The Shooters (Presidential Agent 4)

He took a quick look at the first one, then passed it to Delchamps, and signaled that he was to pass it to Torine and the others when he had seen it.

It showed a bullet-riddled body of a man in a brown, military-type uniform. He was lying on his back, eyes open, in a dark pool of blood, on what was probably the gravel shoulder of a macadam country road.

There were, in all, eight photographs of the body. Several fairly close photographs of the head and torso showed the head was distorted. It had been shot several times at close range, including, Castillo judged, once in the mouth. There were more signs of entrance wounds in the body than Castillo could conveniently count, which strongly suggested the use of a submachine gun, with what looked like an entirely unnecessary coup de grace shot in the mouth.

Next came as many photographs of a second gendarme. He had died of strangulation. A blue metal garrote had been so tightly drawn against his throat that it had cut into the flesh; he had lost a substantial quantity of blood before he had died.

Then there were glossy photographs of two gendarmes sitting in a chair. Both had their wrists handcuffed and showed signs of having been beaten.

Castillo passed along the last of the pictures and the envelope to Delchamps, then looked at Duffy. Duffy locked eyes with him, and Castillo sensed it would not be in his best interests to break the eye contact first.

Castillo didn't look away until Munz touched his arm with the envelope, now again thick with pictures. He took it from Munz, stood up, and walked to Duffy's desk. He put the envelope on the desk, then walked back to his chair, sat down, and looked at Duffy again.

"My gendarmes were manning road checks when the hijos de puta did this to them," Duffy then said. "The gendarmeria sometimes sets up road checks at random sites and sometimes at sites where we have information about where drugs will be coming down the highway. In both cases here, we had had information that drugs would be coming down two particular highways, which happen to be some seventy kilometers apart."

Duffy paused a moment, then continued: "Killing and kidnapping gendarmes is very unusual. Criminals almost never kill members of the gendarmeria, and never before have kidnapped any of them."

"Why is that, Comandante?" Delchamps asked softly.

"Because they know it is unacceptable," Munz said.

"What does that mean, 'unacceptable'?" Castillo demanded.

"It means the gendarmes will take revenge," Munz said. "Killing anyone they suspect may have been involved."

He let that sink in for a moment, then went on: "The gendarmeria operates all over Argentina, very often in remote areas and with very few men. They usually operate in two-man teams, and sometimes alone. They are not attacked, because the price for doing so is too high. When this happened-"

"When did this happen?" Castillo interrupted. "Before or after Timmons was snatched?"

"A week after Timmons was taken," Munz said. "The day-or the day after-Max found Lorimer in the bushes at Nuestra Pequena Casa."

"The gendarmeria, Colonel," Duffy said, "prides itself on always getting its man. It was not wise to do what these hijos de puta did, and I asked myself why these narcos had.

"The first conclusion obviously to be drawn was that they decided to send the gendarmeria the same kind of message they have been sending your DEA people in Asuncion-that they will not tolerate interference with their business.

"Then I asked myself why they had suddenly decided to do this. What came to mind there was that they were about to start significantly increasing the flow of product to the point where so much money would be involved that they would think that protecting the shipments was worth the risk of behaving toward the gendarmeria in a manner heretofore considered unacceptable.

"If this were true, I reasoned, it was possible-even likely-that my men were targeted by the narcos, rather than it being that they simply had stopped a narco truck and that the narcos had resisted. If the latter were the case, then both men would have been killed-no witnesses-not one of them taken away.

"That posed a number of questions, including how they had learned-that is, who had told them-where the road checks would be. I had some ideas about that, but nothing that I could prove. The most kind was that the hijos de puta offered the farmhands, the peones, in the area a little gift if they would telephone a number to report where we had set up a road check. Less kind was the possibility that the narcos offered a little gift to the officers of the Policia Federal in the area to do the same thing.

"But the major question in my mind was what had happened to cause the sudden increase in actions by the hijos de puta that they had to know were not only unacceptable to the gendarmeria but would also call attention to them, which was also not in their best interests.

"At that point, I remembered hearing some gossip about something interesting that had happened in Uruguay. It sounded incredible, but I decided it was worth looking into. What

I had heard was that a drug deal had gone wrong on an estancia in Tacuarembo Province in central Uruguay. According to this story, six men, all dressed in black, like characters in a children's movie, had been found shot to death.

"I thought that checking out the story would be a simple matter. Jose Ordonez is more than a professional associate with whom I have worked closely over the years. As I said, we are dear friends. I thought all I would have to do would be to telephone Jose-unofficially, of course; I have Jose's private number and he has mine-and ask him what there was to this incredible story. And also to ask him if he had noticed any sudden increase in the drug shipments into and out of his country.

"So I called him. When I asked him what had happened in Tacuarembo Province, he didn't answer directly. He said that it had been too long since we had seen one another, and that we should really try to have lunch very soon.

"Well, the very next morning, I was on the Buquebus to Montevideo," Duffy went on. "Tourist class, as I was paying for it myself. Getting an official authorization to travel to Uruguay is difficult, takes time, and then only results in a voucher for a tourist-class seat. Is it that way in the U.S. Army, Colonel?"

"Very much so, Comandante. Getting the U.S. Army to pay for travel is like pulling teeth."

"That, then, raises the question of who is paying for the helicopter in which you have been flying all over down here."

Castillo looked Duffy square in the eyes and said evenly, "I have no idea what you're talking about, Comandante."