The Shooters Read online

  “His name is White,” Paul Sieno said. “Robert J. White.”

  Delchamps looked thoughtful a moment, then shook his head.

  Susanna said: “He can’t understand why someone like himself, who has kissed all the appropriate buttocks in Langley for years, gets assigned to Asunción when troublemakers like Paul and Alex and me got to go to Buenos Aires.”

  “What about the military attaché?” Castillo asked.

  “He and the station chief are great pals,” Santini said. “I don’t think talking to them would work, Charley.”

  “And I don’t want to go to the ambassador there, or involve Silvio any more than I already have,” Castillo said, almost thoughtfully. “If this thing blows up in our faces, the less he knows the better.”

  Juan Manuel Silvio was the United States Ambassador to Argentina. He had put his career at risk to help Castillo to carry out the Presidential Finding.

  “So?” Delchamps asked.

  “So, I guess I have to go to the other ambassador.”

  The other ambassador was the Honorable Charles W. Montvale, the former deputy secretary of State, former secretary of the Treasury, and former ambassador to the European Union. And now the director of National Intelligence.

  Castillo shook his head and said, “I now know how Lee felt at Appomattox Court House when he said, ‘I would rather face a thousand deaths, but now I must go and treat with General Grant.’”

  “Is he really that bad, Charley?” Susanna asked.

  “Right now, Susie, I feel like a small white mouse about to be put into the cobra’s cage,” Castillo said.

  He pushed himself away from the wall, walked to the bed, and gestured to Solez to give up his seat.

  “You want some privacy, Ace?” Delchamps said.

  “No. I want everybody to hear this,” Castillo said, sat down on the bed, and punched the SPEAKER PHONE button on what looked like an ordinary telephone.

  “Corporal Bradley speaking, sir,” Lester’s voice came over the speaker.

  “Is the Local Secure LED lit, Lester?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Get Major Miller on here, secure.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  Ten seconds later, a male voice came very clearly over the speaker.

  “And how are things down in Buenos Aires on this miserable, blistering, humid afternoon in our beloved nation’s capital?”

  “Verify secure,” Bradley’s voice piped.

  “Ah, the pride of the Marine Corps! The little green light is glowing brightly, Lester.”

  “Colonel, the line is secure. I believe Major Miller is the party answering.”

  “Thank you, Bradley,” Castillo said. “Hey, Dick!”

  “A sus órdenes, mi coronel,” Miller said.

  “Get Agnes on an extension, and then patch me through secure to the White House.”

  “I don’t like the tone of your voice,” Miller said, seriously. “Hold one, Charley.”

  Twenty seconds later, a female voice announced, “White House.”

  “You on, Agnes?” Castillo asked.

  “Uh-huh,” Mrs. Agnes Forbison, the deputy chief for administration of the Office of Organizational Analysis, said.

  “You and Dick stay on the line,” Castillo said. “Don’t record or take notes, but pay attention.”

  “Why do I think I know what you’re going to say next?” Agnes Forbison asked.

  “White House,” the female operator repeated.

  “You’re prescient, Agnes,” Castillo said, and then, “Operator, this is Colonel Castillo. Will you get me Ambassador Montvale on a secure line, please?”

  “Hold one, Colonel. It may take a moment. He’s in the mountains with the boss.”

  Oh, shit!

  Ten seconds later, a male voice came on.

  “Ambassador Montvale’s line.”

  “Colonel Castillo for Ambassador Montvale,” the White House operator said. “The line is secure.”

  “The ambassador is with the President. I’m not sure he can be disturbed.”

  “Is that Mr. Ellsworth?” Castillo asked.

  Truman C. Ellsworth had risen high in government service as Ambassador Montvale’s trusted deputy. He was not an admirer of Lieutenant Colonel Castillo, whom he viewed as a threat to Montvale.

  “Good afternoon, Colonel,” Ellsworth said in his somewhat nasal voice.

  “I have to speak to the ambassador. Your call, Mr. Ellsworth, as to if he can be interrupted when he’s with the President.”

  There was no reply, but in five seconds another male voice, one somewhat impatient, came over the speakers.

  “Yes?”

  Ellsworth, you sonofabitch!

  “This is Castillo, Mr. President. Sorry to bother you, sir. I was trying to get the ambassador.”

  “My line rang,” the President said, and then corrected himself. “Flashed. How are you, Charley?”

  “Very well, thank you, sir.”

  “You’re in Argentina, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What kind of television do you get down there?”

  “We’ve been watching Fox and Deutsche Welle, Mr. President.”

  “So you know what’s going on in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We’re watching. Hard to believe, isn’t it?”

  Un-fucking-believable, sir.

  “Yes, Mr. President, it is.”

  “I want to see you as soon as you get back up here, Charley. When is that going to be?”

  “Probably late tomorrow, sir.”

  “Okay. I’ll see you then. Unless I’m down there overseeing this disaster. You find me, either way.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Charles,” Castillo heard the President say, “it’s Charley for you.”

  Ambassador Montvale came on the line a moment later.

  “Good to hear from you, Colonel,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  “Buy Mr. Ellsworth a new pair of glasses.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I can think of no reason but fuzzy eyesight for his pushing the President’s button when he knew I wanted to talk to you, can you?”

  “I’m sure that it was inadvertent.”

  “Oh, me too,” Castillo said, sarcastically. “I can’t imagine him doing it on purpose, hoping it would cause the President to be annoyed with me. It just has to be his glasses.”

  “What can I do for you, Charley?” Montvale asked, his annoyance clear in his voice.

  “There’s a risk of compromise down here that I want to stop before it goes any further.”

  “At this late date?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What needs to be done?”

  “Two things. First, please call the station chief in Paraguay and tell him that Alex Darby is coming to see him and will speak with your authority.”

  “My authority about what?”

  “To tell his people to stop guessing between them what happened in Uruguay and here, and stop talking about it, period.”

  “Should I call the ambassador there?”

  “Let’s leave him out of it, if we can.”

  “Your call. But forewarned is forearmed, as you know.”

  “And then call Fort Meade and have the DIA immediately transfer First Lieutenant Edmund Lorimer, an assistant military attaché at the embassy in Asunción, to OOA.”

  “What’s that about?”

  “He was clever enough to learn my name and find the safe house. I don’t want to leave him here.”

  “A troublemaker, in other words?”

  “Mr. Ambassador, he’s done nothing but what I would have done in his shoes.”

  “Why don’t I find that comforting, do you suppose?”

  Castillo ignored the response.

  “We’re shutting down here,” Castillo went on, “just to be safe. We’re just about finished here anyway. We ought to be in Washington sometime late to
morrow. I’m going to bring Lorimer with us.”

  “Come see me when you get here.”

  “Yes, sir. Of course.”

  “I’ll get right on this.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Castillo waited until the White House operator, detecting that the telephone in Camp David had been hung up, asked, “Are you through, Colonel?”

  “Break it down, please, thank you,” Castillo said, and then, after a moment, “You heard that, Agnes? Dick?”

  “Why do I think Mr. Ellsworth doesn’t like you?” Agnes asked.

  “With a little bit of luck, I can stop this before it gets any worse,” Castillo said. “But I wanted you to have a heads-up if it goes wrong. I’ll give you a call when we’re a couple hours out of Baltimore. We’re going to need three Yukons.”

  “They’ll be there,” Agnes said.

  “Where do we live now, Dick?”

  “I was about to call you about that,” Miller said. “You know West Boulevard Drive in Alexandria?”

  “Maybe. I think so.”

  “Agnes knows a real estate guy, and he put her onto a place at 7200 West Boulevard Drive. An old couple lived there, she died, and then a month later, three months ago, he did. Their kids didn’t want it, and they want the money quick. They went through it and took out the valuable stuff, but what’s left is nice.”

  “And the house?”

  “You’ll like everything about it but the price, boss,” Agnes said.

  “Which is how much? And why will I like it?”

  “Right now you are renting it, furnished, for ten thousand a month, with an option to buy at $2,950,000 with the furniture, and I don’t really know how much without.”

  “Done deal?”

  “You told Dick to get you out of the Monica Lewinsky Motel right now, and yesterday would be better. Yeah, it’s a done deal. I gave them a check two hours ago,” Agnes said.

  “On my account, I hope? I don’t want the Lorimer Benevolent & Charitable Trust involved in this.”

  “You’re paying for it,” Agnes said. “But on that subject, we just got confirmation of that substantial deposit to the trust we’ve been expecting.”

  “Well, presuming we can keep that a secret, that’s good news. Can I go to this place straight from the airport? And can I stash Lieutenant Lorimer there until I figure out what to do with him?”

  “You can go there from the airport,” Agnes said. “But there’s no sheets or towels, food, etcetera. And yes, you can take somebody there. Six bedrooms, six baths. And it’s off the road; nobody can look into the windows from the street. I told them to get a radio in there tomorrow, but it will probably be a couple of days before you have a secure White House telephone.”

  “Dick, can you get our stuff out of the Mayflower and over there before I get there? And stop by Sam’s Club or someplace and buy sheets, etcetera, and food? Charge that to the Trust.”

  “Yes, sir, Colonel, sir. Dare I to presume that was an invitation to share your new quarters?”

  “Yeah, but no guests of the opposite sex above the first floor,” Castillo said. “We are going to be paragons of virtue in our new home.”

  Agnes laughed.

  “That I’ll have to see,” she said.

  Castillo had a new thought: “Who’s going to take care of this place?”

  “That’s another problem I’m working on,” Agnes said. “You’re going to need a housekeeper and a yardman. At least. Dick said maybe we could put an ad in the Army Times and see if we could find a retired sergeant and his wife. Maybe they’d have security clearances.”

  “What would I do without you, Agnes?”

  “I shudder to consider the possibility,” she said.

  “Unless you’ve got something else, we’ll see you tomorrow,” Castillo said.

  “Can’t think of anything that won’t wait,” she said.

  When it became evident that Miller wasn’t going to say anything, Castillo ordered, “Break it down, Lester.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  Castillo hung up the phone.

  “Okay,” he said, “in the immortal words of General George S. Patton, let’s saddle up and get this show on the road.”

  “I don’t think Patton said that, Ace,” Edgar Delchamps said.

  “If he didn’t, he should have,” Castillo said.

  “What about the steaks?” Susanna Sieno said.

  “Fire should be ready about now,” Paul Sieno added.

  Castillo considered that a moment, then said, “Good idea, Susanna. ‘An Army marches on its stomach.’ I don’t know if Patton said that or not. And I don’t care—I’m hungry. Let’s eat.”

  II

  [ONE]

  29.88 Degrees North Latitude

  86.39 Degrees West Longitude

  Over the Gulf of Mexico

  1750 1 September 2005

  They had gone wheels-up at Jorge Newbery Airport in Buenos Aires a few minutes after six that morning. They’d flown diagonally across South America to Quito, Ecuador, where they had taken on fuel and had lunch. From Quito, they’d flown north, passing over Panama into the Gulf of Mexico, skirted around the western tip of Cuba, and then flown almost straight north to the Panhandle of Florida.

  The flight plan they filed gave Hurlburt Field, near Destin, Florida, as their destination. Hurlburt was headquarters of the Air Force Special Operations Command. Far fewer questions, Jake Torine had suggested, would be asked there than anywhere else, and even if questions were asked, Hurlburt had instant communication with the Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, where they could be quickly—and, as important, quietly—answered.

  It now looked as if that logical plan wasn’t going to work.

  “Aircraft calling Hurlburt Approach Control, this is Eglin Approach.”

  “Uh-oh,” Castillo said, and then triggering his mike, replied, “Eglin Approach Control, Gulfstream Three Seven Nine.”

  “Gulfstream Three Seven Nine, be advised that Hurlburt Field is closed to all traffic. Acknowledge.”

  Jake Torine made an impatient gesture for Castillo to take control of the airplane.

  “Eglin, Three Seven Nine, this aircraft is in the service of the United States government. Colonel Jacob Torine, USAF, is pilot in command. We wish to land at Hurlburt.”

  “Sir, Katrina knocked Hurlburt out.”

  Castillo and Torine exchanged What the hell? glances.

  “Okay,” Torine replied. “Turning on transponder at this time. We are approximately a hundred miles south of your station. Let me know when you have us.”

  Fifteen seconds later, Eglin Approach Control reported, “Three Seven Nine, I have you at flight level 30, 450 knots, approximately nine five miles south.”

  “Okay, Eglin Approach. Give me approach and landing, please.”

  “Three Seven Nine, be advised that Eglin is closed to all but emergency traffic.”

  “Son, did you hear what I said about this aircraft being in government service?”

  “Yes, sir. Do you wish to declare an emergency at this time?”

  Castillo triggered his microphone.

  “Eglin,” he said, “is Cairns Army Airfield open?”

  “Three Seven Nine, I believe Cairns is open, but be advised it is closed to civilian traffic.”

  “Thank you, Eglin,” Castillo said. “Three Seven Nine is not, repeat not, declaring an emergency at this time.”

  He turned to Torine.

  “Jake, if you’ll take it and steer about thirty-five degrees, I’ll see if I can find the approach charts to Cairns.”

  “I gather, first officer, that you have been to this place before?”

  “Once or twice, pilot in command, sir,” Castillo said, as he began rummaging through his Jeppesen case.

  THIRTEEN YEARS EARLIER

  [-I-]

  Base Operations

  Cairns Army Airfield

  The Army Aviation Center

  Fort
Rucker, Alabama 1145 2 February 1992

  Lieutenant Colonel F. Mason Edmonds, Aviation—a starting-to-get-a-little-chubby thirty-nine-year-old who sported a bushy mustache—stood behind one of the double plateglass doors of Base Operations, looking out at the airfield.

  On the wall behind him was an oil portrait of Major General Bogardus S. Cairns, for whom the airfield was named. General Cairns, a West Pointer and at the time the commanding general of Fort Rucker, had crashed to his death in an H-13 Sioux helicopter on 9 December 1958. There was an unpleasant story that the crash had been due to General Cairns’s failure to turn on his aircraft’s pitot heat.

  True or not, Colonel Edmonds did not like the story. It tended to detract from the positive image of Army Aviation, and Colonel Edmonds considered himself to be probably the most important guardian of that image. He was the information officer of the Army Aviation Center and Fort Rucker, Alabama.

  A year before, the fact that Colonel Edmonds had been granted a bachelor of fine arts degree in journalism by Temple University had come to light when personnel officers in the Pentagon were reviewing his records to see what could be done with him now that some sort of unpronounceable inner-ear malady had caused him to fail his annual flight physical examination and he could no longer be assigned to flight duty.

  Finding a round peg for the round hole had pleased both the personnel officers and Colonel Edmonds. He had been afraid, now that he was grounded, that he would be assigned to some maintenance billet, or some supply billet, or wind up in some other nothing assignment, like dependent housing officer.

  Being the information officer for the Army Aviation Center and Fort Rucker was a horse of an entirely different hue. He had always believed he had a flair for journalism and the written word, and had often wondered if he had made the right decision in staying in the Army after his compulsory-after-ROTC five-year initial tour. He could have gotten out and tried his hand as a journalist. Or perhaps even as a novelist.

  His experience since he’d become the IO had confirmed his opinion of his ability as a journalist. Surprising most his staff—made up of half civilian, half military—instead of just sitting behind his desk supervising things and reviewing press releases to make sure they reflected well on Army Aviation, he had gotten right down to his new profession and gotten his hands dirty.