Clear and Present Danger

The Chinese language was ideographic—Cortez had met his share of Chinese intelligence types as well—and its symbol for “crisis” was a combination of the symbols denoting “danger” and “opportunity.” The dualism had struck him the first time he’d heard it, and he’d never forgotten it. Opportunities like this one were exceedingly rare, and equally dangerous. The principal danger, he knew, was the simple fact that he didn’t know how the Americans were developing their intelligence information. Everything he knew pointed to a penetration agent within the organization. Someone high up, but not as high as he wished to be. The Americans had compromised someone just as he had so often done. Standard intelligence procedure, and that was something CIA excelled at. Someone. Who? Someone who had been deeply offended, and wanted to get even while at the same time acquiring a seat around the table of chieftains. Quite a few people fell into that category. Including Félix Cortez. And instead of having to initiate his own operation to achieve that goal, he could now depend on the Americans to do it for him. It struck him as very odd indeed that he was trusting the Americans to do his work, but it was also hugely amusing. It was, in fact, almost the definition of the perfect covert operation. All he had to do was let the Americans carry out their own plan, and stand by the sidelines to watch it work. It would require patience and confidence in his enemy—not to mention the degree of danger involved—but Cortez felt that it was worth the effort.

  In the absence of knowing how to get the information to the Americans, he decided, he’d just have to trust to luck. No, not luck. They seemed to be getting the word somehow, and they’d probably get it this time, too. He lifted his phone and made a call, something very uncharacteristic for him. Then, on reflection, he made one other arrangement. After all, he couldn’t expect that the Americans would do exactly what he wanted exactly when he wanted. Some things he had to do for himself.

  Ryan’s plane landed at Andrews just after seven in the evening. One of his assistants—it was so nice having assistants—took custody of the classified documents and drove them back to Langley while Jack tossed his bags in the back of his XJS and drove home. He’d get a decent night’s sleep to slough off the effects of jet lag, and tomorrow he’d be back at his desk. First order of business, he told himself as he took the car onto Route 50, was to find out what the Agency was up to in South America.

  Ritter shook his head in wonder and thanksgiving. CAPER had come through for them again. Cortez himself this time, too. They just hadn’t twigged to the fact that their communications were vulnerable. It wasn’t a new phenomenon, of course. The same thing had happened to the Germans and Japanese in World War II, and had been repeated time and again. It was just something that Americans were good at. And the timing could hardly have been better. The carrier was available for only thirty more hours, barely time enough to get the message to their man on Ranger. Ritter typed up the orders and mission requirements on his personal computer. They were printed, sealed in an envelope, and handed to one of his senior subordinates, who caught an Air Force supply flight to Panama.

  Captain Robby Jackson was feeling a little better. If nothing else, he thought he could just barely feel the added weight of the fourth stripe on the shoulders of his undress-white shirt, and the silver eagle that had replaced the oak leaf on the collar of his khakis was so much nicer a symbol for a pilot, wasn’t it? The below-the-zone promotion meant that he was seriously in the running for CAG, command of his own carrier air wing—that would be his last real flying job, Jackson knew, but it was the grandest of all. He’d have to check out in several different types of aircraft, and would be responsible for over eighty birds, their flight crews, and the maintenance personnel, without which the aircraft were merely attractive ornaments for a carrier’s flight deck.

  The bad news was that his tactical ideas hadn’t worked out as well as planned, but he consoled himself with the knowledge that all new ideas take time. He’d seen that a few of his original ideas were flawed, and the fixes suggested by one of Ranger’s squadron commanders had almost worked—had actually improved the idea markedly. And that, too, was normal. The same could also be said of the Phoenix missiles, whose guidance-package fixes had performed fairly well; not quite as well as the contractor had promised, but that wasn’t unusual either, was it?

  Robby was in the carrier’s Combat Information Center. No flight operations were underway at the moment. The battle group was in some heavy weather that would clear in a few hours, and while the maintenance people were tinkering with their airplanes, Robby and the senior air-defense people were reviewing tapes of the fighter engagements for the sixth time. The “enemy” force had performed remarkably well, diagnosing Ranger’s defense plans and reacting to them quickly and effectively to get its missile-shooters within range. That Ranger’s fighters had clobbered them on the way out was irrelevant. The whole point of the Outer Air Battle was to clobber the Backfires on the way in.

  The tape recording had been made from the radar coverage of the E-2C Hawkeye which Robby had ridden for the first engagement, but six times really were enough. He’d learned all he could learn, and his mind was wandering now. There was the Intruder again, mating up with the tanker, then heading off toward Ecuador and disappearing off the screen just before it made the coast. Captain Jackson settled back in his chair while the discussion went on around him. They fast-forwarded the tape for the approach phase, spent over an hour replaying the actual battle—what there had been of it, Jackson noted with a frown—then fast-forwarded it again. Ranger’s CAG was particularly annoyed with the lackadaisical manner in which his squadrons had re-formed for the return to the carrier. The poor organization of the fighters elicited some scathing comments from the captain who had the title that Robby now looked forward to. Listening to his remarks was a good education, though it was a touch profane. The ensuing discussion kept the tape running until—there, again, the A-6 reappeared, heading into the carrier after having done whatever the hell it had done. Robby knew that he was making an assumption, and for professional officers assumptions were dangerous things. But there it was.

  “Cap’n Jackson, sir?”

  Robby turned to see a yeoman with a clipboard. It was an action message for which he had to sign, which he did before accepting the form and reading it.

  “What gives, Rob?” the carrier’s operations officer asked.

  “Admiral Painter is flying out to the PG School. He wants me to meet him there instead of flying back to D.C. I s’pose he wants an early reading on how my wonderful new tactics worked out,” Jackson replied.

  “Don’t sweat it. They ain’t going to take the shoulder boards back.”

  “I didn’t think this all the way through,” Robby replied, gesturing at the screen.

  “Nobody ever does.”

  Ranger cleared the bad weather an hour later. The first plane off was the COD, which headed off to Panama to drop off mail and pick up various things. It returned in four hours. The “tech-rep” was waiting for it, already prepped by an innocuous signal over a clear channel. When he’d finished reading the message, he called Commander Jensen’s stateroom.

  Copies of the photo were being taken to The Hideaway, but the closest witness was in Alexandria, and he took it there himself.

  Murray knew better than to ask where the photo had come from. That is, he knew that it came from CIA, and that it was some sort of surveillance photo, but the circumstances that surrounded it were things he didn’t need to know—or so he would have been told had he asked, which he hadn’t. It was just as well, since he might not have accepted the “need-to-know” explanation in this case.

  Moira was improving. The restraints were off, but she was still being treated for some side effects of the sleeping pills she’d taken. Something to do with her liver function, he’d heard, but she was responding well to treatment. He found her sitting up, the motorized bed elevated at the command of a button. Visiting hours were over—her kids had been in tonight, and that, Murray figured, was the best treatmen
t she could possibly get. The official story was an accidental OD. The hospital knew different, and that had leaked, but the Bureau took the public position that it had been an accident since she hadn’t quite taken a lethal dose of the drug. The Bureau’s own psychiatrist saw her twice a day, and his report was optimistic. The suicide attempt, while real, had been based on impulse, not prolonged contemplation. With care and counseling, she’d come around and would probably fully recover. The psychiatrist also thought that what Murray was about to do would help.

  “You look a hell of a lot better,” he told her. “How are the kids?”

  “I’ll never do this to them again,” Moira Wolfe replied. “What a stupid, selfish thing to do.”

  “I keep telling you, you got hit by the truck.” Murray took the chair by her bedside and opened the manila envelope he’d carried in. “Is this the truck?”

  She took the photo from his hand and stared at it for a moment. It wasn’t a very good photograph. Taken at a distance of over two miles, even with the high-power lens and computer enhancement of the image, it didn’t show anything approaching the detail of an amateur photographer’s action shot of his child. But there is more to a picture than the expression on a person’s face. The shape of the head, the style of the hair, the posture, the way he held his hands, the tilt of the head....

  “It’s him,” she said. “That’s Juan Diaz. Where did you get it?”

  “It came from another government agency,” Murray replied, his choice of words telling her nothing—the exact nothing that meant CIA. “They had a discreet surveillance of some place or other—I don’t know where—and got this. They thought it might be our boy. For your information, this is the first confirmed shot we have of Colonel Félix Cortez, late of the DGI. At least now we know what the bastard looks like.”

  “Get him,” Moira said.

  “Oh, we’ll get him,” Murray promised her.

  “I know what I’ll have to do—testify and all that. I know what the lawyers will do to me. I can handle it. I can, Mr. Murray.”

  She isn’t kidding, Dan realized. It wasn’t the first time that revenge had been part of saving a life, and Murray was glad to see it. It was one more purpose, one more thing Moira had to live for. His job was to see that she and the Bureau got their revenge. The approved term at the FBI was retribution, but the hundreds of agents on the case weren’t using that word now. Jack arrived at his office early the next morning to find the expected pile of work, on top of which was a note from Judge Moore.

  “The convention closes tonight,” it read. “You’re booked on the last flight to Chicago. Tomorrow morning you will brief Gov. Fowler. This is a normal procedure for presidential candidates. Guidelines for your briefing are attached, along with a copy of the national-security brief done in the 1984 presidential campaign. ‘Restricted’ and ‘Confidential’ information may be discussed, but nothing ‘Secret’ or higher. I need to see your written presentation before five.”

  And that completely blew the day away. Ryan called home to let his family know that he’d be gone yet another night. Then he got to work. Now he wouldn’t be able to quiz Ritter and Moore until the following Monday. And Ritter, he learned, would be spending most of the day over at the White House anyway. Jack’s next call was to Bethesda, to check in with Admiral Greer and get some guidance. He was surprised to learn that Greer had done the last such briefing personally. He wasn’t surprised that the old man’s voice was measurably weaker than the last time they’d talked. The good cheer was still there, but, welcome sound that it was, the image in Jack’s mind was of an Olympic skater giving a medal-winning performance on thin, brittle ice.

  21.

  Explanations

  HE’D NEVER THOUGHT of the COD as the busiest aircraft in the carrier’s air wing. It was, of course, and he’d always known it, but the machinations of the ugly, slow, prop-driven aircraft had hardly been a matter of interest to a pilot who’d been “born” in an F-4N Phantom-II and soon thereafter moved up in class to the F-14A Tomcat. He hadn’t flown a fighter in weeks, and as he walked out toward the COD—officially the C-2A Greyhound, which was almost appropriate since it did indeed fly like a dog—he resolved that he’d sneak down to Pax River for a few hours of turnin’ and burnin’ in a proper airplane just as soon as he could. “I feel the need,” he whispered to himself with a smile. “The need for speed.” The COD was spotted for a shot off the starboard bow catapult, and as Robby headed toward it he again saw an A-6E Intruder, again the squadron commander’s personal aircraft, parked next to the island. Outboard from the structure was a narrow area called the Bomb Farm, used for ordnance storage and preparation. It was a convenient spot, too small an area for airplanes to be parked and agreeably close to the edge of the deck so that bombs could easily be jettisoned over the side if the need arose. The bombs were moved about on small, low-slung carts, and just as he boarded the COD, he saw one, carrying a blue “practice” bomb toward the Intruder. On the bomb were the odd attachments for laser guidance.

  So, another Drop-Ex tonight, eh? It was something else to smile about. You put that one right down the pickle barrel, too, Jensen, Robby thought. Ten minutes later he was off, heading for Panama, where he’d hop a ride with the Air Force for California.

  Ryan was over West Virginia on a commercial flight, sitting in coach on an American Airlines DC-9. It was quite a comedown from the Air Force VIP group, but there hadn’t been sufficient cause for that sort of treatment this time. He was accompanied by a security guard, which Jack was gradually getting used to. This one was a case officer who’d been injured on duty—he’d fallen off something and badly injured his hip. After recovering, he’d probably rotate back to Operations. His name was Roger Harris. He was thirty or so and, Jack thought, pretty smart.

  “What did you do before you joined up?” he asked Harris.

  “Well, sir, I—”

  “Name’s Jack. They don’t issue a halo along with the job title.”

  “Would you believe? A street cop in Newark. I decided that I wanted to try something safer, so I came here. And then look what happened,” he chuckled.

  The flight was only half booked. Ryan looked around and saw that no one was close, and listening devices invariably had trouble with the whine of the engines.

  “Where’d it happen?”

  “Poland. A meet went down bad—I mean, something just felt bad and I blew it off. My guy got away clean and I boogied the other way. Two blocks from the embassy I hopped over a wall. Tried to. There was a cat, just a plain old alley cat. I stepped on it, and it screeched, and I tripped and broke my fucking hip like some little old lady falling in the bathtub.” A rueful smile. “This spy stuff ain’t like the movies, is it?”

  Jack nodded. “Sometime I’ll tell you about a time when the same sort of thing happened to me.”

  “In the field?” Harris asked. He knew that Jack was Intelligence, not Operations.

  “Hell of a good story. Shame I can’t tell it to anyone.”

  “So what are you gonna tell J. Robert Fowler?”

  “That’s the funny part. It’s all stuff he can get in the papers, but it isn’t official unless it comes from one of us.”

  The stewardess came by. It was too short a flight for a meal, but Ryan ordered a couple of beers.

  “Sir, I’m not supposed to drink on duty.”

  “You just got a dispensation,” Ryan told him. “I don’t like drinking alone, and I always drink when I fly.”

  “They told me you don’t like it up here,” Harris observed.

  “I got over that,” Jack replied, almost truthfully.

  “So what is going on?” Escobedo asked.

  “Several things,” Cortez answered slowly, carefully, speculatively, to show el jefe that he was still somewhat in the dark, but working hard to use his impressive analytical talents to find the correct answer. “I believe the Americans have two or perhaps three teams of mercenaries in the mountains. They are, as you know, attac
king some of the processing sites. The objective here would appear to be psychological. Already the local peasants have shown reluctance to assist us. It is not hard to frighten such people. Do it enough and we have problems producing our product.”

  “Mercenaries?”

  “A technical term, jefe. A mercenary, as you know, is anyone who performs services for money, but the term most often denotes paramilitary services. Exactly who are they? We know that they speak Spanish. They could be Colombian citizens, disaffected Argentines—you know that the norteamericanos used people from the Argentine Army to train the contras, correct? Dangerous ones from the time of the Junta. Perhaps with all the turmoil in their home country, they have decided to enter American employ on a semipermanent basis. That is only one of many possibilities. You must understand, jefe, that operations such as this must be plausibly deniable. Wherever they come from, they may not even know that they are working for the Americans.”

  “Whoever they may be, what do you propose to do about them?”

  “We will hunt them down and kill them, of course,” Cortez said matter-of-factly. “We need about two hundred armed men, but certainly we can assemble such a force. I have people scouting the area already. I need your permission to gather the necessary forces together to sweep the hills properly.”

  “You’ll get it. And what of the Untiveros bombing?”

  “Someone loaded four hundred kilos of a very high-grade explosive into the back of his truck. Very cleverly done, jefe. In any other vehicle it would have been impossible, but that truck...”

  “Sí. The tires each weighed more than that. Who did it?”

  “Not the Americans, nor any of their hirelings,” Cortez replied positively.

  “But—”

  “Jefe, think for a moment,” Félix suggested. “Who could possibly have had access to the truck?”