“You can’t. It’s a unique algorithm that’s based on the time transmissions from NAVSTAR satellites. Secure as hell, and just about impossible to duplicate.”
“In other words those kids are completely cut off?”
“Well, no, he took the third disk, and there’s somebody else who’s -”
“Do you really believe that?” Clark asked. The man’s hesitation answered the question. When the field officer spoke again, it was in a voice that didn’t brook resistance. “You just told me that the commo link was unbreakable, but you accepted a statement from somebody you never saw before that it had been compromised. We got thirty kids down there, and it sounds like they’ve been abandoned. Now, who gave the orders to do it?”
“Cutter.”
“He was here?’
“Yesterday.”
“Jesus.” Clark looked around. The other officer couldn’t bring himself to look up. Both men had speculated over what was really happening, and had come to the same conclusion that he had. “Who set up the commo plan for this mission?”
“I did.”
“What about their tactical radios?”
“Basically they’re commercial sets, a little customized. They have a choice of ten SSB frequencies.”
“You have the freqs?”
“Well, yeah, but -”
“Give them to me right now.”
The man thought to say that he couldn’t do that, but decided against it. He’d just say that Clark threatened him, and it didn’t seem like the right time to start a little war in the van. That was accurate enough. He was very much afraid of Mr. Clark at this moment. He pulled the sheet of frequencies from a drawer. It hadn’t occurred to Cutter to destroy that, too, but he had the radio channels memorized anyway.
“If anybody asks…”
“You were never here, sir.”
“Very good.” Clark walked out into the darkness. “Back to the air base,” Clark told Larson. “We’re looking for a helicopter.”
Cortez had made it back to Anserma without note having been taken of his seven-hour absence, and had left behind a communications link that knew how to find him, and now, rested and bathed, he waited for the phone to ring. He congratulated himself, first, on having set up a communications net in America as soon as he’d taken the job with the Cartel; next on his performance with Cutter, though not as much for this. He could scarcely have lost, though the American had made it easier through his own stupidity, not unlike Carter and the marielitos, though at least the former President had been motivated by humanitarian aims, not political advantage. Now it was just a matter of waiting. The amusing part was the book code that he was using. It was backwards from the usual thing. Normally a book code was transmitted in numbers to identify words, but this time words indicated numbers. Cortez already had the American tactical maps – anyone could buy American military maps from their Defense Mapping Agency, and he’d been using them himself to run his operation against the Green Berets. The bookcode system was always a secure method of passing information; now it was even more so.
Waiting was no easier for Cortez than for anyone else, but he amused himself with further planning. He knew what his next two moves were, but what about after that? For one thing, Cortez thought, the Cartel had neglected the European and Japanese markets. Both regions were flush with hard currency, and while Japan might be hard to crack – it was hard to import things legally into that market – Europe would soon get much easier. With the EEC beginning its integration of the continent into a single political entity, trade barriers would soon start to come down. That meant opportunity for Cortez. It was just a matter of finding ports of entry where security was either lax or negotiable, and then setting up a distribution network. Reducing exports to America could not be allowed to interfere with Cartel income, after all. Europe was a market barely tapped, and there he would begin to expand the Cartel horizons with his surplus product. In America, reduced demand would merely increase price. In fact, he expected that his promise to Cutter – a temporary one to be sure – would have a small but positive effect on Cartel income. At the same time, the disorderly American distribution networks would sort themselves out rapidly after the supply was reduced. The strong and efficient would survive, and once firmly established, would conduct business in a more orderly way. Violent crime was more troublesome to the yanquis than the actual drug addiction that caused it. Once the violence abated, drug addiction itself would lose some of the priority in the pantheon of American social problems. The Cartel wouldn’t suffer. It would grow in riches and power so long as people desired its product.
While that was happening, Colombia itself would be further subverted, but more subtly. That was one more area in which Cortez had been given professional training. The current lords used a brute-force approach, offering money while at the same time threatening death. No, that would also have to stop. The lust in the developed countries for cocaine was a temporary thing, was it not? Sooner or later it would become unfashionable, and demand would gradually diminish. That was one thing that the lords didn’t see. When it began to happen, the Cartel had to have a solid political base and a diversified economic foundation if it wished to survive the diminution of its power. That demanded a more accommodating stance with its parent country. Cortez was prepared to establish that, too. Eliminating some of the more obnoxious lords would be a major first step toward that goal. History taught that you could reach a modus vivendi with almost anybody. And Cortez had just proven it to be true.
The phone rang. He answered it. He wrote down the words given him and after hanging up, picked up the dictionary. Within a minute he was making marks on his tactical map. The American Green Berets were not fools, he saw. Their encampments were all set on places difficult to approach. Attacking and destroying them would be very costly. Too bad, but all things had their price. He summoned his staff and started getting radio messages out. Within an hour, the hunter groups were coming down off the mountains to redeploy. He’d hit them one at a time, he decided. That would guarantee sufficient strength to overwhelm each detachment, and also guarantee sufficient losses that he’d have to draw further on the retainers of the lords. He would not accompany the teams up the mountains, of course, but that was also too bad. It might have been amusing to watch.
Ryan hadn’t slept at all well. A conspiracy was one thing when aimed at an external enemy. His career at CIA had been nothing more than that, an effort to bring advantage to his own country, often by inflicting disadvantage, or harm, upon another. That was his job as a servant of his country’s government. But now he was in a conspiracy that was arguably against the government itself. The fact denied him sleep.
Jack was sitting in his library, a single reading lamp illuminating his desk. Next to him were two phones, one secure, one not. It was the latter which rang.
“Hello?”
“This is John,” the voice said.
“What’s the problem?”
“Somebody cut off support for the field teams.”
“But why?”
“Maybe somebody wants them to disappear.”
Ryan felt a chill at the back of his neck. “Where are you?”
“Panama. Communications have been shut down and the helicopter is gone. We have thirty kids on hilltops waiting for help that ain’t gonna come.”
“How can I reach you?” Clark gave him a number. “Okay, I’ll be back to you in a few hours.”
“Let’s not screw around.” The line clicked off.
“Jesus.” Jack looked into the shadows of his library. He called his office to say that he’d drive himself into work. Then he called Dan Murray.
Ryan was back in the FBI building underpass sixty minutes later. Murray was waiting for him and took him back upstairs. Shaw was there, too, and much-needed coffee was passed out.
“Our field guy called me at home. VARIABLE has been shut down, and the helicopter crew that was supposed to bring them out has been pulled. He thinks they’re going to be – hell, he thinks -”
“Yeah,” Shaw observed. “If so, we now have a probable violation of the law. Conspiracy to commit murder. Proving it might be a little tough, though.”
“Stuff your law – what about those soldiers?”
“How do we get them out?” Murray asked. “Get help from – no, we can’t get the Colombians involved, can we?”
“How do you think they’d react to an invasion from a foreign army?” Shaw noted. “About the same way we would.”
“What about confronting Cutter?” Jack asked. Shaw answered.
“Confront him with what? What do we have? Zip. Oh, sure, we can get those communications guys and the helicopter crews and talk to them, but they’ll stonewall for a while, and then what? By the time we have a case, those soldiers are dead.”