Covert Warriors (Presidential Agent 7)

“And you, Mr. D’Alessandro,” Pevsner replied. “This is our friend Stefan Koussevitzky.”

“You can be nice to Stefan, Vic,” Castillo called. “You guys went to different snake-eating schools.”

“I know you by reputation, Mr. D’Alessandro,” Koussevitzky said. “I’m pleased to meet you.”

“You’re the guy who Sweaty shot on that island, right? And call me Vic.”

Koussevitzky smiled and nodded.

“I was one of them. She also shot General Sirinov in the foot. Fortunately, mine was a minor flesh wound in the leg with a thirty-two.”

“Fortunately for Stefan, Svetlana always liked him,” Tom Barlow said. “She was never at all fond of the general.”

“So where is Charley’s redhead?” D’Alessandro asked.

“She’s having a bikini wax. She should be up in a minute in her bikini,” Castillo said. “Lester, why don’t you get Vic a Dos Equis? After which he can tell us all about Acapulco.”

“Lester,” D’Alessandro said, “why don’t you get your old Uncle Vic a double of that Jack Daniel’s?”

“Yes, sir.”

D’Alessandro slid onto a chaise longue in the shade of the striped awning, and sat on it.

“Is everybody familiar with the official version, the message Ambassador McCann sent to Secretary of State Cohen?” he began.

“Which she passed to Roscoe Danton, giving him his scoop,” Castillo said. “Yeah, Vic, we’re all familiar with that.”

“Our guys in Acapulco—there’s three—and the DEA guys there think that what happened is Ferris’s Suburban was stopped by a roadblock manned by either Federales or people wearing Federales uniforms. They got talked out of the Suburban and the bad guys whacked everybody but Ferris. Then they loaded Ferris back into the Suburban and took off for God knows where. Or God knows why.

“Supporting this theory is that Ferris and Danny Salazar—especially Danny—had been around the block more than once, had either M-16s or CAR-15s with them, and would have offered some pretty skilled resistance to an ambush.

“Why wouldn’t Ferris—and again, especially Danny—be suspicious of a Federales roadblock? Because they had good relations with the Federales, good relations being defined as sharing intelligence with them, which is further defined as they tell us only what they want us to know, and we tell them everything we know, which they promptly pass to the drug cartels.”

“That bad, huh?” Castillo asked. “And Ferris went along with this?”

“How well do you know Jim Ferris, Charley?”

Castillo shrugged. “Not well. I’ve seen him around. People who know him well seem to respect him.”

“Including me,” D’Alessandro said. “He’s a hell of a teacher, probably the best we have.”

“But?”

“You and Ferris are different in several ways, Charley. First, you’d be a lousy teacher. You’d also be a lousy instructor, and there’s a difference.”

“Probably,” Castillo admitted.

“Which, McNab being aware of this, is why you never found yourself at McCall teaching Snake Eating 101 to a class of would-be Green Beanies.”

“I always thought it was the press of my other duties,” Castillo said sarcastically.

“No. It was because McNab knew—and I knew and Uncle Remus knew—that you would set a lousy example for the new guys. You ever actually eat a snake, Charley?”

“No, and I never bit the head off a live chicken running around in the Hurlburt Field swamps, either,” Castillo said.

“But—the proof being you’re still alive—you performed satisfactorily in the real world, huh? And have all those medals to prove it?”

“Where the hell are you going with this, Vic?” Castillo asked more than a little testily.