The Outlaws (Presidential Agent 6)

Castillo rose from his chair, walked to the bar, and leaned his back against it.

“Two-Gun,” he began, “I think you’d better take notes.”

Yung gave him a thumbs-up, then reached for his laptop computer.

“To bring everybody up to speed,” Castillo began, “let’s start with what we do know. First, somebody sent Colonel Hamilton a barrel of Congo-X. Then, in Budapest, Colonel Vladlen Solomatin of the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki handed Eric Kocian a letter asking him to get it to Tom Barlow. The letter said, in essence, ‘Come home. All is forgiven.’ I think it’s likely the two actions are related.”

“About as likely as the sun will come up tomorrow,” Svetlana said.

She waited for a chuckle. When she didn’t get one, she looked at Castillo.

“We won’t know,” Castillo said, “about the sun rising until tomorrow morning, will we, Svet? Until then, it’s just likely that it will. And the way this works, Svet, is that no one offers an opinion, clever or otherwise, until I ask for it. Got it?”

Her face colored and her eyes flared angrily, but she didn’t reply.

Well, Commander Casanova, guess who’s not going to get laid tonight?

Castillo took a sip of his drink, then went on: “Let’s start with the Congo-X. Where did it come from? That raises the question, ‘Did we destroy it all in the attacks on the Fish Farm or not?’ Colin?”

“Sir, I respectfully suggest Colonel Torine can answer that better than I can,” Leverette said.

“Jake?” Castillo asked.

Torine nodded. “Charley, you know as well as I do, except for nukes, there is no such thing as total destruction of anything by high explosive or incendiary saturation bombing. The question then becomes: ‘How much was not destroyed? ’ And I suggest Colin can answer that better than I can. He (a) was there, and (b) he’s done a lot of damage assessment.”

Castillo motioned with his hand toward Leverette.

“The Fish Farm was a collection of concrete block buildings, none of them over three stories, most of them just one,” Leverette said. “The few I got into had basements, and I saw a half-dozen buried and half-buried steel-door revetments—like ammo bunkers. Let’s say the bombs and the incendiaries took out ninety-five percent of everything.”

“Jake?” Castillo said.

Torine nodded his agreement. “Leaving five percent,” he said.

“Until we run into a stone wall, let’s try this scenario,” Castillo said. “Five percent of the Congo-X in barrels survived the bombing. Let’s say that’s six barrels. Two of them got to the States. How and by what means? Tom?”

“I’m sure one of the first things Sirinov did after the bombing—”

Alex Darby interrupted: “General Yakov Sirinov, who runs the SVR for Putin?”

Barlow nodded, and went on: “What he did was send in a Vympel Spetsnaz team for damage assessment and to see if anyone was still alive.”

Castillo said, “Can we presume (a) the Spetsnaz made it into the Fish Farm, and (b) while they were there found—more important, took control of—the six barrels of Congo-X?”

“If Tom is talking about Spetsgruppa V,” Leverette said, and looked at Barlow.

Barlow nodded. He said, “Also known as the Vega Group of KGB Directorate B.”

“The Russian Delta Force, Charley,” Leverette said. “They’re damned good.”

“It is because they are so good that they were selected to provide security for the Congo operation,” Barlow said. “I was surprised that you didn’t encounter at least one or two of them, Uncle Remus, when you were there.”

Leverette met his eyes for a moment.

“Quickly changing the subject,” Leverette said, making it clear there had been a confrontation with at least one or two Spetsnaz special operators and that they had lost. “So they found the six barrels of Congo-X. What did they do with it?”

“This is conjecture,” Barlow said, “based on my knowledge of how Sirinov’s mind works. The Spetsnaz were parachuted onto the site from a great height, probably from a specially adapted Ilyushin Il-96 passenger transport on a flight path duly reported to aviation authorities. The parachutists would not have opened their canopies until they were quite close to the ground, so they would appear only momentarily, if at all, on radar screens.”

“That’s what we call HALO,” Castillo said. “High-altitude, low opening.”