“What’s happening, Ding?” the captain asked.
“I heard you coming, sir,” Chavez said.
“I tripped. Sorry.”
Chavez ran down the situation briefly. Ramirez put his binoculars on the enemy to check things for himself.
“Supposedly they aren’t being bothered by the local police and army,” the captain observed.
“Bought off?” Vega asked.
“No, just they got discouraged, mainly. So the druggies have settled down to a half-dozen or so regular airfields. Like this one. We’re gonna be here awhile.” A pause. “Anything happens -”
“We’ll call you right off, sir,” Vega promised.
“See any snakes?” Ramirez asked.
“No, thank God.” The captain’s teeth flared in the darkness. He clapped Chavez on the shoulder and disappeared back into the bushes.
“What’s wrong with snakes?” Vega asked.
Captain Winters felt the pangs of disappointment as he watched the Piper touch down. It was two in a row now. The big one from the other night was gone already. Exactly where they flew them off to, he didn’t know. Maybe the big boneyard in the desert. One more old piston bird would hardly be noticed. On the other hand, you could sell one of these Pipers easily enough.
The .50-caliber machine gun looked even more impressive at eye level, though with dawn coming up, the spotlights were less overpowering. They didn’t use the spy-plane ploy this time. The Marines treated the smugglers just as roughly as before, however, and their actions again had the desired effect. The CIA officer running the operation had formerly been with DEA, and he enjoyed the difference in interrogation methods. Both pilots were Colombians, the aircraft’s registration to the contrary. Despite their machismo, it took only one look at Nicodemus. To be brave in the face of a bullet, or even an attack dog, was one thing. To be brave before a living carnosaur was something else entirely. It took less than an hour for them to be processed, then taken off to the tame federal district judge.
“How many planes don’t make it here?” Gunnery Sergeant Black asked as they were driven away.
“What d’you mean, Gunny?”
“I seen the fighter, sir. It figures that he told the dude, ‘Fly this way or else!’ An’ we been called here more times ‘n airplanes have showed up, right? What I’m saying, sir, is it stands to reason, like, that some folks didn’t take the hint, and the boy driving the fighter showed them the ‘or else.’ ”
“You don’t need to know that, Gunny Black,” the CIA officer pointed out.
“Fair enough. Either way, it’s cool with me, sir. My first tour in ‘Nam, I seen a squad get wiped because some of ’em were doped up. I caught a punk selling drugs in my squad, back in ’74-75, and I damned near beat the little fuck to death. Almost got in trouble over it, too.”
The CIA officer nodded as though that statement surprised him. It didn’t.
” ‘Need-to-know,’ Gunny,” he repeated.
“Aye aye, sir.” Gunnery Sergeant Black assembled his men and walked off toward the waiting helicopter.
That was the problem with “black” operations, the CIA officer thought as he watched the Marines leave. You want good people, reliable people, smart people, to be part of the op. But the good, reliable, and smart people all had brains and imagination. And it really wasn’t all that hard for them to figure things out. After enough of that happened, “black” operations tended to become gray ones. Like the dawn that had just risen. Except that light wasn’t always a good thing, was it?
Admiral Cutter met Directors Moore and Jacobs in the lobby of the office wing, and took them straight to the Oval Office. Agents Connor and D’Agostino were on duty in the secretarial office and gave all three the usual once-over out of habit. Unusually, for the White House, they walked straight in to see WRANGLER.
“Good afternoon, Mr. President,” all three said in turn.
The President rose from his desk and took his place in an antique chair by the fireplace. This was where he usually sat for “intimate” conversations. The President regretted this. The chair he sat in was nowhere near as comfortable as the custom-designed one behind his desk, and his back was acting up, but even presidents have to play by the rules of others’ expectations.
“I take it that this is to be a progress report. You want to start off, Judge?”
“SHOWBOAT is fully underway. We’ve had a major stroke of luck, in fact. Just as we got a surveillance team in place, they spotted an aircraft taking off.” Moore favored everyone with a smile. “Everything worked exactly as planned. The two smugglers are in federal custody. That was luck, pure and simple, of course. We can’t expect that to happen too often, but we intercepted ninety kilos of cocaine, and that’s a fair night’s work. All four covert teams are on the ground and in place. None have been spotted.”
“How’s the satellite working out?”
“Still getting parts of it calibrated. That’s mainly a computer problem, of course. The thing we’re planning to use the Rhyolite for will take another week or so. As you know, that element of the plan was set up rather late, and we’re playing it by ear at the moment. The problem, if I can call it that, is setting up the computer software, and they need another couple of days.”
“What about The Hill?”
“This afternoon,” Judge Moore answered. “I don’t expect that to be a problem.”
“You’ve said that before,” Cutter pointed out.
Moore turned and examined him with a tired eye. “We’ve laid quite a bit of groundwork. I don’t invoke SAHO very often, and I’ve never had any problems from them when I did.”
“I don’t expect any active opposition there, Jim,” the President agreed. “I’ve laid some groundwork, too. Emil, you’re quiet this morning.”
“We’ve been over that aspect of the operation, Mr. President. I have no special legal qualms, because there really is no law on this issue. The Constitution grants you plenipotentiary powers to use military force to protect our national security once it is determined – by you, of course – that our security is, in fact, threatened. The legal precedents go all the way back to the Jefferson presidency. The political issues are something else, but that’s not really my department. In any case, the Bureau has broken what appears to be a major money-laundering operation, and we’re just about ready to move on it.”
“How major?” Admiral Cutter asked, annoying the President, who wanted to ask the same question.
“We can identify a total of five hundred eighty-eight million dollars of drug money, spread through twenty-two different banks all the way from Liechtenstein to California, invested in a number of real-estate ventures, all of which are here in the United States. We’ve had a team working ’round the clock all week on this.”
“How much?” the President asked, getting in first this time. He wasn’t the only person in the room who wanted that number repeated.
“Almost six hundred million,” the FBI Director repeated. “It was just over that figure two days ago, but a sizable block of funds was transferred on Wednesday – it looks like it was a routine transfer, but we are keeping an eye on the accounts in question.”
“And what will you be doing?”
“By this evening we’ll have complete documentation on all the accounts. Starting tomorrow, the legal attachés in all our embassies overseas, and the field divisions covering the domestic banks, will move to freeze the accounts and -”
“Will the Swiss and the Europeans cooperate?” Cutter interrupted.
“Yes, they will. The mystique about numbered accounts is overrated, as President Marcos found out a few years ago. If we can prove that the deposits result from criminal operations, the governments in question will freeze the funds. In Switzerland, for example, the money goes to the state – ‘canton’ – government for domestic applications. Aside from the moral issue, it’s simple self-interest, and we have treaties to cover this. It hardly hurts the Swiss economy, for example, to keep that money in Switzerland, does it? If we’re successful, as I have every right to expect, the total net loss to the Cartel will be on the order of one billion dollars. That figure is just an estimate on our part which includes loss of equity in the investments and the expected profits from rollover. The five eighty-eight, on the other hand, is a hard number. We’re calling this Operation TARPON. Domestically, the law is entirely on our side, and on close inspection, it’s going to be very hard for anyone to liberate the funds, ever. Overseas the legal issues are more muddied, but I think we can expect fairly good cooperation. The European governments are starting to notice drug problems of their own, and they have a way of handling the legal issues more… oh, I guess the word is pragmatically,” Jacobs concluded with a smile. “I presume you’ll want the Attorney General to make the announcement.”