The Scorpio Illusion (61 page)

“What you say or think doesn’t interest me. You and your
system
killed my wife, and you know it. I don’t owe you bastards a thing!”

“Then get out of our nest. I’ve got a dozen deep-cover agents better than you, and I can insert them without missing you for a minute. Do me a favor, get out.”

“In your dreams! Friends of mine were killed—good friends—and one who survived may never walk again! You and your hotshots have been about as inadequate as you’ve ever been. I’m going down and deep, and I’d
advise you to keep track of me because I’m going to lead you to Little Girl Blood.”

“You know, Commander, I believe that’s possible, for as I mentioned, you were well trained. As to monitoring you, you can take that to the bank, insofar as your equipment is frequencied into our macrocomputers. Let’s get down to business, Commander. As your people requested, and relayed through Palisser, the communications and transponder units will be combined with no access to outside telephones. Frankly, I think it’s overkill, and our personnel will be individually and collectively upset—they’re among the finest we have.”

“So was O’Ryan. Have you told them about him?”

“I see your point.” The director was silent for a moment or two, not finished, merely pausing. “Perhaps I will, although we have no concrete proof of his having turned.”

“Since when are we in a court of law, Mr. Intelligence Man? He was there and she was there. One survived and one didn’t. Have our rules of engagement changed?”

“No, no, they haven’t. Coincidence is rarely, if ever, a factor. Perhaps I’ll explain that there’s evidence that this operation has been penetrated; that could be enough. Sequestration is very bad for internal morale, and these people are all outstanding. I’ll have to think about it.”

“Don’t think. Tell them about O’Ryan! What the hell else do you need? Why, when there’s a hundred thousand square miles of coastline, was he within a couple of hundred yards of Bajaratt when he was taken out?”

“It’s not conclusive, Mr. Hawthorne—”

“Neither was my wife, Mr. Director. But you know and I know what killed her! We don’t have to think, we
know
. Haven’t you made that leap? Because if you haven’t, you don’t belong in that chair.”

“I made it years ago, young man, but where I am now
demands that I make another leap—not so much of faith, but one of practicality. There are a lot of things I’d like to change around here, and I can’t do it being imperious. There’s been too much of that. Regardless, you and I are working on the same side now.”

“No, Mr. Director, I’m working for
my
side and some degree of sanity, if it’s any comfort to you. But not yours. To repeat, I don’t owe you bastards anything—you owe me what you can never pay.” The blood rushing to his head in fury, Hawthorne slammed down the telephone, the strength of the impact cracking the tan plastic shell.

Raymond Gillette, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, leaned over his desk, his fingers massaging the terrible ache in his forehead. Bewilderingly, the memory of Command Saigon had come back to him, filling him with anger and sorrow, and he did not know why. Then suddenly it was clear—it was Tyrell Hawthorne … what he was
doing
to the retired naval officer. The similarity to Saigon was acutely painful.

Back in Vietnam, a young air force officer, an Air Force Academy graduate, had been shot down with his crew, parachuting out of a burning plane near the border of Cambodia, less than five miles from the camouflaged, crisscrossing Ho Chi Minh supply routes. How that man survived the jungles and the swamps while evading the Cong and the North Vietnamese, only God knew, but he had done so. He had made his way south through the rivers and the forests, living on berries and bark and rodents until he reached friendly territory. And the story he brought back to his intelligence debriefing was incredible.

There was a hidden complex the size of twenty football stadiums carved out of the side of the mountain, into which hundreds of trucks and tanks, gasoline haulers and armored vehicles disappeared regularly during
the daylight hours, only to proceed south again at night. According to the young officer, it was also an ammunition depot, as he had seen webbed ammo vehicles enter and leave empty.

Visions of the World War II German rocket base, Peenemünde, fueled the imagination of the interrogating intelligence officer, who now sat at his desk as director of Central Intelligence. To bomb out, to utterly destroy and close up such a massive complex, would not only be an immense strategic victory but also a much needed psychological boost to a military machine that was being worn down by the sheer perseverance of an enemy who had neither the use nor the need of false body counts.

Where was this enormous mountain sanctuary large enough to house an entire division and all its firepower?
Where
?

The young air force officer could not accurately pinpoint it on the aerial maps; he had been hiding and running for his life on the ground. However, he knew the coordinates where he had been shot out of the sky, and he believed that if he was chuted down in the area, he could retrace his escape route. In retracing it he was sure he would reach the ascending hills opposite the armed mountain retreat from which he had observed the activity. Not only sure, but
positive
; there was only one such group of hills, “like scoops of green ice cream piled on top of each other,” but not defined in the aerial photographs.

“I can’t ask you to do that, Lieutenant,” Gillette had said. “You’ve lost over twenty-five pounds and your physical condition is marginal.”

“I think you can and you should, sir,” replied the pilot. “The longer we wait, the more screwed up my memory gets.”

“For Christ’s sake, it’s just another depot—”

“Correction, sir, it’s
the
depot. I’ve never seen anything
like it anywhere, and neither have you. It’s like turning part of the Grand Canyon sideways and driving into it! Let me go, Captain, please.”

“I sense a wrinkle here, Lieutenant. Why are you so eager? You’re a rational man; you’re not after extraneous medals, and this could be a very dangerous operation.”

“I’ve got all the reason I need, Captain. My two crewmen bailed out with me; they landed near each other in a field while I bounced through some trees, maybe a quarter of a mile away. I threw my chute under some branches and ran toward that field as fast as I could. I reached the edge of it at the same time as a group of soldiers came out from the other side—soldiers in
uniforms
, not kids in pajamas—and I knelt in the grass and watched those bastards hack my crew to death with bayonets! They weren’t only my friends, Captain, one of them was my cousin.
Soldiers
, Captain! Soldiers don’t bayonet prisoners in a field!… You see, I have to go back there. Now. Before it all becomes too much of a blur.”

“You’ll have all the protection we can give you. You’ll be wired with the most sophisticated communications equipment we have and monitored every step of the way. The Cobra choppers will never be more than three miles from your position, prepared to swing down at your signal and take you out.”

“What more can I ask, sir?”

A great deal more, young man, for you didn’t understand any more than I did. Covert Operations doesn’t work that way. There’s another morality, another ethic, the credo of which is “get the job done, whatever the cost.
”

The young officer was flown northeast with a Cong defector who had lived on the Cambodian border. Both were parachuted at night over the vicinity where the pilot’s plane had gone down, and together they started the retrace. Gillette, the intelligence captain responsible
for the mission, flew north, just south of Han Minh, joining the Cov-Op unit monitoring the two-man insurgency team.

Where are the Cobras
? asked the intelligence officer from Command Saigon.

Don’t worry, Captain, they’re on their way
was a colonel’s reply.

They should be there now. Our pilot and the Cong defect are closing in. Listen to them
!

We’re listening
, said a major who hovered over a radio.
Relax. They’re reaching Zero target and we’ve got a perfect fix on their position
.

If they give the signal, they’re roughly a thousand meters west of Zero
, added the Colonel.

Then send in the Cobras
! roared the captain from Saigon.
It’s all we asked them to do
!

When they do it
, said the colonel.

Suddenly, there was an eruption of static accompanied by an erratic staccato of gunfire. Then silence—a dreadful silence.

That’s it
! yelled the major.
They’ve been cut down. Contact the bombers to move in and unload everything they’ve got! Here are the coordinates
!

What do you mean, they’ve been cut down
? Gillette shouted.

They were obviously found and killed by North Viet patrols, Captain. They gave their lives for an outstanding operation
.

Where the hell were the Cobras, the choppers that were to take them out
?

What Cobras
? said the major from Cov-Op sarcastically.
You think we were going to blow the whole show with Cobras in the air only miles from Zero? They’d be picked up by radar and that’s a goddamned mountain
!

That wasn’t my understanding
! yelled the captain.
I gave that pilot my word
!

Your word
, said the colonel,
not ours. We’re trying to win a war that we’re losing
.

You bastards! I gave that pilot a promise
—

Your promise, not ours. By the way, what’s your name, Captain
?

Gillette
, the intelligence officer replied, perplexed.
Raymond Gillette
.

I can see it now: Gillette’s Razor Cuts Off Major Supply Route! We’re also pretty big in the Press-Op department
.

Raymond Gillette, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, raised his head, arched his neck, and again pressed his fingers against his temples.
Gillette’s Razor
had opened the corporate world for him at the expense of a young pilot’s life as well as that of his Vietnamese companion. Was he doing it again? With Hawthorne? Was it possible that there was another O’Ryan in the upper echelons of the CIA?

Anything was possible, concluded Raymond Gillette as he got out of his chair and walked to his office door. He was going to talk personally to every man and woman in the transmission unit, staring into their eyes and using the expertise of a lifetime to find a flaw in any of them. He owed that much to a dead air force officer and his Vietnamese scout from many years ago. He owed that much to Tyrell Hawthorne, to whom he had given his word only minutes before. He had to do better than that; he had to study each man and each woman in whose hands Hawthorne’s life would rest. He opened the door and spoke to his secretary.

“Helen, I want you to alert the Little Girl unit. All personnel are to meet me in Operations, room five, in twenty minutes.”

“Yes, sir,” said the gray-haired, middle-aged woman, rising from her chair and walking around her desk. “But first, I promised Mrs. Gillette that I’d make sure you had your afternoon pill.” The secretary extracted a tablet from a small plastic box, poured water from a Thermos into a paper cup, and handed both to
the impatient director of the Central Intelligence Agency. “Mrs. Gillette insists you use the bottled water, sir. It’s salt-free.”

“Mrs. Gillette can be damned annoying, Helen,” said the DCI, throwing the pill in his mouth and drinking the water.

“She wants to keep you around, sir. She also insists, as you well know, that you sit down for a minute or two until the medication is digested. Please, sit down, Mr. Director.”

“You two are in cahoots, Helen, and I won’t have it,” said Gillette, smiling and sitting down in a straight-backed chair in front of his secretary’s desk. “I hate these damn things; they make me feel like I’ve had three bourbons without the pleasure of drinking them.”

Suddenly, without any indication of being in discomfort, Raymond Gillette lurched out of the chair, grimaced, and choked as he spread his fingers over his face and fell forward on the floor, his head angled into the front of his secretary’s desk, his mouth agape, his eyes wide. He was dead.

The secretary rushed to the office door, locked it, and returned to the corpse. She pulled the body away from the desk, dragged it into the director’s office, and placed it in front of the couch beneath the north window. She returned to the anteroom, closing her employer’s door behind her, and slowly, breathing steadily, picked up her secure telephone. She pressed the interagency extension for the officer heading up Task Force, Communications, Little Girl Blood.

“Yes?” said the male voice on the line.

“This is Helen in the DCI’s office. He asked that I call you and tell you to start testing your unit’s equipment as soon as you hear from Commander Hawthorne that he’s in place.”

“We know that; we all agreed fifteen minutes ago.”

“I imagine he didn’t want you to think you had to wait for him. He’ll be tied up in conferences most of the afternoon.”

“No problem. It’s a go as soon as we get the word.”

“Thank you,” said Scorpio 17, hanging up the phone.

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