Clear and Present Danger

CHAPTER 12 The Curtain on SHOWBOAT

"VARIABLE, this is KNIFE. Stand by to copy, over.'

The signal off the satellite channel was as clear as a commercial FM station. The communications technician stubbed out his cigarette and keyed his headset.

"KNIFE, this is VARIABLE, your signal is five by five. We are ready to copy, over." Behind him, Clark turned in his swivel chair to look at the map.

"We are at Objective RENO, and guess what – there's a twin-engine aircraft in view with some people loading cardboard boxes into it. Over."

Clark turned to look in surprise at the radio rack. Was their operational intel that good?

"Can you read the tail number, over."

"Negative, the angle's wrong. But he's going to take off right past us. We are right in the planned position. No security assets are evident at this time."

"Damn," observed one of the Operations people. He lifted a handset. "This is VARIABLE. RENO reports bird in the nest, time zero-three-one-six Zulu… Roger. Will advise. Out." He turned to his companion. "The stateside assets are at plus-one hour."

"That'll do just fine," the other man thought.

As Ramirez and Chavez watched through their binoculars, two men finished loading their boxes into the aircraft. It was a Piper Cheyenne, both men determined, a midsize corporate aircraft with reasonably long range, depending on load weights and flight profile. Local shops could fit it with ferry tanks, extending the range designed into the aircraft. The cargo flown into America by drug smugglers had little to do with weight or – except in the case of marijuana – bulk. The limiting factor was money. A single aircraft could carry enough refined cocaine, even at wholesale value, to wipe out the cash holdings of most federal reserve banks.

The pilots boarded the aircraft after shaking hands with the ground crews – that part seemed to their covert observers just as routine as any aircraft departure. The engines began turning, and their roar swept across the open land toward the light-fighters.

"Jesus," Sergeant Vega noted with bemusement. "I could smoke the bird right here and now. Damn." His gun was on "safe," of course.

"Might make our life a little too exciting," Chavez noted. "Yeah, that makes sense, Oso. The security guys were all around the airplane. They're spreading out now." He grabbed his radio. "Captain–"

"I see it. Heads up in case we have to move out."

The Piper taxied to the end of the runway, moving like a crippled bird, bouncing and bobbing on the landing-gear shocks. The airstrip was illuminated by a mere handful of small flares, far fewer lights than were normally used to outline a real runway. It struck all who looked as dangerous, and suddenly Chavez realized that if the aircraft crashed on takeoff, some squad members would end up eating the thing…

The aircraft's nose dropped as the pilot pushed the engines to full throttle preparatory to takeoff, then reduced power to make sure the motors wouldn't quit when he did so. Satisfied, they ran up again, and the aircraft slipped its brakes and started moving. Chavez set his binoculars down to watch. Heavily loaded with fuel, it cleared the trees to his right by a mere twenty yards. Whoever the pilot was, he was a daredevil. The term that sprang into the sergeant's mind seemed appropriate enough.

"Just took off now. It's a Piper Cheyenne," Ramirez's voice read off the tail number. It had American registration. "Course about three-three-zero." Which headed for the Yucatan Channel, between Cuba and Mexico. The communicator took the proper notes. "What can you tell me about RENO?"

"I count six people. Four carry rifles, can't tell about the rest. One pickup truck and a shack, like on the satellite overheads. Truck's moving now, and I think – yeah, they're putting out the runway lights. They're using flares, just putting dirt over on top of them. Stand by, we have a truck heading this way."

Off to Ramirez's left, Vega had his machine gun up on its bipod, the sight tracking the pickup as it moved down the east side of the runway. Every few hundred meters, it stopped, and the passenger jumped out and shoveled dirt on one of the sputtering flares.

"Reach out, reach out and touch someone…" Julio murmured.

"Be cool, Oso," Ding cautioned.

"No problem." Vega's thumb was on the selector switch – still set on "safe" – and his finger was on the trigger guard, not the trigger itself.

The flares went out one by one. The truck was briefly within one hundred fifty meters of the two soldiers, but never approached them directly. They merely happened to be in a place the truck had to pass by. Vega's gun stayed on the truck until well after it turned away. As he set the buttstock back down on the dirt, he turned to his comrade.

"Aw, shit!" he whispered in feigned disappointment.

Chavez had to stifle a giggle. Wasn't this odd, he thought. Here they were in enemy territory, loaded for fucking bear, and they were playing a game no different from what children did on Christmas Eve, peeking around corners. The game was serious as hell, they all knew, but the form it took was almost laughable. They also knew that could change in an instant. There wasn't anything funny about training a machine gun on two men in a truck. Was there?

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 problem."

"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 attachés 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 GIA'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.

The increase in salary was also impressive, or would have been if it had matched what his wife, Cathy, was making from the surgical practice that supplemented her associate professorship at Johns Hopkins. But there was not a single government salary – not even the President's – that matched what a good surgeon made. Ryan also had the equivalent rank of a three-star general or admiral, even though his capacity in the job was merely "acting."

His first task of the day, after closing the office door, had been to open the DDI safe. There was nothing in it. Ryan memorized the combination, again noting that the DDO's combination was scribbled on the same sheet of paper. His office had that most precious of government perks: a private bathroom; a high-definition TV monitor on which he could watch satellite imagery come in without going to the viewing room in the building's new north wing; a secure computer terminal over which he could communicate to other offices if he so wished – there was dust on the keys; Greer had almost never used it. Most of all, there was room. He could get up and pace if he wanted. His job gave him unlimited access to the Director. When the Director was away – and even if he were not – Ryan could call the White House for an immediate meeting with the President. He'd have to go through the Chief of Staff – bypassing Cutter, if he felt the need – but if Ryan now said, "I have to see the President, right now!" he'd get in, right now. Of course he'd have to have a very good reason for doing so.

Jack sat in the high-backed chair, facing away from the plate-glass windows, and realized that he had gotten there. This was as far as he had ever expected to rise in the Agency. Not even forty yet. He'd made his money in the brokerage business – and the money was still growing; he needed his CIA salary about as much as he needed a third shoe – gotten his doctor's degree, written his books, taught some history, made himself a new and interesting career, and worked his way to the top. Not even forty yet. He would have awarded himself a gentle, satisfied smile except for the fatherly gentleman who was now at Bethesda Naval Medical Center, dying the lingering and painful death that had put him in this chair, in this office, in this position.

It's not worth it. It sure as hell isn't worth that, Jack told himself. He'd lost his parents to an airliner crash at Chicago, and remembered the sudden, wrenching loss, the impact that had come like a thrown punch. For all that, it had come with merciful speed. He hadn't realized it at the time, but he did now. Ryan made a point of seeing Admiral Greer three times a week, watching his body shrink, draw in on itself like a drying plant, watching the pain lines deepen in his dignified face as the man fought valiantly in a battle he knew to be hopeless. He'd been spared the ordeal of watching his parents fade away, but Greer had become a new father to him, and Ryan was now observing his filial duty for his surrogate parent. Now he understood why his wife had chosen eye surgery. It was tough, technically demanding work in which a slip could cause blindness, but Cathy didn't have to watch people die. What could be harder than this – but Ryan knew that answer. He'd seen his daughter hover near death, saved by chance and some especially fine surgeons.

Where do they get the courage? Jack wondered. It was one thing to fight against people. Ryan had done that. But to fight against Death itself, knowing that they must ultimately lose, but still fighting. Such was the nature of the medical profession.

Jesus, you're a morbid son of a bitch this morning.

What would the Admiral say?

He'd say to get on with the goddamned job.

The point of life was to press on, to do the best you can, to make the world a better place. Of course, Jack admitted, CIA might seem to some a most peculiar place in which to do that, but not to Ryan, who had done some very odd but also very useful things here.

A smell got his attention. He turned to see that the coffee machine on the credenza was turned on. Nancy must have done it, he realized. But Admiral Greer's mugs were gone, and some "generic" CIA-logoed cups sat on the silver tray. Just then came a knock on the door. Nancy's head appeared.

"Your department-head meeting starts in two minutes, Dr. Ryan."

"Thanks, Mrs. Cummings. Who did the coffee?" Jack asked.

"The Admiral called in this morning. He said you would need some on your first day."

"Oh. I'll thank him when I go over tonight."

"He sounded a little better this morning," Nancy said hopefully.

"Hope you're right."

The department heads appeared right on schedule. He poured himself a cup of coffee, offering the same to his visitors, and in a minute was down to work. The first morning report, as always, concerned the Soviet Union, followed by the others as CIA's interests rotated around the globe. Jack had attended these meetings as a matter of routine for years, but now he was the man behind the desk. He knew how the meetings were supposed to be run, and he didn't break the pattern. Business was still business. The Admiral wouldn't have had it any other way.

With presidential approval, things moved along smartly. Overseas communications were handled, as always, by the National Security Agency, and only the time zones made things inconvenient. An earlier heads-up signal had been dispatched to the legal attaches in several European embassies, and at the appointed time, first in Bern, teletype machines operating off encrypted satellite channels began punching out paper. In the communications rooms in all the embassies, the commo-techs took note of the fact that the systems being used were the most secure lines available. The first, or register, sheet prepped the technicians for the proper one-time-pad sequence, which had to be retrieved from the safes which held the cipher keys.

For especially sensitive communications – the sort that might accompany notice that war was about to start, for example – conventional cipher machines simply were not secure enough. The Walker-Whitworth spy ring had seen to that. Those revelations had forced a rapid and radical change in American code policy. Each embassy had a special safe – actually a safe within yet another, larger safe – which contained a number of quite ordinary-looking tape cassettes. Each was encased in a transparent but color-coded plastic shrink-wrap. Each bore two numbers. One number – in this case 342 – was the master registration number for the cassette. The other – in the Bern embassy; it was 68 – designated the individual cassette within the 342 series. In the event that the plastic wrap on any of the cassettes, anywhere in the world, was determined to be split, scratched, or even distorted, all cassettes on that number series were immediately burned on the assumption that the cassette might have been compromised.

In this case, the communications technician removed the cassette from its storage case, examined its number, and had his watch supervisor verify that it had the proper number: "I read the number as three-four-two."

"Concur," the watch supervisor confirmed. "Three-four-two."

"I am opening the cassette," the technician said, shaking his head at the absurd solemnity of the event.

The shrink-wrap was discarded in the low-tech rectangular plastic waste can next to his desk, and the technician inserted the cassette in an ordinary-looking but expensive player that was linked electronically to another teletype machine ten feet away.

The technician set the original printout on the clipboard over his own machine and started typing.

The message, already encrypted on the master 342 cassette at NSA headquarters, Fort Meade, Maryland, had been further encrypted for satellite transmission on the current maximum-security State Department cipher, called STRIPE, but even if someone had the proper keys to read STRIPE, all he would have gotten was a message that read DEERAMO WERAC KEWJRT, and so on, due to the super-encipherment imposed by the cassette system. That would at the least annoy anyone who thought that he'd broken the American communications systems. It certainly annoyed the communications technician, who had to concentrate as hard as he knew on how to type things like DEERAMO WERAC KEWJRT instead of real words that made some sort of sense.

Each letter passed through the cassette player, which took note of the incoming letter and treated it as a number from 1 (A) to 26 (Z), and then added the number on the tape cassette. Thus, if 1 (A) on the original text corresponded to another 1 (A) on the cassette, 1 was added to 1, making 2 (B) on the clear-text message. The transpositions on the cassette were completely random, having been generated from atmospheric radio noise by a computer at Fort Meade. It was a completely unbreakable code system, technically known as a One-Time Pad. There was, by definition, no way to order or predict random behavior. So long as the tape cassettes were uncompromised, no one could break this cipher system. The only reason that this system, called TAPDANCE, was not used for all communications was the inconvenience of making, shipping, securing, and keeping track of the thousands of cassettes that would be required, but that would soon be made easier when a laser-disc format replaced the tape cassettes. The code-breaking profession had been around since Elizabethan times, and this technical development threatened to render it as obsolete as the slide rule.

The technician pounded away on the keyboard, trying to concentrate as he grumbled to himself about the late hours. He ought to have been off work at six, and was looking forward to dinner in a nice little place a couple of blocks from the embassy. He could not, of course, see the clear-text message coming up ten feet away, but the truth was that he didn't give a good goddamn. He'd been doing this sort of thing for nine years, and the only reason he stuck with it was the travel opportunity. Bern was his third posting overseas. It wasn't as much fun as Bangkok had been, but it was far more interesting than his childhood home in Ithaca, New York.

The message had seventeen thousand characters, which probably corresponded to about twenty-five hundred words, the technician thought. He blazed through the message as quickly as he could.

"Okay?" he asked when he was finished. The last "word" had been ERYTPESM.

"Yep," the legal attaché replied.

"Great." The technician took the telex printout he'd just typed from and fed it into the code room's own shredder. It came out as flat pasta. Next he removed the tape cassette from the player and, getting a nod from the watch supervisor, walked to the corner of the room. Here, tied to a cable fixed to the wall – actually it was just a spiraled telephone cord – was a large horseshoe magnet. He moved this back and forth over the cassette to destroy the magnetic information encoded on the tape inside. Then the cassette went into the burn-bag. At midnight, one of the Marine guards, supervised by someone else, would carry the bag to the embassy's incinerator, where both would watch a day's worth of paper and other important garbage burned to ashes by a natural-gas flame. Mr. Bernardi finished scanning the message and looked up.

"I wish my secretary could type that fast, Charlie. I count two – only two! – mistakes. Sorry we kept you late." The legal attaché handed over a ten-franc note. "Have a couple of beers on me."

"Thank you, Mr. Bernardi."

Chuck Bernardi was a senior FBI agent, whose civil-service rank was equivalent to that of brigadier general in the United States Army, in which he had served as an infantry officer, long ago and far away. He had two more months to serve here, after which he'd rotate home to FBI Headquarters and maybe a job as special-agent-in-charge of a medium-sized field division. His specialty was in the Bureau's OC-Organized Crime-Directorate, which explained his posting to Switzerland. Chuck Bernardi was an expert on tracking mob money, and a lot of it worked its way through the Swiss banking system. His job, half police officer and half diplomat, put him in touch with all of the top Swiss police officials, with whom he had developed a close and friendly working relationship. The local cops were smart, professional, and damned effective, he thought. A little old lady could walk the streets of Bern with a shopping bag full of banknotes and feel perfectly secure. And some of them, he chuckled to himself on the walk to his office, probably did.

Once in his office, Bernardi flipped on his reading light and reached for a cigar. He hadn't shaken off the first ash when he leaned back in his chair to stare at the ceiling.

"Son of a bitch!" He reached for his telephone and called the most senior cop he knew.

"This is Chuck Bernardi. Could I speak to Dr. Lang, please? Thank you… Hi, Karl, Chuck here. I need to see you… right away if possible… it's pretty important, Karl, honest… In your office would be better… Not over the phone, Karl, if you don't mind… Okay, thanks, pal. It's worth it, believe me. I'll be there in fifteen minutes."

He hung up the phone. Next he walked out to the office Xerox machine and made a copy of the document, signing off that it was he who had used the machine and how many copies had been run off. Before leaving, he put the original in his personal safe and tucked the copy in his coat pocket. Karl might be pissed about missing dinner, he thought, but it wasn't every day that somebody enriched your national economy to the tune of two hundred million dollars. The Swiss would freeze the accounts. That meant that six of their banks would, by law, keep all the accrued interest – and maybe the principal also, as the identity of the government which was entitled to get the funds might never be clear, "forcing" the Swiss to keep the funds, which would ultimately be turned over to the canton governments. And people wondered why Switzerland was such a wealthy, peaceful, charming little country. It wasn't just the skiing and the chocolate.

Within an hour, six embassies had the word, and as the sun marched across the earth, special agents of the FBI also visited the executive suites of several American commercial – "full-service" – banks. They handed over the identifying numbers or names of several accounts, all of whose considerable funds would be immediately frozen by the simple expedient of putting a computer lock on them. In all cases, it was done quietly. No one had to know, and the importance of secrecy was conveyed in very positive terms – in America and elsewhere – by serious, senior government employees, to bank presidents who were fully cooperative in every instance. (After all, it wasn't their money, was it?) In nearly all cases, the police officials learned, the accounts were not terribly active, averaging two or three transactions per month; always large ones, of course. Deposits would still be accepted, and it was suggested by a Belgian official that if the FBI had the account information for other such accounts, transfers from one monitored account to another would be allowed – only within the same country, of course, the Belgian pointed out – to prevent tipping off the depositors. After all, he said, drugs were the common enemy of all civilized men, and most certainly of all police officers. That suggestion was immediately ratified by Director Jacobs, with the concurrence of the AG. Even the Dutch went along, despite the fact that the Netherlands government itself sold drugs in approved stores to its more jaded younger citizens. It was, all in all, a clear case of capitalism in action. There was dirty money around, money that had not been rightly earned, and governments did not approve of such money. Which was why they seized it for their own approved ends. In the case of the banks, the secrecy to which they were sworn was every bit as sacred as that by which they guarded the identity of their depositors.

By the close of business hours on Friday, all had been accomplished. The banks' computer systems stayed up and running. The law-enforcement people now had two full additional days to give the money trails further examination. If they found any more money related to the accounts already seized, those funds would also be frozen, and, in the case of the European banks, confiscated. The first hit here was in Luxembourg. Though Swiss banks are those known internationally for their confidentiality laws, the only real difference in security between their operation and those of banks in most other European countries was the fact that Belgium, for example, wasn't surrounded by the Alps, and that Switzerland hadn't been overrun by foreign armies quite as recently as her European neighbors. Otherwise, the integrity of the banks was identical, and accordingly the non-Swiss bankers actually resented the Alps for giving their Swiss brethren such an additional and accidental business advantage. But in this case, international cooperation was the rule. By Sunday evening, six new "dirty" accounts had been identified, and one hundred thirty-five million additional dollars were put under computer lock.

Back in Washington, Director Jacobs, Deputy Assistant Director Murray, the specialists from the organized-crime office, and the Justice Department left their offices for a well-deserved dinner at the Jockey Club Restaurant. While the Director's security detail watched, the ten men proceeded to have themselves a superb meal at government expense. Perhaps a passing reporter or Common Cause staffer might have objected, but this one had been well and truly earned. Operation TARPON was the greatest single success in the War on Drugs. It would go public, they agreed, by the end of the week.

"Gentlemen," Dan Murray said, rising with his – he didn't remember how many glasses of Chablis had accompanied this fish – of course – dinner. "I give you the United States Coast Guard!"

They all rose with a chorus of laughter that annoyed the other customers in the restaurant. "The United States Coast Guard!" It was a pity, one of the Justice Department attorneys noted, that they didn't know the words to "Semper Paratus."

The party broke up about ten o'clock. The Director's security men shared looks. Emil didn't hold his liquor all that well, and he'd be a gruff, hungover little bear tomorrow morning – though he'd apologize to them all before lunch.

"We'll be flying down to Bogotá Friday afternoon," he told them in the sanctity of his official car, an Oldsmobile. "Make your plans but don't tell the Air Force until Wednesday. I don't want any leaks on this."

"Yes, sir," the chief of the detail answered. He wasn't looking forward to this one either. Especially now. The druggies were going to be pissed. But this visit would catch them unawares. The news stories would say that Jacobs was remaining in D.C. to work on the case, and they wouldn't expect him to show up in Colombia. Even so, the security for this one would be tight. He and his fellow agents would be spending some extra time in the Hoover Building's own weapons range, honing their skills with their automatic pistols and submachine guns. They couldn't let anything happen to Emil.

Moira found out Tuesday morning. By this time she, too, knew all about TARPON, of course. She knew that the trip was supposed to be secret, and she had no doubt that it would also be dangerous. She wouldn't tell Juan until Thursday night. After all, she had to be careful. She spent the rest of the week wondering what special place he had in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

It no longer mattered that the uniform clothing was khaki instead of woodland pattern Battle Dress Uniform. Between the sweat stains and the dirt, the squad members were now exactly the same color as the ground on which they hid. They had all washed once in the stream from which they took their water, but no one had used soap for fear that suds or smell or something might alert someone downstream. Under the circumstances, washing without soap wasn't even as good as kissing your sister. It had cooled them off, however, and that for Chavez was a most pleasant memory. For – what was it? – ten glorious minutes he'd been comfortable. Ten minutes after which, he'd sweated again. The climate was beastly, with temperatures reaching to one hundred twenty degrees on one cloudless afternoon. If this was a goddamned jungle, Chavez asked himself, why the hell doesn't it rain? The good news was that they didn't have to move around a great deal. The two jerks who guarded this airstrip spent most of their time sleeping, smoking – probably grass, Chavez thought – and generally jerking off. They had, once, startled him by firing their weapons at tin cans that they'd set up on the runway. That might have been dangerous, but the direction of fire hadn't been toward the observation post, and Chavez had used the opportunity to evaluate the weapons skills of the opposition. Shitty, he'd told Vega at once. Now they were up to it again. They set up three bean cans – big ones – perhaps a hundred meters from the shack, and just blazed away, shooting from the hip like movie actors.

"Christ, what fuck-ups," he observed, watching through his binoculars.

"Lemme see." Vega got to watch just as one of them knocked a can down on his third try. "Hell, I could hit the damned things from here…"

"Point, this is Six, what the fuck is going on!" the radio squawked a moment later. Vega answered the call.

"Six, this is Point. Our friends are doing some plinkin' again. Their axis of fire is away from us, sir. They're punchin' holes in some tin cans. They can't shoot for shit, Cap'n."

"I'm coming over."

"Roger." Ding set down the radio. "The Cap'n's coming. I think the noise made him nervous."

"He sure does worry a lot," Vega noted.

"That's what they pay officers for, ain't it?"

Ramirez appeared three minutes later. Chavez made to hand over his binoculars, but the captain had brought his own pair this time. He fell to a prone position and got his glasses up just in time to watch another can go down.

"Oh."

"Two cans, two full magazines," Chavez explained. "They like to go rock-and-roll. I guess ammo's cheap down here."

Both of the guards were still smoking. The captain and the sergeant watched them laugh and joke as they shot. Probably, Ramirez thought, they're as bored as we are. After the first aircraft, there had been no activity at all here at RENO, and soldiers like boredom even less than ordinary citizens. One of them – it was hard to tell them apart since they were roughly the same size and wore the same sort of clothing – inserted another magazine into his AK-47 and blazed off a ten-round burst. The little fountains of dirt walked up to the remaining can, but didn't quite hit it.

"I didn't know it would be this easy, sir," Vega observed from behind the sights of his machine gun. "What a bunch of fuck-ups!"

"You think that way, Oso, you turn into one yourself," Ramirez said seriously.

"Roger that, Cap'n, but I can't help seein' what I'm seein'."

Ramirez softened his rebuke with a smile. "I suppose you're right."

The third can finally went down. They were averaging thirty rounds per target. Next the guards used their weapons to push the cans around the runway.

"You know," Vega said after a moment, "I ain't seen 'em clean their weapons yet." For the squad members, cleaning their weapons was as regular a routine as morning and evening prayers were for clergymen.

"The AK'll take a lot of abuse. It's good for that," Ramirez pointed out.

"Yes, sir."

Finally the guards, too, grew bored. One of them retrieved the cans. As he was doing so, a truck appeared. With little in the way of warning, Chavez was surprised to note. The wind was wrong, but even so it hadn't occurred to him that he wouldn't have at least a minute or two worth of warning. Something to remember. There were three people in the truck, one of whom was riding in the back. The driver dismounted and walked out to the two guards. In a moment he was pointing at the ground and yelling – they could hear it from five hundred yards away even though they hadn't heard the truck, which really seemed strange.

"What's that all about?" Vega asked.

Captain Ramirez laughed quietly. "FOD. He's pissed off at the FOD."

"Huh?" Vega asked.

"Foreign Object Damage. You suck one of those cartridge cases into an aircraft engine, like a turbine engine, and it'll beat the hell out of it. Yeah – look, they're picking up their brass."

Chavez turned his binoculars back to the truck. "I see some boxes there, sir. Maybe we got a pickup tonight. How come no fuel cans – yeah! Captain, last time we were here, they didn't fuel the airplane, did they?"

"The flight originates from a regular airstrip twenty miles off," Ramirez explained. "Maybe they don't have to top off… Does seem odd, though."

"Maybe they got fuel drums in the shack… ?" Vega wondered.

Captain Ramirez grunted. He wanted to send a couple of men in close to check the area out, but his orders didn't permit that. Their only patrolling was to check the airfield perimeter for additional security troops. They never got closer than four hundred meters to the cleared area, and it was always done with an eye on the two guards. His operational orders were not to take the slightest risk of making contact with the opposition. So they weren't supposed to patrol the area even though it would have told them more about the opposition than they knew – would tell them things that they might need to know. That was just good basic soldiering, he thought, and the order not to do it was a dumb order, since it ran as many – or more – risks than it was supposed to avoid. But orders were still orders. Whoever had generated them didn't know much about soldiering. It was Ramirez's first experience with that phenomenon, since he, too, was not old enough to remember Vietnam.

"They're gonna be out there all day," Chavez said. It appeared that the truck driver was making them count their brass, and you never could find all of the damned things. Vega checked his watch.

"Sundown in two hours. Anybody wanna bet we'll have business tonight? I got a hundred pesos says we get a plane before twenty-two hundred."

"No bet," Ramirez said. "The tall one by the truck just opened a box of flares." The captain left. He had a radio call to make.

It had been a quiet couple of days at Corezal. Clark had just returned from a late lunch at the Fort Amador Officers' Club – curiously, the head of the Panamanian Army had an office in the same building; most curious, since he was not overly popular with the U.S. military at the moment – followed by a brief siesta. Local customs, he decided, made sense. Especially sleeping through the hottest part of the day. The cold air of the van – the air conditioning was to protect the electronics gear, mainly from the oppressive humidity here – gave him the wakeup shock he needed.

Team KNIFE had scored on their first night with a single aircraft. Two of the other squads had also had hits, but one of the aircraft had made it all the way to its destination when the F-15 had lost its radar ten minutes after takeoff, much to everyone's chagrin. But that was the sort of problem you had to expect with an operation this short of assets. Two for three wasn't bad at all, especially when you considered what the odds had been like a bare month before, when the Customs people were lucky to bag a single aircraft in a month. One of the squads, moreover, had drawn a complete blank. Their airfield seemed totally inactive, contradicting intelligence data that had looked very promising only a week before. That also was a hazard of real-world operations.

"VARIABLE, this is KNIFE, over," the speaker said without preamble.

"KNIFE, this is VARIABLE. We read you loud and clear. We are ready to copy, over."

"We have activity at RENO. Possible pickup this evening. We will keep you advised. Over."

"Roger, copy. We'll be here. Out."

One of the Operations people lifted the handset to another radio channel.

"EAGLE'S NEST, this is VARIABLE… Stand to… Roger. We'll keep you posted. Out." He set the instrument down and turned. "They'll get everyone up. The fighter is back on line. Seems the radar was overdue for some part replacement or other. It's up and running, and the Air Force offers its apology."

"Damned well ought to," the other Operations man grumbled.

"You guys ever think that maybe an operation can go too right?" Clark asked from his seat in the corner.

The senior one wanted to say something snotty, Clark saw, but knew better.

"They must know that something odd is happening. You don't want to make it too obvious," Clark explained for the other one. Then he leaned back and closed his eyes. Might as well get another piece of that siesta, he told himself. It might be a long night.

Chavez got his wish just after sundown. It started to rain lightly, and clouds moving in from the west promised an even heavier downpour. The airfield crew set out their flares – quite a few more than the last time, he saw – and the aircraft arrived soon after that.

Rain made visibility difficult. It seemed to Chavez that someone ran a fuel hose out from the shack. Maybe there were some fuel drums in there, and maybe a hand-crank pump, but his ability to see the five or six hundred yards came and went with the rain. Something else happened. The truck drove down the center of the strip, and the driver tossed out at least ten additional flares to mark the centerline. The aircraft took off twenty minutes after it arrived, and Ramirez was already on his satellite radio.

"Did you get the tail number?" VARIABLE asked.

"Negative," the captain replied. "It's raining pretty heavy now. Visibility is dogshit. But he got off at twenty-fifty-one Lima, heading north-northwest."

"Roger, copy. Out."

Ramirez didn't like the effect that the reduced visibility might have on his unit. He took another pair of soldiers forward to the OP, but he just as well might not have bothered. The guards didn't bother extinguishing the flares this time, letting the rain wet things down. The truck left soon after the aircraft took off, and the two chastised runway guards retired to the shack to keep dry. All in all, he thought, it couldn't be much easier.

Bronco was bored, too. It wasn't that he minded what he was doing, but there really wasn't much challenge in it. And besides, he was stuck at four kills, and needed only one more to be an ace. The fighter pilot was sure that the mission was better accomplished with live prisoners – but, damn it, killing the sons of bitches was… satisfying, even though there wasn't much challenge to it. He was flying an aircraft designed to mix it up with the best fighters the Russians could make. Taking out a Twin-Beech was about as difficult as driving to the O-Club for a couple of brews. Maybe tonight he'd do something different… but what?

That gave him something to think about as he orbited north of the Yucatan Channel, just behind the E-2C, and of course out of normal airliner tracks. The contact call came in at about the right time. He turned south to get on the target, which took just over ten minutes.

"Tallyho," he told the Hawkeye. "I have eyeballs on target."

Another two-engine, therefore another coke smuggler. Captain Winters was still angry about the other night. Someone had forgotten to check the maintenance schedule on his Eagle, and sure enough, that damned widget had failed right when the contractor said it would, at five hundred three hours. Amazing that they could figure it that close. Amazing that an umpty-million-dollar fighter plane went tits-up because of a five-dollar widget, or diode, or chip, or whatever the hell it was. It cost five bucks. He knew that because the sergeant had told him.

Well, there he was. Twin engines, looked like a Beech King Air. No lights, cruising a lot lower than his most efficient cruise altitude.

Okay, Bronco thought, slowing his fighter down, then lighting him up and making the first radio call.

It was a druggie, all right. He did the same dumbass thing they all did, reducing power, lowering flaps, and diving for the deck. Winters had never gotten past the fourth level of Donkey Kong, but popping a real airplane under these circumstances was a hell of a lot easier than that, and you didn't even have to put in a quarter… but he was bored.

Okay, let's try something different.

He let the aircraft go down, maintaining his own altitude and power setting to pass well ahead of it. He checked to make sure that all of his flying lights were off, then threw the Eagle into a tight left-hand turn. This brought his fire-control radar in on the target, and that allowed him to spot the King Air on his infrared scanner, which was wired in to a videotape recorder the same way his gun systems were.

You think you've lost me, don't you…

Now for the fun part. It was a really dark one tonight. No stars, no moon, solid overcast at ten or twelve thousand feet. The Eagle was painted in a blue-gray motif that was supposed to blend in with the sky anyway, and at night it was even better than flat-matte black. He was invisible. The crew in the Beech must be looking all over creation for him, he knew. Looking everywhere but directly forward.

They were flying at fifty feet, and on his screen Captain Winters saw that their propwash was throwing up spray from the waves-five- or six-footers, he thought – just over a mile away. He came straight in at one hundred feet and five hundred knots. Exactly a mile from the target, he put on his lights again.

It was so predictable. The Beech pilot saw the incoming, sun-bright lights, seemingly dead-on, and instinctively did what any pilot would do. He banked hard right and dove – exactly fifty feet – cartwheeling spectacularly into the sea. Probably didn't even have time to realize what he'd done wrong, Bronco thought, then he laughed out loud as he yanked back on the stick and rolled to give it a last look. Now that was a class kill, Captain Winters told himself as he turned for home. The Agency people would really love that one. And best of all, he was now an ace. You didn't have to shoot them down for it to count. You just had to get the kill.