The Outlaws (Presidential Agent 6)

Torine said, “Oh, shit!” and then asked, “When did you get this?”

“Just now.”

“Not good news,” Torine said. “What is the exact opposite of ‘good news’?”

Casey said, “What’s he talking about? What did he bring out of the Congo?”

Torine exhaled.

He looked around the laboratory.

“I don’t suppose this place is bugged?”

Casey shook his head.

“We went over there in Delta’s 727,” Torine said. “It was painted in the color scheme of Sub-Saharan Airways—” He stopped. “Why am I telling you this? You know.”

“Go on, Jake,” Casey said.

“We landed at Kilimanjaro International in Tanzania. Uncle Remus and his crew went by truck to Bujumbura in Burundi. There’s an airport at Bujumbura but Castillo decided we’d attract too much attention if we used it, particularly if we sat on the runway for a couple of days, maybe longer.

“Uncle Remus infiltrated Hamilton back into the Congo from Bujumbura. And then when Hamilton found what he found, and the shit hit the fan, we got a message from Uncle Remus to move the airplane to Bujumbura, yesterday, and have it prepared for immediate takeoff.

“We were there about three hours when Uncle Remus, his crew, and Hamilton showed up. They had with them a half-dozen of what looked like rubber beer kegs. Blue.”

He demonstrated with his hands the size of the kegs.

“Uncle Remus asked me if we could fly to the States with the HALO compartment depressurized and open.”

“I don’t understand that,” Lester said. “‘HALO compartment’?”

“For ‘High Altitude, Low Opening’ parachute infiltration from up to forty thousand feet,” Peg-Leg explained. “The rear half—the HALO compartment—of the fuselage can be sealed off from the rest of the fuselage, and then, where that rear stairway was, opened to the atmosphere.”

“Got it,” Lester said.

“I told him yes,” Torine went on, “and Hamilton said, ‘Thank God,’ as if he meant it.

“I asked him what was going on, and he told me the beer barrels contained more dangerous material than I could imagine, and extraordinary precautions were in order; he would explain later. He asked me how cold the HALO compartment would get in flight, and I told him probably at least sixty degrees below zero, and he said, ‘Thank God,’ again and sounded like he meant it this time, too.

“Then he and Uncle Remus and his team loaded the barrels in the HALO compartment. When they came out, everybody stripped to the skin. They took a shower on the tarmac using the fire engine and some special soap and chemicals Hamilton had with him. Then they put on whatever clothing we had aboard, flight suits, some other clothing, and got in the front, and we took off.

“Before we had climbed out to cruising altitude, we got some company, a flight of F/A-18E Super Hornets from a carrier in the Indian Ocean. They stayed with us until we were over the Atlantic, where they handed us over to some Super Hornets flying off a carrier in the Atlantic.

“We headed for North Carolina—Pope Air Force at F

ort Bragg. We were refueled in flight halfway across the Atlantic and when the refueling was over, we were handed over to a flight of Air Force F-16s who stayed with us until we got to Pope.

“When we got to Pope, we were directed to the Delta hangar, and immediately towed inside and the doors closed. Then maybe two dozen guys in science-fiction movie space suits swarmed all over the airplane. Some of them went into the HALO compartment and removed the barrels. I later learned they were sealed and then loaded aboard a Citation Three and flown to Washington.

“They took everybody off the airplane and gave us a bath. Unbelievable. Soap, chemicals, some kind of powder. It took half an hour. And then they held us—everybody but Hamilton and Uncle Remus; they went on the Citation with the barrels—for twenty-four hours for observation, gave us another bath, and finally let us go.

“General McNab was waiting for us—did I mention they held us in the hangar?—when they finally turned us loose. He gave us the standard speech about keeping this secret for the rest of our natural lives or suffer castration with a dull knife.”

“What was in the barrels, Jake?” Casey asked softly. “Did Hamilton tell you?”

Torine nodded.

“He said two of them contained ‘laboratory material’ and the other four had ‘tissue samples.’ When I pressed him on that, he said that two of the barrels contained body parts from bodies he and Uncle Remus dug up near this place, and the other two held the bodies of two people, one black and one white, that Uncle Remus took down when they had to get into the laboratory. He said he needed them for autopsies.”