Black Ops (Presidential Agent) Read online

  "Unless we cooked dinner, ma'am," Harold Sanders put in, "they'd poison themselves and we'd be out of a job."

  "If you say so," she said with a smile.

  She went in turn to the others, kissing the cheeks of the men she knew, shaking the hands of those she didn't and saying she was happy to get to know them.

  These included a young Chinese American whose name was David Yung; a nondescript man in his late fifties, wearing somewhat rumpled trousers and an unbuttoned vest, who introduced himself as Edgar Delchamps; a well-set-up man about Castillo's age by the name of John Davidson; a ruddy-cheeked, middle-aged man who said he was Tom McGuire; and another middle-aged man whose name was Sandor Tor. Most were wearing suits, but not the jackets thereto.

  And there were two others in the house: the muscular young man in the suit who had opened the front door to Dona Alicia, and another muscular young man in a suit who could have been his brother were he not a very dark-skinned African-American.

  These two muscular young men were special agents of the United States Secret Service. Their mission was to provide security to the personnel of the Office of Organizational Analysis. While both the Secret Service and the OOA were in the Department of Homeland Security, almost no one knew of the OOA's existence and even fewer were in fact members, including these special agents.

  Of course, there were very good reasons for this--indeed, top secret ones--chief among them that the OOA had come into being only five months earlier at the direction--if not the fury--of the President of the United States:

  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, 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 INDICATES 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 DISCRETIONAL 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

  There at first had been only one member of the Office of Organizational Analysis--Castillo, who had recently returned from Afghanistan and was then assigned as an aide to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Matthew Hall--but the staff had quickly grown.

  To guide the young Army major through the swamp of Washington bureaucracy and to protect him as much as this could be done from the alligators dwelling therein, Secretary Hall had given up two members of his personal staff, Mrs. Agnes Forbison and Thomas McGuire.

  Mrs. Forbison, who was forty-nine, gray-haired, and getting just a little chubby, was a GS-15, the most senior grade in the Federal Civil Service. She had been one of Hall's executive assistants before being named deputy chief for administration of the Office of Organizational Analysis.

  Tom McGuire, a supervisory special agent of the Secret Service, had been transferred to OOA because he knew the law-enforcement community and because--although he was not told this--Hall knew that whatever Castillo was going to do, it would take him far from Washington, and the secretary thought that getting away from Washington would take McGuire's mind off the recent loss of his wife to cancer. He had been devastated.

  The search for the assassins of J. Winslow Masterson had taken Castillo from Buenos Aires to the U.S. embassy in Montevideo, Uruguay. There he had met David W. Yung, Jr., ostensibly one of more than a dozen embassy "legal attaches"--actually, FBI agents--investigating the money laundering that was taking place in that small republic and its surrounding countries in what the U.S. State Department types called the Southern Cone.

  About the time Yung had pointed Castillo toward a Uruguayan antiquities dealer--who was really one Dr. Jean-Paul Lorimer, an American employee of the United Nations and Elizabeth Masterson's brother and deeply involved in the Iraqi-UN oil-for-food scandal--Castillo had learned that Yung--who spoke five languages, none of them Oriental--had been assigned duties in Uruguay that neither the ambassador nor the other "legal attaches" knew about.

  The secretary of State and the U.S. attorney general had him investigating money laundering by prominent Americans of profits from the oil-for-food cesspool.

  After Yung's investigation helped unmask Lorimer, Castillo decided the best way to deal with the situation was to repatriate Lorimer to the United States--willingly or otherwise--where he could be interrogated by people like Tom McGuire.

  Castillo then launched an ad hoc helicopter assault on Lorimer's estancia, Shangri-La, to accomplish this. He used a helicopter borrowed from Aleksandr Pevsner, a Russian arms dealer living in secret in Argentina, and the few personnel immediately available to him, including Yung and a young--very young--U.S. Marine Corps corporal, Lester Bradley.

  Castillo had sent Bradley--the clerk-typist of the Marine Guard at the American embassy in Buenos Aires, and thus best tasked to drive a truck on some unexplained mission--to Uruguay, at the wheel of a GMC Yukon XL, smuggling in two forty-two-gallon barrels for the refueling of the helicopter.

  The raid, even though conducted by what Castillo painfully acknowledged were mostly amateurs, initially went well. But just as Castillo was about to tell Lorimer that he was being returned to the States--and right after he'd had Lorimer open his safe--a burst of small-arms fire announced that others were interested in Dr. Jean-Paul Lorimer. He was killed instantly.

  In the next five minutes, the estancia became littered with bodies, including one of the two Special Forces soldiers on Castillo's team. Sergeant Seymour Krantz had been garroted to death. The other six dead were all of the unknown men who had begun the attack. One had been shot by David W. Yung, Jr., who for the first time in his law-enforcement career had drawn his pistol, and two others by Corporal Lester Bradley, who took them out with head shots from a sniper's rifle at more than one hundred yards away.

  Bradley later modestly confessed he had been a "designated marksman" when the Marines had marched on Baghdad, and there had been no question at all in his mind that he could make the shots at the estancia when he laid the crosshairs of the telescopic sight on the heads of the bad guys about to fire
on Yung and Castillo.

  The assault team immediately departed Estancia Shangri-La by helicopter, leaving behind Dr. Lorimer's body but taking with them the body of Sergeant Krantz, the garroted Delta Force soldier; David W. Yung, Jr.; Corporal Lester W. Bradley, USMC--and some sixteen million dollars' worth of what amounted to bearer bonds that Yung had found in Lorimer's safe.

  Castillo had ordered Yung aboard the helicopter for two reasons:

  One, that Yung--even if he didn't know it--had more information about the oil-for-food business behind the Masterson assassination than Castillo had been able to draw from him, and, Two, that Castillo didn't think Yung would be able to keep his mouth shut during the interrogations that would begin the moment the black-clad bodies of whoever had attacked them were discovered at the estancia.

  And so far as Corporal Bradley was concerned, this was an even worse situation. If Bradley went back to his duties at the embassy without the GMC truck, his gunnery sergeant in Buenos Aires was naturally going to ask, "So where's the Yukon?"

  Bradley obviously could not be allowed to reply that a Special Forces major had torched the vehicle with a thermite grenade during a clandestine helicopter assault on an estate in Uruguay--which was precisely what Bradley would understand that he would have to reply when so asked.

  Marines learn at Parris Island that when a gunny asks them a question, they will respond with the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

  By the time they got to Washington, Yung had figured out a likely scenario to explain the money, and why they had been attacked at the estancia: Dr. Lorimer--by now identified as the bagman for oil-for-food bribes and payoffs--had stolen the sixteen million bucks from his as-yet-unidentified employers.

  These people had kidnapped Lorimer's sister--Mrs. J. Winslow Masterson--then murdered her husband before her eyes to impress upon her that they were quite serious about being willing to kill her and her children unless she told them where in hell they could find Lorimer and their sixteen million. But she hadn't told them because she didn't know.

  The bad guys had found Estancia Shangri-La by themselves.

  That they arrived there to reclaim their money and eliminate Lorimer ten minutes after Castillo's covert team had arrived to repatriate Lorimer was pure coincidence. Not to mention damn bad luck.

  "They didn't expect to find anything at the estancia, Mr. President, but Dr. Lorimer and the sixteen million dollars in bearer bonds," Castillo had explained the next day in the presidential apartment in the White House.

  "Surprise, surprise, huh?" the President replied. "You have no idea who these people were, Charley?"

  "I don't think they were South American bandits, Mr. President. But aside from that--"

  "Find out who they are, Major," the President interrupted, "and render them harmless."

  Castillo noted that he'd been formally addressed. And, as such, so ordered.

  "Yes, sir."

  "Anything else, Charley?"

  "Mr. President, what do we do with the money?"

  "Sixteen million, right? Where is it? Are you sure you can cash those bearer bonds?"

  "Sir, to make sure we could retain control of money, we already have. It's now in the Riggs Bank."

  "I'm not going to get involved with dirty money," the President said. "You understand that, of course?"

  "Yes, of course, Mr. President."

  "But on the subject of money, and apropos of nothing else, Charley . . ."

  "Yes, sir?"

  "I funded OOA with two million from my discretionary funds. That's really not very much money, and I have a good idea of how expensive your operations are. Sooner or later, you're going to have to come to me for more money, and right now I just don't see how it will be available. It's something to keep in mind."

  "Sir, are you suggesting--?"

  "Major, I have no idea what you're talking about. What sixteen million?"

  Thus was established the Lorimer Charitable & Benevolent Fund, with an initial donation the next day of nearly sixteen million dollars from an anonymous well-wisher.

  On the same day, David W. Yung, Jr., and Corporal Lester Bradley were placed on indefinite temporary duty with the OOA.

  At the time, there was only one true volunteer in the ranks of the OOA, essentially because very few people had even heard of it. Sergeant Major John K. "Jack" Davidson had learned of OOA from Corporal Bradley, whom Castillo, perhaps unwisely, had sent to Camp Mackall--the Special Forces/Delta Force training base near Fort Bragg, North Carolina--"for training" but actually to get him out of sight--and out of truthfully answering questions from his gunny and any other superior--short-term until Castillo could figure out what to do with him long-term.

  Davidson's function at Mackall was to evaluate students to see if they were psychologically and physically made up to justify their expensive training to become special operators. He had taken one look at nineteen-year-old Corporal Bradley--who stood five-four and weighed one thirty-two--then decided that someone with a sick sense of humor had sent the boy to Mackall as a joke.

  Davidson put Bradley to work pushing the keys on a computer.

  The next day, Lieutenant General Bruce J. McNab, commanding general of the John F. Kennedy Center for Special Warfare, disabused Davidson of this notion that whatever the kid was, he was no warrior.

  The general had choppered out to Mackall to take Corporal Bradley to Sergeant Krantz's burial at Arlington National Cemetery. Davidson had no Need to Know, of course, but he and General McNab had been around several blocks together, and so the general told him what had happened to Krantz on Charley Castillo's ad hoc assault, and how, had it not been for Corporal Bradley's offhand hundred-yard head shots, Charley would be awaiting his own interment services at Arlington alongside Krantz.

  Davidson, as he reminded General McNab, also had been around the block several times with Charley Castillo. He further reminded General McNab that the general knew as well as he did that while Charley was a splendid officer, he tended sometimes to do things that he would not do if he had a sober, experienced advisor, such as Davidson, at his side to counsel him.

  General McNab, who first met Castillo when Castillo had been a second lieutenant, and who thus had been around the block with him on many occasions, considered this and agreed.

  Sergeant Major Davidson was sent to OOA.

  It was Davidson who had recruited Dianne and Harold Sanders to run the OOA safe house on West Boulevard Drive. Master Sergeant Harold Sanders, who had been around the block several times with both Jack Davidson and Charley Castillo, had been unhappy with his role after he had been medically retired. Sanders said that he had become a camp follower, because CWO3 Dianne Sanders had remained on active service. But recognizing the situation, she then had retired, too.

  Living the retired life in Fayetteville, North Carolina, however, then caused the both of them to be bored--almost literally--out of their minds.

  They had jumped at the chance to work again with Charley and Jack, even if it only would be guarding the mouth of the cave. Still, both suspected that Charley would sooner or later require the services of a cryptographic analyst--and Dianne, recognized as one of the best code-breakers around, would be there.

  Edgar Delchamps had been the CIA station chief in Paris, France, when Castillo, running down Dr. Lorimer's various connections, first met him. Men with thirty years in the Clandestine Services of the agency tended to regard thirty-six-year-old Army officers with something less than awe, and such had been the case when Delchamps laid eyes on then-Major C. G. Castillo.

  He had told Castillo that he was the station chief in Paris as the result of an accommodation with his superiors in Langley. They didn't want him to retire because his doing so would leave him free to more or less run at the mouth concerning a number of failed operations that the agency devoutly wished would never again be mentioned. Langley reasoned that if Delchamps was stationed in Paris--the only assignment he was willing to accept--he couldn't
do much harm. Paris wasn't really important in the world of intelligence.

  "Despite my name, I'm a Francophobe, Ace," Delchamps had told Castillo. "My files say all sorts of unkind things about the Frogs. They are sent to Langley, where, of course, they are promptly shredded--unread--by a platoon of Francophiles humming 'The Last Time I Saw Paris.'"

  Delchamps made it perfectly clear that he had no desire whatever to become in any way associated with OOA. When, a month or so later, Castillo decided he had to have him whether or not he liked it, and Delchamps received orders to immediately report for indefinite temporary duty with OOA, he first had stopped by Langley to fill out his request for retirement, effective immediately.

  He was dissuaded from going through with his retirement when Castillo told him he was going after the oil-for-food people with a presidential carte blanche to do what he thought had to be done, and that the carte blanche specifically ordered the Director of Central Intelligence to grant access to OOA to whatever intelligence--raw, in analysis, or confirmed--the CIA had in its possession. Castillo said he thought Edgar Delchamps was just the man to root around in Langley's basement. It was an offer Delchamps could not refuse.

  And there was one man in the kitchen who was neither an American nor a member of OOA. Sandor Tor was the chief of security for the Budapester Tages Zeitung, of which Eric Kocian was the managing director and editor in chief. Tor didn't feel uncomfortable among the special operators and senior law-enforcement officers, as might be expected. Before he had gone to work for the newspaper, he had been an inspector on the Budapest police force and, before that, in his youth, a sergeant in the French Foreign Legion.