“Naylor out.”
[SEVEN]
Office of the Commanding General United States Central Command MacDill Air Force Base Tampa, Florida 1215 10 June 2005
General Albert McFadden, USAF, walked without knocking into the office of General Allan Naylor, USA, and stood before his desk for twenty seconds before Naylor sensed—or chose to acknowledge—his presence.
“ ‘The best-laid plans of mice and men’—you ever hear that, Allan?” McFadden asked.
“What went wrong now?” Naylor asked.
“I was just talking with Larry Fremont,” McFadden said. “He’s been on the phone to the CIA guy in San José, Costa Rica ..."
“And?”
“The CIA guy says the way the Costa Rican Foreign Ministry is going to handle our ambassador’s request for permission to enter their airspace is to stall for at least a couple of days.”
“We expected something like that,” Naylor said. “So we land without, do what has to be done, and let the State Department pick up the pieces.”
“So I would interpret that to mean you believe the CIA?”
“That’s a loaded question, Al.”
“You want to shoot crap, Allan? How about taking another chance on the CIA?”
“What are you talking about? You sound like you know something.”
McFadden laid a small map on Naylor’s desk.
“What am I looking at?”
“That’s the Golfo de Nicoya.”
“Okay. There’s nothing on the map but dirt roads and water. ”
“Larry’s guy says there is a sandy beach about forty miles from Tomas Guardia International, and maybe fifty from Juan Santamaria, that’ll take the C-17, and there’s nothing around it for miles except fishing villages.”
“That’s too good to be true,” Naylor said. “How does Larry’s guy know?”
“Larry’s guy says he heard that they were moving drugs through the area, went there ‘while sportfishing,’ checked it out, measured it, did compression tests, found some aircraft tire tracks—he doesn’t know what kind of aircraft but not large ones—and thinks it’ll take a C-17, based on what he read in an Air Force Manual about C-17 tire loadings.”
“How much credence does he place in his guy?”
“That’s a little problem. This guy is like the one in Suriname. ”
“What does that mean?”
“Think of him as a second lieutenant with the varnish still on his gold bars. What the agency does with their graduates is send them someplace where nothing is happening, where they get to practice being a spy and working under diplomatic cover.”
“Oh, Christ!”
“Larry said to tell you this guy sounds like an eager beaver.”
“As in, ‘There’s nothing faster than a second lieutenant rushing to officer’s call’?”
“I think Larry was being complimentary,” McFadden said. “I think he liked what he heard on the phone.”
“Where is Larry?”