The people were What people? You do not need to know. You do not want to know, Clark said. If you have a problem with that, I want you to tell me right now.

Hey, I told you we could do it. I was just curious.

Youre old enough to know better. Clark delivered the line gently. He didnt want to insult the man, though he did have to get the message across.

Okay.

USS Ranger was about to deploy for an extended battle-group exercise whose objective was work-ups: battle practice to prepare the group for a deployment to the Indian Ocean. They were scheduled for three weeks of intensive operations that involved everything from carrier landing practice to underway-replenishment drills, with a mock attack from another carrier battle group returning from WestPac. The operations would be carried out, Commander Jensen had just learned, about three hundred miles from Panama instead of farther west. The squadron commander wondered who had the juice to reroute a total of thirty-one ships, some of them outrageous fuelhogs. That confirmed the source of the orders hed just been given. Jensen was a careful man; though hed gotten a very official telephone call, and the orders hand-delivered by Mr. Carlson said everything they needed to say, it was nice to have outside confirmation.

Thats it. Youll get notice when you need it. Figure eight hours or so of warning time. That enough?

No sweat. Ill make sure the ordies put the weapons in a convenient place. You be careful on the ground, Mr. Carlson.

Ill try. Clark shook hands with the pilot and walked aft to find his way off the ship. Hed be catching another plane in two hours.

The Mobile cops were in a particularly foul mood. Bad enough that one of their own had been murdered in such an obvious, brutal way, Mrs. Braden had made the mistake of coming to the door to see what was wrong and caught two rounds herself. The surgeons had almost saved her, but after thirty-six hours that too was over, and all the police had to show for it was a kid not yet old enough to drive who claimed to have hit one of the killers with his granddads Marlin 39, and some bloodstains that might or might not have supported the story. The police preferred to believe that Braden had scored for the points, of course, but the experienced homicide investigators knew that a two-inch belly gun was the next thing to useless unless the shoot-out were held inside a crowded elevator. Every cop in Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and Louisiana was looking for a blue Plymouth Voyager minivan with two male Caucs, black hair, medium, medium, armed and dangerous, suspected cop-killers.

The van was found Monday afternoon by a concerned citizenthere really were some in Alabamawho called the local county sheriffs office, who in turned called the Mobile force.

The kid was right, the lieutenant in charge of the case observed. The body on the back of the van was about as distasteful to behold as any cadaver would be after two days locked inside a car, in Alabama, in June, but for all that the hole near the base of the skull, just at the hairline, was definitely a .22. It was also clear that the killer had died in the right-front seat, hemorrhaging explosively from the head wound. There was one more thing.

Ive seen this guy. Hes a druggie, another detective observed.

So what was Ernie wrapped up with?

Christ knows. What about his kids? the detective asked. They lose their mom and dadwe gonna tell the whole fucking world that their dad was a dirty cop? Do that to a couple of orphaned kids?

It merely required a single look for both men to agree that, no, you couldnt do something like that. Theyd find a way to make Ernie a hero, and damned sure somebodyd give the Sanderson kid a pat on the head.

Do you realize what you have done? Cortez asked. Hed steeled himself going in to restrain his temper. In an organization of Latins, his would behad to bethe only voice of reason. They would respect that in the same sense that the Romans valued chastity: a rare and admirable commodity best found in others.

I have taught the norteamericanos a lesson, Escobedo replied with arrogant patience that nearly defeated Flixs self-discipline.

And what did they do in reply?

Escobedo made a grand gesture with his hand, a gesture of power and satisfaction. The sting of an insect.

You also know, of course, that after all the effort I made to establish a valuable information source, you have pissed it away like What source?

The secretary of the FBI Director, Cortez answered with his own self-satisfied smile.

And you cannot use her again? Escobedo was puzzled.

Fool! Not unless you wish me to be arrested, jefe. Were that to happen, my services would cease to be useful to you. We could have used information from this woman, carefully, over years. We could have identified attempts to infiltrate the organization. We could have discovered what new ideas the norteamericanos have, and countered them, again carefully and thoughtfully, protecting our operations while allowing them enough successes to think that they were accomplishing something. Cortez almost said that hed just figured out why all those aircraft had disappeared, but didnt. His anger wasnt under that much control. Flix was just beginning to realize that he really could supplant the man who sat behind the desk. But first he would have to demonstrate his value to the organization and gradually prove to all of the criminals that he was more useful than this buffoon. Better to let them stew in their own juice for a while, the better to appreciate the difference between a trained intelligence professional and a pack of self-taught and over-rich smugglers.

Ryan gazed down at the ocean, forty-two thousand feet below him. The VIP treatment wasnt hard to get used to. As a directorate chief he also rated a special flight from Andrews direct to a military airfield outside of the NATO headquarters at Mons, Belgium. He was representing the Agency at a semiannual conference with his intelligence counterparts from the European Alliance. It would be a major performance. He had a speech to give, and favorable impressions to make. Though he knew many of the people whod be there, hed always been an upscale gofer for James Greer. Now he had to prove himself. But hed succeed. Ryan was sure of that. He had three of his own department heads along, and a comfortable seat on a VC-20A to remind him how important he was. He didnt know that it was the same bird that had taken Emil Jacobs to Colombia. That was just as well. For all his education, Ryan remained superstitious.

As Executive Assistant Director (Investigations), Bill Shaw was the Bureaus senior official, and until a new Director was appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, hed be acting Director. That might last for a while. It was a presidential election year, and with the coming of summer, people were thinking about conventions, not appointments. Perversely, Shaw didnt mind a bit. That meant that hed be running things, and for a case of this magnitude, the Bureau needed an experienced cop at the helm. Political realities were not terribly important to William Shaw. Crime cases were something that agents solved, and to him the case was everything. His first act on learning of the death of Director Jacobs had been to recall his friend, Dan Murray. It would be Dans job to oversee the case from his deputy assistant directors office, since there were at least two elements to it: the investigation in Colombia and the one in Washington. Murrays experience as legal attach in London gave him the necessary political sensitivity to understand that the overseas aspect of the case might not be handled to the Bureaus satisfaction. Murray entered Shaws office at seven that morning. Neither had gotten much sleep in the previous two days, but theyd sleep on the plane. Director Jacobs would be buried in Chicago today, and theyd be flying out on the plane with the body to attend the funeral.

Well?

Dan flipped open his folder. I just talked to Morales in Bogot. The shooter they bagged is a stringer for M-19, and he doesnt know shit. Name is Hector Buente, age twenty, college dropout from the University of the Andesbad marks. Evidently the locals leaned on him a little bitMorales says theyre pretty torqued about thisbut the kid doesnt know much. The shooters got a heads-up for an important job several days ago, but they didnt know what or where until four hours before it actually took place. They didnt know who was in the car aside from the ambassador. There was another team of shooters, by the way, staked out on a different route. They have some names, and the local copsre taking the town apart looking for them. I think thats a dead end. It was a contract job, and the people who know anything are long gone.

What about places they fired from?

Broke in both apartments. They undoubtedly had the places surveyed beforehand. When the time came, they got in, tied upactually cuffedthe owners, and sat it out. A real professional job from beginning to end, Murray said.

Four hours warning?

Correct.

That makes it after the time the plane lifted off Andrews, Shaw observed.

Murray nodded. That makes it clear that the leak was on our side. The airplanes flight plan was filed for Grenadawhere the bird actually ended up. That was changed two hours out from the destination. The Colombian Attorney General was the only guy who knew that Emil was going down, and he didnt spread the word until three hours before the landing. Other senior government members knew that something was up, and that could explain the alert order to our M-19 friends, but the timing just isnt right. The leak was here unless their AG himself blew the cover off. Morales says thats very unlikely. The man is supposed to be the local Oliver Cromwell, honest as God and the balls of a lion. No mistress to blab to or anything like that. The leak was on our end, Bill.

Shaw rubbed his eyes and thought about some more coffee, but he had enough caffeine in his system already to hyperactivate a statue. Go on.

Weve interviewed everyone who knew about the trip. Needless to say, nobody claims to have talked. Ive ordered a subpoena to check phone records, but I dont expect anything there.

What about The guys at Andrews? Dan smiled. Theyre on the list. Maybe forty people, tops, who could have known that the Director was taking a flight. That includes people who found out up to an hour after the bird lifted off.

Physical evidence?

Well, we have one of the RPG launchers and assorted other weapons. The Colombian Army troops reacted damned wellChrist, running into a building where you know theres heavy weapons, thats real balls. The M-19ers were carrying Sovietbloc light weapons also, probably from Cuba, but thats incidental. Id like to ask the Sovs to help us identify the RPG lot and shipment.

You think well get any cooperation?

The worst thing they can say is no, Bill. Well see if this glasnost crap is for-real or not.

Okay, ask.

The rest of the physical side is pretty straightforward. Itll confirm what we already know, but thats about it. Maybe the Colombians will be able to work their way back through M-19, but I doubt it. Theyve been working on that group for quite a while, and its a tough nut.

Okay.

You look a little punked out, Bill, Murray observed. We got young agents to burn both ends of the candle. Us old farts are supposed to know about pacing ourselves.

Yeah, well, I have all this other stuff to get current with. Shaw waved at his desk.

Whens the plane leave?

Ten-thirty.

Well, Im going to go back to my office and grab a piece of the couch. I suggest you do the same.

Shaw realized that it wasnt such a bad idea. Ten minutes later, hed done the same, asleep despite all the coffee hed drunk. An hour after that, Moira Wolfe came to his door minutes ahead of the time his own executive secretary showed up. She knocked but got no answer. She didnt want to open the door, didnt want to disturb Mr. Shaw, even though there was something important that she wanted to tell him. It could wait until they were all on the airplane.

Hi, Moira, Shaws secretary said, catching her on the way out. Anything wrong?

I wanted to see Mr. Shaw, but I think hes asleep. Hes been working straight through since I know. You look like you could use some rest, too.

Tonight, maybe.

Want me to tell him No, Ill see him on the airplane.

There was a mixup on the subpoena. The agent whod made the arrangements had gotten the name of the wrong judge from the U.S. Attorney, and found himself sitting in the anteroom until 9:30 because the judge was also late coming in this Monday morning. Ten minutes after that, he had everything he needed. The good news was that it was but a short drive to the phone company, and that the local Bell office could access all the billing records it needed. The total list was nearly a hundred names, with over two hundred phone numbers and sixty-one credit cards, some of which were not AT&T. It took an hour to get a hard copy of all the records, and the agent rechecked the numbers he had written down to make sure that there hadnt been any garbles or overlooks. He was a new agent, only a few months out of the Academy, on his first assignment to the Washington Field Division, essentially running an important errand for his supervisor as he learned the ropes, and he hadnt paid all that much attention to the data hed just received. He didnt know, for example, that a 58 prefix on a certain telephone number denoted an overseas call to Venezuela. But he was young, and hed know that before lunch.

The aircraft was a VC-135, the military version of the old 707. It was windowless, which the passengers always enjoyed, but had a large cargo door that was necessary for loading Director Jacobs aboard for his last trip to Chicago. The President was in another aircraft, scheduled to arrive at OHare International a few minutes ahead of this one. He would speak both at the temple and the graveside.

Shaw, Murray, and several other senior FBI officials rode in the second aircraft, which was often used for similar missions, and had the appropriate hardware to keep the casket in place in the forward section of the cabin. It gave them a chance to stare at the polished oak box for the entire flight, without even a small window to distract them. Somehow that brought it home more than anything else might have done. It was a very quiet flight, only the whine of the turbofan engines to keep the living and the dead company.

But the aircraft was part of the Presidents own fleet, and had all of the communications gear needed for that duty. An Air Force lieutenant came aft, asking for Murray, then led him forward to the communications console.

Mrs. Wolfe was in an aisle seat thirty feet aft of the senior executives. There were tears streaming down her face, and while she remembered that there was something she ought to tell Mr. Shaw, this wasnt the time or place, was it? It didnt really matter anywayjust that shed made a mistake when the agent had interviewed her the previous afternoon. It was the shock of the event, really. It was sohard. Her life had known too many losses in the past few years, and the mental whiplash of the weekend had . . . what? Confused her? She didnt know. But this wasnt the right time. Today was a time to remember the best boss shed ever had, a man who was every bit as thoughtful to her as hed ever been to the agents who lionized him. She saw Mr. Murray walk forward for something or other, past the coffin that her hand had brushed on the way in, her last goodbye to the Director.

The call didnt take more than a minute. Murray emerged from the small radio compartment, his face as much under control as it ever was. He didnt look again at the casket, just looked aft, Moira saw, straight down the aisle before he took his place next to his wife.

Oh, shit! Dan muttered to himself after he was seated. His wifes head snapped around. It wasnt the sort of thing you say at a funeral. She touched his arm, but Murray shook his head. When he looked at his wife, the expression she saw was sadness, but not grief.

The flight lasted just over an hour. The honor guard came up from the rear of the aircraft to take charge of the Director, all polished and scrubbed in their dress uniforms. After they were out, the passengers exited to find the rest of the assembly waiting for them on the tarmac, watched by distant TV news cameras. The honor guard marched their burden behind two flags, that of their nation and the banner of the FBI, emblazoned with the FidelityBraveryIntegrity motto of the Bureau. Murray watched as the wind played with the flag, watched the words curl and flap in the breeze, and realized just how intangible such words really were. But he couldnt tell Bill just yet. It would be noticed.

Well, now we know why we wasted the airfield. Chavez watched the ceremony in the squad bay of the barracks. It was all very clear to him now.

But whyd they yank us out? Vega asked.

Were going back, Oso. An the airs gonna be thin where were goin back to.

Larson didnt need to watch the TV coverage. He hovered over a map, plotting known and suspected processing sites southwest of Medelln. He knew the areaswho didnt?but isolating individual locations . . . that was harder, but, again, it was a technological question. The United States had invented modern reconnaissance technology and spent almost thirty years perfecting it. He was in Florida, having flown to the States ostensibly to take delivery of a new aircraft, which had unaccountably developed engine problems.

How long have we been doing this?

Only a couple of months, Ritter answered.

Even with so thin a data base, it wasnt all that hard. All of the towns and villages in the area were plotted, of course, even individual houses. Since nearly all had electricity, they were easy to spot, and once identified, the computer simply erased them electronically. That left energy sources that were not towns, villages, and individual farmsteads. Of these, some were regular or fairly so. It had been arbitrarily decided that anything that appeared more than twice in a week was too obvious to be of real interest, and these, too, were erased. That left sixty or so locations that appeared and disappeared in accordance with a chart next to the map and photographs. Each was a possible site where raw coca leaves began the refining process. They were not encampments for the Colombian Boy Scouts.

You cant track in on them chemically, Ritter said. I checked. The ether and acetone concentrations released into the air arent much more than youd expect from the spillage of nailpolish remover, not to mention the usual biochemical processes in this sort of environment. Its a jungle, right? Lots of stuff rots on the ground, and they give off all sorts of chemicals when they do. So all we have off the satellite is the usual infrared. They still do all their processing at night? I wonder why?

Larson grunted agreement. Its a carry-over from when the Army was actively hunting them. They still do it mainly from habit, I suppose.

Well, it gives us something, doesnt it?

What are we going to do with it?

Murray had never been to a Jewish funeral. It wasnt very different from a Catholic one. The prayers were in a language he couldnt understand, but the message wasnt very different. Lord, were sending a good man back to You. Thanks for letting us have him for a while. The Presidents eulogy was particularly impressive, having been drafted by the best White House speech-writer, quoting from the Torah, the Talmud, and the New Testament. Then he started talking about Justice, the secular god that Emil had served for all of his adult life. When, toward the end, he talked about how men should turn their hearts away from vengeance, however, Murray thought that . . . it wasnt the words. The speech was as poetically written as any hed ever heard. It was just that the President started sounding like a politician at that point, Dan thought. Is that my own cynicism talking? the agent thought. He was a cop, and justice to him meant that the bastards who committed crimes had to pay. Evidently the President thought the same way, despite the statesmanlike stuff he was saying. That was fine with Murray.

The soldiers watched the TV coverage in relative silence. A few men worked knives across sharpening stones, but mainly they just sat there, listening to their President speak, knowing who had killed the man whose name few had heard until after he was dead. Chavez had been the first to make the correct observation, but it hadnt been all that great a leap of imagination, had it? They accepted the as-yet-unspoken news phlegmatically. Here was merely additional proof that their enemy had struck out directly against one of the most important symbols of their nation. There was their countrys flag, draped across the coffin. There was the banner of the mans own agency, but this wasnt a job for cops, was it? So the soldiers traded looks in silence while their Commander-in-Chief had his say. When it was all over, the door to the squad bay opened, and there was their commander.

Were going back in tonight. The good news is, its going to be cooler where were going, Captain Ramirez told his men. Chavez cocked an eyebrow at Vega.

USS Ranger sailed on the tide, assisted away from the dock by a flotilla of tugs while her escorts formed up, already out of the harbor and taking rolls from the broad Pacific swells. Within an hour she was clear of the harbor, doing twenty knots. Another hour, and it was time to begin flight operations. First to arrive were the helicopters, one of which refueled and took off again to take plane-guard station off the carriers starboard quarter. The first fixed-wing aircraft aboard were the Intruder attack bombers, led, of course, by the skipper, Commander Jensen. On the way out hed seen the ammunition ship, USS Shasta, just beginning to get up steam. Shed join the underway-replenishment group that was to sail two hours behind the battle group. Shasta had the weapons that hed be dropping. He already knew the sort of targets. Not the exact places yet, but he had the rough idea, and that, he realized as he climbed down from his aircraft, was all the idea he wanted to have. Worrying about Collateral Damage wasnt strictly his concern, as somebody had told him earlier in the day. What an odd term, he thought. Collateral Damage. What an offhand way of condemning people whom fate had already selected to be in the wrong place. He felt sorry for them, but not all that sorry.

Clark arrived in Bogot late that afternoon. No one met him, and he rented a car as he usually did. One hour out of the airport he stopped to park on a secondary road. He waited several annoying minutes for another car to pull up alongside. The driver, a CIA officer assigned to the local station, handed him a package and drove off without a word. Not a large package, it weighed about twenty pounds, half of which was a stout tripod. Clark set it gently on the floor of the passenger compartment and drove off. Hed been asked to deliver quite a few messages in his time, but never quite so emphatically as this. It was all his idea. Well, he thought, mostly his idea. That made it somewhat more palatable.

The VC-135 lifted off two hours after the funeral. It was too bad they didnt have a wake in Chicago. That was an Irish custom, not one for the children of Eastern European Jews, but Emil would have approved, Dan Murray was sure. He would have understood that many a beer or whiskey would be lifted to his memory tonight, and somewhere, in his quiet way hed laugh in the knowledge of it. But not now. Dan had gotten his wife to maneuver Mrs. Shaw onto the other side of the airplane so that he could sit next to Bill. Shaw noticed that immediately, of course, but waited until the aircraft leveled off to make the obvious question.

What is it?

Murray handed over the sheet he pulled off the aircrafts facsimile printer a few hours earlier.

Oh, shit! Shaw swore quietly. Not Moira. Not her.

Target List.

IM OPEN TO suggestions, Murray said. He regretted his tone at once.

Christs sake, Dan! Shaws face had gone gray for a moment, and his expression was now angry.

Sorry, butdamn it, Bill, do we handle it straight or do we candy-ass our way around the issue?

Straight.

One of the kids from WFO asked her the usual battery of questions, and she said that she didnt tell anybody . . . well, maybe so, but who the hell did she call in Venezuela? They rechecked going back a year, no such calls ever before. The boy I left behind to run things did some further checkingthe number she called is an apartment, and the phone there rang someplace in Colombia within a few minutes of Moiras call.

Oh, God. Shaw shook his head. From anyone else he would merely have felt anger, but Moira had worked with the Director since before hed returned to D.C., from his command of the New York Field Division.

Maybe its an innocent thing. Maybe even a coincidence, Murray allowed, but that didnt improve Bills demeanor very much.

Care to do a probability assessment of that statement, Danny?

No.

Well, were all going back to the office after we land. Ill have her into my place an hour after we get back. You be there, too.

Right. It was time for Murray to shake his head. Shed shed as many tears at the graveside as anyone else. Hed seen a lifetimes worth of duplicity in his law-enforcement career, but to think that of Moira was more than he could stomach. It has to be a coincidence. Maybe one of her kids has a pen pal down there. Or something like that, Dan told himself.

The detectives searching Sergeant Bradens home found what they were looking for. It wasnt much, just a camera case. But the case had a Nikon F-3 body and enough lenses that the entire package had to be worth eight or nine thousand dollars. More than a Mobile detective sergeant could afford. While the rest of the officers continued the search, the senior detective called Nikons home office and checked the number on the camera to see if the owner had registered it for warranty purposes. He had. And with the name that was read off to him, the officer knew that he had to call the FBI office as well. It was part of a federal case, and he hoped that somehow they could protect the name of a man who had certainly been a dirty cop. Dirty or not, he did leave kids behind. Perhaps the FBI would understand that.

He was committing a federal crime to do this, but the attorney considered that he had a higher duty to his clients. It was one of those gray areas which decorate not so much legal textbooks, but rather the volumes of written court decisions. He was sure a crime had been committed, was sure that nothing was being done to investigate it, and was sure that its disclosure was important to the defense of his clients on a case of capital murder. He didnt expect to be caught, but if he were, hed have something to take to the professional ethics panel of the state bar association. Edward Stuarts professional duty to his clients, added to his personal distaste for capital punishment, made the decision an inevitable one.

They didnt call it Happy Hour at the base NCO club anymore, but nothing had really changed. Stuart had served his time in the U.S. Navy as a legal officer aboard an aircraft carriereven in the Navy, a mobile city of six thousand people needed a lawyer or twoand knew about sailors and suds. So hed visited a uniform store and gotten the proper outfit of a Coast Guard chief yeoman complete with the appropriate ribbons and just walked onto the base, heading for the NCO club where, as long as he paid for his drinks in cash, nobody would take great note of his presence. Hed been a yeoman himself while aboard USS Eisenhower, and knew the lingo well enough to pass any casual test of authenticity. The next trick, of course, was finding a crewman from the cutter Panache.

The cutter was finishing up the maintenance period that always followed a deployment, preparatory to yet another cruise, and her crewmen would be hitting the club after working hours to enjoy their afternoon beers while they could. It was just a matter of finding the right ones. He knew the names, and had checked tape archives at the local TV stations to get a look at the faces. It was nothing more than good luck that the one he found was Bob Riley. He knew more about that mans career than the other chiefs.

The master chief boatswains mate strolled in at 4:30 after ten hot hours supervising work on various topside gear. Hed had a light lunch and sweated off all of that and more, and now figured that a few mugs of beer would replace all the fluids and electrolytes that hed lost under the hot Alabama sun. The barmaid saw him coming and had a tall one of Samuel Adams all ready by the time he selected a stool. Edward Stuart got there a minute and half a mug later.