"And if things don't go well, Charley?" Torine asked.

"We'll have to play that by ear," Castillo said. "Maybe stay one day and try it again. Or abort this operation and think of something else."

Torine nodded.

"If it works, and you go to Buenos Aires, check out of the Four Seasons."

"Check everybody out?" Torine asked.

"Britton, me, and you and Fernando," Castillo said. "Kranz and Kensington will have to stay here long enough to get the weapons, the gear, and the radios back to Buenos Aires. And then get with Darby and Santini and get it to the States through the emba.s.sy. So they'll need rooms for a day or two. Then they'll go back to Bragg commercial. Is getting them tickets going to be a problem, Alex?"

Darby shook his head.

"Good. Okay, Fernando and Torine will go to Jorge Newbery, check the weather, file a flight plan, etcetera, and be ready to go the minute I get there in the Ranger with Lorimer and Yung and Munz. That's where you come in, mi coronel- mi coronel-Alex said you'd be helpful-"

"Who the h.e.l.l is Alex?" Darby asked again. Castillo ignored the question.

"If I'm able to reason with Lorimer," he went on, "that is, convince him the only way he's going to stay alive is by going with me, fine. He may even have his American and UN pa.s.sports in his safe. If he gives me trouble, if I have to put him to sleep-Yung, a man of many unexpected talents, tells me he'll have no trouble getting into his safe-I think we can count on his Lebanese pa.s.sport for sure. But if he is knocked out, how do we get him through immigration and into the Lear?"

"I can arrange that," Munz said. "No problem."

"And I just come back to Montevideo, right?" Yung asked.

"No. You're going to the States with us," Castillo said.

"What about my investigation, my files? I'd really like to stay here."

"This is not open for debate, Yung," Castillo said. "You're going with us. Your cover as just one more FBI agent will be blown with the amba.s.sador the moment he hears what happened. So this afternoon, pack a bag with enough clothes for a couple of days and give it to Fernando. A small bag."

"What the h.e.l.l happens to my files?"

"You are tenacious, aren't you?" Castillo said sharply. "But that is, in fact, a good question. Mr. Howell, this afternoon-when you go with him to his apartment-Mr. Yung is going to give you some files, which, as of this moment, are cla.s.sified Top Secret-Presidential. You will find someplace to keep them until I decide how to get them to the States. Maybe in the hands of a diplomatic courier."

"And what happens to my files in the States?"

"Whatever the President decides to do with them."

"Which means they disappear down the black hole of diplomacy?"

"I just changed my mind," Castillo said. "Colonel Torine, will you go with Howell and Yung to Yung's apartment and take possession of Yung's files? That way, we can take them home with us."

Torine gave him a thumbs-up signal.

Castillo nodded. "The subject is closed, Yung. You understand?"

Yung exhaled in resigned disgust.

"Okay," Castillo said. "Now to the a.s.sault team. Those two"-he pointed to Kranz and Kensington- "have some very rudimentary skills in that area. So they'll be on it. But that means they won't be on the radios. You can set them up, can't you, so all someone has to do is turn them on and talk?"

"No problem, sir," Sergeant Kensington said.

"One goes with us. That leaves the question of where to set up the other one. Here? Can you just aim the antenna out the window, the way you did in the Four Seasons?"

"I think so, sir. I'll have to try it."

"Okay, but if Miller, or anyone else in the States, tries to talk to you, it fails, right? I don't want anybody trying to micromanage this operation."

"Got it, sir," Kensington said.

"How big is the antenna?" Howell asked.

"A little larger than a satellite TV antenna," Kensington answered. "Eighteen, twenty inches in diameter."

"There's a backyard at my house," Howell said. "Fenced in. Would that work?"

"Where's your house?" Castillo asked.

"In Carrasco, not far from Yung's apartment."

"Okay, you are now our base station radio operator. Kensington will go with you, set it up, and show you how it works."

Both men nodded.

"Jack Britton, who knows how to operate a Car 4, and I know is pretty good at running around in the dark, gets suited up. Tony, you want to go?"

"Absolutely."

"I would like to volunteer, sir," Corporal Lester Bradley said. "I have never fired the Car 4, but I shot Expert at Parris Island with the M-16, and with the Beretta, and in Iraq I was the designated marksman of my fire-team. I used a bolt-action 7.62 51mm sniper's rifle for that, sir. Essentially a Remington Model 700 modified for Marine Corps use, sir."

"You were a sniper in Iraq?" Sergeant Kranz asked incredulously.

"We don't have snipers in the Corps, Sergeant. But the better shots are issued a sniper's rifle and are a.s.signed as 'designated marksmen.'"

"We have a Remington, right?" Castillo asked.

"I do, sir," Kranz said.

"Well, Lester," Castillo said, "you're just the man I've been looking for. What you're going to do is take Sergeant Kranz's rifle, make yourself a suitably camouflaged firing/observation position . . . We have binoculars, too, right, Kranz?"

Kranz nodded. "And the night-vision goggles. The new ones, the really good ones."

"Make sure that Corporal Bradley knows how to use them," Castillo ordered. "He's going to guard the Ranger while we're at the house."

"Sir, since it's Sergeant Kranz's rifle," Bradley said, "maybe he'd prefer to guard the helicopter, and I could go on the a.s.sault team."

"In special operations, Bradley," Castillo said, very seriously, "we operate on the principle of the round peg in the round hole, not personal desire. Sergeant Kranz is not the best man to guard the chopper. You are."

"Aye, aye, sir," Bradley responded with not much enthusiasm.

"Ricardo, you want to go with us?" Castillo asked. "I realize you haven't had much training in things like this."

Please say no. If anything goes wrong, you'll be the first one to take a hit. And I really don't want to have to tell Abuela Abuela about that. That would be even worse than having to tell your father. about that. That would be even worse than having to tell your father.

"Nothing like this, I suppose," the young DEA agent said. "But I have had training."

"The DEA school . . . is there such a thing?"

"Yeah, and that's tough. But what I meant was that when I was at A and M, in the Corps, I went through the Ranger Course at Benning and Hurlburt Field one summer. Don Fernando can tell you that's rough. Yeah. I really want to go. Don't worry about me."

"Okay. You're on."

He glanced at Fernando and saw that Fernando's eyes were on him. Castillo shrugged slightly. Fernando tipped his head slightly.

He's thinking exactly what I'm thinking.

It's one of those things. It has to be.

"That makes seven on your a.s.sault team, right?" Darby asked. "Plus Bradley at the helicopter. That's eight. You have enough black suits, weapons, night goggles, etcetera?"

"Where do you get eight?"

Darby ticked them off on his fingers: "Kranz, Kensington, Yung, Britton, Santini, Solez, Munz, and you." He held his hands up, with five fingers on his left hand and three on his right extended. "That's eight. When I took those bags from Fort Bragg out to the house, I counted equipment for six-shooters."

"That's the trouble with you agency people," Castillo said, with a smile. "You a.s.semble a few facts and immediately draw the wrong conclusion. Or usually, conclusions, plural."

Darby rearranged his extended hands and gave him the finger. Twice.

"What Colonel Munz and you and I are going to do, Alex, is drive sedately up to the door of Shangri-La in a car."

"You're just going to drive up in a car? Where, question one, is the car coming from?"

"Howell will rent it for us this afternoon from Hertz at the airport. He will use his credit card, thus keeping your name off the books."

"I have a car that you can use, Mr. Castillo," Howell said. "A five-year-old, powder blue Peugeot."

"Better yet," Castillo said, "things are going so well, I'm waiting for that famous other shoe to drop. Would your car be the sort of car used by Uruguayan bureaucrats on official business, Mr. Howell?"

Howell nodded. "That's why I bought what I did, actually."

"Alex, you will drive Mr. Howell's five-year-old, powder blue Peugeot to Tacuarembo early tomorrow afternoon; there's no sense you being there any sooner than, say, half past five or six. . . ."

"And when I get there, then what?"

"Go to the Hotel Carlos Gardel. If it doesn't have a bar, it has to have a place you can have a cup of coffee. Munz and I will meet you there, say, at eight or eight-thirty. We will be wearing suits and trying to look as much as possible like Uruguayan bureaucrats. Don't recognize us. Finish your coffee and leave. Go to the car. We'll find it. It's powder blue, right? That should make it easy to find."

"And then?"

"We drive out to Shangri-La, quickly flash our badges to whoever answers the door. Eventually, we will get to Mr. Bertrand, who will be informed that there seems to be some irregularity with his pa.s.sport, and might we have a look at it?

"If this goes as I hope it will, Lorimer will open his safe-saving Yung the difficulty of blowing it open-to get either his Lebanese pa.s.sport or money to bribe us with, probably both. Once the safe is open, Munz will put handcuffs on him, and I will begin to explain to him what happens next, and the wisdom of his cooperating. Once we get that far, you, who will have been waiting patiently outside, will drive the powder blue car back to Montevideo.

"Anybody around, seeing the car leaving, will presume we're in it," Castillo went on. "As soon as they see you leave, while Britton, Yung, and Solez are cutting the telephone line and/or any cables leading to any transmitter antennas, Kranz and Kensington will come into the house, put plastic cuffs on anybody in the house, and make sure there's n.o.body lurking around who can cause trouble. They will then go outside to make sure there are no visitors, or that we're warned if there are. Ricardo, Britton, and Yung, who should be in the house by then, will herd everyone we've cuffed into a bedroom, where they will be attached to the furniture with more plastic cuffs.

"When that's been done, leaving Ricardo to watch those cuffed, Britton and Yung will start to search the house for anything interesting that Lorimer didn't choose to put in the safe.

"That's in Munz's area of expertise, too, so he'll help with that. I'll sit on Lorimer.

"Just before dawn, we take Lorimer out of the house and head for the helicopter. By the time we get there, there will be enough light to take off. The way I figure it, we'll have anywhere from a half hour to an hour before those cuffed manage to get loose, or someone comes in to make breakfast, or whatever, and discover Jean-Paul has been kidnapped by-this is important- Spanish-speaking people, two of whom look like cops/businessmen/bureaucrats and the rest like those people one sees in thriller movies. Those balaclava masks really scare people."

Darby thought the scenario over carefully.

"You don't need permission to speak, you know, Alex," Castillo said after a very long thirty seconds.

"Jesus, Charley," Darby said, smiling, "this might just work."

"And n.o.body gets hurt," Castillo said. "I want everybody to keep that in mind. This is not an a.s.sault. The only man at Lorimer's estancia who deserves to die is Lorimer, and unfortunately I need the sonofab.i.t.c.h alive. The primary purpose of the black suits and the balaclava masks and all the weapons is to scare everybody into behaving while we're there. And the masks will make everybody hard to describe to the local gendarmes when they finally show up and start asking questions."

"At what time do you want me to chauffeur you and Munz out there?" Darby asked.

"Probably about nine o'clock. At that time, there probably won't be more than two or three servants in the house. Plus, maybe, his tootsie. Anyway, Kranz and Kensington will have kept an eye on the place for at least an hour before we get there, and if it doesn't look right, one or the other of them will wave us off at the driveway.

"If that happens, we may wait until later. Midnight, for example, and forget the bureaucratic business, just drive up in the Yukon, bust in, grab Lorimer, bust open the safe, and get the h.e.l.l out of there. We can hide in the field where the chopper is. Or maybe just get in the chopper and go."

"I think the first scenario will work," Darby said.

"Jesus, I hope so," Castillo said. "Okay, we'll get to the rest of the tape. Make notes of what we're missing, and I'll try to get what I missed this afternoon."

He pushed a b.u.t.ton on the control and the videotape began to play.

"This is where we followed the road Bradley's going to use into Tacuarembo. I didn't see anything extraordinary about it, but take a real good look, Bradley."

"Okay. Here we are over the field again. I didn't see one, but there has to be a road, a path, into it. Look for it, Bradley. Don't just drive over the field. We can't afford to have the Yukon stuck in the middle of the field when the sun comes up. I'm glad I thought of that. If Bradley gets the Yukon stuck, he will be shot, and his carca.s.s left in the Yukon, which will be then torched by Ricardo. Ricardo, make sure that Kranz gives you a couple of thermite grenades and shows you how to use them before you drive up there. One for the engine compartment, the other on one of the barrels of fuel."

"I've seen a thermite grenade before," Solez said.

"Okay, here we are. I'm about to make the low-level pa.s.s over the main house at Shangri-La."

"Jesus, there's somebody in the interior courtyard."

He stopped the tape.

"Gentlemen, there is Mr. Jean-Paul Bertrand, aka Lorimer. Apparently having a wake-me-up cup of coffee in his garden."

[THREE].

Estancia Shangri-La Tacuarembo Province Republica Oriental del Uruguay 2110 31 July 2005 Jean-Paul Bertrand was not only dining alone, but he had prepared the meal himself.

There were several reasons. For one, he was bored. For another, his cook's idea of a gourmet meal was to throw something-usually beef, sometimes pork, and less often chicken-on the wood-fired parrilla parrilla grill, char it, and then serve it with either mashed potatoes or what they called here grill, char it, and then serve it with either mashed potatoes or what they called here papas fritas papas fritas, and a sliced tomato salad. Wrapping a potato in aluminum foil and baking it apparently overtaxed her culinary skills.