Some bird named OMara. My ell-tee took the call and got a little flustered. New kid, still got a lot to learn, Mitchell explained.

I never heard of no Colonel OMara. I think maybe you got the wrong post, Mitch.

No shit? Mitchell was genuinely puzzled. My ell-tee must have really booted this one. Okay, Ernie, Ill take it from here. You give my love to Hazel now.

Roge-o, Mitch. You have a good one, son. Bye.

Hmph. Mitchell stared at the phone for a moment. What the hell was going on? Ding wasnt at Benning, and wasnt at MacDill. So where the fuck was he? The platoon sergeant flipped to the number for the Military Personnel Center, located in Alexandria, Virginia. The sergeants club is a tight one, and the community of E-7s was especially so. His next call was to Sergeant First Class Peter Stankowski. It took two tries to get him.

Hey, Stan! Mitch here.

You looking for a new job? Stankowski was a detailer. His job was to assign his fellow sergeants to new jobs. As such, he was a man with considerable power.

Nah, I just love being a light-fighter. Whats this I hear about you turning track-toad on us? Stankowskis next job, Mitchell had recently learned, was in the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, where hed lead his squad from inside an M-2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle.

Hey, Mitch, my knees are goin. Ever think it might be nice to fight sittin down once in a while? Besides, that twenty-five-millimeter chain gun makes for a nice equalizer. What can I do for you?

Trying to track somebody down. One of my E-6s checked out a couple of weeks back, and we have to ship some shit to him, and he aint where we thought he was.

Oooo-kay. Wait while I punch up my magic machine and well find the lad for you. Whats his name? Stankowski asked. Mitchell gave him the information.

Eleven-Bravo, right? 11-B was Chavezs Military Occupation Specialty, or MOS. That designated Chavez as a light infantryman. Mechanized infantry was Eleven-Mike.

Yep. Mitchell heard some more tapping.

C-h-a-v-e-z, you said?

Right.

Okay, he was supposed to go to Benning and wear the Smokey Bear hat Thats the guy! Mitchell said, somewhat relieved.

but they changed his orders an sent him down to MacDill.

But he aint at MacDill! Mitchell managed not to say.

Thats a spooky bunch down there. You know Ernie Davis, dont you? Hes there. Why dont you give him a call?

Okay, Mitchell said, really surprised by that one. I just did! When you going to Hood?

September.

Okay, Ill, uh, call Ernie. You take it easy, Stan.

Stay in touch, Mitch. Say hi to the family. Bye.

Shit, Mitchell observed after he hung up. Hed just proved that Chavez didnt exist anymore. That was decidedly strange. The Army wasnt supposed to lose people, at least not like this. The sergeant didnt know what to do next, except maybe talk to his lieutenant about it.

We had another hit last night, Ritter told Admiral Cutter. Our lucks holding. One of our people got scratched, but nothing serious, and thats three sites taken out, forty-four enemy KIAs And?

And tonight, four senior Cartel members are going to have a sit-down, right here. Ritter handed over a satellite photograph, along with the text of the intercept. All people on the production end: Fernndez, dAlejandro, Wagner, and Untiveros. Their ass is ours.

Fine. Do it, Cutter said.

Clark was examining the same photo at that moment, along with a few obliques that hed shot himself and a set of blueprints for the house.

You figure this room, right here?

Ive never been in this one, but that sure looks like a conference room to me, Larson said. How close you have to be?

Id prefer under four thousand meters, but the GLD is good to six.

How about this hilltop right here? Weve got a clear line of sight into the compound.

How long to get there?

Three hours. Two to drive, one to walk. You know, you could almost do this from an airplane. . . .

Yours? Clark asked with a sly grin.

Not on a bet! Theyd use a four-wheel-drive Subaru for the drive. Larson had several different sets of plates, and the car didnt belong to him anyway. I got the phone number and I got a cellular phone.

Clark nodded. He was really looking forward to this. Hed done jobs against people like this before, but never with official sanction, and never this high up the line. Okay, I gotta get final approval. Pick me up at three.

Murray hustled over from his office as soon as he got the news. Hospitals never made people look glamorous, but Moira appeared to have aged ten years in the past sixty hours. Hospitals werent especially big on dignity, either. Her hands were in restraints. She was on suicide watch. Murray knew that it was necessarycould scarcely be more sobut her personality had taken enough battering already, and this didnt make things any better.

The room was already bedecked with flowers. Only a handful of FBI agents knew what had transpired, and the natural assumption at the office was that shed taken Emils death too hard. Which wasnt far off, after all.

You gave us quite a scare, kiddo, he observed.

Its all my fault. She couldnt bring her eyes to look at him for more than a few seconds at a time.

Youre a victim, Moira. You got taken in by one of the best in the business. It happens, even to the smarties. Trust me, I know.

I let him use me. I acted like a whore I dont want to hear that. You made a mistake. That happens. You didnt mean to hurt anybody, and you didnt break any laws. Its not worth dying for. Its damned sure not worth dying over when you got kids to worry about.

Whatll they think? Whatll they think when they find out. . . .

Youve already given them all the scare they need. They love you, Moira. Can anything erase that? Murray shook his head. I dont think so.

Theyre ashamed of me.

Theyre scared. Theyre ashamed of themselves. They think its partly their fault. That struck a nerve.

But its not! Its all my fault I just told you it isnt. Moira, you got in the way of a truck named Flix Cortez.

Is that his real name?

He used to be a colonel in the DGI. Trained at the KGB Academy, and hes very, very good at what he does. He picked you because youre a widow, a young, pretty one. He scouted you, figured out that youre lonely, like most widows, and he turned on the charm. He probably has a lot of inborn talent, and he was educated by experts. You never had a chance. You got hit by a truck you never saw coming. Were going to have a shrink come down, Dr. Lodge from Temple University. And hes going to tell you the same thing I am, but hes going to charge a lot more. Dont worry, though. It comes under Workers Comp.

I cant stay with the Bureau.

Thats true. Youre going to have to give up your security clearance, Dan told her. Thats no great loss, is it? Youre going to get a job at the Department of Agriculture, right down the street, same pay grade and everything, Murray said gently. Bill set it all up for you.

Mr. Shaw? Butwhy?

Cause youre a good guy, Moira, not a bad guy. Okay?

So what exactly are we going to do? Larson asked.

Wait and see, Clark replied, looking at the road map. There was a place called Don Diego not too far from where they were going. He wondered if somebody named Zorro lived there. Whats your cover story in case somebody sees us together?

Youre a geologist, and Ive been flying you around looking for new gold deposits.

Fine. It was one of the stock cover-stories Clark used. Geology was one of his hobbies, and he could discuss the subject well enough to fool a professor in the subject. In fact, thats exactly what hed done a few times. That cover would also explain some of the gear in the back of the four-wheel-drive station wagon, at least to the casual or unschooled observer. The GLD, theyd explain, was a surveying instrument, which was pretty close.

The drive was not terribly unusual. The local roads lacked the quality of paving common in America, and there werent all that many guard rails, but the main hazard was the way the locals drove, which was a little on the passionate side, Clark thought. He liked it. He liked South America. For all the social problems, the people down here had a zest for life and an openness that he found refreshing. Perhaps the United States had been this way a century before. The old West probably had. There was much to admire. It was a pity that the economy hadnt developed along proper lines, but Clark wasnt a social theorist. He, too, was a child of his countrys working class, and in the important things working people are the same everywhere. Certainly the ordinary folk down here had no more love for the druggies than he did. Nobody likes criminals, especially the sort that flaunt their power, and they were probably angry that their police and army couldnt do anything about it. Angry and helpless. The only popular group that had tried to deal with them was M-19, a Marxist guerrilla groupactually more an elitist collection of city-bred and university-educated intellectuals. After kidnapping the sister of a major cocaine trafficker, the others in the business had banded together to get her back, killing over two hundred M-19 members and actually forming the Medelln Cartel in the process. That allowed Clark to admire the Cartel. Bad guys or not, they had made a Marxist revolutionary group back off by playing the urban guerrilla game by M-19s own rules. Their mistakeaside from being in a business which Clark abhorredhad been in assuming that they had the ability to play against another, larger enemy by the same set of rules, and that their new enemy wouldnt respond in kind. Turnabout was fair play, Clark thought. He settled back in his seat to catch a nap. Surely theyd understand.

Three hundred miles off the Colombian coast, USS Ranger turned into the wind to commence flight operations. The battle group was composed of the carrier, the Aegis-class cruiser Thomas S. Gates, another missile cruiser, four missile-armed destroyers and frigates, and two dedicated antisubmarine destroyers. The underway replenishment group, with a fleet oiler, the ammunition ship Shasta, and three escorts, was fifty miles closer to the South American coast. Five hundred miles to seaward was another similar group returning from a lengthy deployment at Camel Station in the Indian Ocean. The returning fleet simulated an oncoming enemy formationpretending to be Russians, though nobody said that anymore in the age of glasnost.

The first aircraft off, as Robby Jackson watched from Pri-Fly, the control position high up on the carriers island structure, were F-14 Tomcat interceptors, loaded out to maximum takeoff weight, squatting at the catapults with cones of fire trailing from each engine. As always, it was exciting to watch. Like a ballet of tanks, the massive, heavily loaded aircraft were choreographed about the four acres of flight deck by teenaged kids in filthy, color-coded shirts who gave instructions in pantomime while keeping out of the way of the jet intakes and exhausts. It was for them a game more dangerous than racing across city streets at rush hour, and more stimulating. Crewmen in purple shirts fueled the aircraft, and were called grapes. Other kids, red-shirted ordnancemen called ordies, were loading bluepainted exercise weapons aboard aircraft. The actually shooting part of the Shoot-Ex didnt start for another day. Tonight theyd practice interception tactics against fellow Navy aviators. Tomorrow night, Air Force C-130s would lift out of Panama to rendezvous with the returning battle group and launch a series of target drones which, everyone hoped, the Tomcats would blast from the sky with their newly repaired AIM-54C Phoenix missiles. It was not to be a contractors test. The drones would be under the control of Air Force NCOs whose job it was to evade fire as though their lives depended on it, for whom every successful evasion involved a stiff penalty to be paid in beer or some other medium of exchange by the flight crew who missed.

Robby watched twelve aircraft launch before heading down to the flight deck. Already dressed in his olive-green flight suit, he carried his personal flight helmet. Hed ride tonight in one of the E-2C Hawkeye airborne-early-warning aircraft, the Navys own diminutive version of the larger E-3A AWACS, from which hed see if his new tactical arrangement worked any better than current fleet procedures. It had in all the computer simulations, but computers werent reality, a fact often lost upon people who worked in the Pentagon.

The E-2C crew met him at the door to the flight deck. A moment later the Hawkeyes plane captain, a First-Class Petty Officer who wore a brown shirt, arrived to take them to the aircraft. The flight deck was too dangerous a place for pilots to walk unattended, hence the twenty-five-year-old guide who knew these parts. On the way aft Robby noticed an A-6E Intruder being loaded with a single blue bombcase to which guidance equipment had been attached, converting it into a GBU-15 laser-guided weapon. It was, he saw, the squadron-skippers personal bird. That, he thought, must be part of the system-validation test, called a Drop-Ex. It wasnt that often you got to drop a real bomb, and squadron commanders like to have their fair share of fun. Robby wondered for a moment what the target wasprobably a raft, he decidedbut he had other things to worry about. The plane captain had them at their aircraft a minute later. He said a few things to the pilot, then saluted him smartly and moved off to perform his next set of duties. Robby strapped into the jump seat in the radar compartment, again disliking the fact that he was in an airplane as a passenger rather than a driver.

After the normal preflight ritual, Commander Jackson felt vibration as the turboprop engines fired up. Then the Hawkeye started moving slowly and jerkily toward one of the waist catapults. The engines were run up to full power after the nosewheel attachment was fixed to the catapult shuttle and the pilot spoke over the intercom to warn his crew that it was time. In three stunning seconds, the Grumman-built aircraft went from a standing start to one hundred forty knots. The tail sank as it left the ship, then the aircraft leveled out and tipped up again for its climb to twenty thousand feet. Almost immediately, the radar controllers in back started their systems checks, and in twenty minutes the E-2C was on station, eighty miles from the carrier, its rotodome turning, sending radar beams through the sky to start the exercise. Jackson was seated so as to observe the entire battle on the radar screens, his helmet plugged into the command circuit so that he could see how well the Ranger s air wing executed his plan, while the Hawkeye flew a racetrack pattern in the sky.

From their position they could also see the battle group, of course. Half an hour after taking off, Robby noted a double launch from the carrier. The radar-computer system tracked both new contacts as a matter of course. They climbed to thirty thousand feet and rendezvoused. A tanker exercise, he realized at once. One of the aircraft immediately returned to the carrier, while the other flew east-southeast. The intercept exercise began in earnest right about then, but every few seconds Robby noted the course of the new contact, until it disappeared off the screen, still heading toward the South American mainland.

Yes, yes, I will go, Cortez said. I am not ready yet, but I will go. He hung up his phone with a curse and reached for his car keys. Flix hadnt even had the chance to visit one of the smashed refining sites yet and they wanted him to address theThe Production Committee, el jefe called it. That was amusing. The fools were so bent on taking over the national government that they were starting to use quasi-official terminology. He swore again on the way out the door. Drive all the way down to that fat, pompous lunatics castle on the hill. He checked his watch. It would take two hours. And he would get there late. And he would not be able to tell them anything because he hadnt had time to learn anything. And they would be angry. And he would have to be humble again. Cortez was getting tired of abasing himself to these people. The money they paid him was incredible, but no amount of money was worth his self-respect. That was something he should have thought about before he signed up, Cortez reminded himself as he started his car. Then he swore again.

The newest CAPER intercept was number 2091 and was an intercept from a mobile phone to the home of Subject ECHO. The text came up on Ritters personal computer printer. Then came 2092, not thirty seconds later. He handed both to his special assistant.

Cortez . . . going right there? Christmas in June.

How do we get the word to Clark? Ritter wondered.

The man thought for a moment. We cant.

Why not?

We dont have a secure voice channel we can use. Unlesswe can get a secure VOX circuit to the carrier, and from there to the A-6, and from the A-6 to Clark.

It was Ritters turn to swear. No, they couldnt do that. The weak link was the carrier. The case officer they had aboard to oversee that end of the mission would have to approach the carriers commanding officerit might not start there, but it would sure as hell end thereand ask for a cleared radio compartment to handle the messages by himself on an ears-only basis. That would risk too much, even assuming that the CO went along. Too many questions would be asked, too many new people in the information loop. He swore again, then recovered his senses. Maybe Cortez would get there in time. Lord, wouldnt it be nice to tell the Bureau that theyd nailed the bastard! Or, more properly, that someone had, plausibly deniably. Or maybe not. He didnt know Bill Shaw very well, and didnt know how he might react.

Larson had parked the Subaru a hundred yards off the main road in a preselected spot that made detection unlikely. The climb to their perch was not a difficult one, and they arrived well before sundown. The photos had identified a perfect place, right on the crest of a ridge, with a direct line of sight toward a house that took their breath away. Twenty thousand square feet it wasa hundred-foot square, two stories, no basementset within a fenced six-acre perimeter four kilometers away, perhaps three hundred feet lower than their position. Clark had a pair of seven-power binoculars and took note of the guard force while light permitted. He counted twenty men, all armed with automatic weapons. Two crew-served heavy machine guns were sited in built-for-the-purpose strongpoints on the wall. Bob Ritter had called it right on St. Kitts, he thought: Frank Lloyd Wright meets Ludwig the Mad. It was a beautiful house, if you went for the neoclassical-Spanish-modern style, fortified in hi-tech fashion to keep the unruly peasants away. There was also the de rigueur helicopter pad with a new Sikorsky S-76 sitting on it.

Anything else I need to know about the house? Clark asked.

Pretty massive construction, as you can see. Id worry about that. This is earthquake country, you know. Personally, Id prefer something lighter, wood-post and beam, but they like concrete constructionto stop bullets and mortar rounds, I suppose.

Better and better, Clark observed. He reached into his backpack. First he removed the heavy tripod, setting it up quickly and expertly on solid ground. Then came the GLD, which he attached and sighted in. Finally, he removed a Varo Noctron-V night-sighting device. The GLD had the same capability, of course, but once it was set up he didnt want to fool with it. The Noctron had only five-power magnificationClark preferred the binocular lens arrangementbut was small, light, and handy. It also amplified ambient light about fifty thousand times. This technology had come a long way since his time in Southeast Asia, but it still struck him as a black art. He remembered being out in the boonies with nothing better than a Mark-1 eyeball. Larson would handle the radio traffic, and had his unit all set up. Then there was nothing left to do but wait. Larson produced some junk food and both men settled down.

Well, now you know what Great Feet means, Clark chuckled an hour later. The cryppies should have known. He handed the Noctron over.

Gawd! Only difference between a man and a boy . . .

It was a Ford three-quarter-ton pickup with optional four-wheel drive. Or at least that was how it had left the factory. Since then it had visited a custom-car shop where four-foot-diameter tires had been attached. It wasnt quite grotesque enough to be called Big Foot, after the monster trucks so popular at auto shows, but it had the same effect. It was also quite practical, and that was the really strange part. The road up to the casa did need some serious help, but this truck didnt noticethough the chieftains security pukes did, struggling to keep up with their bosss new and wonderful toy.

I bet the mileage sucks, Larson observed as it came through the gate. He handed the night-sight back.

He can afford it. Clark watched it maneuver around the house. It was too much to hope for, but it happened. The dick-head parked the truck right next to the house, right next to the windows to the conference room. Perhaps he didnt want to take his eyes off his new toy.

Two men alighted from the vehicle. They were greeted at the verandaClark couldnt remember the Spanish name for thatby their host with handshakes and hugs while armed men stood about as nervously as the Presidents Secret Service detail. He could see them relax when their charges went inside, spreading out, mixing with their counterpartsafter all, the Cartel was one big, happy family, wasnt it?

For now, anyway, Clark told himself. He shook his head in amazement at the placement of the truck.

Here comes the last one. Larson pointed to headlights struggling up the gravel road.

This car was a Mercedes, a stretch job, doubtless armored like a tankJust like the ambassadors car, Clark thought. How poetic. This VIP was also met with pomp and circumstance. There were now at least fifty guards visible. The wall perimeter was fully manned, with other teams constantly patrolling the grounds. The odd thing, he thought, was that there were no guards outside the wall. There had to be a few, but he couldnt spot them. It didnt matter. Lights went on in the room behind the truck. That did matter.

Looks like you guessed right, boy.

Thats what they pay me for, Larson pointed out. How close do you think that truck Clark had already checked, keying the laser in on both the house and the truck. Three meters from the wall. Close enough.

Commander Jensen finished tanking his aircraft, disconnecting from the KA-6 as soon as his fuel gauges pegged. He recovered the refueling probe and maneuvered downward to allow the tanker to clear the area. The mission profile could hardly have been easier. He eased the stick to the right, taking a heading of one-one-five and leveling off at thirty thousand feet. His IFF transponder was switched off at the moment, and he was able to relax and enjoy the ride, something he almost always did. The pilots seat in the Intruder is set rather high for good visibility during a bomb runit did make you feel a little exposed when you were being shot at, he remembered. Jensen had done a few missions before the end of the Vietnam War, and he could vividly recall the 100-mm flak over Haiphong, like black cotton balls with evil red hearts. But not tonight. The seat placement now was like a throne in the sky. The stars were bright. The waning moon would soon rise. And all was right with the world. Added to that was his mission. It didnt get any better than this.

With only starlight to see by they could pick out the coast from over two hundred miles away. The Intruder was cruising along at just under five hundred knots. Jensen brought the stick to the right as soon as he was beyond the radar coverage from the E-2C, taking a more southerly heading toward Ecuador. On crossing the coast he turned left to trace along the spine of the Andes. At this point he flipped on his IFF transponder. Neither Ecuador nor Colombia had an air-defense radar network. It was an extravagance that neither country needed. As a result, the only radars that were now showing up on the Intruders ESM monitors were the usual air-traffic-control type. They were quite modern. A little-known paradox of radar technology was that these new, modern radars didnt really detect aircraft at all. Instead they detected radar transponders. Every commercial aircraft in the world carried a small black boxas aircraft electronic equipment is invariably knownthat noted receipt of a radar signal and replied with its own signal, giving aircraft identification and other relevant information which was then painted on the control scopes at the radar stationmost often an airport down herefor the controllers to use. It was cheaper and more reliable than the older radars that did skin-paints, detecting the aircraft merely as nameless blips whose identity, course, and speed then had to be established by the chronically overworked people on the ground. It was an odd footnote in the history of technology that the new scheme was a step both forward and backward.

The Intruder soon entered the air-control zone belonging to El Dorado International Airport outside Bogot. A radar controller there called the Intruder as soon as its alphanumeric code appeared on his scope.

Roger, El Dorado, Commander Jensen replied at once. This is Four-Three Kilo. We are Inter-America Cargo Flight Six out of Quito, bound for LAX. Altitude three-zero-zero, course three-five-zero, speed four-nine-five. Over.

The controller verified the track with his radar data and replied in English, which is the language of international air travel. Four-Three Kilo, roger, copy. Be advised no traffic in your area. Weather CAVU. Maintain course and altitude. Over.

Roger, thank you, and good night, sir. Jensen killed the radio and spoke over his intercom to his bombardier-navigator. That was easy enough, wasnt it? Lets get to work.

In the right seat, set slightly below and behind the pilots, the naval flight officer got on his own radio after he activated the TRAM pod that hung on the Intruders center-line hardpoint.

At T minus fifteen minutes, Larson lifted his cellular phone and dialed the proper number. Seor Wagner, por favor.

Momento, the voice replied. Larson wondered who it was.

Wagner, another voice replied a moment later. Who is this?

Larson took the cellophane from off a pack of cigarettes and crumpled it over the receiver while he spoke garbled fragments of words, then finally: I cant hear you, Carlos. I will call back in a few minutes. Larson pressed the kill button on the phone. This location was at the far edge of the cellular system anyway.

Nice touch, Clark said approvingly. Wagner?