October's Ghost (49 page)

“Yes, sir.”

“Hang on.” Bud gave the same direction to the other three still waiting and dialed the NMCC. “This is NSA DiContino. Give me the secretary.”

“Bud.”

“Drew, I need a fast plane for two in the Los Angeles area, pronto.”

“What? Bud, we’re kind of busy here,” Meyerson said. “Delta is on their way, the Russians have their ABM system on alert, and you’ve got us crossing wires like some telephone-switching crew.”

“Christ, Drew!” Bud drew back and cooled down. “Look, I don’t have time to explain. Not now. Please. Something fast that can get across the country.”

“Just a minute.” The minute was only thirty seconds, thanks to the ability of the National Military Command Center to almost instantly locate a piece of hardware any where on the globe. “All right. I’ve got a VC-Twenty-one at Los Alamitos. It’s CINCPAC’s plane. He’s on a visit, and he’s not gonna be happy with you taking it.”

“Thank you, Drew. I’ll call you back in a minute with a flight plan for it.” He brought Jefferson back up. “Okay, you and your partner get out to Los Alamitos, and fast. I don’t care how.”

“Sir, my partner was just involved in a—”

“I don’t give a damn what he was involved in, just—”

“She, sir,” Art said loudly. “Her name is Frankie Aguirre, and she just shot three bad guys dead. Okay?”

Bud knew he had to come down from the high his mind had put him in. “I’m sorry, Jefferson. But this is very, very important, and we can’t let anyone else in on it. You and your partner are already in, and what needs to be done is a nonevent.”

“I don’t follow.”

Bud explained it briefly. “Do you have a problem doing this?”

Art remembered what he had done to protect Bill Sturgess from a legal system that could not comprehend his anguish. Now he would have to lie again, actually just not tell, about a similar act, though this time a quite opposite goal was the motivation. “I can do it.”

“And your partner?”

“No problem.”

“Good. You’ll get more instructions in the air.” Bud went back to his conference call. “Sorry, but it was well worth the interruption.”

“What was it?” Jones asked.

“A couple of your agents in L.A. got a recording from Portero’s killers that has Anthony listening to Portero tell the story of the missile. Problem is, it’s an illegal recording.”

“Christ!” Healy swore. “Why are we tiptoeing around this? Legal, illegal. I know we have to follow basic principles, but Anthony is the highest intelligence officer in the land, and he’s fucked things up royally. God knows what his backdoor shit is going to cost us in the long run, and I mean lives, not dollars!”

“Mike...”

“Greg, he’s right,” Bud said. “Gordy, the agents who handled the wiretap—can we use them for something?”

“For what?”

Bud told him without attempting any justification of his plan. “I’m leaving out what follows.”

The director of the FBI wasn’t a rocket scientist, but then he didn’t have to be to take the NSA’s thought process to a conclusion. “You know that’s a crime.”

“I haven’t said anything,” Bud pointed out correctly. “The part your agents will play is completely legal. What comes next—”

“I’ll handle,” Greg Drummond said, jumping in. It was also clear to him, and it would be a pleasure.

“I suggest you do not know the rest, Gordy.”

Jones was a lifelong Bureau man, sworn to uphold the law. He had a particular dislike of those in government who used their positions to skirt the rules of society that John and Jane Q. Public were bound to follow. And he was a pragmatist above all else. He also could not forget that he had once run interference for a colleague who’d taken too much of a liking to the tables in Atlantic City while involved in an undercover operation. Looking the other way was infinitely easier than bearing false witness, but no less challenging for the soul. “I’ll inform the agents down South personally,” the director said, hanging up immediately.

“I can do this, Greg,” Bud offered.

“Right. With that missile still there and the Russians on the edge.”

He was right. Bud’s place was in D.C., with the man who would be making decisions, not running off to involve himself in something that he should be physically removed from. “You’ll have to face him down, Greg.”

“Bud, I’ve been in this town a long time. Longer than you, even. If there is one person out of all the shitheads that I am not afraid to tangle with, it’s Anthony Merriweather. I think I’ll even enjoy it.”

Bud wondered if any man could enjoy destroying another at the moment of its happening. He was also suddenly glad that it wasn’t going to be him doing it.

“If this all works, then we have a new problem,” the DDO pointed out. “Who is going to take the reins in Cuba?”

“I’ll talk to Jim,” Bud said. “He brokered the original agreement. Maybe he has some idea on this. And you, Mike, you need to get in touch with your man in Cuba.”

“I guess they will want to know there’s been a change.” Healy considered something for a second. “It might be good if Jim and I do the talking together.”

“Good idea.” Bud took another look at the time. “You better get a move on, Greg. We need you in position to coordinate.”

“On my way.”

Both CIA men hung up together. Bud kept the phone in his hand and rang the office of the chief of staff. “Ellis, listen. I need to see the Boss again.”

“You just left him.”

“Get him back to the Oval Office,” Bud mildly demanded.

Gonzales realized he shouldn’t argue, considering the way the “request” was delivered. “It’s done. Is this about Jefferson’s call?”

“What call?” Bud asked, his tone hinting at the answer he expected.

“Oh.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

FORCES

“The advance scouts are turning south toward Juragua,” the radioman reported as he walked, the heavy radio and its whip antennae bouncing with each quick step.

Colonel Ojeda, a third of the way back in the twin columns that totaled three hundred men, considered the situation and his mission briefly before responding. “Order them to cross the highway to the east and prepare an ambush. In one hour they are to spring the trap and set up a defense to draw the loyalists to them.”

A
defense
? Antonio thought, the unfamiliar rifle suddenly feeling very present in his hands.
With twenty-five men?

“They know, Papa Tony,” Ojeda answered, the look on the CIA officer’s face asking the question he had heard many times. Those for whom command was an unknown often expressed horror at the thought of their fellow men used in a sacrificial maneuver. Leaders of warriors, however, lived with the horror of having to do so.

Antonio switched the rifle from hand to hand and cinched the straps that held his satellite manpack snug against his back. He looked away from the colonel, focusing on the rutted dirt track ahead and trying to think of something other than the scouts. Twenty-five men four miles ahead, all about to give their lives. A hundred more immediately in front of him and twice that number behind. He found himself wondering how many would survive what was to come, and whether he would be among the living. Or would he join his father as yet another casualty in the struggle to free his homeland?

A staccato burst of fire from the front ended Antonio’s questioning. Ojeda reached out and pushed him down to the right. He fell on his side, consciously protecting the satellite radio from impact damage. Looking up, he could see the lead element of the column running left into the cane fields and right for the edge of the marsh. A half-dozen men had fallen by Antonio’s count before any fire was returned. Ojeda’s men were disciplined and knew the value of ammunition when far from their supply lines.

“Papa, get up and follow me,” Ojeda said. He led off into the marsh, the setting sun at their rear coloring the edges of the sharp grass rising from the water with a fiery brightness. Two squads of men, twenty in all, were ten yards in front of the colonel and his five-man headquarters detail.

“Jeez!” Antonio said, cringing as several bullets ripped through the thick grass above his head. The water was waist-high, already lapping at the weatherproof radio on his back. Short bursts of return fire from the two squads sounded to his front. Then more in return, and more from another direction, and all the while Antonio was moving, following the colonel, instinctively crouching into the soggy marsh as much as he could and having no idea in hell what he was supposed to do.

Ojeda’s hand came up just in front of Antonio. He followed the colonel’s lead, stopping and sinking deeper into the water until just his nose and eyes were exposed. The taste of thick, dirty water seeped through his lips, filling his mouth. He continued breathing through his nose, smelling the staleness of the marsh and the decay that was an ever-present part of its ecosystem. They stayed still, almost fully submerged, for several minutes, Antonio’s heart beating faster with every passing second.

CLICK
.

The sound came from Antonio’s right. He turned his head easily to look, then back at the colonel, who was staring intently toward the direction in which his men had moved. Then back to the right.

CLICK
.

Antonio ran his fingers along the body of the submerged Kalashnikov until he found the safety. Remembering the colonel’s brief instructions he moved it up one notch, to single shot, and started to bring the weapon to his eye level. He turned the rest of his body slowly right, disturbing as little of the coarse vegetation as possible as he did, causing just a few crackles as the sharp-edged blades of grass rubbed against each other, and stopping when he was facing the direction of the sound. The distinctive top of the Kalashnikov broached the surface of the water. Antonio’s eyes looked past the sights into the gently moving forest of light green blades. His eyes moved, searching, his body still except for the soft up-and-down caress his finger was giving the trigger. He watched, expecting to see someone not unlike him staring back from behind another AK-74. But there was none. No movement, no sound.

“Papa Tony.”

Antonio’s body jumped at the colonel’s voice. He let go of the trigger and stood, lifting his weapon out of the water as he did. “I heard something.”

Ojeda scanned the direction of the CIA officer’s interest and discounted the claim very quickly. “We killed three of them,” he said, looking back to Antonio. “More escaped.”

“Three? I saw at least six of our men go down.”

“We were fortunate. A well-executed ambush could have killed ten times that number.” Ojeda saw the surprise in Antonio’s eyes. “This is war, Papa Tony. Welcome to it.”

The colonel turned and headed back out of the marsh. Antonio looked once more over his shoulder, still expecting to see someone with the means and the desire to kill him lurking among the vegetation but finding only that which scared him more: the unknown. He turned and followed Ojeda, his right hand squeezing the Kalashnikov’s rear grip more tightly than he’d thought possible.

*  *  *

The first unit of the 106th Guards Air Assault Division to leave its base northeast of Moscow was the reconnaissance company. In wartime, after having been inserted in the enemy’s rear by airdrop according to the still-followed Soviet doctrine of battle, the two hundred officers and men of recon would be tasked to seek out and identify the enemy units in their area. This morning, however, the objective was not elusive, and they expected no resistance to their advance.

Just after the witching hour, in the bitter chill of the ever-longer Russian nights of autumn, a single Russian Army staff car rumbled through the main gate and turned south onto the M8 highway. Twenty BMD-3 Infantry Combat Vehicles of the recon company followed their commander’s vehicle but would not even attempt to keep up. Unlike in battle, his job was to announce their presence before they would strike. Next came ten BMP-2s, the larger and slower cousins of the lead element, and these were followed by 160 trucks that would stagger their departure in groups of five every few minutes. By the time the last of the division had passed through the brown-painted gates, adorned with the blazing white parachute emblem of Russian airborne forces, the lead elements would be a quarter of the way to Moscow, and their commander would be well on his way to deliver the requisite message to the president.

Force, after all, was most effective when employed as a threat.

*  *  *

“We’re going where?” Frederico Sanz asked.

“The Cape,” Chris Testra answered, still trying to figure out the call from the director.

“To do what?”

“Didn’t say. He said we’d be briefed once we got there by someone named Drummond.”

“Drummond?” Sanz let the name roll around in his head for a minute. “Drummond. You don’t mean...?”

“I don’t know,” Testra said. “So don’t think it yourself. If the director didn’t tell us, maybe we ain’t supposed to know.”

Sanz closed the hard case that held their recording gear and started for the van.

“Don’t lock it up, Freddy,” Testra directed his partner.

“Why?”

“Because we’re supposed to bring some stuff with us.”

Sanz looked down at the silver suitcase. “This? I hope someone has a warrant.”

“Don’t need one,” Testra said. “Remember where we’re going?”

*  *  *

Lieutenant Duc brought the Pave Hawk down to eight hundred feet after an easy two-hundred-mile cruise out to sea at three thousand. A hundred miles east of Great Abaco Island, a crescent-shaped finger of land at the northern end of the Bahamas chain, he nosed the helicopter to starboard, making his course just east of due south. They would be meeting up with the Combat Shadow in two more hours off the eastern tip of Cuba. Until then, the plan called for staying away from the more inhabited land masses and skirting shipping whenever possible.

“Yo, Cho. Look.”

Duc heeded his copilot’s direction and shifted his attention briefly left, looking over the Pave Hawk’s instrument panel to the white capped sea below. He scanned the scene for a few seconds, then pressed the intercom switch on his yoke. “Major, take a look to port. Coming up off about a hundred yards.”