Hazardous Duty (Presidential Agent 8)

“You know, Miami? Tampa? Palm Beach?”

“What are we going to do in Palm Beach?” Susanna Sieno asked.

“Susanna, you heard what the man said about these people. Stalling Clendennen in Mexico is not going to be a vacation on the CIA’s dime. They’d cut off your head, and Paul’s, as quickly as they’d cut off mine.”

“I was thinking about that,” she said.

“Good,” Juan Carlos said.

“Juan Carlos, could you pass off Paul and me as your cousins from, say, Colombia? Better yet, Havana?” she asked.

“What the hell, Charley,” Paul chimed in. “Maybe we could learn something about these people that somebody on top could use.”

“You understand,” Juan Carlos said, “that if these people find out who you are—”

“We spent five years in Cuba,” she said. “Brother Raúl is a lot smarter than these cartel people, and he and his DGI never got close to us.”

“My cousins from Havana are obviously as crazy as you are, Carlito,” Juan Carlos said. “But I like the idea of getting the straight story to people at the top. The reports of your DEA never seem to get there.”

“You realize, of course, that if you stay, it’s going to cost Those People in Las Vegas a lot of money.”

“Screw those people in Las Vegas,” Susanna said.

[FOUR]

The Cabinet Room

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.

Washington, D.C.

0905 14 June 2007

The President of the United States was not in a good mood when Secretary of State Natalie Cohen, DCI A. Franklin Lammelle, General Allan B. Naylor, Senior, and Director of National Intelligence Truman C. Ellsworth filed into the Cabinet Room and stood waiting to be acknowledged.

The President had just been informed by Supervisory Special Agent Robert J. Mulligan that his mother-in-law, who had gone missing from Happy Haven, the Baptist assisted living facility in Pascagoula, Mississippi, several days before had been located.

The “First Mother-in-Law” was in the Biloxi, Mississippi, jail charged with public drunkenness and assault on a police officer. It appeared that she had overly availed herself of the free cocktails offered by the Biloxi Palace Casino to its gaming guests at the roulette tables.

Mulligan said he could probably spring her from durance vile by noon, but that wasn’t going to solve much. The Reverend J. Finley Cushman, DD, who had taken her in after she had been asked to leave the Ocean Springs branch of the Baptist assisted living facility, had made it quite clear if she ever got loose again and brought shame upon Happy Haven by getting into the Devil’s Brew, they would have to find some other haven for her.

Since she had been asked to leave just about every other facility in Mississippi, that posed problems. The prospect of having to face the First Mother-in-Law every morning at breakfast in the White House struck terror in the heart of Joshua Ezekiel Clendennen.

“Mr. President,” Secretary Cohen said, “we have another report from Colonel Castillo.”

The President was so upset that he momentarily couldn’t remember who Castillo was, and thought she was referring to the head of the Mississippi State Police, who was also a colonel.

“Mulligan just told me,” the President said, rather impatiently. And then he remembered.

“Give it to me,” he said, and then, “Sit.”

He read the report:

TOP SECRET

URGENT