By Order of the President (Presidential Agent 1)

“The problem is not how to neutralize it, Charley,” he said, “but how quickly we can do so.”

We’re back to “Charley”?

“I’m not sure I follow you, sir.”

“What did you do, forget everything you learned in the stockade?” McNab asked, not very pleasantly.

“Okay,” McNab went on and looked at his watch. “It’s oh-seven-fifty-five. Let’s assume that at this very moment analysts at Langley and Fort Meade are going over the first of the daytime imagery downloads. It would be nice if they came up with a nice clear photo of this airplane sitting on an airfield in Suriname, but I don’t think we better count on that. Realistically, what they’re going to come up with is half a dozen images that might be—even probably are—of our 727. But they’re not going to pass that on to the DCI, much less the president, until they’re sure. They’ll direct the satellites for better pictures, and if they have assets on the ground—do you think there’s much of a CIA operation in Suriname, for instance? I don’t—they’ll send him word to make a visual. How long is that going to take?”

“Hours,” Charley said.

“How long is it going to take you to fly to Cozumel in that pretty little airplane of yours?”

“It’s 930 nautical miles. A little under two hours. Maybe a little less; when Fernando checked the weather a half hour ago, there were some favorable winds aloft.”

“So what we’re saying, Charley, is that you will get a location on the 727 from his guy before the NSA and the CIA finish making sure they’ve found it. Presuming they do find it.”

Castillo nodded.

“You trust your guy, Charley?”

Castillo nodded again and said, “Yes, sir.”

“During those two hours, Gray Fox will be standing around with its thumb up its ass,” McNab said.

“I’m not sure I know where you’re going with this, General, ” Castillo said.

“I’m a little disappointed this hasn’t occurred to you,” McNab said. “But let’s take it from the top. We can assume that when we get a firm fix on the 727, we’ll be ordered to neutralize it.”

"Yes, sir.”

“How would you do that?”

Jesus Christ, why lay this on me? You’re the guy who runs Gray Fox.

“What I thought you would do, sir, would be send a Gray Fox team—with Little Birds2—to wherever it is and neutralize it. Knock out the gear, maybe, or blow it up.”

“And when would I do that?”

“As soon as you got the word, sir.”

“And what’s the sequence of events? You should have thought about this, Charley. You’re about to be Lieutenant Colonel Castillo. You’re supposed to think ahead. Give me the sequence.”

“I confirm the location, notify Secretary Hall—and you, to give you a heads-up—Hall tells the president and/or the secretary of defense, who tell CentCom to lay on the operation. And they give you the order.”

“And then,” McNab picked it up, “conferring with his staff to make sure everybody agrees on what should be done, General Naylor orders the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment at Fort Campbell to prepare half a dozen Little Birds, say, four MH-6Hs and two AH-6Js—we’re not going to have to fight our way onto the airfield, but it never hurts to have some airborne weaponry available. And then CentCom orders the Seventeenth Airlift Squadron to send a Globemaster to Fort Campbell to pick up the Little Birds and bring them here so we can load the Gray Fox people . . .”

Now I know where you’re going. And you’re right, I should have thought about this.

“All of which is going to take time,” Castillo offered.

“Yes, it will, Charley. You and I have been down that road together too many times before.”

McNab let that sink in.

“Apropos of nothing whatever, Mr. Castillo, simply to place the facts before you,

there are AH-6Js and MH-6Hs at the Special Warfare Center, for training purposes. There are thirty-odd special operators—most of them Gray Fox—eating their breakfast off trays inside the Globemaster that just brought them home from Morocco. By now, the C-17 III should be refueled . . .”