██████ TOLD THIS REPORTER THAT IF SOME WAY COULD BE FOUND TO SHUT DOWN “DRUG CARTEL INTERNATIONAL,” IT WOULD PUT A “SERIOUS CRIMP” IN DRUG CARTEL ACTIVITIES AND THAT HE WAS WORKING WITH ███ ON A PLAN TO DO SO, WHICH HE WOULD FORWARD TO THE PRESIDENT.
AFTER NO MORE THAN AN HOUR AT THE AIRFIELD, WE REBOARDED THE BLACK HAWK HELICOPTER AND FLEW BACK TO COZUMEL AND BOARDED THE GULFSTREAM, LEAVING BEHIND ███ AND ██████ █████, AND TOOK OFF FOR BUDAPEST. THE █████ WILL UNDERTAKE MISSIONS FOR ██████ THAT HE WAS UNWILLING TO SHARE WITH THIS REPORTER.
MORE TO FOLLOW
“Okay, I got it. Castillo redacted all those things so in case this fell into the wrong hands, nobody would know who Roscoe J. Danton was talking about. Am I right?”
“Yes, sir, Mr. President,” Truman Ellsworth said. “That is correct.”
“Couple of questions,” the President said. “General Naylor, Danton said you were the most important what in the Army?”
“I believe, Mr. President,” Secretary Cohen said, “that Mr. Danton believes General Naylor is the most important general in the Army.”
“Where did he get a nutty idea like that? Everybody knows the chief of staff is the most important general in the Army.”
“I don’t know where he got a nutty idea like that, Mr. President,” Robin Hoboken said, “but I’ll get on it right away and let you know as soon as I find out.”
“Lammelle, I want you to get together with Ellsworth and come up with a plan to shut down this drug dealers’ airfield. I don’t want to do anything until I hear more from Castillo, but I want to be ready.”
“Yes, sir,” Lammelle said.
“This out-of-the-box idea of mine is working out better than I thought. I wonder why I didn’t think of it earlier.”
“Well, you had a lot on your mind, Mr. President,” Robin Hoboken said. “That probably had something to do with it.”
PART VII
[ONE]
“Well,” Truman Ellsworth said to Natalie Cohen as they and General Naylor and DCI Lammelle waited for their various vehicles to pull up, “on balance, I’d say that went well.”
“I’m not so sure,” she replied.
“And what do you think, General?” Ellsworth inquired of Naylor.
“I am very uncomfortable with the entire situation,” Naylor replied. “I suspect that what Mr. Ellsworth means—”
“You can call me Truman,” Ellsworth interrupted. “We are all in this together. Succeeding together, I would suggest.”
“Forgive me, Mr. Ellsworth,” Naylor said, “for not sharing your pleasure in our successfully deceiving the President.”
“What would you have us do?” Lammelle asked. “Go to the Vice President and the Cabinet and ask them to bring on the men in the white coats and the straitjacket?”
“This is going to end badly,” General Naylor said.
“Possibly,” Lammelle said. “Everybody knows that. But the operative word is ‘possibly.’ It is also possible that we’ll get away with it.”
“Possible, but unlikely,” Secretary Cohen said. “He told you and Truman to come up with a plan to shut down that Mexican airfield. What are you going to do about that?”
“Take a long time coming up with a plan,” Lammelle said. “Hoping that he’ll forget he told me that.”
“And if he doesn’t forget?” General Naylor asked.
“Then I will stall him, using Castillo, for as long as I can.”
“And what if that doesn’t work?” Naylor asked. “What if he says, ‘Shut down that Mexican airfield now’?”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, General,” Truman Ellsworth said, “but wasn’t General Patton quoted as saying… something along this line—‘Don’t take counsel of your fears’?”
“That’s your recommended course of action?” Naylor demanded tartly. “‘Don’t worry about it!’”
Just as tartly, Ellsworth replied, “General, our course of action, repeat, our course of action, mutually agreed between the four of us, is to indulge the President as long as we can do that without putting the country at serious risk. I don’t see any greater risk to the country coming out of that meeting than I did going in. If you do, please share what you saw with us.”
“The President told you and Lammelle to prepare a plan to shut down that airfield,” Naylor said.
“And I just told you, General,” Lammelle said, “that we will do so very, very slowly. If he persists in this notion to the point where I think it’s necessary — let me rephrase, to the point where the four of us, repeat, the four of us, think it’s necessary — we will have Natalie explain to him that shutting down that airfield would be an act of war. If he still insists, then, presuming we four are then in agreement, the four of us will go to the Cabinet and tell them he’s out of control. Do you agree with that, or not?”
Naylor did not reply directly. Instead, he said, “I don’t think any of us should forget that the President, under the War Powers Act, has the authority to order troops into action for thirty days wherever and whenever he thinks that’s necessary. During those thirty days, if he tells me to shut down that airfield, I’ll have to shut down that airfield.”
“I think, General, that each of us is aware of the War Powers Act,” Secretary Cohen said. “We’ll have to deal with that if it comes up.”
“Relax, Allan,” Lammelle said. “Three will get you five that the Sage of Biloxi has already forgotten that notion and is now devoting all of his attention to getting the First Mother-in-Law out of jail.”
Ellsworth chuckled. Secretary Cohen smiled.
“And there’s one more thing, General,” Ellsworth said. “Have you noticed that Hackensack—”
“I think you mean Hoboken, Truman,” the secretary of State corrected him gently.
“Right. Hoboken. Have you noticed what a splendid job Hoboken does with what are known, I believe, as ‘Presidential Photo-Ops’?”
Cohen, Lammelle, and Naylor all shrugged, suggesting, in the cases of Cohen and Naylor, that they were not aware of the splendid job Presidential Spokesperson Hoboken was doing with Presidential Photo-Ops. Lammelle’s shrug asked, so to speak, “So what?”
“Every time a dozen Rotarians,” Ellsworth clarified, “or for that matter eight Boy Scouts, come to Washington, they can count on getting their picture taken with the President.”
“And Special Agent Mulligan,” the secretary of State said. “He’s usually in the picture.”
“At the risk of repeating my shrug,” Lammelle said, “so what?”
“When they are recording themselves for posterity, Frank,” Ellsworth explained, “they won’t have time to worry about seizing a Mexican airfield. It’s a matter of priority. Getting your picture in the paper with the Rotarians or the Boy Scouts helps your reelection chances. Thanks to Mulligan and Hoboken, I don’t think we really have to worry about getting ordered to seize the Mexican airfield.”
“You may have something there, Truman,” Lammelle said.
The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of their vehicles. Following the protocol of rank, Secretary Cohen’s Yukon arrived first. Charlene Stevens jumped out and opened the right rear door for her, and Cohen got in without saying anything else and drove off. Then Ellsworth’s Jaguar Vanden Plas pulled up and he got in it, and it drove off. Lammelle’s Yukon was next, and he got in and drove off. Finally General Naylor’s Suburban pulled up, a sergeant jumped out of the front seat and removed the covers from the four-star plates, and then held the right rear door open for the general.