Covert Warriors (Presidential Agent 7)

McNab put his own career at risk. He arranged for a Gray Fox team to secretly infiltrate the “fish farm” in the Congo, taking with them the Army’s preeminent expert in biological warfare, Colonel J. Porter Hamilton, MC.

Hamilton reported to the President that the situation was even more dangerous—he called it “an abomination before God”—than the Russians had said.

The President immediately launched a preemptive strike against the fish farm, using every air-deliverable weapon in the U.S. arsenal except for nuclear weapons. That solved the problem of the incredibly lethal substance called “Congo-X.”

But it did not solve the problem of Presidential Agent C. G. Castillo.

The political damage of having the world learn that the President had brought the nation to the cusp of a nuclear exchange on the word of a lowly lieutenant colonel would destroy his presidency. So he gave Castillo a final order: “Go fall off the edge of the earth, and don’t ever be seen again.”

Castillo had barely arrived in Argentina when word came that the President had suddenly died of an aortal rupture.

Castillo had just begun to adapt to his new status of having fallen off the edge of the earth when he learned that the Army’s biological warfare laboratory had received—via FedEx—a container of Congo-X.

While that development was being evaluated, the SVR rezident in Washington invited the CIA’s deputy chief for operations—A. Franklin Lammelle—for drinks at the Russian embassy compound outside Washington. There he offered a deal. If the Americans turned over to Russia the two Russian defectors and Lieutenant Colonel C. G. Castillo, then the Russians would turn over what stocks of Congo-X they had, and give their solemn word that was all of it, and none of it would ever appear again.

The new President, Joshua Ezekiel Clendennen, thought this to be a satisfactory solution to the program, and ordered Director of National Intelligence Montvale to start looking for Castillo and the Russians and then load them on an Aeroflot plane for Moscow. He also ordered General Allan Naylor to participate in

the search and exchange.

A. Franklin Lammelle knew all this because the CIA director also ordered him to assist Montvale—and by the time Lammelle found Castillo, he had decided that what Clendennen was trying to do to Castillo was unconscionable. He wanted no part of it.

And this became the second time that Lammelle found Naylor blindly prepared to throw Castillo under the bus.

When Naylor finally found Castillo—and was prepared to order him to return to the United States, there to hold himself in readiness to obey what orders the President might have for him—Castillo and his Merry Band of Outlaws had already learned how the Congo-X had reached the United States and were in the final stages of planning an ad hoc assault on a Venezuelan island where the remaining stock of Congo-X could be found.

Despite this, Naylor delivered his orders, whereupon Castillo very politely placed him under arrest. Lammelle had witnessed the surreal exchange—and what followed.

Naylor—concluding that the assault’s failure would be more damaging to the United States than its success—finally decided to help. He provided a Navy helicopter carrier and three 160th Black Hawks that probably guaranteed the success of the assault.

Naylor’s change of heart had nothing to do with Castillo attempting the obviously right thing to do in the circumstances. And it certainly had nothing to do with their personal relationship. Lammelle understood that Naylor’s decision could easily have gone the other way.

Lammelle had then decided that it was a case of not if, but when, they faced another situation where Castillo was going to try something of which Naylor might not approve and Naylor would decide not to help.

Or, worse, that Naylor’s duty was to prevent Castillo from doing what he planned to do—thus once again throwing him under that proverbial bus.

This was one of those times, Lammelle now decided, when he didn’t like General Allan B. Naylor at all, and that meant he wasn’t going to tell him anything at all that might in any way hurt Charley Castillo.

When Naylor did not immediately respond to Lammelle’s questions about why he thought Lammelle would know where Vic D’Alessandro was, and why did he want to know, Lammelle asked a third: “Why don’t you ask Terry O’Toole where he is? Vic works for him.”

“General O’Toole doesn’t know where he is. That’s why I’m asking you, Lammelle.”

“That brings us back to my original question: Why do you want to know?”

“We have a mission for him. An important mission. I’m sorry, but that’s all I can tell you.”

“That’s all you want to tell me, Allan. And that’s not enough.”

“POTUS made it clear that he doesn’t want the CIA involved in any way in this mission.”

“Which is?”

When Naylor didn’t immediately reply, Lammelle went on: “I’m sure you find this distasteful, General, but once in a while you have to disobey an order. Particularly an order from Clendennen, who we are agreed is not playing with a full deck.”

“You’re speaking, Lammelle, of the President of the United States.”

“Yes, I am.”

There was a long pause.