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  Castillo chuckled. "Untaxed brandy?"

  "Fernando told me you had bought your grandmother a case of Argentine brandy at twelve bucks a bottle. I figured if it was good enough for your grandmother, it would be a suitable expression of my affection for my wife."

  "It's really good brandy," Castillo said. "And, best of all, it's not French."

  "It's a sad world, Charley, where boycotting the products of those who have screwed you interferes with your drinking habits, but that's the way it is."

  Castillo chuckled.

  "Okay, let's get this show on the road. While I call D'Allessando, somebody call the doorman and have him get us a couple of cabs."

  "There's a big Yukon stationed at the National Geographic exit," Miller said. "And since I'm not going anywhere, you can use that."

  "Great," Castillo said.

  "Sir, what about me?" Corporal Lester Bradley asked. Castillo looked at him a long moment before replying. "You better come with me, Bradley," he said, finally. "Sir, may I ask what I'm going to be doing?"

  "You can ask, but I can't tell you because I haven't figured that out yet." [THREE] The Belle Vista Casino and Resort U.S. Highway 90 ("The Magic Mile") Biloxi, Mississippi 0405 2 August 2005 Inside the resort, as C. G. Castillo and Lester Bradley, in civilian clothing, approached the main entrance of the casino, a burly "host" came out from behind a small stand-up desk and not very politely asked Bradley how old he was and then, when told, shook his head and said he couldn't go in.

  "Wait right here, Bradley," Castillo ordered. "I'll be right out."

  "Yes, sir."

  Castillo entered the casino and walked past rows of slot machines, at which maybe a quarter of them sat gamblers, most of them middle-aged and elderly women. Beyond the slot machines was an arch with a flashing GAMING sign on it. Castillo walked under it and found himself in a huge area filled with tables for the playing of blackjack, craps, and roulette.

  Perhaps a third of them were in use. He saw Vic D'Allessando's totally bald head at one of the blackjack tables deep in the room. He walked toward the table and stopped six feet from it.

  There was a sign on the table indicating the minimum bet was ten dollars. There were five stacks of chips in front of D'Allessando. He tapped them steadily with the fingers of his left hand as he watched the dealer deal.

  Even if they were all ten-dollar chips-and they're obviously not, since each stack is a different color, which means they're worth even more-Vic is into this game big-time.

  He watched a little longer, saw that Vic was playing two cards at a time, and then walked up behind him. D'Allessando sensed his presence and turned to see who was behind him. He gave no sign of recognition.

  The dealer busted and passed out chips to both of the cards D'Allessando was playing.

  "That'll do it," D'Allessando said, then slid a tip of two chips to the dealer and started to gather up the remainder of his chips. The dealer slid a rack to him.

  "Thanks," D'Allessando said and put the chips in the rack.

  "Oh, goody," Castillo said. "I brought you luck."

  D'Allessando snorted. He arranged the chips in the rack and stood up. He was a short man whose barrel chest and upper arms strained his shirt.

  "Cashier's over there," D'Allessando said, indicating the direction with a nod of his head.

  On his retirement from twenty-four years of service-twenty-two of it in Special Forces-CWO5 Victor D'Allessando had gone to work for the Special Operations Command as a Department of the Army civilian. Theoretically, he was a technical advisor to the commanding general of the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg. What he actually did for the Special Operations Command was classified.

  At the cashier's window, a peroxide blonde in her fifties counted the chips, then asked if D'Allessando wanted his winnings as a check.

  "Cash will do nicely, thank you," D'Allessando said.

  The peroxide blonde began to lay crisp new one-hundred-dollar bills in stacks, ten bills to a stack. There were four stacks. Then she started a fifth stack with fifties, twenties, a ten, and, finally, a five.

  "Jesus Christ, Vic!" Castillo said. "You had a good night."

  D'Allessando grunted again, stuffed the money in the inside pocket of his lemon-colored sports coat, and started for the door. Castillo followed him.

  D'Allessando made a Give it to me gesture to the host, who had refused to let Bradley into the casino. The host unlocked a small drawer in the stand-up desk and tried to discreetly hand D'Allessando a Colt General Officers model.45 ACP semiautomatic pistol. The discretion failed. D'Allessando hoisted the skirt of his sports coat and slipped the pistol into a skeleton holster over his right hip pocket.

  "They won't let you carry a weapon in there," D'Allessando said. "I guess losers have been known to pop the dealers."

  Castillo chuckled. The host was not amused.

  "Elevator's over there," D'Allessando said, again nodding to show the direction.

  "I know."

  "Oh, yeah. Masterson said you'd been here."

  "You get to talk to him?" Castillo asked as they walked and Bradley followed.

  "He'll be here at eight for breakfast."

  When they reached the bank of elevators, D'Allessando took a plastic card key from his jacket pocket and swiped it through a reader. The elevator door opened. D'Allessando waved Castillo into it. Bradley started to get on.

  "Sorry, my friend," D'Allessando said, "this elevator is reserved for big-time losers."

  "He's with me," Castillo said.

  D'Allessando shrugged and stepped out of the way.

  When the door closed, Castillo said, "Bradley, this is Mr. D'Allessando. Vic, this is Corporal Lester Bradley. He's a Marine."

  "You're in bad company, kid," D'Allessando said. "Watch yourself."

  "He's a friend of mine, Vic."

  "Even worse."

  The elevator stopped and D'Allessando swiped the plastic key again. The door opened.

  "Welcome to Penthouse C," D'Allessando said.

  "Wow!" Bradley exclaimed.

  They were in an elegantly furnished suite of rooms. Two walls of the main room were plate glass, offering a view of what was now an intermittent stream of red lights going west on U.S. 90, white lights going east. In the daylight, the view would be of the sugar white sand beaches and emerald salt water of the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

  "My sentiments exactly, Bradley," Castillo said.

  "You want a drink, Charley?" D'Allessando asked.

  "At four o'clock in the morning?"

  "It would not be your first drink at four in the morning," D'Allessando said.

  "True," Castillo said. "What the hell, why not? There's wine?"

  "There's a whole bin full of it behind the bar," D'Allessando said.

  "You want something to drink, Bradley?" Castillo asked.

  "I'm a little hungry, sir," Bradley said.

  "So'm I," Castillo said. "There's round-the-clock room service, right, Vic?"

  "Indeed."

  Castillo picked up the telephone and punched a button on the base.

  "What kind of steak can I have at this unholy hour?" he said into the phone.

  He was told.

  "New York strip sounds fine."

  Castillo looked at Bradley, who smiled and nodded, and then at D'Allessando, who said, "Why not? I can think of it as breakfast. Get mine with eggs."

  "Three New York strips, medium rare. With fried eggs. Either home fries or French fries. And whatever else seems appropriate for two starving men and an old fat Italian who really shouldn't be eating at all."

  D'Allessando gave him the finger as he hung up the phone.

  "So tell me, Marine," D'Allessando said to Bradley, "how did this evil man worm his way into your life?"

  "He saved my life, Vic," Castillo said.

  D'Allessando looked at Bradley.

  "Not to worry," he said. "You're a young man. In time, you'll be forgiven."

  Casti
llo shook his head.

  "You going to have a drink before or after you tell me what's going on, Charley?"

  "Yes," Castillo said and went behind the bar in search of wine.

  "If you promise not to tell your mother, Marine, you may also have a little taste," D'Allessando said.

  "Leave him alone, Vic," Castillo said. "I wasn't kidding when I said he's a friend of mine."

  "You also said he saved your life," D'Allessando said.

  "He did."

  "And how-not to get into 'Why in the name of all the saints?'-did he do that?"

  "He took out two bad guys who were shooting submachine guns at me. With two headshots."

  "I have this very odd feeling that you're not pulling my chain," D'Allessando said. "Forgive me, son, if I say you do not look much like the ferocious jarhead of fame and legend."

  "Says the Special Operations poster boy," Castillo said.

  "You always have had a cruel streak in you, Carlos," D'Allessando lisped as he put his hand on his hip.

  Bradley chuckled.

  "I have an idea, Charley," D'Allessando said. "Take it from the top."

  Castillo held up a wineglass to Bradley.

  "No, thank you, sir. Is there any beer?"

  "Half a dozen kinds. Come over here and help yourself."

  "And while you're doing that, Major Castillo is going to take it from the top."

  "Okay," Castillo said. "Vic, this is Top Secret Presidential."

  "Okay," D'Allessando said, now very seriously.

  "You remember I told you here that Masterson had been whacked to make the point to his wife that these bastards were willing to kill to get to her brother?"

  D'Allessando nodded. "The UN guy in Paris."

  Castillo nodded. "What I didn't tell you is that there is a Presidential Finding, in which an organization called the Office of Organizational Analysis is founded-"

  "C and c?" D'Allessando interrupted.

  Castillo nodded.

  "Covert and clandestine," he went on, "and charged with, quote, rendering harmless, end quote, those responsible for whacking Masterson, Sergeant Markham, kidnapping Mr. Masterson, and wounding Special Agent Schneider."

  "I figured there was something like that in the woodpile," D'Allessando said. "Who's running that?"

  "I am."

  D'Allessando considered that and nodded, then asked, "And you found out who these people are, huh?"

  "I don't have a clue who they are."

  "You're losing me, Charley."

  "I figured the best way to find these people was to find Lorimer first. So we went looking for him. We found him in Uruguay."

  "Uruguay?"

  "Uruguay," Castillo confirmed. "We also found out that Mr. Lorimer was the bagman-the bagman-for the guys who got rich on the Iraqi oil-for-food scam. He knew who got how much, and what for."

  "And they wanted to silence him," D'Allessando said. "But what's with Uruguay?"

  "Uruguay and Argentina are now the safe havens of choice for ill-gotten gains."

  "I knew Argentina and Paraguay, but this is the first I've heard about Uruguay."

  "I really don't know what I'm talking about here, Vic. I always heard Argentina and Paraguay, too. But Uruguay is where we found Lorimer. He had a new identity-Jean-Paul Bertrand-a Lebanese passport, a Uruguayan residence permit, and an estancia. Everybody thought he was in the antiquities business."

  "Clever," D'Allessando said.

  "He also ripped off nearly sixteen million from these people."

  "You never said who these people are."

  "I don't have a fucking clue, Vic," Castillo said. "Anyway, once we found Lorimer I staged an operation to repatriate him."

  "McNab sent people down there? I didn't hear anything about that. Who'd he send?"

  "He didn't send anybody. I didn't have time to wait for anybody from the stockade. I went with what I had."

  "Which was?"

  "Kranz and Kensington were already down there, as communicators. So I used them. Plus two Secret Service guys, a DEA agent, an FBI agent, and Bradley."

  D'Allessando pointed at Bradley, who was now sucking at the neck of a Coors beer bottle, and raised his eyebrows.

  "Yeah. That Bradley," Castillo said and then went on: "The CIA station chiefs in Buenos Aires helped and I had an Argentine-ex-SIDE-with me. I thought it was, do it right then or don't do it all. If I could find Lorimer, so could the bad guys."

  "Yeah. So what were you going to do with Lorimer when you found him?"

  "Get him to the States."

  "How?"

  "I had the Lear-you saw it here?"

  "You took that to South America?"

  "By way of Europe," Castillo said.

  "Across the Atlantic twice?" D'Allessando asked, incredulously.

  "That was interesting," Castillo said. "But Jake Torine said we could do it and we did. I borrowed a JetRanger in Uruguay…"

  "The last time you 'borrowed' a helicopter, you nearly went to Leavenworth," D'Allessando said. "Is Interpol looking for you, Charley?"

  "No. I really borrowed this one from a friend."

  "And he will keep his mouth shut when people start asking him questions?"

  "It's in his interest to keep his mouth shut."

  D'Allessando shrugged, suggesting he hoped this would be the case but didn't think so.

  "The plan was to snatch Lorimer at his estancia, chopper him, nap of the earth, to Buenos Aires, put him on the Lear, and bring him to the States. The ex-SIDE guy had arranged for us get the Lear out of Argentina without questions being asked."

  "But something went wrong, right? The best-laid plans of mice and special operators, etcetera?"

  "We had just gotten him to open his safe when somebody stuck a Madsen through the window and let loose. Lorimer took two hits to the head and the SIDE guy took one in the arm. And then Bradley took the shooter out with a head shot from Kranz's Remington and then took out the shooter's pal. Both head shots. He saved my ass, Vic."

  D'Allessando looked at Bradley.

  "Consider all my kind thoughts about your touching innocence withdrawn," he said.

  "Just doing my job, sir," Corporal Bradley said.

  D'Allessando's eyebrow rose but he didn't say anything.

  "And when Bradley was popping these people with Seymour's rifle, where was Seymour?"

  "Getting himself garroted," Castillo said, softly.

  "No shit? How the hell did that happen? Kranz was no amateur."

  "Neither, obviously, were the bad guys. It was a stainless steel garrote, with handles."

  "Well, who the hell were they?"

  "I don't know, Vic. There ensued a brief exchange of small-arms fire, during which three more of the bad guys met their fate. Kensington found the last of them, number six, lying on the ground near Kranz. Seymour had gotten a knife into him before going down."

  "And Kensington finished him off?"

  Castillo nodded.

  "Understandable-those two went way back together-but inexcusable. He should have remembered that dead people don't talk much."

  "I mentioned that to him," Castillo said.

  "So you hauled your ass out of wherever you were?"

  "After Kensington took a 9mm bullet out of the ex-SIDE guy."

  "And what was in the a safe?"

  "An address book and withdrawal slips for the money Lorimer had squirreled away in Uruguayan banks."

  "You got the money? What did you say, sixteen million?"

  "I think we should have it first thing in the morning."

  "And what's in the address book?"

  "It's in code. It'll be at Fort Meade at eight this morning. When they do their thing, I'll be able to have a good look. Anyway, we got the hell out of there and the hell out of South America."

  "Seymour? You didn't leave him there?"

  "We left Lorimer and the six bad guys there-no identification on any of them-and dropped Kranz off at MacDill on the way to Washington."
/>
  "And then you came here. Why?"

  "I wanted your opinion, Vic."

  "Well, that's a first."

  "Mr. Masterson told me the bad guys wanted Lorimer and that was why they executed Masterson, to make the point they were willing to kill to find him. Well, he's been found. The bad guys are going to hear that he's dead. Does that remove the threat from the Masterson family?"

  "Unless the bad guys really want their sixteen million back."

  "We don't know that it's the bad guys' sixteen million. Or that they know we have it. They may have been after Lorimer just to shut him up…"

  "Or both," D'Allessando said. "Whack him and get their money back."

  "Or both," Castillo admitted. "Anything happen here to suggest they're watching her?"

  "Not a thing. We have taps on all the phones, including the cellulars. Nothing. And no tourists at the plantation, either."

  "I'd like to tell her I think the threat is gone."

  "And I'd like to take my guys back to the stockade," D'Allessando said. "They're getting a little antsy. I didn't tell them why they're here, and they're starting to think of themselves as babysitters. Thank God the widow-and Masterson's father-are such good people."

  What had once been the military prison-the stockade-at Fort Bragg now held the barracks and headquarters of Delta Force, the elite, immediate-response Special Forces unit. The same barbed wire that had kept prisoners in now kept people without the proper clearances out.

  "How're you doing with people from China Post?"

  Many former Special Forces soldiers, Marine Force Recon, Navy SEALs, Air Commandos, and other warriors of this ilk belong to China Post 1 in exile (from Shanghai) of the American Legion. Those wishing to employ this sort of people in a civilian capacity often have luck finding just what they want at "China Post."

  "I guess you know General McNab called them?"

  Castillo nodded. "He told me he was going to."

  "That helped. I've got eight guys, good guys-I guess they're getting a little tired of commuting to Iraq and Afghanistan-lined up. They're going to be expensive, but Masterson said that wasn't a problem."

  "It's not. How soon can they be up and running?"

  "Forty-eight hours, tops, and they'll be on the job."

  "I want to run this whole thing past Masterson-and the widow-but I don't think they'll object. How about first thing in the morning getting that going?"