The Shooters Read online

  It damn sure doesn’t help someone sitting in the comfort of their living room better understand what the hell is really going on.

  Castillo turned from the TV and glanced around the quincho.

  Of the people watching CNN, three could—and in fact often did—pass as Argentines. They were the Sienos (who now had the parrilla wood burning) and a twenty-three-year-old from San Antonio, Texas, named Ricardo Solez, who had come to Argentina as an agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration. All had mastered the Porteño accent of a Buenos Aires native.

  Anthony J. “Tony” Santini, a special agent of the U.S. Secret Service, a stocky and somewhat swarthy forty-two-year-old, could pass for a Porteño until he had to say something, whereupon his accent usually gave him away.

  None of the others watching the TV in the quincho even tried to pass themselves off as Argentines.

  Special Agent David W. Yung of the FBI, a thirty-two-year-old of Chinese ancestry—who spoke Spanish and three other languages, none of them Oriental—felt that his race made trying to fob himself off as an Argentine almost a silly exercise.

  The language skills of various others were rudimentary.

  As Colonel Jacob D. “Jake” Torine, United States Air Force, put it, “It’s as if the moment I get out of the States, a neon sign starts flashing over my head—American! Throw rocks!”

  Inspector John J. Doherty of the FBI understood what Torine meant. Lieutenant Colonel Castillo had once remarked, “Torine and Doherty look like somebody called Central Casting and said, ‘Send us an airline pilot and an Irish cop.’” Neither had taken offense.

  One viewer of what Katrina was doing to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast was in a category of his own.

  Corporal Lester Bradley, United States Marine Corps, was not quite twenty. He appeared to be about seventeen. He stood five feet five inches tall and weighed a little under one hundred forty pounds. Looking at him now—attired in a knit polo shirt, khaki trousers, and red and gold striped Nike sport shoes—very few people would think of associating him with the military at all, much less with the elite special operations.

  The truth here was that Bradley, fresh from Parris Island boot camp, had earned his corporal’s stripes as a “designated marksman” with the Marines on the march to Baghdad. On his return to the United States, he had been assigned to the USMC guard detachment at the American embassy in Buenos Aires, where he mostly functioned as a clerk typist until the day he had been detailed—as the man the gunny felt he could most easily spare—to drive a GMC Yukon XL to Uruguay.

  Three days after that, Bradley found himself part of a hastily organized special operations mission during which he saved the life of then-Major C. G. Castillo by using a borrowed sniper’s rifle to take out two of the bad guys with head shots.

  Bradley thus had learned too much about a very secret operation—and the reasons for said operation—for him to be returned to the care of the gunny, who could be counted on to demand a full account of where his young corporal had been and what he had done. So Bradley next had been aboard the aircraft on which Castillo and the body of Sergeant First Class Seymour Kranz—who had been killed during the operation—returned to the United States.

  Not knowing what to do with Bradley back in the States, Castillo had “put him on ice” at Camp Mackall, North Carolina, the Special Forces training base, until he could find a solution. Camp Mackall’s sergeant major, Jack Davidson, had taken one look at the boyish Marine, concluded that his assignment to Mackall was a practical joke being played on Davidson by a Marine master gunnery sergeant acquaintance, and put him to work pushing the keys on a computer.

  The first that Davidson learned of who Bradley really was—and that he had saved the life of Castillo, with whom Davidson had been around the block many times, most recently in Afghanistan—came when Lieutenant General Bruce J. McNab showed up at Mackall to arrange for Bradley to attend Sergeant Kranz’s funeral at Arlington National Cemetery.

  Davidson had also been around the block several times with General McNab, and several times with McNab and Castillo together. He had not been at all bashful to tell the general (a) that Castillo’s idea that Bradley could be hidden at Mackall made about as much sense as suggesting a giraffe could be hidden on the White House lawn, and (b) that if Charley was doing something interesting, it only made sense that Sergeant Major Davidson be assigned to do it with him, as the general well knew how prone Charley, absent the wise counsel of Sergeant Major Davidson, was to do things that made large waves, and got everybody in trouble, and that this was not very likely to be changed just because they’d just made Charley a light bird.

  Shortly after the final rites of Sergeant Kranz at Arlington National Cemetery, Sergeant Major Davidson and Corporal Bradley were en route to Buenos Aires.

  And shortly after going to Nuestra Pequeña Casa, while serving as the driver of a Renault Trafic van, Corporal Bradley found himself participating in an unpleasant firefight in the basement garage of the Pilar Sheraton Hotel and Convention Center, during which he took down one of the bad guys with a Model 1911A1 Colt semiautomatic pistol and contributed to the demise of another with the same .45-caliber weapon.

  Following that, it was Castillo’s judgment that Corporal Bradley really deserved to be formally assigned to the Office of Organizational Analysis.

  He called the director of National Intelligence, who called the secretary of defense, who called the secretary of the Navy, who directed the commandant of the Marine Corps—“Just do it, don’t ask questions”—to issue the appropriate orders:

  * * *

  TOP SECRET—PRESIDENTIAL

  THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  DUPLICATION FORBIDDEN

  COPY 2 OF 3 (SECRETARY COHEN)

  JULY 25, 2005.

  PRESIDENTIAL FINDING.

  IT HAS BEEN FOUND THAT THE ASSASSINATION OF J. WINSLOW MASTERSON, DEPUTY CHIEF OF MISSION OF THE UNITED STATES EMBASSY IN BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA; THE ABDUCTION OF MR. MASTERSON’S WIFE, MRS. ELIZABETH LORIMER MASTERSON; THE ASSASSINATION OF SERGEANT ROGER MARKHAM, USMC; AND THE ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION OF SECRET SERVICE SPECIAL AGENT ELIZABETH T. SCHNEIDER INDICATE BEYOND ANY REASONABLE DOUBT THE EXISTENCE OF A CONTINUING PLOT OR PLOTS BY TERRORISTS, OR TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS, TO CAUSE SERIOUS DAMAGE TO THE INTERESTS OF THE UNITED STATES, ITS DIPLOMATIC OFFICERS, AND ITS CITIZENS, AND THAT THIS SITUATION CANNOT BE TOLERATED.

  IT IS FURTHER FOUND THAT THE EFFORTS AND ACTIONS TAKEN AND TO BE TAKEN BY THE SEVERAL BRANCHES OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT TO DETECT AND APPREHEND THOSE INDIVIDUALS WHO COMMITTED THE TERRORIST ACTS PREVIOUSLY DESCRIBED, AND TO PREVENT SIMILAR SUCH ACTS IN THE FUTURE ARE BEING AND WILL BE HAMPERED AND RENDERED LESS EFFECTIVE BY STRICT ADHERENCE TO APPLICABLE LAWS AND REGULATIONS.

  IT IS THEREFORE FOUND THAT CLANDESTINE AND COVERT ACTION UNDER THE SOLE SUPERVISION OF THE PRESIDENT IS NECESSARY.

  IT IS DIRECTED AND ORDERED THAT THERE IMMEDIATELY BE ESTABLISHED A CLANDESTINE AND COVERT ORGANIZATION WITH THE MISSION OF DETERMINING THE IDENTITY OF THE TERRORISTS INVOLVED IN THE ASSASSINATIONS, ABDUCTION, AND ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION PREVIOUSLY DESCRIBED AND TO RENDER THEM HARMLESS. AND TO PERFORM SUCH OTHER COVERT AND CLANDESTINE ACTIVITIES AS THE PRESIDENT MAY ELECT TO ASSIGN.

  FOR PURPOSES OF CONCEALMENT, THE AFOREMENTIONED CLANDESTINE AND COVERT ORGANIZATION WILL BE KNOWN AS THE OFFICE OF ORGANIZATIONAL ANALYSIS, WITHIN THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY. FUNDING WILL INITIALLY BE FROM DISCRETIONARY FUNDS OF THE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT. THE MANNING OF THE ORGANIZATION WILL BE DECIDED BY THE PRESIDENT ACTING ON THE ADVICE OF THE CHIEF, OFFICE OF ORGANIZATIONAL ANALYSIS.

  MAJOR CARLOS G. CASTILLO, SPECIAL FORCES, U.S. ARMY, IS HEREWITH APPOINTED CHIEF, OFFICE OF ORGANIZATIONAL ANALYSIS, WITH IMMEDIATE EFFECT.

  SIGNED:

  PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  WITNESS:

  Natalie G. Cohen

  SECRETARY OF STATE

  TOP SECRET—PRESIDENTIAL

  * * *

/>   The identification of the bodies in the Sheraton garage—and of two others shortly thereafter in the Conrad Resort & Casino in Punta del Este, Uruguay—pretty well “determined the identity of the terrorists.”

  And, obviously, they had been “rendered harmless” as called for by the Finding.

  This accomplishment, however, did not mean that the Office of Organizational Analysis now could be shut down, or that the Finding could be filed in the Presidential Documents Not To Be Declassified For Fifty Years, or that the OOA personnel could be returned whence they had come.

  Just about the opposite was true.

  The investigation had been going on in Nuestra Pequeña Casa for nearly three weeks. To say that no end was in sight was a gross understatement.

  The turning over of the rocks had revealed an astonishing number of ugly worms of interest to the director of National Intelligence, the Department of Justice, the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of State, and other governmental agencies.

  “What we have here isn’t an investigation,” Inspector Doherty, who was on the staff of the director of the FBI and who had given the subject a good deal of thought, said very seriously the night before at dinner, “it’s an investigation to determine what has to be investigated.”

  Doherty had reluctantly—another gross understatement—become part of the investigation only after the President had personally ordered the FBI director to loan the best man he had to OOA, not the senior FBI man who could be most easily spared.

  Edgar Delchamps, of the CIA, had replied, “You got it, Sherlock.”

  Delchamps, too, had come to the OOA reluctantly. So reluctantly that when transferred from his posting as the CIA station chief in Paris, he had reported to Castillo only after he had stopped by CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, to put in for retirement.

  When Castillo found out about that, it had taken a personal call from the director of National Intelligence, Ambassador Charles W. Montvale, to the director of the Central Intelligence Agency to get Delchamps to put off his retirement “for the time being.” Montvale told the DCI that the President had personally ordered that the OOA—meaning Delchamps—be given absolute access to any intelligence the agency had gathered on any subject.

  Doherty and Delchamps had not at first gotten along. Both were middle-aged and set in their ways. Doherty’s way—which had seen him rise high in the FBI hierarchy—was to scrupulously follow the book, never bending, much less breaking, the law. Delchamps had spent most of his career operating clandestinely, often using a fictitious name. There was no book for what he did, of course, because the clandestine service does not—cannot—operate that way. So far as Delchamps was concerned, the end really justified the means.

  Yet surprisingly they had become close—even friends—in recent weeks, largely because, Castillo had decided, they were older than everybody but Eric Kocian. They regarded everyone else—including Castillo—as inexperienced youngsters and were agreed that the President had erred in giving Castillo the authority he had given him. (Castillo thought they were probably right.)

  What Doherty the night before had called the “investigation to determine what has to be investigated” now was just about over.

  Castillo and Colonel Torine had flown the OOA’s private jet—a Gulfstream III registered to the Lorimer Charitable & Benevolent Fund—down to Argentina to quietly ferry Delchamps, Doherty, and some of the others—not to mention the results of the investigation, which now filled one small filing cabinet and a dozen computer external hard drives—back to Washington.

  Eric Kocian and his two dogs would go with them, too. His notes about the Iraqi Oil for Food scandal had provided keys to much of the information now on the hard drives.

  So far as Castillo, Delchamps, and Doherty were concerned, Kocian was going to Washington to serve as a sort of living reference library as their investigation moved into the data banks of the FBI, the CIA, and other elements of the intelligence community.

  So far as Kocian was concerned, however, he was going to Washington because there was a direct Delta Airlines flight from Washington Dulles International Airport to Budapest. It would allow him to take his dogs. There was no such flight from Buenos Aires.

  Kocian owned two Bouvier des Flandres dogs, a male named Max and a bitch named Mädchen. At one hundred–plus pounds, Max was time-and-a-half the size of a large boxer. Mädchen was just a little smaller. There always had been a Max in Kocian’s life since right after World War II, all of them named Max. Mädchen was a recent addition, a gift from the Lorimer Charitable & Benevolent Fund, not necessarily as a pet for Kocian, but as a companion for Max.

  Max’s alertness in Budapest had warned Castillo in time for him to be able to use a suppressed Ruger MKII .22-caliber semiautomatic pistol to render harmless two men who had broken into his hotel room bent on his assassination.

  As Castillo later had put it—perhaps indelicately—to Edgar Delchamps, “I don’t know how things are done in the spook world, but in the Army when someone saves your ass, the least you can do for him is get him laid.”

  It had been love at first sight between Max and Mädchen. But the playful frolicking of two canines weighing more than two hundred pounds between them had caused some serious damage to the furnishings of Nuestra Pequeña Casa. Although they slept on the floor in Kocian’s bedroom, they mostly had been banished to the backyard and to the quincho, where they had sort of adopted Corporal Lester Bradley, sensing that not only did he like to kick a soccer ball for them, but while manning the secure satellite communication device had the time to do so.

  Everyone was so used to seeing Max, Mädchen, and Lester together that hardly anyone noticed when Lester went to Ricardo Solez, touched his shoulder, and pointed to the secure radio. Solez nodded his understanding that if the radio went off, he was to answer the call.

  Solez thought that Lester and Max and Mädchen were leaving the quincho so that the dogs could meet the call of nature and Lester would then kick the soccer ball for them to retrieve. Both dogs could get a soccer ball in their mouths with no more effort than lesser breeds had with a tennis ball.

  The first person to sense that that had not been Corporal Bradley’s intention was Edgar Delchamps, who happened to glance out of the quincho into the backyard.

  “Hey, Ace!” he called to Lieutenant Colonel Castillo. “As much as I would like to think the kid’s playing cops and robbers, I don’t think so.”

  Castillo looked at him in confusion, then followed Delchamps’s nod toward the backyard.

  Corporal Bradley, holding a Model 1911A1 .45 ACP pistol in both hands, was marching across the grass by the swimming pool. Ahead of Bradley was a young man in a suit and tie who held his hands locked in the small of his neck. Max walked on one side of them, showing his teeth, and Mädchen on the other showing hers.

  “What the hell?” Castillo exclaimed.

  Sándor Tor, with almost amazing grace for his bulk, got out of his chair and walked toward the door, brushing aside his suit jacket enough to uncover a black SIG-Sauer 9mm P228 semiautomatic pistol in a skeleton holster on his belt.

  Castillo moved quickly to the drapes gathered at one side of the plateglass window and snatched a 9mm Micro Uzi submachine gun from behind them.

  He opened the door as they approached the verandah of the quincho.

  “What’s up, Lester?” he asked.

  Corporal Bradley did not reply directly.

  “On the porch,” he ordered the man. “Drop to your knees, and then get on your stomach on the tiles.”

  “Permission to speak, sir?” the young man in the suit asked.

  “I told you to get on your stomach,” Bradley ordered as sternly as he could. He did not have much of what is known as a “command voice.”

  “I’d do what he says, pal,” Edgar Delchamps suggested, conversationally. “Lester’s been known to use that .45, and Max likes to bite people.”

  The young man dropped to his knees, then went flat to
the tile of the shaded verandah. Max leaned over him, showing his teeth. Mädchen sat on her haunches across from him.

  “I apprehended the intruder behind the pine trees, sir,” Bradley announced, “as he was making his way toward the house.”

  “He was inside the fence?” Castillo asked. “What happened to the motion detectors?”

  “He was inside the fence, sir,” Bradley said. “Perhaps there is a malfunction of the motion-detecting system.”

  Tony Santini, carrying a Mini Uzi, and Ricardo Solez, holding a CAR-4, came out of the quincho.

  “Jesus Christ, Pegleg!” Solez exclaimed. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  “Right now I’m laying on my goddamn stomach,” the young man said.

  “You know this guy, Ricardo?” Castillo asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Solez said.

  Castillo waited a moment, then asked, “Well?”

  “He’s an assistant military attaché at the embassy in Asunción.”

  “Permission to speak, sir?” the man on the tile said.

  “See what he’s got in his pockets, Sándor,” Castillo ordered.

  Sándor Tor bent over the man on the tile, took a wallet from his hip pocket, and tossed it to Castillo. Then he rolled the man onto his back and went into the pockets of his jacket. He came up with an American diplomatic passport and tossed that to Castillo.

  Castillo examined it.

  “Sit, Max,” he ordered.

  Max looked at him, head cocked.

  “He’s probably not a bad guy,” Castillo added.

  After a moment, as if he had considered, then accepted, what Castillo had said, Max sat back on his haunches.