The Outlaws (Presidential Agent 6)

Colonel Jake Torine’s Russian was very limited, but he could read the lettering they would find on the instrument panel of the Tu-934A. Navigation of the airplane would be by the Casey GPS system installed on their laptops.

Max, as he was wont to do, suspected his master intended to leave him behind. So, when Castillo, Sweaty, Dmitri, and Roscoe J. Danton got into the Cessna Mustang for the flight to Cozumel, they found Max already lying in the aisle looking at Castillo with melancholy eyes that melted his master’s heart.

What the hell! When we leave Cozumel, I’ll chain him to the seat. Sparkman will be flying this back. He and Sweaty can deal with him; he likes them.

That did not come to pass.

When the Policía Feder

al Preventiva UH-60 had been refueled at Cozumel, and after Castillo had spent an hour explaining the cockpit specifically and the aircraft generally to Colonel Torine, he had climbed out to see how the loading of the Spetsnaz was going.

He found that everybody had changed into their combat uniforms, which were in fact commercially available summer-weight camouflage-pattern hunting jackets and trousers. They and the khaki trousers/yellow polo shirts everyone wore at Laguna el Guaje had been purchased at three Walmarts in Mexico City, Distrito Federal, by Peg-Leg Lorimer, who had charged them to his LCBF Corporation American Express card.

Peg-Leg reported, on his return from his shopping trip, that his purchases had just about wiped out the stocks in all three Walmart stores.

“When that information is sent by the Walmart computers to Walmart headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas,” Peg-Leg said, “the company will rush to replace the deleted stocks. This in turn will result in a gross overstock of khaki trousers, yellow polo shirts, and summer-weight camouflage-pattern hunting clothes in Mexico City. Walmart executives will be baffled.

“But I strongly suspect that Ol’ Jack Walton,” Peg-Leg concluded, “will be smiling down at us from that Great Watering Hole in the Sky, pleased that we outfitted this operation from his daddy’s store.”

John Walton—son of the founder of Walmart, and at his death the eleventh-richest man in the world—had earlier in his life been awarded the nation’s third highest award for valor, the Silver Star, while a Special Forces sergeant in Vietnam.

Among those donning their Walmart combat uniforms was former Lieutenant Colonel Svetlana Alekseeva of the SVR, who was rolling up the sleeves of hers when Castillo came around the nose of the Black Hawk. Max was lying on the floor of the Black Hawk’s cabin, watching with his head between his legs.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Castillo demanded.

“Carlos, I don’t like it when you use that tone to me.”

“You and Max are going back to the lake on the Mustang!”

She pointed at the runway. Castillo looked. The Mustang was beginning its takeoff roll.

“Well, Svet, you got that past me. But now you can wait here. You’re not going.”

“Of course I’m going. Wherever did you get this idea I wasn’t?”

“Honey, for Christ’s sake, we don’t know what’s going to happen at La Orchila. People are likely to get hurt.”

“Did you ever think, Generalissimo Carlitos,” she snapped, “you poor man’s von Clausewitz, what would happen if one of Sirinov’s Spetsnaz takes Dmitri out the moment we land? When you speak Russian, you sound like a Saint Petersburg poet.” She wet her finger and ran it over her eyebrow, the gesture’s meaning unmistakable. “You’d make the Spetsnaz giggle. I was a podpolkovnik of the SVR and I sound like one. I know how to deal with Spetsnaz and I’m going!”

After a moment’s reflection, Castillo asked, “And Max? You want to take him too, I suppose, Podpolkovnik Alekseeva?”

“Absolutely! You get Max to show his teeth to Yakov Sirinov the way you did to Lammelle and he’ll wet his pants. I may not even have to hurt him.”

Castillo considered that a moment, and then asked, “Have you got a weapon?”

“Of course I’ve got a weapon,” she snapped, still angry. “I’ve always got a weapon. You should know that. You’ve been looking up my dress from the day we met.”

Castillo had an immediate, very clear mental image of that day.

Svetlana’s skirt had risen high as she nimbly jumped from the tracks of Vienna’s Sudbahnhof onto the platform, revealing that she was wearing red lace underpants with a small pistol—he later learned it was a Colt 1908 Pocket Model .32 ACP—holstered on her inner thigh just under them.

Roscoe J. Danton walked up.

“Not to worry, Charley,” he said. “I understand Colonel Alekseeva was speaking off the record.”

“Roscoe, sometimes he makes me very, very angry,” Sweaty said.

Jake Torine walked up.