Covert Warriors (Presidential Agent 7)

“You wanted to know who Jim Ferris is. I’m telling you. He’s almost exactly your opposite. He caught, killed, and ate snakes because that’s what he was ordered to do. And he taught a whole bunch of people to obey orders and eat snakes, too. You went into the swamps at Hurlburt with two pounds of high-protein bars taped to your legs because you heard snake would be on the menu.

“The point being that when Jim Ferris came down here, he obeyed his orders from the ambassador to cooperate with the Mexicans. He argued with both Ambassador McCann, and the ambassador before McCann, but he obeyed his orders.

“What you would have said, Charley, is: ‘Screw this. I was sent down here to get the drug guys and that’s what I’m going to do.’ ”

Castillo, who did not look as if he took offense to that, then said: “So you’re sugges

ting the drug cartel had no reason to whack anybody because Ferris’s people weren’t causing them any trouble?”

“Yeah. And they must have known that killing three Americans and kidnapping a fourth would bring a lot of attention.”

“Tell me about the drug guys,” Castillo said.

“Pacific Coast operations are run by the Sinaloa cartel, which is headed by two guys, Joaquín Guzmán Loera and Ismael Zambada García. You ever hear of Los Zetas?”

Castillo shook his head.

“Loera and García needed a private army, so they bought one. They went to the Mexican army and said, ‘If you come work for me, bringing along the weapons the Americans gave you, I will pay you five times what the Army has been paying you. If you don’t come, we will kill you and rape your wives, mothers, and other female relatives.’ ”

“Shit!” Castillo said.

“These are really charming people, Charley, and they have very deep pockets. They have about a battalion’s worth of Mexican soldiers—officers, noncoms, and privates. And all the equipment we gave them. Los Zetas are really bad guys, Charley.”

“And they could have been manning the roadblock?”

“Either in Mexican army uniforms or Federales uniforms,” D’Alessandro answered. “Which brings us back to why?”

“Edgar thinks it had nothing to do with the drug cartels,” Castillo said, “and Alek agrees with him.”

“Then what?”

“It has been suggested that Mr. Putin, on reflection, has decided that an armistice is not the way for him to go,” Tom Barlow offered. “And that he’s coming after Svetlana and me again.”

“And after Charley,” D’Alessandro added.

“And me,” Pevsner said. “Not necessarily in that order.”

“Jesus, I guess I should have thought of that,” D’Alessandro said. “I will think about it now. Lester, I’d think better after I’ve had a second taste of the Jack Daniel’s.”

[FOUR]

Cozumel International Airport

Cozumel, Mexico

1920 12 April 2007

Two glistening white Yukons with the legend GRAND COZUMEL BEACH AND GOLF RESORT painted on their doors and a much less elegant brown Suburban with the insignia of Mexican Customs and Immigration were waiting for the Cessna Mustang when the small twin-engine jet was wanded to a parking spot.

John David Parker was relieved to be on the ground. Not only had it been his first flight in a Mustang, until today he had thought that jet aircraft required the services of two pilots. Not only had there been but one pilot—Major Dick Miller, U.S. Army, Retired—but he had seen Miller climb aboard the airplane at Baltimore Washington International—and suddenly understood why they called him “Gimpy.” There clearly was something wrong with his left leg; it didn’t bend as knees are supposed to.

Surprising Parker not a little, moments after Miller had boarded the airplane, the gray-haired elderly lady and “the Reverend Father” Tom Sanders had shown up with his passport, as promised. They had even packed a small bag with a change of linen and his toilet kit.

Three minutes later, they were airborne. The trip was uneventful. They went through immigration at New Orleans’s Louis Armstrong International Airport and then flew across the Gulf of Mexico.

Two men got out of each Yukon. One of them—a burly, fair-skinned man wearing shorts, knee-high stockings and a white jacket with the logotype of the Grand Cozumel Beach and Golf Resort on the chest—came onto the airplane as soon as the stair door was opened.

The man shook Edgar Delchamps’s hand and said something in Russian.