Black Ops (Presidential Agent 5)

0940 8 January 2006

"I know what you're thinking, Carlos," Dmitri Berezovsky said after Castillo had set things up with Miller. "But that could have gone wrong and it didn't."

"I thought you done good, Charley," Davidson said, then added admiringly: "He is one starchy sonofabitch, ain't he?"

"Starch melts in hot water. Like in a cannibal's pot?"

Berezovsky chuckled but said: "I have the feeling the colonel knows how to handle the cannibals."

Castillo looked at him and shook his head. "Well, now that your boundless optimism has removed that weight from my shoulders, we can turn to Bradley's shopping list." He looked at him. "What did you come up with, Les?"

"Sir, while I know what we should have in terms of equipment capability, I'm afraid I haven't been able to convert that into what we need in terms of specific equipment that might--or might not--be available in an Office Depot or Radio Shack store."

"Which, off the top of my head, Les, means that you don't get to go to bed until after you've gone shopping. Sorry about that. Let me see what you have."

Bradley handed him a sheet of paper. Castillo looked at it a moment, then tossed it onto the table.

"I don't know what I'm looking at, and it just occurred to me--some of you may have noticed that I am not functioning too well in the I'm-on-top-of-everything department--that when you don't know something it usually helps to ask somebody who does."

He leaned forward and touched a button on the AFC handset.

"C. G. Castillo. Dr. Casey. Encryption Level One."

"One moment, please, Colonel," a sultry, electronically generated voice replied. "I will attempt to connect you."

The voice of Aloysius Francis Casey, Ph.D.--in an interesting mixture of the accents of a Boston Irish "Southie" and a Southwesterner--came over the speaker ten seconds later.

"Hey, Charley. What the hell are you doing twenty-two-point-five miles outside of Midland, Texas?"

How the hell does he know that?

"Good morning, Dr. Casey."

"You call me that one more time, and I'll not only hang up but will make the handset blow up in your ear."

"Sorry."

"You're forgiven. I know you can't handle the booze. I can't detonate the handset--but that's a thought; I may work on that--but that GPS function works all right, doesn't it? Providing you are twenty-two-point-five miles from Midland, Texas."

"That's where I am."

"I can whittle down that tenth-of-a-mile indicator some--probably to within a couple of meters--when I have more time to fiddle with it. What can I do for you, Charley?"

"I'm about to send Lester shopping in Radio Shack or someplace--"

"The Boy Jarhead is there? Semper Fi, Les!"

"Good morning, Dr. Casey," Bradley said.

"You can call me that. You Gyrenes should always show a little respect for people like me."

Bradley grinned at the term Marines normally took some offense at. "Yes, sir."

"Charley, you're sending Les shopping for what?"

"We need storage devices to receive a lot of data from a long way away from one AFC to another--maybe multiple more AFCs. So they'll have to be high speed."

"And portable? Self-powered and/or uninterruptible battery powered for at least a couple of hours?"