“No, and I never bit the head off a live chicken running around in the Hurlburt Field swamps, either,” Castillo said.
“But-the proof being you’re still alive-you performed satisfactorily in the real world, huh? And have all those medals to prove it?”
“Where the hell are you going with this, Vic?” Castillo asked more than a little testily.
“You wanted to know who Jim Ferris is. I’m telling you. He’s almost exactly your opposite. He caught, killed, and ate snakes because that’s what he was ordered to do. And he taught a whole bunch of people to obey orders and eat snakes, too. You went into the swamps at Hurlburt with two pounds of high-protein bars taped to your legs because you heard snake would be on the menu.
“The point being that when Jim Ferris came down here, he obeyed his orders from the ambassador to cooperate with the Mexicans. He argued with both Ambassador McCann, and the ambassador before McCann, but he obeyed his orders.
“What you would have said, Charley, is: ‘Screw this. I was sent down here to get the drug guys and that’s what I’m going to do.’ ”
Castillo, who did not look as if he took offense to that, then said: “So you’re suggesting the drug cartel had no reason to whack anybody because Ferris’s people weren’t causing them any trouble?”
“Yeah. And they must have known that killing three Americans and kidnapping a fourth would bring a lot of attention.”
“Tell me about the drug guys,” Castillo said.
“Pacific Coast operations are run by the Sinaloa cartel, which is headed by two guys, Joaquin Guzman Loera and Ismael Zambada Garcia. You ever hear of Los Zetas?”
Castillo shook his head.
“Loera and Garcia needed a private army, so they bought one. They went to the Mexican army and said, ‘If you come work for me, bringing along the weapons the Americans gave you, I will pay you five times what the Army has been paying you. If you don’t come, we will kill you and rape your wives, mothers, and other female relatives.’ ”
“Shit!” Castillo said.
“These are really charming people, Charley, and they have very deep pockets. They have about a battalion’s worth of Mexican soldiers-officers, noncoms, and privates. And all the equipment we gave them. Los Zetas are really bad guys, Charley.”
“And they could have been manning the roadblock?”
“Either in Mexican army uniforms or Federales uniforms,” D’Alessandro answered. “Which brings us back to why?”
“Edgar thinks it had nothing to do with the drug cartels,” Castillo said, “and Alek agrees with him.”
“Then what?”
“It has been suggested that Mr. Putin, on reflection, has decided that an armistice is not the way for him to go,” Tom Barlow offered. “And that he’s coming after Svetlana and me again.”
“And after Charley,” D’Alessandro added.
“And me,” Pevsner said. “Not necessarily in that order.”
“Jesus, I guess I should have thought of that,” D’Alessandro said. “I will think about it now. Lester, I’d think better after I’ve had a second taste of the Jack Daniel’s.”
FOUR
Cozumel International Airport Cozumel, Mexico 1920 12 April 2007
Two glistening white Yukons with the legend GRAND COZUMEL BEACH AND GOLF RESORT painted on their doors and a much less elegant brown Suburban with the insignia of Mexican Customs and Immigration were waiting for the Cessna Mustang when the small twin-engine jet was wanded to a parking spot.
John David Parker was relieved to be on the ground. Not only had it been his first flight in a Mustang, until today he had thought that jet aircraft required the services of two pilots. Not only had there been but one pilot-Major Dick Miller, U.S. Army, Retired-but he had seen Miller climb aboard the airplane at Baltimore Washington International-and suddenly understood why they called him “Gimpy.” There clearly was something wrong with his left leg; it didn’t bend as knees are supposed to.
Surprising Parker not a little, moments after Miller had boarded the airplane, the gray-haired elderly lady and “the Reverend Father” Tom Sanders had shown up with his passport, as promised. They had even packed a small bag with a change of linen and his toilet kit.
Three minutes later, they were airborne. The trip was uneventful. They went through immigration at New Orleans’s Louis Armstrong International Airport and then flew across the Gulf of Mexico.
Two men got out of each Yukon. One of them-a burly, fair-skinned man wearing shorts, knee-high stockings and a white jacket with the logotype of the Grand Cozumel Beach and Golf Resort on the chest-came onto the airplane as soon as the stair door was opened.
The man shook Edgar Delchamps’s hand and said something in Russian.
“Hand him your passports as you get off,” Delchamps ordered. “He’ll take care of the formalities.”
It was a five-minute ride from the airport to the Grand Cozumel, which turned out to be an enormous luxury resort complex at the center of which was a twenty-odd-story building surrounded by smaller buildings. There were two golf courses, acres of tennis courts, and, fronting the wide, white sand beach, lines of individual cottages.
Parker was not surprised that the entire property was enclosed within a substantial fence, but when they reached the main building and went down a ramp to an underground garage, he was surprised at the steel barriers that were hydraulically lowered as they reached them. They looked exactly like the barriers at the White House, through which-he had been told and he believed-an M1 Abrams tank would have a hard time crashing.
There was a line of elevators. Delchamps led them all to one marked THE TAHITIAN SUITE. In lieu of an UP/DOWN button, it had a keyboard and what looked like a small television screen or computer monitor.
When Delchamps keyed in a series of numbers, the screen lit up, showing the outline of a hand. A moment after Delchamps placed his hand on the image, there came a ping sound-and the elevator door slid open.
He waved everybody onto the elevator.
There were no floor numbers on the elevator control panel, just up and down arrows.
When Delchamps pushed UP, the opening bars of The Blue Danube came over loudspeakers. After just a faint sensation of movement, the door slid open.
Parker thought: That was quick. We’re probably only going to the second floor.
They were on a circular foyer, off of which were eight closed doors and one open double door. A burly man in a white jacket-a twin of the man at the airport-stood next to the open doors, holding an Uzi submachine gun along his leg.
He ran his eyes among the elevator passengers and then sat down.
Delchamps walked to and through the open doors with the others following him. Parker, confused for a moment, saw that rather than being on the second floor, they were on a very high floor.
They were in a large room. There were six men. Two were playing chess while a third-a very young man, almost a boy-watched. A fourth was reading a Spanish-language newspaper, and a fifth was reading the Wall Street Journal. The sixth was working at a laptop computer on a glass-topped coffee table.
Through wide plate-glass doors, Parker saw two more men-one of them a very large, obviously Latino man and the other a good-looking, six-foot, fair-skinned man in his late thirties who looked American-hoist themselves nimbly out of a swimming pool and start to towel themselves dry.
A huge black dog like the ones at Lorimer Manor came trotting around the side of the pool with a white soccer ball in his mouth. He dropped it at the feet of the swimmers and then shook himself dry. It produced an explosion of water.
What the hell is it with these dogs?
A stunningly beautiful redheaded woman wearing a transparent flaming yellow jacket over a matching bikini-together, the garments left only negligible anatomical details to the imagination-rose gracefully from a chaise longue next to the pool and marched up to Roscoe Danton. She gave him a little hug and offered her cheek for him to kiss.