"Go on," Ordonez said.
"I was going to split a hair," Castillo said. "My people at Shangri-La were not all Special Forces. It was not an SF unit that was sent here."
"I don't think, whatever the legalities, that anyone will believe that."
"That's what I decided. And the people who came here now to rescue Timmons are bona fide Special Forces."
"They're already here?"
"Just about all of them," Castillo said. "And the helicopter pilots are from the 160th-the Special Operations Aviation Regiment."
"And the helicopters, too, presumably?"
"No. I got the helicopters from a graveyard. By the t
ime they get here, they'll be cleaned and black-"
"'Cleaned and black'?" Ordonez parroted.
"Anything that could indicate they belong to the U.S. Army will be removed. And they'll be painted in the color scheme used by the Argentine Army. They'll be more or less identical to the Hueys the Argentines are flying."
"And if nothing goes wrong and you manage to rescue your man without murdering everyone whoever so much as talked to the narcos, how do you plan to get your men and the helicopters out of Argentina or Paraguay?"
If he's not going to let me use Shangri-La to bring the choppers in, Castillo thought, what the hell does he care about the details of what's-not-to-happen?
What the hell is he hinting at?
"The men will leave the same way they came in, as tourists. I haven't given much thought to the helicopters."
"You weren't planning on flying them back to where they came from?"
"The 'field' from which they will have been flown into Uruguay is an aircraft carrier-the USS Ronald Reagan. By the time I can get Timmons back, it will have sailed around Cape Horn and be halfway up the Pacific coast to Valparaiso, Chile."
"So?"
"I understand some of the lakes in Argentina are very deep," Castillo said.
"You're not suggesting that you intend to…sink four helicopters in an Argentine lake?"
What the hell's going on here?
Why the curiosity? And it's damned sure not idle curiosity!
"What else would you suggest I do with them? I can't just leave them in a field somewhere. Or, for that matter, destroy them, torch them. They have to disappear. My orders are to come down here quietly, get Timmons back quietly, and leave quietly."
"Tell me, Colonel, are helicopters of this type readily available on the commercial market?"
"Sure."
"But wouldn't there be some means of tracing their history? All the way back to the factory?"
"The communists captured several hundred of them when Vietnam fell. Many of those have appeared at various places around the world."
Ordonez nodded and asked, "Involved with criminal activity of some sort?"
Castillo nodded.
I'll be a sonofabitch.