Covert Warriors (Presidential Agent 7)

“May I use your telephone, General?” O’Toole replied.

“Don’t tell her who,” McNab said.

“I understand, sir.”

Neither Mrs. McNab nor Mrs. O’Toole would be surprised by the summons. Both had gone more times than they liked to remember to accompany their husbands when they went to inform wives that their husbands were either dead or missing.

McNab picked up the CaseyBerry and punched in a number.

It was answered ten seconds later in what was known as “the Stockade.” Delta Force and Gray Fox were quartered in what had once been the Fort Bragg Stockade. The joke was that all the money spent to make sure no one got out of the Stockade had not been wasted. All of the fences and razor wire and motion sensors were perfectly suited to keep people out of the Stockade.

The CaseyBerry was answered by a civilian employee of the Department of the Army, who were known by the acronym DAC. His name was Victor D’Alessandro, a very short, totally bald man in his late forties who held Civil Service pay grade GS-15. Army regulations provided that a GS-15 held the assimilated rank of colonel. Before Mr. D’Alessandro had retired, he had been a chief warrant officer (5) drawing pay and allowances very close to those of a lieutenant colonel. And before he put on the bars of a warrant officer, junior grade, D’Alessandro had been a sergeant major.

“Go,” Mr. D’Alessandro said by way of answering his CaseyBerry.

“Bad news, Vic,” General McNab said. “Danny Salazar and two DEA guys with him were whacked about noon fifty miles from Acapulco. They were in an embassy SUV with Colonel Ferris. The SUV and Ferris are missing.”

“Shit! What happened?”

“I want you to go down there—black—and find out,” McNab said. “You and no more than two of your people. By the time you get to Pope, the C-38 will be waiting to fly you to Atlanta. By the time you get there, you should have reservations on Aeromexico to either Acapulco or Mexico City. I’ll try to confirm while you’re en route.”

In a closely guarded hangar at Pope Air Force Base, which abutted Fort Bragg, were several aircraft, including a highly modified Boeing 727 and a C-38, the latter the military nomenclature of the Israel Aircraft Industries Ltd./Galaxy Aerospace Corporation Astra SPX business jet. The C-38 had civilian markings.

“I’ll take Nunez and Vargas.”

“Your call.”

“Who’s paying for this?”

McNab, who hadn’t considered that detail, gave it some quick thought.

There were two options, neither of which would cost the U.S. taxpayer a dime. In D’Alessandro’s safe, together with an assortment of passports in different names, were two manila envelopes, one marked “TP” and one “Charley.” Each envelope held two inch-thick stacks of credit cards, American Express Platinum and Citibank Gold Visa cards, the names embossed on them matching the names on the passports, and two business-size envelopes, each holding $10,000 in used hundred-, fifty-, and twenty-dollar bills.

There had been a “TP” envelope in the safe for several years. TP stood for Those People. Those People were an anonymous group of very wealthy businessmen who saw it as their patriotic duty to fund black Special Operations missions when getting official funds to do so would be difficult or impossible.

The “Charley” envelope was a recent addition to D’Alessandro’s safe. Charley stood for Lieutenant Colonel Carlos G. Castillo, Special Forces, U.S. Army, Retired. The Amex Platinum and Citibank Gold Visa cards in the Charley envelope identified their holders as officers of the LCBF Corporation.

During a recent covert operation—which went so far beyond black that McNab had dubbed it Operation March Hare, as in “mad as a March hare”—Castillo and McNab had learned that Those People had concluded that since they were making a financial contribution to an operation, they had the right to throw the special operators under the bus when it seemed to be the logical thing to do, considering the big picture.

One of the results of that was the LCBF Corporation’s decision to provide General McNab with the same sort of stand-by funding as Those People provided. It had not posed any financial problems for the LCBF Corporation to do so. The LCBF Corporation already had negotiable assets of more than $50 million when the director of the Central Intelligence Agency handed Mr. David W. Yung—LCBF’s vice president, finance—a Treasury check for $125 million in settlement of the CIA’s promise to pay that sum, free of any tax liabilities, to whoever delivered to them an intact Russian Tupelov Tu-934A transport aircraft.

Mr. D’Alessandro had written “Charley” on the LCBF envelope without thinking about it. D’Alessandro had still been a sergeant major when Second Lieutenant Castillo had first been passed behind the fences of the Stockade. And as good sergeants major do, he had taken the young officer under his wing. Both D’Alessandro and General McNab devoutly believed they had raised Castillo from a pup.

General McNab would have dearly liked to stick Those People with the costs of D’Alessandro’s reconnaissance mission, but decided in the end it would not be the thing to do now. He would think of something else—a bayonet, maybe—to stick them with at a later time.

“Let Charley pay for it, Vic,” he said.

“I’ll be in touch,” D’Alessandro said, and broke the CaseyBerry connection.

[FOUR]

The Machiavelli Penthouse Suite

The Venetian

3355 Las Vegas Boulevard South

Las Vegas, Nevada