The Shooters (Presidential Agent 4)

"Be careful," Munz warned.

Duffy popped the little sandwich in his mouth. He chewed and smiled…but then his lips contorted and his face broke out in a sweat.

"La puta madre!" he exclaimed, spitting out the sandwich into a napkin.

"I told you to be careful, and so did Alfredo," Castillo said, smiling and shaking his head sympathetically.

Duffy ignored that.

"What is it you wish to say, Colonel?" he said impatiently after taking a sip of water. "You said we should 'start talking about how we can help each other.'"

As Castillo began making himself another sandwich, he said, "Pegleg, why don't you tell Comandante Duffy what you told us about where you think these people are holding Special Agent Timmons? And the problems of extracting him?"

"'Pegleg'?" Duffy said without thinking.

"Show the comandante your leg, Pegleg," Castillo ordered.

"Yes, sir," Lorimer said, and hoisted his trouser leg.

"The knee is fully articulated," he said. "And it's titanium, so light I hardly know it's on there." Then, without breaking his cadence, he went on: "They're more than likely holding Timmons at a remote farm, most likely in Paraguay, but possibly in Argentina. Another possibility is that he's being held on a watercraft of some sort on the Rio Paraguay. Wherever it is-"

"Then you don't know where he's being held, I gather?" Duffy interrupted sarcastically.

"Not yet," Castillo answered for Lorimer. "Let him finish, Comandante."

"Wherever Timmons is being held, it will be difficult to approach without being detected. The moment they suspect that there will be visitors, they will take Timmons into the bush or put him in a small boat and hide it along the shore of the river. A variation of this scenario-a likely one because of their changed modus operandi-is that they've got Timmons at a plant where they refine the paste into cocaine hydrochloride. That sort of place would also be difficult to approach without detection-"

"Difficult? Impossible!" Duffy snorted.

"-as it will almost certainly be approachable over only one road. In this latter scenario, furthermore, there would probably be additional, better-armed and more-skilled guards, better communication, and a generator, or generators, to provide the electricity necessary for the refining operation in case the local power grid goes down. The availability of electricity would probably allow them to have motion-sensing and other intrusion-detecting devices."

"May I ask a question, Colonel?" Duffy said.

Castillo gestured that he could.

Duffy looked at Lorimer and said, "Where did you acquire this information, senor…? I didn't get your name."

"I didn't give it," Lorimer said. He looked at Castillo, and when Castillo just perceptibly nodded, Lorimer went on, "Special Agent Timmons and I were close in Asuncion. We talked."

"I was not aware that you were friends," Duffy said. "So were we."

"If that's so," Castillo put in, "then perhaps you might consider devoting more of your effort to the problem of getting Timmons and your two men back, instead of planning for the massacre of those who took them."

Duffy gave him a dirty look but didn't respond directly.

"How would you deal with the problems you see?" he asked Lorimer. "Starting with locating precisely where Timmons and my men are, presuming they're together?"

Castillo answered for him: "We're working on that as we speak."

"I'll let that pass for the moment," Duffy said to Castillo, then turned back to Lorimer. "How would you go about rescuing Timmons and my men?"

Lorimer looked to Castillo again for permission. Castillo nodded, and Lorimer replied, "A simple helicopter assault operation."

"Like the one staged at Estancia Shangri-La?" Duffy said, more than a little sarcas

tically.

"Not quite," Castillo said. "Shangri-La was supposed to be a passenger pickup, not an assault. We were really surprised when those people shot at us. We'll go into this one expecting resistance. And act accordingly."