Hazardous Duty (Presidential Agent 8)

“You tell him, Colonel Naylor,” Castillo said. “If I tell him, I’d have to shoot him, and I really would hate to do that. Every time he gets shot, he sounds like Madonna having a baby.”

Colonel Naylor explained what they were doing at Estancia Shangri-La.

“Even with your brain in neutral, Damon, you can see why Charley is recruiting those of African heritage, right?” Uncle Remus asked. “That he and Colonel Naylor would have just a little bit of trouble in Mogadishu trying to pass themselves off as native Somalians?”

“I don’t know why,” Damon said, “I know Charley speaks Af-Soomaali and Arabic… Oh!”

“Yeah.”

“Well, count me in, Uncle Remus,” Damon said.

“Count you in where?”

“If Charley’s going to Mogadishu, I’m going.”

“You weren’t listening, Greg,” Castillo said. “I’m not going to Mogadishu. Uncle Remus is going to Mogadishu with Dick and Master Sergeant Phineas DeWitt, Retired—and now gainfully employed by Sparkling Water Due Diligence, Inc.—and Jack Britton.”

“Who?”

“He used to be an undercover cop in Philadelphia, specializing in infiltrating would-be rag-head terrorist groups,” Castillo clarified. “He is also now associated with Sparkling Water.”

“And what we are going to do in picturesque Mogadishu,” Dick Miller said, “is take photographs of each other standing in front of easily recognizable landmarks—”

“Which I will send to POTUS as visual proof that we are carrying out his orders,” Castillo said, finishing the sentence for him.

“Which are, specifically?” Damon asked.

“To assess the situation and make recommendations vis-à-vis the solution of the problems known as the Mexican drug cartels and Somalian pirates.”

“What are you going to suggest?” Damon asked.

“Ambassador Lorimer suggests that following the motto of Special Forces—‘Kill Them All and Let God Sort It Out’—would be one solution, but I don’t think the President would go along with it. He doesn’t stand a chance of reelection without the Somali-American vote.”

“Charley,” Ambassador Lorimer said, laughing, “that’s not what I said and you know it. What I said was that President Clendennen is going to have a harder problem with the pirates than President Thomas Jefferson did. The law then—I said the law then, Charley—permitted Jefferson to hang pirates from the nearest yardarm. Now they have to be tried in a court of law.”

“Well, maybe President Clendennen doesn’t know that,” Castillo said, “or I’ll have to think of some other suggestion to make.”

“And what are you going to be doing, Charley, while Uncle Remus is in picturesque Mogadishu, besides thinking of another suggestion to make to the President?” Damon asked.

“Hoping he has another nutty idea that will make him forget this one.”

“And where are you going to do that?”

“We were discussing that when you drove up in that car with the ‘I can park anywhere, I’m a diplomat’ license plates. There were two possibilities for a location for my command post. One was the Danubius Hotel Gellért in Budapest. The advantages of that would be that I could talk to my Uncle Billy Kocian…” He stopped, said, “I have now stopped pulling your chain, Greg,” and then went on, “about the pirates. He has amazing contacts. And also it has a foreign-intrigue sound to it that I suspect will appeal to the President. The other option was the Grand Cozumel Beach and Golf Resort in Mexico. That would probably make the President think that we’re all sunning ourselves on a beach while sucking on bottles of Dos Equis instead of investigating the bad guys. But I have a friend, a lifelong friend, a Mexican cop—an honest Mexican cop—who knows all about the cartels and will have some practical ideas about how to deal with them the President should hear.”

“So, what did you decide?” Damon asked.

“My fiancée just told me we’re going to Mexico first, and then Budapest.”

“Your fiancée? You’re back to pulling my leg?”

“Not at all.”

“You have a fiancée?”

“Indeed, I do. You’ll meet Sweaty on our way to Cozumel.”

“On our way to Cozumel?”