an observation point—the one Chavez had staked out for himself—around the clock. Ding took the first watch, again with Vega, and would be relieved at dawn by Guerra and another man armed with a silenced MP-5. Either a SAW or a soldier armed with a grenade launcher would always be at the OP in case the opposition got rambunctious. If there was to be a firefight, the idea was to end it as quickly as possible. Light-fighters weren’t especially big on tanks and heavy guns, but American soldiers think in terms of firepower, which, after all, had been largely an American invention in the first place.
It amazed Chavez how easily one could slip into a routine. An hour before dawn, he and Vega surveyed the landing strip from their little knoll. Of the two men in the permanent security team, only one was moving around. The other was sitting with his back against the shack, still smoking something or other. The one up and moving didn’t stray far.
“What’s happening, Ding?” the captain asked.
“I heard you coming, sir,” Chavez said.
“I tripped. Sorry.”
Chavez ran down the situation briefly. Ramirez put his binoculars on the enemy to check things for himself.
“Supposedly they aren’t being bothered by the local police and army,” the captain observed.
“Bought off?” Vega asked.
“No, just they got discouraged, mainly. So the druggies have settled down to a half-dozen or so regular airfields. Like this one. We’re gonna be here awhile.” A pause. “Anything happens—”
“We’ll call you right off, sir,” Vega promised.
“See any snakes?” Ramirez asked.
“No, thank God.” The captain’s teeth flared in the darkness. He clapped Chavez on the shoulder and disappeared back into the bushes.
“What’s wrong with snakes?” Vega asked.
Captain Winters felt the pangs of disappointment as he watched the Piper touch down. It was two in a row now. The big one from the other night was gone already. Exactly where they flew them off to, he didn’t know. Maybe the big boneyard in the desert. One more old piston bird would hardly be noticed. On the other hand, you could sell one of these Pipers easily enough.
The .50-caliber machine gun looked even more impressive at eye level, though with dawn coming up, the spotlights were less overpowering. They didn’t use the spy-plane ploy this time. The Marines treated the smugglers just as roughly as before, however, and their actions again had the desired effect. The CIA officer running the operation had formerly been with DEA, and he enjoyed the difference in interrogation methods. Both pilots were Colombians, the aircraft’s registration to the contrary. Despite their machismo, it took only one look at Nicodemus. To be brave in the face of a bullet, or even an attack dog, was one thing. To be brave before a living carnosaur was something else entirely. It took less than an hour for them to be processed, then taken off to the tame federal district judge.
“How many planes don’t make it here?” Gunnery Sergeant Black asked as they were driven away.
“What d’you mean, Gunny?”
“I seen the fighter, sir. It figures that he told the dude, ‘Fly this way or else!’ An’ we been called here more times ’n airplanes have showed up, right? What I’m saying, sir, is it stands to reason, like, that some folks didn’t take the hint, and the boy driving the fighter showed them the ‘or else.’ ”
“You don’t need to know that, Gunny Black,” the CIA officer pointed out.
“Fair enough. Either way, it’s cool with me, sir. My first tour in ‘Nam, I seen a squad get wiped because some of ’em were doped up. I caught a punk selling drugs in my squad, back in ’74-75, and I damned near beat the little fuck to death. Almost got in trouble over it, too.”
The CIA officer nodded as though that statement surprised him. It didn’t.
“ ‘Need-to-know,’ Gunny,” he repeated.
“Aye aye, sir.” Gunnery Sergeant Black assembled his men and walked off toward the waiting helicopter.
That was the problem with “black” operations, the CIA officer thought as he watched the Marines leave. You want good people, reliable people, smart people, to be part of the op. But the good, reliable, and smart people all had brains and imagination. And it really wasn’t all that hard for them to figure things out. After enough of that happened, “black” operations tended to become gray ones. Like the dawn that had just risen. Except that light wasn’t always a good thing, was it?
Admiral Cutter met Directors Moore and Jacobs in the lobby of the office wing, and took them straight to the Oval Office. Agents Connor and D’Agostino were on duty in the secretarial office and gave all three the usual once-over out of habit. Unusually, for the White House, they walked straight in to see WRANGLER.
“Good afternoon, Mr. President,” all three said in turn.
The President rose from his desk and took his place in an antique chair by the fireplace. This was where he usually sat for “intimate” conversations. The President regretted this. The chair he sat in was nowhere near as comfortable as the custom-designed one behind his desk, and his back was acting up, but even presidents have to play by the rules of others’ expectations.
“I take it that this is to be a progress report. You want to start off, Judge?”
“SHOWBOAT is fully underway. We’ve had a major stroke of luck, in fact. Just as we got a surveillance team in place, they spotted an aircraft taking off.” Moore favored everyone with a smile. “Everything worked exactly as planned. The two smugglers are in federal custody. That was luck, pure and simple, of course. We can’t expect that to happen too often, but we intercepted ninety kilos of cocaine, and that’s a fair night’s work. All four covert teams are on the ground and in place. None have been spotted.”
“How’s the satellite working out?”
“Still getting parts of it calibrated. That’s mainly a computer problem, of course. The thing we’re planning to use the Rhyolite for will take another week or so. As you know, that element of the plan was set up rather late, and we’re playing it by ear at the moment. The problem, if I can call it that, is setting up the computer software, and they need another couple of days.”
“What about The Hill?”
“This afternoon,” Judge Moore answered. “I don’t expect that to be a prob
lem.”
“You’ve said that before,” Cutter pointed out.
Moore turned and examined him with a tired eye. “We’ve laid quite a bit of groundwork. I don’t invoke SAHO very often, and I’ve never had any problems from them when I did.”
“I don’t expect any active opposition there, Jim,” the President agreed. “I’ve laid some groundwork, too. Emil, you’re quiet this morning.”
“We’ve been over that aspect of the operation, Mr. President. I have no special legal qualms, because there really is no law on this issue. The Constitution grants you plenipotentiary powers to use military force to protect our national security once it is determined—by you, of course—that our security is, in fact, threatened. The legal precedents go all the way back to the Jefferson presidency. The political issues are something else, but that’s not really my department. In any case, the Bureau has broken what appears to be a major money-laundering operation, and we’re just about ready to move on it.”
“How major?” Admiral Cutter asked, annoying the President, who wanted to ask the same question.
“We can identify a total of five hundred eighty-eight million dollars of drug money, spread through twenty-two different banks all the way from Liechtenstein to California, invested in a number of real-estate ventures, all of which are here in the United States. We’ve had a team working ’round the clock all week on this.”
“How much?” the President asked, getting in first this time. He wasn’t the only person in the room who wanted that number repeated.
“Almost six hundred million,” the FBI Director repeated. “It was just over that figure two days ago, but a sizable block of funds was transferred on Wednesday—it looks like it was a routine transfer, but we are keeping an eye on the accounts in question.”
“And what will you be doing?”
“By this evening we’ll have complete documentation on all the accounts. Starting tomorrow, the legal attaches in all our embassies overseas, and the field divisions covering the domestic banks, will move to freeze the accounts and—”
“Will the Swiss and the Europeans cooperate?” Cutter interrupted.
“Yes, they will. The mystique about numbered accounts is overrated, as President Marcos found out a few years ago. If we can prove that the deposits result from criminal operations, the governments in question will freeze the funds. In Switzerland, for example, the money goes to the state—‘canton’—government for domestic applications. Aside from the moral issue, it’s simple self-interest, and we have treaties to cover this. It hardly hurts the Swiss economy, for example, to keep that money in Switzerland, does it? If we’re successful, as I have every right to expect, the total net loss to the Cartel will be on the order of one billion dollars. That figure is just an estimate on our part which includes loss of equity in the investments and the expected profits from rollover. The five eighty-eight, on the other hand, is a hard number. We’re calling this Operation TARPON. Domestically, the law is entirely on our side, and on close inspection, it’s going to be very hard for anyone to liberate the funds, ever. Overseas the legal issues are more muddied, but I think we can expect fairly good cooperation. The European governments are starting to notice drug problems of their own, and they have a way of handling the legal issues more ... oh, I guess the word is pragmatically,” Jacobs concluded with a smile. “I presume you’ll want the Attorney General to make the announcement.”
You could see the sparkle in the President’s eyes. The press release would be made in the White House Press Room. He’d let the Justice Department handle it, of course, but it would be done in the White House so that journalists could get the right spin. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I have just informed the President that we have made a major break in the continuing war against ...
“How badly will this hurt them?” the President asked.
“Sir, exactly how much money they have has always been a matter of speculation on our part. What’s really interesting about this whole scheme is that the laundering operation may actually be designed to legitimize the money once it gets into Colombia. That’s hard to read, but it would seem that the Cartel is trying to find a less overtly criminal way in which to infiltrate their own national economy. Since that is not strictly necessary in economic terms, the presumptive goal of the operation would seem to be political. To answer your question, the monetary loss will sting them rather badly, but will not cripple them in any way. The political ramifications, however, may be an extra bonus whose scope we cannot as yet evaluate.”
“A billion dollars....” the President said. “That really gives you something to tell the Colombians about, doesn’t it?”
“I do not think they’ll be displeased. The political rumblings they’ve been getting from the Cartel are very troubling to them.”
“Not troubling enough to take action,” Cutter observed.
Jacobs didn’t like that at all. “Admiral, their Attorney General is a friend of mine. He travels with a security detail that’s double the size of the President’s, and he has to deal with a security threat that’d make most people duck for cover every time a car backfired. Colombia is trying damned hard to run a real democracy in a region where democracies are pretty rare—which historically happens to be our fault, in case you’ve forgotten—and you expect them to do—what? Trash what institutions they do have, do what Argentina did? For Christ’s sake, the Bureau and DEA combined don’t have the manpower to go after the drug rings that we already know about, and we have a thousand times their resources. So what the hell do you expect, that they’ll go fascist again to hunt down the druggies just because it suits us? We did expect that and we got that, for over a hundred years, and look where it’s gotten us!” This clown is supposed to be an expert on Latin America, Jacobs didn’t say out loud. Says who? I bet you couldn’t even drive boats worth a damn!
The bottom line, Judge Moore noted, is that Emil doesn’t like this whole operation, does he? On the other hand, it did rock Cutter back in his chair. A small man, Jacobs had dignity and moral authority measured in megaton quantities.
“You’re trying to tell us something, Emil,” the President said lightly. “Spit it out.”
“Terminate this whole operation,” the FBI Director said. “Stop it before it goes too far. Give me the manpower I need, and I can accomplish more right here at home, entirely within the law, than we’ll ever accomplish with all this covert-operations nonsense. TARPON is the proof of that. Straight police work, and it’s the biggest success we’ve ever had.”
“Which happened only because some Coast Guard skipper got a little off the reservation,” Judge Moore noted. “If that Coastie hadn’t broken the rules himself, your case would have looked like simple piracy and murder. You left that part out, Emil.”
“Not the first time something like that has happened, and the difference, Arthur, is that that wasn’t planned by anyone in Washington.”
“That captain isn’t going to be hurt, is he?” the President asked.
“No, sir. That’s already been taken care of,” Jacobs assured him.
“Good. Keep it that way. Emil, I respect your point of view,” the President said, “but we have to try something different. I can’t sell Congress on the funding to double the size of the FBI, or DEA. You know that.”
You haven’t tried, Jacobs wanted to say. Instead he nodded submission.
“And I thought we had your agreement on this operation.”
“You do, Mr. President.” How did I ever rope myself into this? Jacobs asked himself. This road, like so many others, was paved with good intentions. What they were doing wasn’t quite illegal; in the same sense that skydiving wasn’t quite dangerous—so long as everything went according to plan.
“And when are you heading down to Bogotá?”
“Next week, sir. I’ve messengered a letter to the legal attaché, and he’ll deliver it by hand to the AG. We’ll have good security for the meeting.”
“Good. I want
you to be careful, Emil. I need you. I especially need your advice,” the President said kindly. “Even if I don’t always take it.”
The President has to be the world’s champ at setting people down easy, Moore told himself. But part of that was Emil Jacobs. He’d been a team player since he joined the U.S. Attorney’s office in Chicago, lo, those thirty years ago.
“Anything else?”
“I’ve made Jack Ryan the acting DDI,” Moore said. “James recommended him, and I think he’s ready.”
“Will he be cleared for SHOWBOAT?” Cutter asked immediately.
“He’s not that ready, is he, Arthur?” the President opined.
“No, sir, your orders were to keep this one tight.”
“Any change with Greer?”
“It does not look good, Mr. President,” Moore replied.
“Damned shame. I have to go into Bethesda to have my blood pressure looked at next week. I’ll stop in to see him.”
“That would be very kind of you, sir.”
Everyone was supportive as hell, Ryan noted. He felt like a trespasser in this office, but Nancy Cummings—secretary to the DDI from long before the time Greer arrived here—did not treat him as an interloper, and the security detail that he now rated called him “sir” even though two of them were older than Jack was. The really good news, he didn’t realize until someone told him, was that he now rated a driver also. The purpose of this was simply that the driver was a security officer with a Beretta Model 92-F automatic pistol under his left armpit (there was something even more impressive under the dash), but for Ryan it meant that he’d no longer have to make the fifty-eight-minute drive himself. From now on he’d be one of those Important People who sat in the back of the speeding car talking on a secure mobile phone, or reading over Important Documents, or, more likely, reading the paper on the way into work. The official car would be parked in CIA’s underground garage, in a reserved space near the executive elevator, which would whisk him directly to the seventh floor without having to pass through the customary security-gate routine, which was such a damned nuisance. He’d eat in the executive dining room with its mahogany furniture and discreetly elegant silverware.