“There he is,” the junior agent said into his portable radio. “Southbound.”
O’Day picked the man up three minutes later. The backup car was already on Cutter, and by the time O’Day had caught up, it was clear that he was merely returning to Fort Myer, the VIP section off Sherman Road, east of the officers’ club. Cutter lived in a red brick house with a screen porch overlooking Arlington National Cemetery, the garden of heroes. To Inspector O’Day, who’d served in Vietnam, what little he knew of the man and the case made it seem blasphemous that he should live here. The FBI agent told himself that he might be jumping to an inaccurate conclusion, but his instincts told him otherwise as he watched the man lock his car and walk into the house.
One benefit of being part of the President’s staff was that he had excellent personal security when he wanted it, and the best technical security services as a matter of course. The Secret Service and other government agencies worked very hard and very regularly to make sure that his phone lines were secure. The FBI would have to clear any tap with them, and would also have to get a court order first, neither of which had been done. Cutter called a WATS line number-with a toll-free 800 prefix – and spoke a few words. Had anyone recorded the conversation he would have had a problem explaining it, but then so would the listener. Each word he spoke was the first word on a dictionary page, and the number of each page had three digits. The old paperback dictionary had been given him before he left the house in Panama, and he would soon discard it. The code was as simple and easy to use as it was effective, and the few words he spoke indicated pages whose numbers combined to indicate map coordinates for a few locations in Colombia. The man on the other end of the line repeated them back and hung up. The WATS-line call would not show up on Cutter’s phone bill as a longdistance call. The WATS account would be terminated the next day. His final move was to take the small computer disk from his pocket. Like many people he had magnets holding messages to his refrigerator door. Now he waved one of them over the disk a few times to destroy the data on it. The disk itself was the last existing record of the soldiers of Operation SHOWBOAT. It was also the last means of reopening the satellite radio link to them. It went into the trash. SHOWBOAT had never happened.
Or that’s what Vice Admiral James A. Cutter, USN, told himself. He mixed himself a drink and walked out onto his porch, looking down across the green carpet to the countless headstones. Many times he’d walked over to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, watching the soldiers of the President’s Guard go through their mechanistic routine before the resting places of men who had served their country to the utmost. It occurred to him now that there would be more unknown soldiers, fallen on some nameless field. The original unknown soldier had died in France in World War I, and had known what he fought for – or thought he did, Cutter corrected himself. Most often they never really understood what it was all about. What they were told wasn’t always the truth, but their country called, and off they went to do their duty. But you really needed a perspective to understand what it was all about, how the game was played. And that didn’t always – ever? – jibe with what the soldiers were told. He remembered his own service off the coast of Vietnam, a junior officer on a destroyer, watching five-inch-gun rounds pound the beach, and wondering what it was like to be a soldier, living in the mud. But still they went to serve their country, not knowing that the country herself didn’t know what service she needed or wanted. An army was composed of young kids who did their job without understanding, serving with their lives, and in this case, with their deaths.
“Poor bastards,” he whispered to himself. It really was too bad, wasn’t it? But it couldn’t be helped.
It surprised everyone that they couldn’t get the radio link working. The communications sergeant said that his transmitter was working just fine, but there was no answer from VARIABLE at six o’clock local time. Captain Ramirez didn’t like it, but decided to press on to the extraction point. There had been no fallout from Chavez’s little adventure with the would-be rapist, and the young sergeant led off for what he expected would be the last time. The enemy forces had swept this area, stupidly and oafishly, and wouldn’t be back soon. The night went easily. They moved south in one-hour segments, stopping off at rally points, looping their path of advance to check for trailers, and detecting none. By four the following morning, they were at the extraction site. It was a clearing just downhill from a peak of eight thousand feet, lower than the really big crests, and conducive to a covert approach. The chopper could have picked them up nearly anywhere, of course, but their main consideration was still stealth. They’d be picked up, and no one would ever be the wiser. It was a shame about the men they’d lost, but no one would ever really know what they’d been here for, and the mission, though a costly one, had been a success. Captain Ramirez had said so. He set his men in a wide perimeter to cover all approaches, with fallback defensive positions in case something untoward and unexpected happened. When that task was completed, he again set up his satellite radio and started transmitting. But again, there was no reply from VARIABLE. He didn’t know what the problem was, but to this point there had been no hint of trouble, and communications foul-ups were hardly unknown to any infantry officer. He wasn’t very worried about this one. Not yet, anyway.
Clark was caught rather short by the message. He and Larson were just planning their flight back to Colombia when it arrived. Just a message form with a few code-words, it was enough to ignite Clark’s temper, so vile a thing that he labored hard to control it in the knowledge that it was his most dangerous enemy. He wanted to call Langley, but decided against it, fearing that the order might be restated in a way difficult to ignore. As he cooled off, his brain started working again. That was the danger of his temper, Clark reminded himself, it stopped him from thinking. He sure as hell needed to think now. In a minute he decided that it was time for a little initiative.
“Come on, Larson, we’re going to take a little ride.” That was easily accomplished. He was still “Colonel Williams” to the Air Force, and got himself a car. Next came a map, and Clark picked his brain to remember the path to that hilltop… It took an hour, and the last few hundred yards were a potholed nightmare of a twisted, half-paved road. The van was still there, as was the single armed guard, who came forward to give them a less than eager greeting.
“Stand down, mister, I was here before.”
“Oh, it’s you – but, sir, I’m under orders to -”
Clark cut him off. “Don’t argue with me. I know about your orders. Why the hell do you think I’m here? Now be a good boy and safe that weapon before you hurt yourself.” Clark walked right past him, again amazing Larson, who was far more impressed with loaded and pointed guns.
“What gives?” Clark asked as soon as he was inside. He looked around. All the gear was turned off. The only noise was from the air-conditioning units.
“They shut us down,” the senior communicator answered.
“Who shut you down?”
“Look, I can’t say, all right, I got orders that we’re shut down. That’s it. You want answers, go see Mr. Ritter.”
Clark walked right up to the man. “He’s too far away.”
“I got my orders.”
“What orders?”
“To shut down, damn it! We haven’t transmitted or received anything since lunchtime yesterday,” the man said.
“Who gave you the orders?”
“I can’t say!”
“Who’s looking after the field teams?”
“I don’t know. Somebody else. He said our security was blown and it was being handed over to somebody else.”
“Who – you can tell me this time,” Clark said in an eerily calm voice.
“No, I can’t.”
“Can you call up the field teams?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Their satellite radios are encoded. The algorithm is on computer disk. We downloaded all three copies of the encryption keys and erased two of ’em. He watched us do it and took the third disk himself.”
“How do you reestablish the link?”