Yes, sir. That makes it one of the oldest-model sextants. The glass is all broke, but thats easy to fix. I know a museum that pays top dollar for thesebut then I might just keep it myself, of course.

We got some company, Wegener said, getting back to business. They want to talk about the two people we picked up.

Murray and Bright held up their ID cards. Dan noticed a phone in the compartment. The XO, he realized, might have called to warn them what was coming. Rileys cigar hadnt dropped an ash yet.

No problem, Oreza said. What are you guys going to do with the bastards?

Thats up to the U.S. Attorney, Bright said. Were supposed to help put the case together, and that means we have to establish what you people did when you apprehended them.

Well, you want to talk to Mr. Wilcox, sir. He was in command of the boarding party, Riley said. We just did what he told us.

Lieutenant Wilcox is on leave, the captain pointed out.

What about after you brought them aboard? Bright asked.

Oh, that, Riley admitted. Okay, I was wrong, but that little cocksuckerI mean, he spit on the captain, sir, and you just dont do that kinda shit, yknow? So I roughed him up some. Maybe I shouldnt have done it, but maybe that little prick oughta have manners, too.

Thats not what were here about, Murray said after a moment. He says you hanged him.

Hung him? What from? Oreza asked.

I think you call it the yardarm.

You meanhang, like in, well, hang? Around the neck, I mean? Riley asked.

Thats right.

The bosuns laugh rumbled like an earthquake. Sir, if I ever hung somebody, he wouldnt go around bitchin about it the next day.

Murray repeated the story as hed heard it, almost word for word. Riley shook his head.

Thats not the way its done, sir.

What do you mean?

You say that the little one said that the last thing he saw was his friend swinging back and forth, right? That aint the way its done.

I still dont understand.

When you hang somebody aboard ship, you tie his feet together and run a downhaul lineyou tie that off to the rail or a stanchion so he dont swing around. You gotta do that, sir. You have something that weightwell, over a hundred poundsswinging around like that, itll break things. So what you do is, you two-block himthat means you run him right up to the blockthats the pulley, okay?and you got the downhaul to keep him in place real snug like. Otherwise it just aint shipshape. Hell, everybody knows that.

How do you know that? Bright asked, trying to hide his exasperation.

Sir, you lower boats into the water, or you rig stuff on this ship, and thats my job. We call it seamanship. I mean, say you had some piece of gear that weighs as much as a man, okay? You want it swinging around loose like a friggin chandelier on a long chain? Christ, itd eventually hit the radar, tear it right off the mast. We had a storm that night, too. Nah, the way they did it in the old days was just like a signal hoistline on top of the hoist and a line on the bottom, tie it off nice and tight so it dont go noplace. Hey, somebody in the deck division leaves stuff flapping around like that, I tear him a new asshole. Gear is expensive. We dont go around breaking it for kicks, sir. What do you think, Portagee?

Hes right. That was a pretty good blow we had that nightdidnt the captain tell you?the only reason we still had the punks aboard was that we waved off the helo pickup cause of the weather. We didnt have any work parties out on deck that night, did we?

No chance, Riley said. We buttoned up tight that night. What I mean, sir, is we can go out and work even in a damned hurricane if we have to, but unless you gotta, you dont go screwin around on the weather decks during a gale. Its dangerous. You lose people that way.

How bad was it that night? Murray asked.

Some of the new kids spent the night with their heads in the thunderjugs. The cook decided to serve chops that night, too. Oreza laughed. Thats how we learned, aint it, Bob?

Only way, Riley agreed.

So there wasnt a court-martial that night either?

Huh? Riley appeared genuinely puzzled for a moment, then his face brightened. Oh, you mean we gave em a fair trial, then hung em, like in the old beer commercial?

Just one of them, Murray said helpfully.

Why not both? Theyre both fuckin murderers, aint they? Hey, sir, I was aboard that yacht, all right? I seen what they didhave you? Its a real mess. You see something like that all the time, maybe. I never have, andwell, I dont mind tellin you, sir, it shook me up some. You want em hung, yeah, Ill do it and they wont bitch about it the next day, either. Okay, maybe I shouldnt a snapped the one over the raillost my cool, and I shouldnt haveokay, Im sorry about that. But those two little fucks took out a whole family, probably did some rapin, too. I got a family, too, yknow? I got daughters. So does Portagee. You want us to shed tears over those two fuckers, you come to the wrong place, sir. You sit em in the electric chair and Ill throw the switch for you.

So you didnt hang him? Murray asked.

Sir, I wish Ida thought of it, Riley announced. It was, after all, Oreza whod thought of it.

Murray looked at Bright, whose face was slightly pink by this time. It had gone even more smoothly than hed expected. Well, hed been told that the captain was a clever sort. You didnt give command of a ship to a jerkat least you werent supposed to.

Okay, gentlemen, I guess that answers all the questions we have for the moment. Thank you for your cooperation. A moment later, Wegener was leading them away.

The three men stopped at the gangway for a moment. Murray motioned for Bright to head for the car, then turned to the captain.

You actually operate helicopters off that deck up there?

All the time. I just wish we had one of our own.

Could I see it before I leave? Ive never been aboard a cutter before.

Follow me. In less than a minute, Murray was standing in the center of the deck, directly on the crossed yellow lines painted on the black no-skid deck coating. Wegener was explaining how the lights at the control station worked, but Murray was looking at the mast, drawing an imaginary line from the yardarm to the deck. Yeah, he decided, you could do it easy enough.

Captain, for your sake I hope you never do anything this crazy again.

Wegener turned in surprise. What do you mean?

We both know what I mean.

You believe what those two Yes, I do. A jury wouldntat least I dont think one would, though you can never really tell what a jury will believe. But you did it. I knowyou cant say anything. . . .

What makes you think Captain, Ive been in the Bureau for twenty-six years. Ive heard lots of crazy stories, some real, some made up. You gradually get a feel for whats real and what isnt. The way it looks to me, you could run a piece of rope from that pulley up there, down to here pretty easy, and if youre taking the seas right, having a man swing wouldnt matter much. It sure wouldnt hurt the radar antenna that Riley was so worried about. Like I said, dont do it again. This ones a freebie because we can prosecute the case without the evidence you got for us. Dont push it. Well, Im sure you wont. You found out that there was more to this one than you thought, didnt you?

I was surprised that the victim was Right. You opened a great big can of worms without getting your hands too dirty. You were lucky. Dont push it, Murray said again.

Thank you, sir.

One minute after that, Murray was back in the car. Agent Bright was still unhappy.

Once upon a time, when I was a brand-new agent fresh out of the Academy, I was assigned to Mississippi, Murray said. Three civil-rights workers disappeared, and I was a very junior member of the team that cleared the case. I didnt do much of anything other than hold Inspector Fitzgeralds coat. Ever hear about Big Joe?

My dad worked with him, Bright answered.

Then you know that Joe was a character, a real old-time cop. Anyway, the word got to us that the local Klukkers were mouthing off about how they were gonna kill a few agentsyou know the stories, how they were harassing some families and stuff like that. Joe got a little pissed. Anyway, I drove him out to seeforget the mutts name, but he was the Grand Kleagle of the local Klavern and he was the one with the biggest mouth. He was sitting under a shady tree in his front lawn when we pulled up. He had a shotgun next to the chair, and he was half in the bag from booze already. Joe walks up to him. The mutt starts to pick up the shotgun, but Joe just stared him down. Fitzgerald could do that; he put three guys in the ground and you could see in his face that hed done it. I got a little worried, had my hand on my revolver, but Joe just stared him down and told him if there was any more talk about offing an agent, or any more shitty phone calls to wives and kids, Big Joe was going to come back and kill him, right there in his front yard. Didnt shout or anything, just said it like he was ordering breakfast. The Kleagle believed him. So did I. Anyway, all that loose talk ended.

What Joe did was illegal as hell, Murray went on. Sometimes the rules get bent. Ive done it. So have you.

Ive never Dont get your tits in a flutter, Mark. I said bent, not broken. The rules do not anticipate all situations. Thats why we expect agents to exercise judgment. Thats how society works. In this case, those Coasties broke loose some valuable information, and the only way we can use it is if we ignore how they got it. No real harm was done, because the subjects will be handled as murderers, and all the evidence we need is physical. Either they fry or they cop to the murders and cooperate by again giving us all the information that the good Captain Wegener scared out of em. Anyway, thats what they decided in D.C. Its too embarrassing to everyone to make an issue of what we discussed aboard the cutter. Do you really think a local jury would No, Bright admitted at once. It wouldnt take much of a lawyer to blow it apart, and even if he didnt Exactly. Wed just be spinning our wheels. We live in an imperfect world, but I dont think that Wegener will ever make that mistake again.

Okay. Bright didnt like it, but that was beside the point.

So what we do now is figure out exactly why this poor bastard and his family got themselves murdered by a sicario and his spear-carrier. You know, when I was chasing wise guys up in New York, nobody messed with families. You didnt even kill a guy in front of his family except to make a special kind of point.

Not much in the way of rules for the druggies, Bright pointed out.

Yeahand I used to think terrorists were bad.

It was so much easier than his work with the Macheteros, Cortez thought. Here he was, sitting in the corner booth of a fine, expensive restaurant with a ten-page wine list in his handsCortez thought himself an authority on winesinstead of a rat-infested barrio shack eating beans and mouthing revolutionary slogans with people whose idea of Marxism was robbing banks and making heroic taped pronouncements that the local radio stations played between the rock songs and commercials. America had to be the only place in the world, he thought, where poor people drove their own cars to demonstrations and the longest lines they stood in were at the supermarket check-out.

He selected an obscure estate label from the Loire Valley for dinner. The wine steward clicked his ballpoint in approval as he retrieved the list.

Cortez had grown up in a place where the poor peoplewhich category included nearly everyonescrounged for shoes and bread. In America, the poor areas were the ones where people indulged drug habits that required hundreds of cash dollars per week. It was more than bizarre to the former colonel. In America drugs spread from the slums to the suburbs, bringing prosperity to those who had what others wanted.

Which was essentially what happened on the international scale also, of course. The yanquis, ever niggardly in their official aid to their less prosperous neighbors, now flooded them with money, but on what the Americans liked to call a people-to-people basis. That was good for a laugh. He didnt know or care how much the yanqui government gave to its friends, but he was sure that ordinary citizensso bored with their comfortable lives that they needed chemical stimulationgave far more, and did so without strings on human rights. Hed spent so many years as a professional intelligence officer, trying to find a way to demean America, to damage its stature, lessen its influence. But hed gone about it in the wrong way, Flix had come to realize. Hed tried to use Marxism to fight capitalism despite all the evidence that showed what worked and what did not. He could, however, use capitalism against itself, and fulfill his original mission while enjoying all the benefits of the very system that he was hurting. And the oddest part of all: his former employers thought him a traitor because he had found a way that worked. . . .

The man opposite him was a fairly typical American, Cortez thought. Overweight from too much good food, careless about cleaning his expensive clothing. Probably didnt polish his shoes either. Cortez remembered going barefoot for much of his youth, and thinking himself fortunate to have three shirts to call his own. This man drove an expensive car, lived in a comfortable flat, had a job that paid enough for ten DGI colonelsand it wasnt enough. That was America right therewhatever one had, it was never enough.

So what do you have for me?

Four possible prospects. All the information is in my briefcase.

How good are they? Cortez asked.

They all meet your guidelines, the man answered. Havent I always Yes, you are most reliable. That is why we pay you so much.

Nice to be appreciated, Sam, the man said with a trace of smugness.

FlixSam to his dinner partnerhad always appreciated the people with whom he worked. He appreciated what they could do. He appreciated the information they provided. But he despised them for the weaklings they were. Still, an intelligence officerand that remained the way he thought of himselfcouldnt be too picky. America abounded with people like this one. Cortez did not reflect on the fact that he, too, had been bought. He deemed himself a skilled professional, perhaps something of a mercenary, but that was in keeping with an honored tradition, wasnt it? Besides, he was doing what his former masters had always wanted him to do, more effectively than had ever been possible with the DGI, and someone else was doing the paying. In fact, ultimately the Americans themselves paid his salary.

Dinner passed without incident. The wine was every bit as excellent as hed expected, but the meat was overdone and the vegetables disappointing. Washington, he thought, was overrated as a city of restaurants. On his way out he simply picked up his companions briefcase and walked to his car. The drive back to his hotel took twenty leisurely minutes. After that, he spent several hours going over the documents. The man was reliable, Cortez reflected, and earned his appreciation. Each of the four was a solid prospect.

His recruiting effort would begin tomorrow.

Knowns and Unknowns.

IT HAD TAKEN a week to get accustomed to the altitude, as Julio had promised. Chavez eased out of the suspenders pack. It wasnt a fully loaded one yet, only twenty-five pounds, but they were taking their time, almost easing people into the conditioning program instead of using a more violent approach. That suited the sergeant, still breathing a little hard after the eight-mile run. His shoulders hurt some, and his legs ached in the usual way, but around him there was no sound of retching, and there hadnt been any dropouts this time around. Just the usual grumbles and curses.

That wasnt so bad, Julio said without gasping. But I still say that getting laid is the best workout there is.

You got that one right, Chavez agreed with a laugh. All those unused muscle groups, as the free-weight guys say.

The best thing about the training camp was the food. For lunch in the field they had to eat MRE packsMeal Ready to Eat, which was three lies for the price of onebut breakfast and supper selections were always well prepared in the camps oversized kitchen. Chavez invariably selected as large a bowl of fresh fruits as he could get away with, heavily laced with white sugar for energy, along with the usual Army coffee whose caffeine content always seemed augmented to give you that extra wake-up punch. He laid into his bowl of diced grapefruit, oranges, and damned near everything else with gusto while his tablemates attacked their greasy eggs and bacon. Chavez went back to the line for some hash-browns. Hed heard that carbohydrates were also good for energy, and now that he was almost accustomed to the altitude, the thought of grease for breakfast didnt bother him that much.

Things were going well. Work here was hard, but there was nothing in the way of Mickey Mouse bullshit. Everyone here was an experienced pro, and they were being treated as such. No energy was being wasted on bed-making; the sergeants all knew how, and if a blanket corner wasnt quite tucked in, peer pressure set things right without the need for shouting from a superior officer. They were all young men, as serious about their work as they knew how to be, but there was a spirit of fun and adventure. They still didnt know exactly what they were training for. There was the inevitable speculation, whispering between bunks that gradually transformed to a symphony of snoring at night after agreement on some wildly speculative idea.

Though an uneducated man, Chavez was not a stupid one. Somehow he knew that all of the theories were wrong. Afghanistan was all over; they couldnt be going there. Besides, everyone here spoke fluent Spanish. He mulled over it again while chewing a mouthful of kiwi fruita treat he hadnt known to exist a week before. High altitudethey werent training them here for the fun of it. That eliminated Cuba and Panama. Nicaragua, perhaps. How high were the mountains there? Mexico and the other Central American nations had mountains, too. Everyone here was a sergeant. Everyone here had led a squad, and had done training at one level or other. Everyone here was a light infantryman. Probably theyd be dispatched on some special training mission, therefore, training other light-fighters. That made it counterinsurgency. Of course, every country south of the Rio Grande had one sort of guerrilla problem or other. They resulted from the inequities of the individual governments and economies, but to Chavez the explanation was simpler and to the pointthose countries were all fucked up. Hed seen enough of that in his trips with his battalion to Honduras and Panama. The local towns were dirtytheyd made his home barrio seem paradise on earth. The policewell, hed never thought that he would come to admire the LAPD. But it was the local armies that had earned his especial contempt. Bunch of lazy, incompetent bullies. Not much different from street gangs, as a matter of fact, except that they all carried the same sort of guns (the L.A. gangs tended toward individualism). Weapons skills were about the same. It didnt require very much for a soldier to buttstroke some poor bastard with his rifle. The officerswell, he hadnt seen anyone to compare with Lieutenant Jackson, who loved to run with his men and didnt mind getting all dirty and smelly like a real soldier. But inevitably it was the sergeants down there who earned his fullest contempt. It had been that paddy Sergeant McDevitt in Korea whod shown Ding Chavez the lightskill and professionalism equaled pride. And, when you got down to it, pride truly earned was all there was to a man. Pride was what kept you going, what kept you from caving in on those goddamned mountainside runs. You couldnt let down your friends. You couldnt let your friends see you for something less than you wanted to be. That was the short version of everything he had learned in the Army, and he knew that the same could be said of all the men in this room. What they were preparing for, therefore, was to train others to do the same. So their mission was a fairly conventional Army mission. For some reason or otherprobably political, but Chavez didnt worry about political stuff; never made much sense anywayit was a secret mission. He was smart enough to know that this kind of hush-hush preparation meant CIA. He was correct on that judgment. It was the mission he was wrong on.

Breakfast ended at the normal time. The men rose from their tables, taking their trays and dishes to the stacking table before proceeding outside. Most made pit stops and many, including Chavez, changed into clean, dry T-shirts. The sergeant wasnt overly fastidious, but he did prefer the crisp, clean smell of a newly washed shirt. There was an honest-to-God laundry service here. Chavez decided that hed miss the camp, altitude and all. The air, if thin, was clean and dry. Each day theyd hear the lonely wail of diesel horns from the trains that entered the Moffat Tunnel, whose entrance theyd see on their twice-daily runs. Often in the evening theyd catch the distant sight of the double-deck cars of an Amtrak train heading east to Denver. He wondered what hunting was like here. What did they hunt? Deer, maybe? Theyd seen a bunch of them, big mule deer, but also the curious white shapes of mountain goats racing up sheer rock walls as the soldiers approached. Now, those fuckers were really in shape, Julio had noted the previous day. But Chavez dismissed the thought after a moment. The animals he hunted had only two legs. And shot back if you werent careful.

The four squads formed up on time. Captain Ramirez called them to attention and marched them off to their separate area, about half a mile east of the main camp at the far end of the flat bottom of the high valley. Waiting for them was a black man dressed in T-shirt and dark shorts, both of which struggled to contain bulging muscles.

Good morning, people, the man said. I am Mr. Johnson. Today we will begin some real mission-oriented training. All of you have had training in hand-to-hand combat. My job is to see how good you are, and to teach you some new tricks that your earlier training may have left out. Killing somebody silently isnt all that hard. The tricky part is getting close enough to do it. We all know that. Johnsons hands slipped behind his back as he talked on for a moment. This is another way to kill silently.

His hands came into view holding a pistol with a large, canlike device affixed to the front. Before Chavez had told himself that it was a silencer, Johnson brought it around in both hands and fired it three times. It was a very good silencer, Ding noted immediately. You could barely hear the metallic clack of the automatics slidequieter, in fact, than the tinkle of glass from the three bottles that disintegrated twenty feet awayand you couldnt hear the sound of the shot at all. Impressive.

Johnson gave them all a mischievous grin. You dont get your hands all bruised, either. Like I said, you all know hand-to-hand, and were going to work on that. But Ive been around the block a few times, just like you people, and lets not dick around the issue. Armed combat beats unarmed any day of the week. So today were going to learn a whole new kind of fighting: silent armed combat. He bent down and flipped the blanket off a submachine gun. It, too, appeared to have a silencer on the muzzle. Chavez reproached himself for his earlier speculation. Whatever the mission was, it wasnt about training.

Vice Admiral James Cutter, USN, was a patrician. At least he looked like one, Ryan thoughttall and spare, his hair going a regal silver, and a confident smile forever fixed on his pink-scrubbed face. Certainly he acted like oneor thought he did, Jack corrected himself. It was Ryans view that truly important people didnt go out of their way to act like it. It wasnt as though being the Presidents Special Assistant for National Security Affairs was the same as a peerage. Ryan knew a few people who actually had them. Cutter came from one of those old swamp-Yankee families which had grown rocks on their New England farmsteads for generations, then turned to the mercantile trade, and, in Cutters case, sent its surplus sons to sea. But Cutter was the sort of sailor for whom the sea was a means to an end. More than half of his career had been spent in the Pentagon, and that, Ryan thought, was no place for a proper sailor. Hed had all the necessary commands, Jack knew. First a destroyer, then a cruiser. Each time hed done his job wellwell enough to be noticed, which must have been the important part. Plenty of outstanding officers careers stopped cold at captains rank because theyd failed to be noticed by a high-enough patron. What had Cutter done to make him stick out from the crowd . . . ?

Polished up the knocker faithfully, perhaps? Jack wondered as he finished his briefing.

Not that it mattered now. The President had noticed him on Jeff Pelts staff, and on Pelts return to academiathe International Relations chair at the University of VirginiaCutter had slipped into the job as neatly as a destroyer coming alongside the pier. He sat behind his desk in a neatly tailored suit, sipping his coffee from a mug with uss BELKNAP engraved on it, the better to remind people that hed commanded that cruiser once. In case the casual visitor missed that onethere were few casual visitors to the National Security Advisers officethe wall on the left was liberally covered with plaques of the ships hed served on, and enough signed photographs for a Hollywood agents office. Naval officers call this phenomenon the I LOVE ME! wall, and while most of them have one, they usually keep it at home.

Ryan didnt like Cutter very much. He hadnt liked Pelt either, but the difference was that Pelt was almost as smart as he thought he was. Cutter was not even close. The three-star Admiral was in over his head, but had not the sense to know it. The bad news was that while Ryan was also a Special Assistant To, it was not To the President. That meant he had to report to Cutter whether he liked it or not. With his boss in the hospital, that task would be a frequent occurrence.

Hows Greer? the man asked. He spoke with a nasal New England accent that ought to have died a natural death long before, though it was one thing that Ryan didnt mind. It reminded him of his undergraduate days at Boston College.

Theyre not through with the tests yet. Ryans voice betrayed his worries. It looked like pancreatic cancer, the survival rate for which was just about zero. Hed checked with Cathy about that, and had tried to get his boss to Johns Hopkins, but Greer was Navy, which meant going to Bethesda. Though Bethesda Naval Medical Center was the Navys number-one hospital, it wasnt Johns Hopkins.

And youre going to take over for him? Cutter asked.

That is in rather poor taste, Admiral, Bob Ritter answered for his companion. In Admiral Greers absence, Dr. Ryan will represent him from time to time.

If you handle that as well as youve handled this briefing, we ought to get along just fine. Shame about Greer. Hope things work out. There was about as much emotion in his voice as one needed to ask directions.

Youre a warm person, arent you? Ryan thought to himself as he closed his briefcase. I bet the crew of the Belknap just loved you. But Cutter wasnt paid to be warm. He was paid to advise the President. And Ryan was paid to brief him, not to love him.

Cutter wasnt a fool. Ryan had to admit that also. He was not an expert in the area of Ryans own expertise, nor did he have Pelts cardsharps instinct for political wheeling and dealing behind the sceneand, unlike Pelt, Cutter liked to operate without consulting the State Department. He sure as hell didnt understand how the Soviet Union worked. The reason he was sitting in that high-back chair, behind that dark-oak desk, was that he was a reputed expert in other areas, and evidently those were the areas in which the President had most of his current interest. Here Ryans intellect failed him. He came back to his brief on what KGB was up to in Central Europe instead of following that idea to its logical conclusion. Jacks other mistake was more basic. Cutter knew that he wasnt the man Jeff Pelt had been, and Cutter wanted to change all that.

Nice to see you again, Dr. Ryan. Good brief. Ill bring that matter to the Presidents attention. Now if youll excuse us, the DDO and I have something to discuss.

See you back at Langley, Jack, Ritter said. Ryan nodded and left. The other two waited for the door to close behind him. Then the DDO presented his own brief on Operation SHOWBOAT. It lasted twenty minutes.

So how do we coordinate this? the Admiral asked Ritter.

The usual. About the only good thing that came out of the Desert One fiasco was that it proved how secure satellite communications were. Ever see the portable kind? the DDO asked. Its standard equipment for the light forces.