The Outlaws (Presidential Agent 6)

“They think Charley’s on a riverboat between Budapest and Vienna,” Aloysius said. “And that I’m in Tokyo.”

“I don’t understand that,” Danton said.

“You’re not supposed to,” Sweaty said. “Go on, Carlitos.”

“What are you going to do?” Danton said.

“Well, there is some good news. We’ve learned how to kill Congo-X,” Castillo said. “Right now, nobody knows that but us—”

“You know something that important and you’re not going to tell the President ?” General Naylor blurted.

“If we told him, sir, there are several probabilities I’m not willing to accept. One would be that he would want to know how we came to know this before he did; that would place Colonel Hamilton in an awkward position.”

“Goddamn it, Charley!” Naylor exploded. “Hamilton is a serving officer. He is duty-bound.”

“Sir, with respect. You are violating your parole. I have told you that you are not permitted to question me. But I’ll answer that. Inasmuch as Colonel Hamilton marches beside us in the Long Gray Line, I’m sure he considered the Code of Honor before deciding that to keep this information to ourselves for the time being was necessary. He realized that if President Clendennen knew that we can now neutralize Congo-X, the Russians would learn that in short order. Right now, we don’t want to give them that.”

There was silence for a moment.

Then Danton asked, “So, what are you going to do, Colonel?”

“Depending on how much Congo-X the Russians have, that reduces the threat to the United States just about completely, or doesn’t reduce it much at all,” Castillo went on.

“The odds are that the Congo-X that General Sirinov flew out of Africa is all of it. Dmitri says that the Russians knew how awful this stuff is. Burned once, no pun intended, by Chernobyl, they didn’t want to run the risk of having any of this stuff inside Russia.

“If he’s wrong, and the Russians have warehouses full of Congo-X, or have the means inside Russia, or in Iran, or someplace else, to make more of it, then the United States is in deep trouble.

?

??So what we have to do is find out how much Congo-X they have. I don’t think Putin would answer that truthfully. So we have to ask the only other man who might, General Yakov Sirinov.”

“How the hell are you going to do that? And what makes you think he’ll tell you the truth?” Danton asked.

“We’re going to raid the Venezuelan airfield, La Orchila, grab the general, load him on his Tupolev Tu-934A, fly him here, and ask him.”

“You’re going to invade Venezuela?”

“We’re going to launch a raid on a Venezuelan airfield, not invade. When you invade, you try to stay. With a little luck, we should be in and out in no more than fifteen minutes, twenty tops.”

Danton repeated, “‘Load him on his Tupolev’?”

Castillo nodded. “The CIA has a standing offer of one hundred twenty-five million dollars for a Tu-934A. We’re going to get them one; we need the money.”

“To answer your other question, Mr. Danton,” Sweaty said, “once we get General Sirinov here, I’ll be asking the questions. He will tell us the truth.”

“And now you’ll have to excuse me for a few minutes,” Castillo said. “I have to go buy another Black Hawk. While I’m gone, we’ll show you the surveillance tapes.”

“‘Buy another Black Hawk?’” Danton parroted.

“That’s right,” Castillo said. “You don’t know how that works, do you?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Well, the U.S. Army buys them from Sikorsky. They run right around six million dollars. Then the State Department sells them to the Mexican government—to be used in their unrelenting war against the drug cartels—for about one-tenth of that, say, six hundred thousand.

“The next thing that happens is that—in the aforementioned unrelenting war run by the Policía Federal Preventiva against the drug cartels—the helicopter is reported to have been shot down, or that it crashed in flames.

“Next, a Policía Federal Preventiva palm is crossed with a little money—say, a million or so—and the Black Hawk rises phoenix-like from the ashes. The drug cartels find them very useful to move drugs around. That tends to raise the price. The one downstairs cost us one point two million, and I have been warned that the bidding today will start at a million three.”