22
PUERTO VALLARTA,
Mexico
It was midday as cartel boss Antonio Castañeda sat down across from agent Mariana Mederos at a street-side café in the tourist section of Puerto Vallarta where the local police had been told to regard Castañeda as nothing more than a harmless apparition. He had first met Mariana during the previous September, shortly after Chechen terrorists had detonated the Russian suitcase nuke in one of Castañeda’s tunnels running beneath the Mexican border with New Mexico. Castañeda may have been a ruthless drug lord, but even he wasn’t willing to allow the traffic of nuclear weapons on Mexican soil.
Realizing that the Chechen liaison had lied to him about the true nature of the shipment, Castañeda had him tortured, extracting all information about the remaining suitcase nuke before ordering his throat cut. The subsequent assistance that Castañeda provided to the CIA had been instrumental in averting a successful nuclear strike against the home port of the US Pacific Fleet in San Diego
Bay. For this reason, both the CIA and the Mexican PFM (Policía Federal Ministerial) had since cultivated a tacit working relationship with the Castañeda cartel.
Castañeda had agreed to cease all violence against civilians and to provide any information he could regarding future Muslim terrorists attempting to operate in Mexico. In exchange, no direct action would be taken against Castañeda’s person by either government. Many of his drug shipments were still being interdicted at the border, but that didn’t really matter. He continued making millions, and the freedom from having to live as a fugitive more than made up for any such losses.
Castañeda looked at Mariana and smiled, his bulbous eyes protruding slightly. He said in Spanish, “It’s good to see you again, Señorita Mederos. You have more curves than I remember. Your new position in Langley must be treating you well.”
Mariana smiled dryly, aware that she’d gained a couple of pounds since being given her own office at headquarters along with a significant augmentation in salary. Castañeda’s remark, however, caused her to instantly resolve to resume her previous exercise regimen as soon as she returned to the States.
“I have no complaints,” she answered in the same language.
“Nor do I. You were shaped like a white woman before, but now you’re shaped like a Latina—as you should be.”
“We’re not here to discuss my anatomy.” Mariana was all too aware that Castañeda was a
mujeriego
—a womanizer—and a dangerous one at that.
He signaled the waiter and ordered himself a tequila on the rocks, taking the liberty to order Mariana a gin and tonic. “That is your drink, is it not?” His gaze was level, penetrating.
“A lot of people drink gin,” she replied with a smile, hiding her discomfort at his knowledge of her personal tastes and wondering what else he might know.
“So,” he said, satisfied to have her guessing, “why are we here? What does the CIA want from me now?”
She set a flash drive on the table. “Everything you’ll need is there. We have a traitor on our hands, and he’s taken refuge in Mexico City. It can’t look like the US government had anything to do with his . . . expulsion.”
“Su expulsión
!”
Castañeda said, chortling. “So now the CIA is hiring me to do their assassinations. Oh, the hypocrisy of life seems to have no limitations.”
“We’re not
hiring
you do anything. Your assistance in this matter is conditional upon your ongoing truce with the US government.”
“And with my own government?”
“The Mexican government is to know nothing about this,” she said, sitting back so the waiter could set her drink on the table, and then switching to English. “Your government asks for favors, mine asks for favors, and everyone gets along. There’s plenty of precedent for such an arrangement. And you’ve done a good job of holding up your end: violence is down, tourism is up, and everyone’s happy—so far.”
He lifted his drink.
“La chingada DEA cerró uno de mis túneles la semana pasada.”
The fucking DEA closed one of my tunnels last week.
She shrugged. “The truce protects you—not your tunnels and not your drugs.”
He tucked the flash drive into the pocket of his black guayabera shirt. “Do you dance, Mariana?”
She smiled and shook her head. “I’m back on a plane in two hours—but I do appreciate the drink.”
23
MEXICO CITY,
Mexico
Ken Peterson sat impatiently on the sofa in Tim Hagen’s hotel suite while Hagen finished up with the prostitute he was shagging in the other room. A pair of Mexican security men sat on the far side of the suite playing cards and drinking Tecate beer. They were big men but not burly looking; professionals with a private Mexican firm who were licensed to carry .380 Walther PPK pistols. Larger-caliber bullets were considered military
ammunition
and therefore were illegal under Mexican law.
Eventually a bleached-blond Mexican girl came out of the bedroom, casting Peterson a benign look on her way to the door.
Hagen emerged a few minutes after taking a shower. “I didn’t know you were here already.”
“I got that impression,” Peterson said. “Listen, we’ve got a problem.”
A menacing shadow crossed Hagen’s brow. “I’m getting pretty sick of hearing that, Ken.”
Peterson was untouched by Hagen’s displeasure. “The hit on Pope went bad. His marine driver blew Ryder’s brains out.”
“Fuck!” Hagen swore, causing both security men to idly turn their heads in his direction.
“At least this way Ryder can’t talk,” Peterson remarked.
“But we’ll never get to Pope now. The president will surround him with a wall of steel. Does Pope know you sent Ryder?”
“Pope doesn’t know anything about me,” Peterson said, a droll grin spreading across his face. “But he was already suspicious of you.”
Hagen pointed a finger. “You’d better not even
think
of throwing me under the bus! My bases are covered!”
“Which is the only reason you’re still alive,” Peterson thought to himself.
“Relax,” he said. “It gets a little worse. The president’s going to withdraw Webb’s nomination. He’s naming Pope director of operations.”
Hagen felt suddenly nauseated, realizing it was the perfect move on the president’s part.
“It’s that damn Couture advising him! He knows Congress will have to approve the nomination.” He ran a hand over his head, looking around as if there might be a solution to their problem somewhere in the suite. “We’re fucked.”
“No, not yet,” Peterson said confidently. “Pope took a bullet to the lung, so he won’t be able to take the helm for at least a couple of weeks, and it’ll take him another month to thoroughly clean house. That gives us five or six weeks to bury what little evidence there is and generate whatever false documentation we need to cover our asses. Don’t worry, there are very few direct links to either of us. We’re extremely well insulated, so if the know-it-all-son-of-a-bitch comes after us, we’ll go on the offensive. We could tie up the investigation in congressional hearings for years if we needed to, but I don’t think the old man will let Pope push it that far. Oh—and there is your phone video, which is a very nice ace in the hole to have. Entire governments have been toppled by less.”
Hagen took a chair, reaching for a snubbed-out cigar on the table and relighting it. “What about Shannon?”
“Still on the loose, but still stuck on Sicily. He killed the Malta team we sent after him—along with a couple of Italian cops—and the Italian navy has since blockaded the island, checking all fishing charters, et cetera. It looks like he must have kidnapped an Italian girl when he stole her car, because she managed to contact her parents by cell. The police are searching Corleone now, so I don’t think it’ll be too long before Master Chief Shannon is either dead or in custody. And if he lands in an Italian prison, we can have him killed at our leisure.”
Hagen was long past believing that Gil Shannon could be cornered so easily. He felt his palms begin to sweat and subconsciously began rubbing them together. “I think it’s time for me to disappear.”
“Tim, you’re panicking again. Running will only make you look guilty.”
“How do you think I look hiding out down here?”
“Look, you’re a respected diplomat around Washington.” Peterson realized he needed to calm Hagen down before he did something stupid to put everyone in jeopardy. “You’re independently wealthy, and you’re allowed to take a vacation to Mexico whenever you want. But going completely off the grid is a bad idea.”
“Okay, you’re right,” Hagen agreed, attempting to buck himself up. But the truth was that he was a nervous wreck with Shannon still on the loose. “Maybe I should take a trip up to DC—or to New York for a meeting with Senator Grieves.”
Peterson absolutely didn’t want him meeting with Steve Grieves again before the Gil Shannon issue was resolved. Grieves was too closely linked, and he didn’t need those two cooking up anything behind his back.
“I think you’re fine right here,” he said. “Not too close, not too far away. You might look into some kind of a business deal, though. Real estate, maybe, to make it look like you’re involved in something lucrative down here.”
“That’s a thought,” Hagen said enthusiastically. “There’s a hotel in Cancún looking for American investors. Wouldn’t mean a lot of profit, but it would make my visit appear more legitimate . . .”
“And you know what? Screw Pope! Let him speculate all he wants. Once Shannon’s dead, he’ll have nothing to threaten me with. He’ll be the head of the CIA, and he’ll have to play by the rules like everybody else.”
“Exactly,” Peterson said, having intentionally failed to mention something else he’d discovered recently. Peterson’s White House spy had reported to him only hours earlier that Pope was now the head of some kind of top-secret Special Mission Unit: an SMU the informant had referred to as a “presidential hit squad.” Peterson doubted that Gil Shannon was this mysterious SMU’s sole operator, and he doubted equally that Pope would rest until everyone who had participated in the now doomed-to-fail intelligence coup was either jailed or terminated.
With this grim reality in mind, Peterson and Senator Grieves had already agreed that Hagen should be maneuvered into a position to take the fall. Hagen did, after all, have good reason to hold a grudge against the White House, and would make the perfect patsy.
24
PALERMO,
Sicily
“Do you see us now?” Gil asked Midori over a satellite phone. It had been given to him by the Italian GRU doctor who had arrived from Rome shortly after sunrise to treat their wounds.
“I see you,” she said. “You’re standing next to a blue car.”
Gil looked up into the crystal clear morning sky. “Yeah, that’s me. Okay, so how long before Pope’s out of the hospital?”
“About a week.”
“He’s gonna be okay?”
“Yes. He said to tell you you’re still on for the Georgia operation. JSOC has approved the removal of Dokka Umarov. I’m gathering all the latest intel on him now. Also, the Joint Chiefs have arranged for your exfiltration from Sicily via submersible. An SDV team is being transferred aboard the
Ohio
now. She’ll be on station within eight hours.”
“Roger that. I was worried we’d been forgotten when I heard about Pope.”
“You’re not forgotten, Master Chief. JSOC has assumed control of this operation at Pope’s request.
“Roger that. Then you’ll need to advise JSOC we have to finish off Kovalenko and his team before we exfil. Ivan and I don’t need those bastards dogging us to Georgia when we least expect it—hold on a second.” He turned toward Dragunov, who was talking on his own phone twenty feet away. “Hey, Ivan, what’s the make of that piece of shit Kovalenko’s guys are in—the red one?”
“LaForza,” Dragunov said.
Gil told Midori, “I need to you find a red Italian LaForza SUV. Somewhere in or around Palermo. Start with the outskirts on the east side.”
“Master Chief, you’ve
got
to be kidding me. That’s over sixty square miles.”
“I’m not kidding you even a little bit,” he assured her, turning again to Dragunov. “And that other piece of shit?”
“A Peugeot.”
“The red SUV will probably be parked near a black Peugeot.”
“A search like that could take days.”
“I can give you a few hours,” Gil said, “but that’s all. We’re running out of time down here. There’s cops all over the place. Use the vehicle recognition software the Pentagon uses for spotting military vehicles. The computer will light up every LaForza on the grid within a few minutes. After that, all you gotta do is sort through the red ones.”
“The shapes of military vehicles are a lot more defined than civilian models, Master Chief.”
“Then enhance the resolution, Midori. I gotta swim over there and do your job for you?”
“Hey, all I’m saying is that I haven’t used the software in that application before. I don’t know what kind of results I’m going to get.”
“Well, I’m telling you if you max out the res, you’ll find the SUV.”
“I’ll get on it,” she said. “Why is your hand bandaged?”
Gil looked at his hand and glanced up. “I got shot. I’m signing off now. I’ll check back in an hour.” He put away the phone and turned to see Dragunov grinning at him. “What’s your problem?”
“Maybe we need a Russian satellite to do the search?”
“I don’t think Sputnik’s up to the task. You’ll get your chance to impress me when we get to Georgia.”
Dragunov laughed, gesturing at the girl. “Claudina wants to take her car and go.”
Gil looked at her. “We still need your car, but you can—”
“Then I go with you.” She crossed her arms in a fashion they were growing accustomed to.
He looked at her. “If the police catch up to us, there’s going to be shooting, and people are going to die. Do you understand that?”
“The car is mine,” she insisted.
Gil looked at Dragunov. “We gotta steal another set of wheels.”
Dragunov shook his head. “Stealing another car is a big risk for us. This is a good place to hide until your people can find Kovalenko. Then we go and kill him, and we let her”—he pointed at Claudina—“take her chances.”