The Outlaws (Presidential Agent 6)

“You can go as naked as a jaybird, as far as I’m concerned,” Pevsner said, “but you probably would be more comfortable in a dress.”

“Your dog thinks he’s going,” Tarasov said, pointing at Max, who was sitting on his haunches by the door.

And again Castillo saw something in Pevsner’s eyes, this time that Max going was a good idea. He wondered about that, too.

“Max goes just about everywhere with Charley, Nicolai,” Pevsner said.

There were two Yukons with darkened windows waiting for them in the basement garage of the luxury hotel, and two men standing by, each not making much of an effort to conceal the Mini Uzis under their loose, flowered shirts.

Castillo wondered if all the security was routine, and then considered for the first time that if the Russians were successful in getting Svetlana and Tom back to Russia, they would probably—almost certainly; indeed Pevsner had said so—be coming after Pevsner.

And if that’s true, they will also be coming after Tarasov.

I’ll have to keep that in mind.

And continue to wonder when Alek will decide that if throwing me—and possibly even Tom and Sweaty—under the bus is the price of protecting his family and his businesses, then so be it.

Am I paranoid to consider the possibility that that’s what may be happening right now? When we get to this mysterious airfield, is there going to be a team of General Yakov Sirinov’s Spetsnaz special operators waiting for us, to load us on the Tupolev Tu-934A and fly us off to Mother Russia?

That would solve everyone’s problems.

No. That’s your imagination running away with you.

Scenario two: The crew of the Bertram terminates all the fishermen and tosses their suitably weighted bodies overboard to feed the fishes.

That would get rid of everybody else who knows too much about the affairs of Aleksandr Pevsner.

And nobody knows—except Pevsner and his private army of ex-Spetsnaz special operators—that any of us have ever been near Sunny Cozumel by the Sea.

Come to think of it, there was no real reason we couldn’t have passed through customs under our own names, or the names on the new passports we got in Argentina.

You are being paranoid, and you know it.

On the other hand, you have had paranoid theories before, and on more than several occasions, acting on them has saved your ass.

The Yukon convoy drove directly to the airport, and then through a gate which opened for them as they approached, then onto the tarmac and up beside a Cessna Citation Mustang.

There were two pickup trucks parked close to the airplane. An air-conditioning unit was mounted in the back of one, with a foot-wide flexible tube feeding cold air through the door. The other held a ground power generator.

As soon as the doors of the Yukons opened, the air-conditioning hose was pulled out of the door.

Max knew his role in the departure procedure: He trotted up to the nose gear, sniffed, then raised his right rear leg.

“Does he do that often?” Tarasov asked.

“Religiously,” Castillo said.

“You want to do the walk-around with me?” Tarasov said.

Castillo would have done the walk-around without an invitation—no pilot trusts any other pilot to do properly what has to be done—but he intuited Tarasov’s invitation was more than courtesy, and even more that it wasn’t something a pilot about to give instruction would do.

“Max, go with Sweaty,” Castillo ordered in Hungarian, and the dog went to the stair door and politely waited for Svetlana to board, then leapt aboard himself, pushing Pevsner aside as he did.

Castillo’s suspicion deepened when Tarasov said, “Why don’t you come with us, Dmitri?” and was confirmed when they came to the rear end of the port engine, which could not be seen from inside the airplane.

“Colonel,” Tarasov asked, “are you armed?”

“No,” Castillo admitted. “Should I be?”