Covert Warriors

THREE

The Tahitian Suite Grand Cozumel Beach and Golf Resort Cozumel, Mexico 1710 12 April 2007

Vic D’Alessandro, whose barrel chest and upper arms strained his short-sleeved floral-print Hawaiian shirt, walked onto the balcony of the penthouse suite and announced, “Jesus, it must be nice to be rich!”

“It’s way ahead of whatever’s in second place, Vic,” Fernando Lopez said agreeably. “Write that down.”

Lopez, a very large man with a dark complexion, was sprawled on a chaise longue with a bottle of Dos Equis on his chest. He raised his right arm over his head without turning, and offered his hand. D’Alessandro walked to him and shook it.

Castillo got off his chaise longue and walked to D’Alessandro. They wordlessly embraced. Max sat on his haunches and thrust his paw repeatedly at D’Alessandro until D’Alessandro shook it. Lester Bradley stood behind Castillo.

“Hey, Dead Eye,” D’Alessandro said.

“It’s good to see you, sir,” Bradley said.

Aleksandr Pevsner, Tom Barlow, and Stefan Koussevitzky, sitting on chaise longues in the shade of a striped awning, stood. D’Alessandro nodded to them, then went over and offered his hand.

“Good to see you, Mr. Pevsner,” D’Alessandro said.

“And you, Mr. D’Alessandro,” Pevsner replied. “This is our friend Stefan Koussevitzky.”

“You can be nice to Stefan, Vic,” Castillo called. “You guys went to different snake-eating schools.”

“I know you by reputation, Mr. D’Alessandro,” Koussevitzky said. “I’m pleased to meet you.”

“You’re the guy who Sweaty shot on that island, right? And call me Vic.”

Koussevitzky smiled and nodded.

“I was one of them. She also shot General Sirinov in the foot. Fortunately, mine was a minor flesh wound in the leg with a thirty-two.”

“Fortunately for Stefan, Svetlana always liked him,” Tom Barlow said. “She was never at all fond of the general.”

“So where is Charley’s redhead?” D’Alessandro asked.

“She’s having a bikini wax. She should be up in a minute in her bikini,” Castillo said. “Lester, why don’t you get Vic a Dos Equis? After which he can tell us all about Acapulco.”

“Lester,” D’Alessandro said, “why don’t you get your old Uncle Vic a double of that Jack Daniel’s?”

“Yes, sir.”

D’Alessandro slid onto a chaise longue in the shade of the striped awning, and sat on it.

“Is everybody familiar with the official version, the message Ambassador McCann sent to Secretary of State Cohen?” he began.

“Which she passed to Roscoe Danton, giving him his scoop,” Castillo said. “Yeah, Vic, we’re all familiar with that.”

“Our guys in Acapulco-there’s three-and the DEA guys there think that what happened is Ferris’s Suburban was stopped by a roadblock manned by either Federales or people wearing Federales uniforms. They got talked out of the Suburban and the bad guys whacked everybody but Ferris. Then they loaded Ferris back into the Suburban and took off for God knows where. Or God knows why.

“Supporting this theory is that Ferris and Danny Salazar-especially Danny-had been around the block more than once, had either M-16s or CAR-15s with them, and would have offered some pretty skilled resistance to an ambush.

“Why wouldn’t Ferris-and again, especially Danny-be suspicious of a Federales roadblock? Because they had good relations with the Federales, good relations being defined as sharing intelligence with them, which is further defined as they tell us only what they want us to know, and we tell them everything we know, which they promptly pass to the drug cartels.”

“That bad, huh?” Castillo asked. “And Ferris went along with this?”

“How well do you know Jim Ferris, Charley?”

Castillo shrugged. “Not well. I’ve seen him around. People who know him well seem to respect him.”

“Including me,” D’Alessandro said. “He’s a hell of a teacher, probably the best we have.”

“But?”

“You and Ferris are different in several ways, Charley. First, you’d be a lousy teacher. You’d also be a lousy instructor, and there’s a difference.”

“Probably,” Castillo admitted.

“Which, McNab being aware of this, is why you never found yourself at McCall teaching Snake Eating 101 to a class of would-be Green Beanies.”

“I always thought it was the press of my other duties,” Castillo said sarcastically.

“No. It was because McNab knew-and I knew and Uncle Remus knew-that you would set a lousy example for the new guys. You ever actually eat a snake, Charley?”

“No, and I never bit the head off a live chicken running around in the Hurlburt Field swamps, either,” Castillo said.

“But-the proof being you’re still alive-you performed satisfactorily in the real world, huh? And have all those medals to prove it?”

“Where the hell are you going with this, Vic?” Castillo asked more than a little testily.

“You wanted to know who Jim Ferris is. I’m telling you. He’s almost exactly your opposite. He caught, killed, and ate snakes because that’s what he was ordered to do. And he taught a whole bunch of people to obey orders and eat snakes, too. You went into the swamps at Hurlburt with two pounds of high-protein bars taped to your legs because you heard snake would be on the menu.

“The point being that when Jim Ferris came down here, he obeyed his orders from the ambassador to cooperate with the Mexicans. He argued with both Ambassador McCann, and the ambassador before McCann, but he obeyed his orders.

“What you would have said, Charley, is: ‘Screw this. I was sent down here to get the drug guys and that’s what I’m going to do.’ ”

Castillo, who did not look as if he took offense to that, then said: “So you’re suggesting the drug cartel had no reason to whack anybody because Ferris’s people weren’t causing them any trouble?”

“Yeah. And they must have known that killing three Americans and kidnapping a fourth would bring a lot of attention.”

“Tell me about the drug guys,” Castillo said.

“Pacific Coast operations are run by the Sinaloa cartel, which is headed by two guys, Joaquin Guzman Loera and Ismael Zambada Garcia. You ever hear of Los Zetas?”

Castillo shook his head.

“Loera and Garcia needed a private army, so they bought one. They went to the Mexican army and said, ‘If you come work for me, bringing along the weapons the Americans gave you, I will pay you five times what the Army has been paying you. If you don’t come, we will kill you and rape your wives, mothers, and other female relatives.’ ”

“Shit!” Castillo said.

“These are really charming people, Charley, and they have very deep pockets. They have about a battalion’s worth of Mexican soldiers-officers, noncoms, and privates. And all the equipment we gave them. Los Zetas are really bad guys, Charley.”

“And they could have been manning the roadblock?”

“Either in Mexican army uniforms or Federales uniforms,” D’Alessandro answered. “Which brings us back to why?”

“Edgar thinks it had nothing to do with the drug cartels,” Castillo said, “and Alek agrees with him.”

“Then what?”

“It has been suggested that Mr. Putin, on reflection, has decided that an armistice is not the way for him to go,” Tom Barlow offered. “And that he’s coming after Svetlana and me again.”

“And after Charley,” D’Alessandro added.

“And me,” Pevsner said. “Not necessarily in that order.”

“Jesus, I guess I should have thought of that,” D’Alessandro said. “I will think about it now. Lester, I’d think better after I’ve had a second taste of the Jack Daniel’s.”