Black Ops (Presidential Agent 5)

"All of the above."

"And what else?"

"High-speed printers with lots of resolution for photos and maps. And a similar scanner or three, ditto. I need to keep in contact with one--or two--teams of shooters and a couple of people maybe running around by themselves."

"Charley, the limiting factor is the speed of the relay in the satellites. I have to run them a lot slower than their capacity because of the equipment on the ground--equipment I didn't make. I'm getting the idea you're about to run an op?"

"Yes, we are. Operation Fish Farm."

"I think I know what you need, Charley. No problem."

There was a long silence. Then Castillo said, "You are going to tell me what it is, right, Aloysius?"

"You'll see what it is when I get there. If it doesn't work, we'll work on it until we get it right."

"I called to ask you to tell me what we need, not with my hand out."

"Is there an airport any closer to where you are than Midland? Where do I tell the pilot to go?"

"Home. You go home after you tell me what we need. Then Les will go buy it."

"Like hell he will. Now, where do I tell the pilot to go?"

Castillo shook his head, but he was smiling. "You have my coordinates?"

"Yeah. Like I told you, within a tenth of a mile and maybe five hundred feet altitude."

"There's a strip three-tenths of a mile to the south."

"Will it take a Gulfstream V, or should I bring something smaller?"

"It'll take a G-Five, but I can't get something that big in my hangar, and if you park it here, people might get curious."

"That kind of an op, huh? No problem. I'll just have them drop me off--not to worry, they won't remember where--and worry about getting back to Vegas later. It's seven hundred nautical miles. Figure an hour to get to the airport and off the ground and an hour and three-quarters in the air. Add all that up, Charley, and I'll see you then. Casey out."

Castillo pushed a button, turning off the AFC speakerphone function.

"You really have such interesting friends, Carlos," Svetlana said. "That was the Casey of the AFC Corporation?"

"You know about him, huh, Svet? What that was was a very lonely man--his wife just died--who I think I just made very happy. He's sitting all alone in a house about twice the size of the one in Golf and Polo, or vice versa, that you like so much, on several hundred hectares of very expensive real estate overlooking Las Vegas and of course the AFC labs and plants."

"I don't understand," Berezovsky said.

"When Aloysius was a kid, Colonel," Davidson offered, "he was in the Vietnam War, the commo--communications--sergeant on a Special Forces A-Team operating black in Cambodia and other places. When he gets here, you will learn how he almost won that war all by himself. He never really took off the suit."

"What does that mean?" Svetlana asked.

"He still thinks of himself as a special operator," Castillo said.

"And Charley just told him he could come out and play. No, not play. This is for real, and that makes it better; he can tell us young guys how to do an operation the right way. For Aloysius, that's better than Christmas, his birthday, and Saint Patrick's Day all rolled into one."

"He's stopped talking to Billy Waugh," Castillo said. "Did you hear that?"

Davidson nodded. "Uh-huh."

"Isn't that the fellow who caught Carlos the Jackal?" Berezovsky asked.

"One and the same," Davidson said. "Aloysius and Billy were young green beanies together, and Billy's still out there--the last I heard he was in Afghanistan again--going after the bad guys. Meanwhile, Aloysius is behind a desk--and can't stand that Billy isn't pushing a walker rather than making HALO jumps."