“Mr. President, I never -”
“The hell you didn’t!” the President said loudly enough to startle the Secret Service agent outside his upstairs office. “How the hell did you get me into this mess?”
Cutter’s patrician face went pale as a corpse. Everything he’d worked for, the action he’d been proposing for three years… Ritter was proclaiming success. That was the maddest part of all.
“Sir, our objective was to hurt the Cartel. We have accomplished that. The CIA officer who’s running RECIPROCITY, in Colombia, right now, said that he could start a gang war within the Cartel – and we have done just that! They just tried to assassinate one of their own people – Escobedo. Drug shipments coming in are down. We haven’t announced it yet, but the papers are already talking about how prices are going up on the street. We’re winning.”
“Fine. You tell Fowler that!” The President slammed a file folder down on his desk. His own private polls showed Fowler ahead by fourteen points.
“Sir, after the convention, the opposition candidate always -”
“Now you’re giving me political advice? Mister, you haven’t shown me a hell of a lot of competence in your supposed area of expertise.”
“Mr. President, I -”
“I want this whole thing shut down. I want it kept quiet. I want you to do it, and I want you to do it fast. This is your mess and you will clean it up.”
Cutter hesitated. “Sir, how do you want me to go about it?”
“I don’t want to know. I just want to know when it’s done.”
“Sir, that may mean that I’ll have to disappear for a while.”
“Then disappear!”
“People might notice.”
“Then you are on a special, classified mission for the President. Admiral, I want this thing closed out. I don’t care what you have to do. Just do it!”
Cutter came to attention. He still remembered how to do that. “Yes, Mr. President.”
“Reverse your rudder,” Wegener said. USCGC Panache pivoted with the change of rudder and engine settings, pointing herself down the channel.
“Midships.”
“Rudder amidships, aye. Sir, my rudder is amidships,” the young helmsman announced under the watchful eye of Master Chief Quartermaster Oreza.
“Very well. All ahead one-third, steady up on course one-nine-five.” Wegener looked at the junior officer of the deck. “You have the conn. Take her out.”
“Aye aye, sir, I have the conn,” the ensign acknowledged in some surprise. “Take her out” generally means that you start from the dock, but the skipper was unusually cautious today. The kid on the wheel could handle it from here. Wegener lit his pipe and headed out for the bridge wing. Portagee followed him there.
“That’s about as happy as I’ve ever been to head out to sea,” Wegener said.
“I know what you mean, Cap’n.”
It had been one scary day. Only one, but that had been enough. The FBI agent’s warning had come as quite a shock. Wegener had grilled his people one by one – something that he’d found as distasteful as it had been unfruitful – to find out who had spilled the beans. Oreza thought he knew but wasn’t sure. He was thankful that he’d never have to be. That danger had died with the pirates in Mobile jail. But both men had learned their lesson. From now on they’d abide by the rules.
“Skipper, why d’ya suppose that FBI guy warned us?”
“That’s a good question, Portagee. It figures that what we choked out of the bastards turned that money seizure they pulled off. I guess they figured they owed us some. Besides, the local guy says that it was his boss in Washington who ordered him to warn us.”
“I think we owe him one,” Oreza said.
“I think you’re right.” Both men stayed out to savor yet another sunset at sea, and Panache took a heading of one-eight-one, heading for her patrol station in the Yucatan Channel.
Chavez was down to his last set of batteries. The situation, if anything, had gotten worse. There was a group somewhere behind them, necessitating a rear guard. It was something that he, on point, couldn’t concern himself about, but it was there, a nagging concern as real as the sore muscles that had him popping Tylenol every few hours. Maybe they were being followed. Maybe it was just accidental – or maybe Ramirez had gotten predictable in his evasion tactics. Chavez didn’t think so, but he was becoming too tired to think coherently, and knew it. Maybe the captain had the same problem, he realized. That was especially worrisome. Sergeants were paid to fight. Captains were paid to think. But if Ramirez was too tired to do that, then they might as well not have him.
Noise. A whisper from a branch swishing through the air. But there was no wind blowing at the moment. Maybe an animal. Maybe not.
Chavez stopped. He held his hand straight up. Vega, walking slack fifty meters back, relayed the signal. Ding moved alongside a tree and stayed standing for the best possible visibility. He started to lean against it and found himself drifting. The sergeant shook his head to clear it. Fatigue was really getting to him now.
There. Movement. It was a man. Just a spectral green shape, barely more than a stick figure on the goggle display, nearly two hundred meters to Ding’s right front. He was moving uphill and – another one, about twenty meters behind. They were moving like… soldiers, with the elaborate footwork that looked so damned crazy when somebody else was doing it…
There was one way to check. On the bottom side of his PVS-7 goggles was a small infrared light for use in reading maps. Invisible to the human eye, it would show up like a beacon to anyone wearing another PVS-7. He didn’t even have to make a noise. They’d be looking around constantly.
It was still a risk, of course.
Chavez stepped away from the tree. It was too far to see if they were wearing their headsets, if they were…
Yes. The lead figure was turning his head left and right. It stopped dead on where Chavez was standing. Ding tipped his goggles up to expose the IR light and blinked it three times. He dropped his night scope back into place just in time to see the other one do the same.
“I think they’re our guys,” Chavez whispered into his radio mike.
“Then they’re pretty lost,” Ramirez replied through his earpiece. “Be careful, Sergeant.”
Click-Click. Okay.
Chavez waited for Oso to set his SAW up in a convenient place, then walked toward the other man, careful to keep where Vega could cover him. It seemed an awfully long way to walk, farther still without being able to put his weapon on the target, but he couldn’t exactly do that, could he? He spotted one more, and there would be others out there also, watching him over the sights of their weapons. If that wasn’t a friendly, his chances of seeing the sunrise were somewhere between zero and not much.
“Ding, is that you?” a whisper called the remaining ten meters. “It’s León.”
Chavez nodded. Both men took very deep breaths as they walked together and hugged. Somehow a handshake just wasn’t enough under the circumstances.
“You’re lost, ‘Berto.”
“No shit, man. I know where the fuck we are, but we’re fucking lost all right.”
“Where’s Cap’n Rojas?”
“Dead. Esteves, Delgado, half the team.”
“Okay. Hold it.” Ding punched his radio button. “Six, this is Point. We just made contact with BANNER. They’ve had a little trouble, sir. You better get up here.”
Click-click.
León waved for his men to come in. Chavez didn’t even think to count. It was enough to see that half weren’t there. Both men sat on a fallen tree.
“What happened?”
“We walked right into it, man. Thought it was a processing site. It wasn’t. Musta been thirty-forty guys there. I think Esteves fucked up and it all came apart. Like a bar fight with guns, man. Then Captain Rojas went down, and – it was pretty bad, ‘mano. Been on the run ever since.”
“We got people chasing us, too.”
“What’s the good news?” León asked.
“I ain’t heard any lately, ‘Berto,” Ding said. “I think it’s time for us to get our asses outa this place.”
“Roge-o,” Sergeant León said just as Ramirez appeared. He made his report to the captain.
“Cap’n,” Chavez said when he was finished, “we’re all pretty beat. We need a place to belly up.”
“The man’s right,” Guerra agreed.
“What about behind us?”
“They ain’t heard nothin’ in two hours, sir,” Guerra reminded him. “That knoll over there looks like a good spot to me.” That was about as hard as he could press his officer, but finally it was enough.
“Take the men up. Set up the perimeter and two outposts. We’ll try to rest up till sundown, and maybe I can call in and get us some help.”