Clear and Present Danger

CHAPTER 10 Dry Feet

Mark Bright checked in with Deputy Assistant Director Murray, just as a matter of courtesy, before going in to see the Director.

"You must have caught the first bird out. How's the case coming?"

"The Pirates Case – that's how the papers are treating it – is just fine. I'm up here because of what spun off of it. The victim was dirtier than we thought." Bright explained on for several minutes, pulling one of the ring binders from his briefcase.

"How much?"

"We're not sure. This one's going to take some careful analysis by people with expertise in the world of high finance, but… well, probably on the order of seven hundred million dollars."

Murray managed to set down his coffee without spilling any. "Say that again?"

"You heard right. I didn't know that until day before yesterday, and I didn't finish reading this until about twenty-four hours ago. Christ, Dan, I just skimmed it. If I'm wrong, I'm off on the low side. Anyway, I figured the Director needed to see this PDQ."

"Not to mention the AG and the President. What time you going in to see Emil?"

"Half an hour. Want to tag along? You know this international shuffle better than I do."

The Bureau had a lot of deputy assistant directors, and Murray's post had a vague definition that he jokingly called "utility outfielder." The Bureau's leading authority on terrorism, Murray was also the agency's in-house expert on how various international groups moved people, arms, and money from point to point. That, added to his wide experience as a street agent, gave him the brief of overseeing certain important cases for the Director or for Bill Shaw, the executive assistant director (Investigations). Bright hadn't walked into this office entirely by accident.

"How solid is your information?"

"Like I said, it's not all collated yet, but I got a bunch of account numbers, transaction dates, amounts, and a solid trail all the way back to the point of origin."

"And all of this because that Coast Guard–"

"No, sir." Bright hesitated. "Well, maybe. Knowing the victim was dirty made us search his background a little more thoroughly. We probably would have gotten this stuff eventually anyway. As it was, I kept going back to the house. You know how it is."

"Yeah." Murray nodded. One mark of a good agent was tenacity. Another was instinct. Bright had returned to the home of the victims for as long as his mind kept telling him that something else had to be there. "How'd you find the safe?"

"The guy had one of those Rubbermaid sheets for his swivel chair to ride on. You know how they tend to drift away when you move your chair back and forth? I must have sat at that desk for an hour, all told, and I noticed that it had moved. I rolled the chair away, so I could slide the mat back, and then it hit me – what a perfect hiding place. I was right." Bright grinned. He had every right to do so.

"You should write that one up for The Investigator" – that was the Justice Department's in-house newsletter – "so everybody'll know to look for it."

"We have a good safe-man in the office. After that, it was just a matter of cracking the code on the disks. We have a guy in Mobile who helps us out on that – and, no, he doesn't know what's on the disks. He knows not to pay close attention, and he's not all that interested anyway. I figure we'll want to keep this one pretty tight until we move to seize the funds."

"You know, I don't think we've ever owned a shopping mall. I remember when we seized that topless bar, though." Murray laughed as he lifted his phone and tapped in the number for the Director's office. "Morning, Moira, this is Dan Murray. Tell the boss that we have something really hot for him. Bill Shaw will want to come in for this, too. Be there in two minutes." Murray hung up. "Come on, Agent Bright. It's not often that you hit a grand slam on your first major-league at-bat. You ever meet the Director?"

"Just to say hi to him twice at receptions."

"He's good people," Murray assured him on the way out the door. It was a short walk down the carpeted corridor. Bill Shaw met them on the way.

"Hi, Mark. How's your dad?"

"Catching a lot of fish."

"Living down in the Keys now, isn't he?"

"Yes, sir."

"You're going to love this one, Bill," Murray observed as he opened the door. He led them in and stopped cold when he saw the Director's secretary. "My God, Moira, you're beautiful!"

"You watch that, Mr. Murray, or I'll tell your wife!" But there was no denying it. Her suit was lovely, her makeup was perfect, and her face positively glowed with what could only be new love.

"I most humbly beg your pardon, ma'am," Murray said gallantly. "This handsome young man is Mark Bright."

"You're five minutes early, Agent Bright," Mrs. Wolfe noted without checking the appointment calendar. "Coffee?"

"No, thank you, ma'am."

"Very well." She checked to see that the Director wasn't on the phone. "You can go right in."

The Director's office was large enough for conferences. Emil Jacobs had come to the Bureau after a distinguished career as a United States Attorney in Chicago, and to take this job he'd declined a seat on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals there. It went without saying that he could have held a partner's chair in any criminal-law firm in America, but from the day he'd passed the bar exam, Emil Jacobs had dedicated his life to putting criminals in jail. Part of that resulted from the fact that his father had suffered during the beer wars of Prohibition. Jacobs never forgot the scars his father bore for once having talked back to a South Side Gang enforcer. A small man, like his father, Emil Jacobs viewed his mission in life as protecting the weak from the evil. He pursued that mission with a religious fervor that hid behind a brilliant analytical mind. A rare Jew in a largely Irish-Catholic agency, he'd been made an honorary member of seventeen Hibernian lodges. While J. Edgar Hoover had been known in the field as "Director Hoover," to the current crop of agents, Director Jacobs was "Emil."

"Your dad worked for me once," Jacobs said as he extended his hand to Agent Bright. "He's down on Marathon Key, isn't he? Still fishing for tarpon?"

"Yes, sir. How'd you know?"

"Every year he sends me a Chanukah card." Jacobs laughed. "It's a long story. I'm surprised he hasn't told you that one. So what's the story?"

Bright sat down and opened his briefcase, handing out the bound copies of his documents. He started talking, awkwardly at first, but in ten minutes he was fully warmed to the subject. Jacobs was flipping rapidly through the binder, but didn't miss a spoken word.

"We're talking over half a billion dollars," Bright concluded.

"More than that from what I see here, son."

"I haven't had time to give it a detailed analysis, sir. I figured you'd want to see this right quick."

"You figured right," Jacobs replied without looking up. "Bill, who's the best guy at Justice to get in on this?"

"Remember the guy who headed the savings-and-loan thing? He's a whiz for following money from place to place. Marty something," Shaw said. "Young guy. He has a real nose for it. I think Dan ought to be involved also."

Jacobs looked up. "Well?"

"Fine with me. Shame we can't get a commission on what we seize. We're going to want to move fast on this. The first inkling they have…"

"That might not matter," Jacobs mused. "But there's no reason to drag our feet. This sort of loss will sting them pretty good. And with the other things we're… excuse me. Right, Dan, let's set this up to move fast. Any complications on the piracy case?"

"No, sir. The physical evidence is enough for a conviction. The U.S. Attorney tossed the confession entirely when the defense lawyer started grumbling about how it had been obtained. Says he smiled when he did it. Told the other guy no deals of any kind, that he had enough evidence to fry them, which is exactly what he plans to do. He's pressing for an early trial date, going to try the case himself. The whole thing."

"Sounds like we have a budding political career on our hands," Jacobs observed. "How much show and how much substance?"

"He's been pretty good to us down in Mobile, sir," Bright said.

"You can never have too many friends on The Hill," Jacobs agreed. "You're fully satisfied with the case?"

"Yes, sir. It's solid. What's spun off of it can stand pretty much on its own."

"Why was there so much money on the boat if they just planned to kill him?" Murray asked.

"Bait," Agent Bright answered. "According to the confession that we trashed, they were actually supposed to deliver it to a contact in the Bahamas. As you can see from this document, the victim occasionally handled large cash transactions himself. That's probably the reason he bought the yacht in the first place."

Jacobs nodded. "Fair enough. Dan, you did tell that captain–"

"Yes, sir. He learned his lesson."

"Fine. Back to the money. Dan, you coordinate with Justice and keep me informed through Bill. I want a target date to start the seizures – give you three days for that. Agent Bright and the Mobile Field Office are to get full credit for turning this one – but, this one is code-word until we're ready to move." Codeword meant that the case would be classified right up with CIA operations. It wasn't all that unusual for the Bureau, which ran most of America's counterintelligence operations. "Mark, pick a code-word."

"Tarpon. Dad always has been crazy about chasing after them, and they're good fighters."

"I'm going to have to go down there and see. I've never caught anything bigger than a pike." Jacobs was quiet for a moment. He was thinking about something, Murray thought, wondering what it was. Whatever it was, it gave Emil a very crafty look. "The timing couldn't be better. Shame I can't tell you why. Mark, say hi to your dad for me." The Director stood, ending the meeting.

Mrs. Wolfe noted that everyone was smiling when they came out of the room. Shaw even gave her a wink. Ten minutes later she'd opened a new file in the secure cabinet, an empty folder with the name TARPON typed on the paper label. It went in the drug section, and Jacobs told her that further documentation would follow in a few days.

Murray and Shaw walked Agent Bright down to his car and saw him off.

"What's with Moira?" Dan asked as the car pulled out. "They think she's got a boyfriend." "About time."

At 4:45, Moira Wolfe placed the plastic cover over her computer keyboard and another over her typewriter. Before leaving the office, she checked her makeup one last time and then walked out with a spring in her step. The oddest thing was that she didn't realize that everyone else in the office was rooting for her. The other secretaries and executive assistants, even the Director's security detail, had avoided comment for fear of making her self-conscious. But tonight had to be a date. The signs were clear, even though Moira thought that she was concealing it all.

As a senior executive secretary, Mrs. Wolfe rated a reserved parking space, one of many things that made her life easier. She drove out a few minutes later onto 10th Street, Northwest, then turned right onto Constitution Avenue. Instead of her normal southward course toward Alexandria and home, she headed west across the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge into Arlington. It seemed as though the rush-hour traffic was parting before her, and twenty-five minutes later she pulled up to a small Italian restaurant in Seven Corners. Before going in she checked her makeup again in the rearview mirror. Her children would be getting dinner from McDonald's tonight, but they understood. She told them that she'd be working very late, and she was sure that they believed her, though she ought to have known that they saw through her lies as easily as she had once seen through theirs.

"Excuse me," she said to the hostess upon entering.

"You must be Mrs. Wolfe," the young lady replied at once. "Please come with me. Mr. Díaz is waiting for you."

Félix Cortez – Juan Díaz – was sitting in a corner booth at the rear of the restaurant. Moira was sure that he'd picked the dark place for privacy, and that he had his back to the wall so that he could see her coming. She was partially correct on both counts. Cortez was wary of being in this area. CIA headquarters was less than five miles away, thousands of FBI personnel lived in this area, and who could say whether a senior counterintelligence officer might also like this restaurant? He didn't think that anyone there knew what he looked like, but intelligence officers do not live to collect their pensions by assuming anything. His nervousness was not entirely feigned. On the other hand, he was unarmed. Cortez was in a business where firearms caused far more problems than they solved, public perceptions to the contrary.

Félix rose as she approached. The hostess departed as soon as she realized the nature of this "business dinner," leaving the two lovers – she thought it was kind of cute – to grab each other's hands and exchange kisses that were oddly passionate despite their being restrained for so public a place. Cortez seated his lady, pouring her a glass of white wine before resuming his place opposite her. His first words were delivered with sheepish embarrassment.

"I was afraid you wouldn't come."

"How long have you been waiting?" Moira asked. There were a half-dozen stubbed-out cigarettes in the ashtray.

"Almost an hour," he answered with a funny look. Clearly he was amused at himself, she thought.

"But I'm early."

"I know." This time he laughed. "You make me a fool, Moira. I do not act in such a way at home."

She misread what he was trying to say. "I'm sorry, Juan, I didn't mean-"

A perfect response, Cortez's mind reported. Exactly right. He took her hand across the table and his eyes sparkled. "Do not trouble yourself. Sometimes it is good for a man to be a fool. Forgive me for calling you so abruptly. A small business problem. I had to fly to Detroit on short notice, and since I was in the neighborhood, as you say, I wanted to see you before I went home."

"Problem… ?"

"A change in the design for a carburetor. Something to do with fuel economy, and I must change some tools in my factories." He waved his hand. "The problem is solved. These things are not uncommon – and, it gave me an excuse to make an extra trip here. Perhaps I should thank your EPA, or whatever government office complains about air pollution."

"I will write the letter myself, if you wish."

His voice changed. "It is so good to see you again, Moira."

"I was afraid that–"

The emotion on his face was manifest. "No, Moira, it was I who was afraid. I am a foreigner. I come here so seldom, and surely there must be many men who–"

"Juan, where are you staying?" Mrs. Wolfe asked.

"At the Sheraton."

"Do they have room service?"

"Yes, but why–"

"I won't be hungry for about two hours," she told him, and finished off her wine. "Can we leave now?"

Félix dropped a pair of twenties on the table and led her out. The hostess was reminded of a song from The King and I. They were in the lobby of the Sheraton in less than six minutes. Both walked quickly to the elevators, and both looked warily about, both hoping that they wouldn't be spotted, but for different reasons. His tenth-floor room was actually an expensive suite. Moira scarcely noticed on entering, and for the next hour knew of nothing but a man whose name she mistakenly thought was Juan Díaz.

"So wonderful a thing," he said at last.

"What's that?"

"So wonderful a thing that there was a problem with the new carburetor."

"Juan!"

"I must now create quality-control problems so that they call me every week to Detroit," he suggested lightly, stroking her arm as he did so.

"Why not build a factory here?"

"The labor costs are too high," he said seriously. "Of course, drugs would be less of a problem."

"There, too?"

"Yes. They call it basuco, filthy stuff, not good enough for export, and too many of my workers indulge." He stopped talking for a moment. "Moira, I try to make a joke, and you force me to speak of business. Have you lost interest in me?"

"What do you think?"

"I think I need to return to Venezuela while I can still walk."

Her fingers did some exploring. "I think you will recover soon."

"That is good to know." He turned his head to kiss her, and let his eyes linger, examining her body in the rays of the setting sun that spilled through the windows. She noticed his stares and reached for the sheet. He stopped her.

"I am no longer young," she said.

"Every child in all the world looks upon his mother and sees the most beautiful woman in the world, even though many mothers are not beautiful. Do you know why this is so? The child looks with love, and sees love returned. Love is what makes beauty, Moira. And, truly, you are beautiful to me."

And there it was. The word was finally out in the open. He watched her eyes go somewhat wider, her mouth move, and her breaths deepen for a moment. For the second time, Cortez felt shame. He shrugged it off. Or tried to. He'd done this sort of thing before, of course. But always with young women, young, single ones with an eye for adventure and a taste for excitement. This one was different in so many ways. Different or not, he reminded himself, there was work to be done.

"Forgive me. Do I embarrass you?"

"No," she answered softly. "Not now."

He smiled down at her. "And now, are you ready for dinner?"

"Yes."

"That is good."

Cortez rose and got the bathrobes from the back of the bathroom door. Service was good. Half an hour later, Moira stayed in the bedroom while the dinner cart was rolled into the sitting room. He opened the connecting door as soon as the waiter left.

"You make of me a dishonest man. The look he gave me!"

She laughed. "Do you know how long it's been since. I had to hide in the other room?"

"And you didn't order enough. How can you live on this tiny salad?"

"If I grow fat, you will not come back to me."

"Where I come from, we do not count a woman's ribs," Cortez said. "When I see someone who grows too thin, I think it is the basuco again. Where I live, they are the ones who forget even to eat."

"Is it that bad?"

"Do you know what basuco is?"

"Cocaine, according to the reports I see."

"Poor quality, not good enough for the criminals to send to the norteamericanos, and mixed with chemicals that poison the brain. It is becoming the curse of my homeland."

"It's pretty bad here," Moira said. She could see that it was something that really worried her lover. Just like it was with the Director, she thought.

"I have spoken to the police at home. How can my workers do their jobs if their minds are poisoned by this thing? And what do the police do? They shrug and mumble excuses – and people die. They die from the basuco. They die from the guns of the dealers. And no one does anything to stop it." Cortez made a frustrated gesture. "You know, Moira, I am not merely a capitalist. My factories, they give jobs, they bring money into my country, money for the people to build houses and educate their children. I am rich, yes, but I help to build my country – with these hands, I do it. My workers, they come to me and tell me that their children – ah! I can do nothing. Someday, the dealers, they will come to me and try to take my factory," he went on. "I will go to the police, and the police will do nothing. I will go to the army, and the army will do nothing. You work for your federales, yes? Is there nothing anyone can do?" Cortez nearly held his breath, wondering what the answer would be.

"You should see the reports I have to type for the Director."

"Reports," he snorted. "Anyone can write reports. At home, the police write many reports, and the judges do their investigations – and nothing happens. If I ran my factory in this way, soon I would be living in a hillside shack and begging for money in the street! Do your federales do anything?"

"More than you might think. There are things going on right now that I cannot speak about. What they're saying around the office is that the rules are changing. But I don't know what that means. The Director is flying down to Colombia soon to meet with the Attorney General, and – oh! I'm not supposed to tell anybody that. It's supposed to be a secret."

"I will tell no one," Cortez assured her.

"I really don't know that much anyway," she went on carefully. "Something new is about to start. I don't know what. The Director doesn't like it very much, whatever it is."

"If it hurts the criminals, why should he not like it?" Cortez asked in a puzzled voice. "You could shoot them all dead in the street, and I would buy your federales dinner afterwards!"

Moira just smiled. "I'll pass that along. That's what all the letters say – we get letters from all sorts of people."

"Your director should listen to them."

"So does the President."

"Perhaps he will listen," Cortez suggested. This is an election year…

"Maybe he already is. Whatever just changed, it started there."

"But your director doesn't like it?" He shook his head. "I do not understand the government in my country. I should not try to understand yours."

"It is funny, though. This is the first time that I don't know – well, I couldn't tell you anyway." Moira finished her salad. She looked at her empty wineglass. Félix/Juan filled it for her.

"Can you tell me one thing?"

"What?"

"Call me when your director leaves for Colombia," he said.

"Why?" She was too taken aback to say no.

"For state visits one spends several days, no?"

"Yes, I suppose. I don't really know."

"And if your director is away, and you are his secretary, you will have little work to do, no?"

"No, not much."

"Then I will fly to Washington, of course." Cortez rose from his chair and took three steps around the table. Moira's bathrobe hung loosely around her. He took advantage of that. "I must fly home early tomorrow morning. One day with you is no longer enough, my love. Hmm, you are ready, I think."

"Are you?"

"We will see. There is one thing I will never understand," he said as he helped her from the chair.

"What is that?"

"Why would any fool use powder for pleasure when he can have a woman?" It was, in fact, something that Cortez never would understand. But it wasn't his job to understand it.

"Any woman?" she said, heading for the door.

Cortez pulled the robe from her. "No, not any woman."

"My God," Moira said, half an hour later. Her chest glistened with perspiration, hers and his.

"I was mistaken," he gasped facedown at her side.

"What?"

"When your director of federales flies to Colombia, do not call me!" He laughed to show that he was kidding. "Moira, I do not know that I can do this for more than one day a month."

A giggle. "Perhaps you should not work so hard, Juan."

"How can I not?" He turned to look at her. "I have not felt like this since I was a boy. But I am no longer a boy. How can women stay young when men cannot?" She smiled with amusement at the obvious lie. He had pleased her greatly.

"I cannot call you."

"What?"

"I do not have your number." She laughed. Cortez leaped from the bed and pulled the wallet from his coat pocket, then muttered something that sounded profane.

"I have no cards – ah!" He took the pad from the night table and wrote the number. "This is for my office. Usually I am not there – I spend my days on the shop floor." A grunt. "I spend my nights in the factory. I spend weekends in the factory. Sometimes I sleep in the factory. But Consuela will reach me, wherever I might be."

"And I must leave," Moira said.

"Tell your director that he must make it a weekend trip. We will spend two days in the country. I know of a small, quiet place in the mountains, just a few hours from here."

"Do you think you can survive it?" she asked with a hug.

"I will eat sensibly and exercise," he promised her. A final kiss, and she left.

Cortez closed the door and walked into the bathroom. He hadn't learned all that much, but what he had found out might be crucial. "The rules are changing." Whatever they were changing to, Director Jacobs didn't like it, but was evidently going along. He was going to Colombia to discuss it with the Attorney General. Jacobs, he remembered, knew the Attorney General quite well. They had been classmates together in college, over thirty years before. The Attorney General had flown to America for the funeral of Mrs. Jacobs. Something with a presidential seal on it, also. Well. Two of Cortez's associates were in New Orleans to meet with the attorney for the two fools who'd botched the killing on the yacht. The FBI had certainly played a part in that, and whatever had happened there would give him a clue.

Cortez looked up from washing his hands to see the man who had obtained those intelligence tidbits and decided that he didn't like the man who had done it. He shrugged off the feeling. It wasn't the first time. Certainly it wouldn't be the last.

The shot went off at 23:41 hours. The Titan-IIID's two massive solid-rocket boosters ignited at the appointed time, over a million pounds of thrust was generated, and the entire assembly leapt off the pad amid a glow that would be seen from Savannah to Miami. The solid boosters burned for 120 seconds before being discarded. At this point the liquid-fuel engines on the booster's center section ignited, hurling the remaining package higher, faster, and farther downrange. All the while onboard instruments relayed data from the booster to ground station at the Cape. In fact, they were also radioing their data to a Soviet listening post located on the northern tip of Cuba, and to a "fishing trawler" which kept station off Cape Canaveral, and also flew a red flag. The Titan-IIID was a bird used exclusively for military launches, and Soviet interest in this launch resulted from an unconfirmed GRU report that the satellite atop the launcher had been specially modified to intercept very weak electronic signals – exactly what kind the report didn't specify.

Faster and higher. Half of the remaining rocket dropped off now, the second-stage fuel expended, and the third stage lit off about a thousand miles downrange. In the control bunkers at the Cape, the engineers and technicians noted that everything was still going as planned, as befitted a launch vehicle whose ancestry dated back to the late 1950s. The third stage burned out on time and on profile. The payload, along with the fourth, or transstage, now awaited the proper time to ignite, kicking the payload to its intended geosynchronous height, from which it would hover over a specific piece of the earth's equator. The hiatus allowed the control-room crew to top off their coffee, make necessary pit stops, and review the data from the launch, which, they all agreed, had been about as perfect as an engineer had any right to expect.

The trouble came half an hour later. The transstage ignited early, seemingly on its own, boosting the payload to the required height, but not in the expected place; also, instead of being perfectly placed in a stationary position, the payload was left in an eccentric path, meandering in a lopsided figure-eight that straddled the equator. Even if it had been over the right longitude, the path would negate its coverage of the higher latitudes for brief but annoying periods of time. Despite everything that had gone right, all the thousands of parts that had functioned exactly as designed, the launch was a failure. The engineering crew who managed the lower stages shook their heads in sympathy with those whose responsibility had been the transstage, and who now surveyed launch control in evident dejection. The launch was a failure.

The payload didn't know that. At the appointed time, it separated itself from the transstage and began to perform as it had been programmed. Weighted arms ten meters in length extended themselves. Gravity from an earth over twenty thousand miles away would act on them through tidal forces, keeping the satellite forever pointed downward. Next the solar panels deployed to convert sunlight into electricity, charging the onboard batteries. Finally, an enormous dish antenna began to form. Made of a special metal-ceramic-plastic material, its frame "remembered" its proper configuration, and on being heated by sunlight unfolded itself over a three-hour period until it formed a nearly perfect parabolic dish fully thirty meters in diameter. Anyone close enough to view the event would have noticed the builder's plate on the side of the satellite. Why this was done was itself an anachronism, since there would never be anyone close enough to notice, but it was the custom. The plate, made of gold foil, designated the prime contractor as TRW, and the name of the satellite as Rhyolite-J. The last of an obsolete series of such satellites, it had been built in 1981 and sat in storage – at the cost of over $100,000 per year – awaiting a launch that had never actually been expected, since CIA and NSA had developed newer, less cumbersome electronic-reconnaissance birds that used advanced signal-gathering equipment. In fact, some of the new equipment had been attached to this obsolete bird, made even more effective by the massive receiving dish. Rhyolite had been originally designed to eavesdrop on Soviet electronic emissions, telemetry from missile tests, side-lobes from air-defense radars, scatterings from microwave towers, even for signals from spy devices dropped off by CIA officers and agents at sensitive locations.

That didn't matter to the people at the Cape. An Air Force public affairs officer released a statement to the general effect that the (classified) launch had not achieved proper orbit. This was verified by the Soviets, who had fully expected the satellite to take a place over the Indian Ocean when, in fact, it was now oscillating over the Brazilian-Peruvian border, from which it couldn't even see the Soviet Union. Curious, they thought, that the Americans had even allowed it to switch itself on, but from yet another "fishing trawler" off the California coast, they monitored intermittent scatterings of encrypted transmissions from the satellite down to some earth station or other. Whatever it was sending down, however, was of little concern to the Soviet Union.

Those signals were received at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, where technicians in yet another nondescript communications van, with a satellite dish set outside, began calibrating their instruments. They didn't know that the launch was supposedly a failure. They just knew that everything about it was secret.

The jungle, Chavez thought. It smelled, but he didn't mind the smell so much as the snakes. Chavez had never told anyone about it, but he hated and feared snakes. All kinds of snakes. He didn't know why – and it troubled him that fear of snakes was associated with women, not men – but even the thought of the slithering, slimy things made his skin crawl, those legless lizards with flicking tongues and lidless eyes. They hung from branches and hid under fallen trees, waiting for him to pass so that they could strike at whatever part of his anatomy offered itself. He knew that they would if they got the chance. He was sure that he would die if they did. So he kept alert. No snake would get him, not so long as he stayed alert. At least he had a silenced weapon. That way he could kill them without making noise. Fuckin' snakes.

He finally made the road, and he really ought to have stayed in the mud, but he wanted to lie down on a dry, clear place, which he first scanned with his AN/PVS-7 night scope. No snakes. He took a deep breath, then removed the plastic canteen from its holder. They'd been on the move for six hours, covering nearly five miles – which was really pushing it – but they were supposed to get to this road before dawn, and get there unseen by the OPFOR – the opposing force – who were warned of their presence. Chavez had spotted them twice, each time, he thought, a pair of American MPs, who weren't really soldiers, not to his way of thinking. Chavez had led his squad around them, moving through the swamp as quietly as… as a snake, he told himself wryly. He could have double-tapped all four of them easily enough, but that wasn't the mission.

"Nice job, Ding." Captain Ramirez came down beside him. They spoke in whispers.

"Hell, they were asleep."

The captain grinned in the darkness. "I hate the fuckin' jungle. All these bugs."

"Bugs ain't so bad, sir. It's the snakes I don't like."

Both men scanned the road in both directions. Nothing. Ramirez clapped the sergeant on the shoulder and went to check on the rest of the squad. He'd scarcely left when a figure emerged from the treeline three hundred yards away. He was moving directly toward Chavez. Uh-oh.

Ding moved backward under a bush and set down his submachine gun. It wasn't loaded anyway, not even with the wax practice bullets. A second one came out, but he walked the other way. Bad tactics, Chavez thought. Pairs are supposed to support each other. Well, that was too bad. The last sliver of moon was dropping below the top level of the triple-canopy forest, and Chavez still had the advantage of his night scope as the figure walked toward him. The man walked quietly – at least he knew how to do that – and slowly, keeping his eyes on the edge of the road and listening as much as looking. Chavez waited, switching off the scope and removing it from his head. Then he removed his fighting knife from its sheath. Closer, only about fifty yards now, and the sergeant coiled up, drawing his legs under his chest. At thirty feet, he stopped breathing. If he could have willed his heart to stop, he'd have done that to reduce the noise. This was for fun. If this had been for-real, a 9mm bullet would now reside in the man's head.

The sentry walked right past Ding's position, looking but not seeing the form under the bush. He made it another step before he heard a swishing sound, but then it was too late. By that time, he was facedown on the gravel, and he felt the hilt of a knife at the back of his neck.

"Ninja owns the night, boy! You're history."

"You got me, sure as hell," the man whispered in reply.

Chavez rolled him over. It was a major, and his headgear was a beret. Maybe the OPFOR wasn't MPs after all.

"Who are you?" the victim asked.

"Staff Sergeant Domingo Chavez, sir."

"Well, you just killed a jungle-warfare instructor, Chavez. Good job. Mind if I get a drink? It's been a long night." Chavez allowed the man to roll into the bushes, where he, too, took a pull off his canteen. "What outfit you from – wait a minute, 3rd of the 17th, right?"

"We own the night, sir," Chavez agreed. "You been there?"

"Going there, for a battalion staffjob." The major wiped some blood from his face. He'd hit the road a little hard.

"Sorry about that, sir."

"My fault, Sergeant, not yours. We have twenty guys out there. I never thought you'd make it this far without being spotted."

The sound of a vehicle came down the road. A minute later the wide-set lights of a Hummer – the new and larger incarnation of the venerable jeep-appeared, announcing that the exercise was over. The "dead" major marched off to collect his men, while Captain Ramirez did the same.

"That was the final exam, people," he told the squad. "Get a good day's sleep. We go in tonight."

"I don't believe it," Cortez said. He'd hopped the first flight from Dulles to Atlanta. There he met an associate in a rented car, and now they discussed their information in the total anonymity of an automobile driving at the posted limit on the Atlanta beltway.

"Call it psychological warfare," the man answered. "No plea-bargain, no nothing. It's being handled as a straight murder trial. Ramón and Jesús will not get any consideration."

Cortez looked at the passing traffic. He didn't give a damn about the two sicarios, who were as expendable as any other terrorists and who didn't know the reason for the killings. What he was considering now was a series of seemingly disjointed and unconnected bits of information on American interdiction operations. An unusual number of courier aircraft were disappearing. The Americans were treating this legal case in an unusual way. The Director of the FBI was doing something that he didn't like, and that his personal secretary didn't know about yet. "The rules are changing." That could mean anything at all.

Something fundamental. It had to be. But what?

There were a number of well-paid and highly reliable informants throughout the American government, in Customs, DEA, the Coast Guard, none of whom had reported a single thing. The law-enforcement community was in the dark – except for the FBI Director, who didn't like it, but would soon go to Colombia…

Some sort of intelligence operation was – no. Active Measures? The phrase came from KGB, and could mean any of several things, from feeding disinformation to reporters to "wet" work. Would the Americans do anything like that? They never had. He glowered at the passing scenery. He was an experienced intelligence officer, and his profession was to determine what people were doing from bits and pieces of random data. That he was working for someone he detested was beside the point. This was a matter of pride and besides, he detested the Americans even more.

What were they doing now?

Cortez had to admit to himself that he didn't know, but in one hour he'd board a plane, and in six hours he'd have to tell his employer that he didn't know. That did not appeal to him.

Something fundamental. The rules are changing. The FBI Director didn't like it. His secretary didn't know. The trip to Colombia was clandestine.

Cortez relaxed. Whatever it was, it was not an immediate threat. The Cartel was too secure. There would be time to analyze and respond. There were many people in the smuggling chain who could be sacrificed, who would fight for the chance, in fact. And after a time, the Cartel would adapt its operations to the changing conditions as it always had. All he had to do was convince his employer of that simple fact. What did el jefe really care about Ramón and Jesús or any of the underlings who ran the drugs and did the killings that became necessary? It was continuing the supply of drugs to the consumers that mattered.

His mind came back to the vanishing airplanes. Historically, the Americans had managed to intercept one or two per month, that small a number despite all their radars and aircraft. But recently – four in the last two weeks, wasn't it? – had disappeared. What did that mean? Unknown to the Americans, there had always been "operational" losses, a military term that meant nothing more mysterious than flying accidents. One of the reasons that his boss had taken Carlos Larson on was to mitigate that wastage of resources, and it had, initially, shown promise – until very recently. Why the sudden jump in losses? If the Americans had somehow intercepted them, the air crews would have shown up in courtrooms and jails, wouldn't they? Cortez had to dismiss that thought.

Sabotage, perhaps? What if someone were placing explosives in the aircraft, like the Arab terrorists did… ? Unlikely… or was it? Did anyone check for that? It wouldn't take much. Even minor damage to a low-flying aircraft could face the pilot with a problem whose solution required more time than he had in altitude. Even a single blasting cap could do it, not even a cubic centimeter… he'd have to check that out. But, then, who would be doing it? The Americans? But what if it became known that the Americans were placing bombs on aircraft? Would they take that political risk? Probably not. Who else, then? The Colombians might. Some senior Colombian military officer, operating entirely on his own… or in the pay of the yanquis? That was possible. It couldn't be a government operation, Cortez was sure. There were too many informants there, too.

Would it have to be a bomb? Why not contaminated gasoline? Why not minor tampering with an engine, a frayed control cable… or a flight instrument. What was it that Larson had said about having to watch instruments at low level? What if some mechanic had altered the setting on the artificial horizon… ? Or merely arranged for it to stop working… something in the electrical system, perhaps? How hard was it to make a small airplane stop flying? Whom to ask? Larson?

Cortez grumbled to himself. This was undirected speculation, decidedly unprofessional. There were countless possibilities. He knew that something was probably happening, but not what it was. And only probably, he admitted to himself. The unusually large number of missing aircraft could merely be a statistical anomaly – he didn't believe that, but forced himself to consider the possibility. A series of coincidences – there was not an intelligence academy in the world that encouraged its students to believe in coincidences, and yet how many strange coincidences had he encountered in his professional career?

"The rules are changing," he muttered to himself.

"What?" the driver asked.

"Back to the airport. My Caracas flight leaves in less than an hour."

"Sí, jefe."

Cortez lifted off on time. He had to travel to Venezuela first for the obvious reasons. Moira might get curious, might want to see his ticket, might ask his flight number, and besides, American agents would be less interested in people who flew there than those who flew directly to Bogotá. Four hours later he made his Avianca connection to El Dorado International Airport, where he met a private plane for the last hop over the mountains.

Equipment was issued as always, with a single exception. Chavez noted that nobody was signing for anything. That was a real break from routine. The Army always had people sign for their gear. If you broke it or lost it, well, though they might not make you pay for it, you had to account for it in one way or another. But not now.

The load-cuts differed slightly from one man to the next. Chavez, the squad scout, got the lightest load, while Julio Vega, one of the machine-gunners, got the heaviest. Ding got eleven magazines for his MP-5 submachine gun, a total of 330 rounds. The M-203 grenade launchers that two squad members had attached to their rifles were the only heavy firepower they'd be carrying in.

His uniform was not the usual stripe-and-splotch Army fatigue pattern, but rather rip-stop khaki because they weren't supposed to look like Americans to the casual observer, if any. Khaki clothing was not the least unusual in Colombia. Jungle fatigues were. A floppy green hat instead of a helmet, and a scarf to tie over his hair. A small can of green spray paint and two sticks of facial camouflage "makeup." A waterproof map case with several maps; Captain Ramirez got one also. Twelve feet of rope and a snaplink, issued to everyone. A short-range FM radio of an expensive commercial type that was nonetheless better and cheaper than the one the Army used. Seven-power compact binoculars, Japanese. American-style web gear of the type used by every Army in the world, actually made in Spain. Two one-quart canteens to hang on the web belt, and a third two-quart water bottle for his rucksack, American, commercial. A large supply of water-purification tablets – they'd resupply their own water, which wasn't a surprise.

Ding got a strobe light with an infrared cover lens because one of his jobs would be to select and mark helicopter landing zones, plus a VS-17 panel for the same purpose. A signaling mirror for times when a radio might not be appropriate (steel mirrors, moreover, do not break). A small flashlight; and a butane cigarette lighter, which was far better than carrying matches. A large bottle of extra-strength Tylenol, also known as "light-fighter candy." A bottle of prescription cough medicine, heavily laced with codeine. A small bottle of Vaseline petroleum jelly. A small squeeze bottle of concentrated CS tear gas. A weapons-cleaning kit, which included a toothbrush. Spare batteries for everything. A gas mask.

Chavez would travel light with but four hand grenades – Dutch NR-20 C1 type – and two smokes, also of Dutch manufacture. The rest of the squad got the Dutch frags, and some CS tear-gas grenades, also Dutch. In fact, all of the weapons carried by the squad and all of their ammunition had been purchased at Colon, Panama, in what was fast becoming the hemisphere's most convenient arms market. For anyone with cash there were weapons to be had.

Rations were the normal MREs. Water was the main hygienic concern, but they'd already been fully briefed about using their water-purification tablets. Whoever forgot had a supply of antidiarrhea pills that would follow a serious chewing from Captain Ramirez. Every man had gotten a new series of booster shots while still in Colorado against the spectrum of tropical diseases endemic to the area, and all carried an odorless insect repellent made for the military by the same company that produced the commercial product called "Off." The squad medic carried a full medical kit, and each rifleman had his own morphine Syrette and a plastic bottle of IV fluids for use as a blood-expander.

Chavez had a razor-sharp machete, a four-inch folding knife, and, of course, his three nonregulation throwing stars that Captain Ramirez didn't know about. With other sundry items, Chavez would be carrying a load of exactly fifty-eight pounds. That made his load the lightest in the squad. Vega and the other SAW gunner had the heaviest, with seventy-one pounds. Ding jostled the load around on his shoulders to get a feel for it, then adjusted the straps on his rucksack to make it as comfortable as possible. It was a futile exercise. He was packing a third of his body weight, which is about as much as a man can carry for any length of time without risking a physical breakdown. His boots were well broken-in, and he had extra pairs of dry socks.

"Ding, could you give me a hand with this?" Vega asked.

"Sure, Julio." Chavez took some slack in on one of the machine gunner's shoulder straps. "How's that?"

"Just right, 'mano. Jeez, carrying the biggest gun do have a price."

"Roger that, Oso." Julio, who'd demonstrated the ability to pack more than anyone in the squad, had a new nickname, Oso: Bear.

Captain Ramirez came down the line, walking around each man to check the loads. He adjusted a few straps, bounced a few rucksacks, and generally made sure that every man was properly loaded, and that all weapons were clean. When he was finished, Ding checked the captain's load, and Ramirez took his place in front of the squad.

"Okay – anybody got aches, pains, or blisters?"

"No, sir!" the squad replied.

"We ready to go do it?" Ramirez asked with a wide grin that belied the fact that he was as nervous as everyone else in the squad bay.

"Yes, sir!"

One more thing left to do. Ramirez walked down the line and collected dog tags from each man. Each set went into a clear plastic bag along with wallets and all other forms of identification. Finished, he removed his own, counted the bags a last time, and left them on the table in the squad bay. Outside, each squad boarded a separate five-ton truck. Few waves were exchanged. Though friendships had sprouted up in training, they were mainly limited within the structure of the squads. Each eleven-man unit was a self-contained community. Every member knew every other, knew all there was to know, from stories of sexual performance to marksmanship skills. Some solid friendships had blossomed, and some even more valuable rivalries. They were, in fact, already closer than friends could ever be. Each man knew that his life would depend on the skill of his fellows, and none of them wished to appear weak before his comrades. Argue as they might among themselves, they were now a team; though they might trade barbed comments, over the past weeks they had been forged into a single complex organism with Ramirez as their brain, Chavez as their eyes, Julio Vega and the other machine-gunner as their fists, and all the others as equally vital components. They were as ready for their mission as any soldiers had ever been.

The trucks arrived together behind the helicopter and the troops boarded by squads. The first thing Chavez noticed was the 7.62mm minigun on the right side of the aircraft. There was an Air Force sergeant standing next to it, his green coveralls topped by a camouflage-painted flight helmet, and a massive feed line of shells leading to an even larger hopper. Ding had no particular love for the Air Force – a bunch of pansy truck drivers, he'd thought until now – but the man on that gun looked serious and competent as hell. Another such gun was unmanned on the opposite side of the aircraft, and there was a spot for another at the rear. The flight engineer – his name tag said ZIMMER – moved them all into their places and made sure that each soldier was properly strapped down to his particular piece of floor. Chavez didn't trade words with him, but sensed that this man had been around the block a few times. It was, he belatedly realized, the biggest goddamned helicopter he'd ever seen.

The flight engineer made one final check before going forward and plugging his helmet into the intercom system. A moment later came the whine from the helicopter's twin turbine engines.

"Looking good," PJ observed over the headset. The engines had been pre-warmed and the fuel tanks topped off. Zimmer had repaired a minor hydraulic problem, and the Pave Low III was as ready as his skilled men could make it. Colonel Johns keyed his radio.

"Tower, this is Night Hawk Two-Five requesting permission to taxi. Over."

"Two-Five, tower, permission granted. Winds are one-zero-niner at six knots."

"Roger. Two-Five is rolling. Out."

Johns twisted the throttle grip on his collective control and eased the cyclic stick forward. Due to the size and engine power of the big Sikorsky, it was customary to taxi the aircraft toward the runway apron before actually lifting off. Captain Willis swiveled his neck around, checking for other ground traffic, but there was none this late at night. One ground crewman walked backward in front of them as a further safety measure, waving for them to follow with lighted wands. Five minutes later they were at the apron. The wands came together and pointed to the right. Johns gave the man a last look, returning the ceremonial salute.

"Okay, let's get this show on the road." PJ brought the throttle to full power, making a last check of his engine instruments as he did so. Everything looked fine. The helicopter lifted at the nose a few feet, then dipped forward as it began to move forward. Next it started to climb, leaving behind a small tornado of dust, visible only in the blue runway perimeter lights.

Captain Willis put the navigations systems on line, adjusting the electronic terrain display. There was a moving map display not unlike that used by James Bond in Goldfinger. Pave Low could navigate from a Doppler-radar system that interrogated the ground, from an inertial system using laser-gyroscopes, or from navigational satellites. The helicopter initially flew straight down the Canal's length, simulating the regular security patrol. They unknowingly flew within a mile of the SHOWBOAT's communications nexus at Corezal.

"Lot of pick-and-shovel work down there," Willis observed.

"Ever been here before?"

"No, sir, first time. Quite a job for eighty-ninety years ago," he said as they flew over a large container ship. They caught a little buffet from the hot stack-gas of the ship. PJ came to the right to get out of it. It would be a two-hour flight, and there was no sense in jostling the passengers any more than necessary. In an hour their MC-130E tanker would lift off to refuel them for the return leg.

"Lot of dirt to move," Colonel Johns agreed after a moment. He moved a little in his seat. Twenty minutes later they went "feet wet," passing over the Caribbean Sea for the longest portion of the flight on a course of zero-nine-zero, due east.

"Look at that," Willis said half an hour later. On their night-vision sets, they spotted a twin-engine aircraft on a northerly heading, perhaps six miles away. They spotted it from the infrared glow of the two piston engines.

"No lights," PJ agreed.

"I wonder what he's carrying?"

"Sure as hell isn't Federal Express." More to the point, he can't see us unless he's wearing the same goggles we got.

"We could pull up alongside and take the miniguns–"

"Not tonight." Too bad. I wouldn't especially mind…

"What do you suppose our passengers–"

"If we were supposed to know, Captain, they would have told us," Johns replied. He was wondering, too, of course. Christ, but they're loaded for bear, the colonel thought. Not wearing standard-issue uniforms… obviously a covert insertion – hell, I've known that part of the mission for weeks – but they were clearly planning to stay awhile. Johns hadn't heard that the government had ever done that. He wondered if the Colombians were playing ball… probably not. And we're staying down here for at least a month, so they're planning for us to support them, maybe extract them if things get a little hot… Christ, it's Laos all over again, he concluded. Good thing I brought Buck along. We're the only real vets left. Colonel Johns shook his head. Where had his youth gone?

You spent it with a helicopter strapped to your back, doing all sorts of screwy things.

"I got a ship target on the horizon at about eleven o'clock," the captain said, and altered course a few degrees to the right. The mission brief had been clear on that. Nobody was supposed to see or hear them. That meant avoiding ships, fishing boats, and inquisitive dolphins, staying well off the coast, no more than a thousand feet up, and keeping their anticollision lights off. The mission profile was precisely what they'd fly in wartime, with some flight-safety rules set aside. Even in the special-operations business, that last fact was somewhat out of the ordinary, Johns reminded himself. Hot guns and all.

They made the Colombian coast without further incident. As soon as it was in view, Johns alerted his crew. Sergeants Zimmer and Bean powered up their electrically driven miniguns and slid open the doors next to them.

"Well, we just invaded a friendly foreign country," Willis noted as they went "feet dry" north of Tolu. They used their low-light instruments to search for vehicular traffic, which they were also supposed to avoid. Their course track was plotted to avoid areas of habitation. The six-bladed rotor didn't make the fluttering whops associated with smaller helicopters. Its sound, at a distance, wasn't terribly different from turbopowered aircraft; it was also directionally deceptive – even if you heard the noise, it was hard to figure where it came from. Once past the Pan American Highway, they curved north, passing east of Plato.

"Zimmer, LZ One in five minutes."

"Right, PJ," the flight engineer replied. It had been decided to leave Bean and Childs on the guns, while Zimmer handled the dropoff.

It must be a combat mission. Johns smiled to himself. Buck only calls me that when he expects to get shot at.

Aft, Sergeant Zimmer walked down the center of the aircraft, telling the first two squads to unbuckle their safety belts and holding up his hand to show how many more minutes there were. Both captains nodded.

"LZ One in sight," Willis said soon thereafter.

"I'll take her."

"Pilot's airplane."

Colonel Johns orbited the area, spiraling into the clearing selected from satellite photos. Willis scanned the ground for the least sign of life, but there was none.

"Looks clear to me, Colonel."

"Going in now," Johns said into the intercom.

"Get ready!" Zimmer shouted as the helicopter's nose came up.

Chavez stood up with the rest of his squad, facing aft to the opening cargo door. His knees buckled slightly as the Sikorsky touched down.

"Go!" Zimmer waved them out, patting each man on the shoulder to keep a proper count.

Chavez went out behind his captain, turning left to avoid the tail rotor as soon as his feet were on the dirt. He went ten steps and dropped to his face. Above his head, the rotor was still turning at full power, holding the lethal blades a safe fifteen feet off the ground.

"Clear, clear, clear!" Zimmer said when he'd seen them all off.

"Roger," Johns replied, twisting the throttle again to lift off.

Chavez turned his head as the whine of the engines increased. The blacked-out helicopter was barely visible, but he saw the spectral outline lift off and felt the dirt stinging his face as the hundred-knot downwash from the rotor subsided, and stopped. It was gone.

He ought to have expected it, but the feeling came to Chavez as a surprise. He was in enemy territory. It was real, not an exercise. The only way he had out – had just flown away, already invisible. Despite the fact that there were ten men around him, he was momentarily awash in a sense of loneliness. But he was a trained man, a professional soldier. Chavez grasped his loaded weapon and took strength from it. He wasn't quite alone.

"Move out," Captain Ramirez told him quietly.

Chavez moved toward the treeline in the knowledge that behind him the squad would follow.