The Hunters Read online

  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.”

  Castillo 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?”

  “This is first thing in the morning.”

  Castillo looked at his watch. “Half past four, which means it’s half past ten in Germany. Which brings me to this.”

  He walked to the bar, picked up a telephone, and punched in a long series of numbers from memory.

  [FOUR]

  Executive Offices

  Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H.

  Fulda, Hesse, Germany

  1029 2 August 2005

  Frau Gertrud Schröder, a stocky sixty-year-old who wore her blond hair in a bun, put her head in the office door of Otto Görner, the managing director of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H. She had on a wireless headset.

  “Karlchen is favoring you with a call,” she announced, her hand covering the microphone.

  “How kind of him,” Görner replied. He was a well-tailored sixty-year-old Hessian whose bulk and red cheeks made him look like a postcard Bavarian. As he reached for one of the telephones on his desk, he added, “Well, at least he’s alive.”

  Frau Schröder walked to the desk and Görner waved her into a chair opposite him.

  “And how are things in South America?” Görner said into the handset.

  “I have no idea, I’m in Mississippi. And I’m fine. Thank you for asking.”

  “May I ask what you’re doing in Mississippi?”

  “I’m in Penthouse C of the Belle Vista Casino in Biloxi about to have steak and eggs for breakfast.”

  “Why do I suspect that for once you’re telling me the truth?”

  “But speaking of South America, you might take a look at the Reuters and AP wires from Uruguay starting about now.”

  “Really?”

  “I think both you and Eric Kocian might be interested in what might come over the wire.”

  “Well, I’ll keep an eye out, if you say so.”

  “It might be a good idea.”

  “Is that why you called, Karl, or is there something else on your mind?”

  “Actually, there is. How much trouble would it be for Frau Schröder to open a bank account for me in the Liechtensteinische Landesbank in the Cayman Islands?”

  “Why would you want to do something like that?”

  “And put, say, ten thousand euros in it?”

  “Why would you want to do something like that?” Görner asked again.

  “I’ve always been frugal. You know that, Otto. ‘A penny saved,’ as Benjamin Franklin said, ‘is a penny earned.’”

  “Gott!”

  Frau Schröder shook her head and smiled. Görner gave her a dirty look.

  “And tell them to expect a rather large transfer of funds into the account in the next few days, please,” Castillo said.

  “I really hate to ask this question, but didn’t you just say you’re in the penthouse of a casino?”

  “In the Belle Vista Casino.”

  “And did you put the penthouse on the Tages Zeitung’s American Express card?
”

  “No. Actually, I’m staying here free.”

  “How much did you lose to get them to give you a free room? A penthouse suite?”

  “Why do you think I lost?”

  Görner exhaled audibly.

  “When do you want this bank account opened?”

  “How about today?”

  “If you’re telling the truth—and I would be surprised if you are—and you’re trying to hide money from the IRS, you’re probably going to get caught.”

  “Thank you for your concern. Just have Frau Schröder open the account and e-mail me the number so I can make a deposit. I’ll worry about getting the money out later.”

  “All right, Karl. But I wish I really knew what you’re up to this time.”

  “I’ll tell you the next time I see you.”

  “And when will that be?”

  “Maybe soon. I’m going from here to see my grandmother and then I’ll probably come over there.”

  “I hope I can believe that.”

  “Tell Frau Schröder thanks, Otto. I’ve got to run.”

  The line went dead.

  Görner put the handset in the cradle and Frau Schröder took off her headset.

  “I wonder what that’s all about?” he asked.

  “Gambling? I never knew of his gambling.”

  “Not with money,” Görner said. “The last I heard, when he was in Budapest with Eric and me, he was going—they were all going—to Argentina.”

  “I wonder what we’re supposed to find on the South American wires?”

  “He said ‘Uruguay’ wires.”

  “I wonder what we’re supposed to find on the ‘Uruguay’ wires?”

  Görner shrugged.

  “Is there going to be any trouble with opening that account? Don’t we have some money in the Liechtensteinische Landesbank?”

  “Quite a bit, actually,” she said. “I’ll send them a wire and have them open an account for him. Shouldn’t be any trouble at all.” She paused. “The question is, though, in whose name do I open it?”

  “I think we’re supposed to cleverly deduce who he is right now.”

  “Shall I try to get him back and ask him?”

  Görner thought that over for a moment and then said, “No. Open it for Karl W. Gossinger. That’ll raise fewer questions than if we opened it for Carlos Castillo.”

  [FIVE]

  Penthouse C

  The Belle Vista Casino and Resort