Covert Warriors (Presidential Agent 7)

Naylor took the gloves and pulled them on.

Walsh handed him the envelope, and Naylor took from it a sheet of paper and an eight-by-ten-inch color photograph.

The photograph showed a man dressed in a T-shirt and khaki trousers. He was sitting in a folding chair, holding up a copy of Mexico City’s El Heraldo de Mexico. On each side of him stood a man wearing a black balaclava mask over his head and holding the muzzle of a Kalashnikov six inches from the victim’s head.

“That’s yesterday’s newspaper,” McNab said.

The sheet of paper, obviously printed on a cheap ink-jet printer, carried a simple message:So Far He’s Alive.

There will be further communication.

“Who i

s he?” Naylor asked calmly. “He looks familiar.”

“Lieutenant Colonel James D. Ferris,” McNab said. “The officer whom—with great reluctance, you will recall—I detailed to DEA, from which he was further detailed to be—overtly—one of the assistant military attachés at our embassy in Mexico City. Covertly, I have been led to believe, he was ordered to advise the ambassador in his relentless and never-ending attempt to reason with the drug cartels.”

“I can do without the sarcasm, General,” Naylor said.

“Ferris marches in the Long Gray Line beside his classmates Lieutenant Colonel Randolph Richardson, Jr., and our own Lieutenant Colonel C. G. Castillo, Retired. He has a wife at Fort Bragg and three children. Small world, isn’t it?”

“Where did you get this?” Naylor asked.

“A FedEx delivery man handed it to me just now when I walked out of my quarters to come here.”

“It’s addressed to LTC McNab.”

“I noticed. It may be a typo, or it could be on purpose. My gut feeling is that it’s on purpose.”

“To attract less attention?” Naylor asked.

McNab nodded.

“I’ve been wondering if another . . .”

“Was sent to me?” Naylor finished for him.

McNab nodded again.

“Captain,” Naylor said politely, “would you ask Colonel Brewer to come up here, please?”

Colonel J. D. Brewer was Naylor’s senior aide-de-camp.

“We have been cleared for takeoff,” the public-address system announced. “Please fasten your seat belts.”

“No FedEx Overnight envelope or other communication relative to this at MacDill, General,” Colonel Brewer reported five minutes later, as the Gulfstream reached cruising altitude.

Naylor looked at McNab.

“What’s the plan at Andrews?” McNab asked.

“A Black Hawk will take us to Langley; we meet the others there.”

“Including Natalie?”

“I have been led to believe the secretary of State will be there.”

His tone made it clear that he thought General McNab should not refer to the secretary of State by her first name.