"I want you to listen to this one. You should know about Aloysius Francis Casey."
"What?" a thin, somewhat belligerent voice demanded over the phone's loudspeaker a moment later.
"This is Charley Castillo, Dr. Casey."
"Ah, the boy colonel. How many goddamn times do I have to tell you to call me Frank?"
"Another couple hundred times might do it."
"I hear you're headed out here. When?"
"We're leaving in a couple of minutes-we're in Chicago-and we have to make a stop in Midland, Texas. Say two hours to Midland, and another hour and forty-five minutes to get from Midland to Vegas. We should be on the ground about twenty-thirty or thereabouts."
"Who's 'we'?"
"Jake, of course, and a young Green Beanie who took a pretty bad hit in Afghanistan. And Tom McGuire-"
"He gets a pass because he's a Boston Irishman. Who else?"
"How about a pass for a Chicago cop named Mullroney? He's Irish, too."
"Who the hell is he?"
"I'll tell you when I'm there. Could you get us rooms near McCarren?"
"You'll stay with me."
"There's five of us!"
"There's room. Tell me about the Green Beanie who took the hit."
"Rocket-propelled grenade. One of his legs is titanium from the knee down."
"He need anything special?"
"No."
"He's working with you?"
"Yes."
"I've been working on stuff to set off those goddamn IEDs before they can cause anybody any harm, but those goddamn RPGs…"
"Yeah, I know."
"Okay, I'll see you when you get here."
[FIVE]
Double-Bar-C Ranch
Near Midland, Texas 1845 2 September 2005 As the Gulfstream taxied back toward the hangar, Castillo saw four women standing by a silver Jaguar XJ8. Fifty yards away, near an enormous, slowly bobbing horse-head oil pump, several horses and maybe a dozen Santa Gertrudis steers stood watching.
There had been horses and Santa Gertrudis cattle grazing on the Double-Bar-C long before the first automobile had bounced over the West Texas prairie, and long before the first well had tapped the Permian Oil Basin beneath it.
The first time Castillo had been shown the ranch-he was twelve at the time-his newly discovered grandfather, Don Fernando Castillo, had told him, "We were comfortable, Carlos, before they put the first hole down. I often think we were happier-life was certainly simpler-before they found the oil."
And seeing the pump now, he had the same reaction to it he'd had to the first pump he'd ever seen:
Every time that thing goes up and down, it's fifty cents in his pocket.
And there're a lot of those pumps.
The only difference between then and now is that today West Texas sweet crude brings fifty bucks a barrel.
That, and Abuela left the Double-Bar-C to me.
The women waiting for the Gulfstream were Castillo's grandmother-his abuela-and Colonel Alfredo Munz's wife and two daughters.
The warmth of his memory of Don Fernando turned to cold anger with the sight of the Munzes…and the reason they were at the ranch.
Goddamn the miserable bastards who go after a man's family.
Munz's family had come to the Double-Bar-C because of a very real threat to their lives in Argentina.
"Wake up, First Officer," Jake Torine said. "We are, no thanks to you, safely on the ground."
Castillo unfastened his shoulder harness and went into the cabin.
Alfredo Munz was already out of his seat, waiting for the stair door to be opened. Castillo worked it, and then waved Munz off the plane first.
Castillo saw that Munz had not taken his suitcase with him. He picked it up and went down the stairs with it. He saw the younger girl running toward her father, followed by the older girl, and then, moving more slowly, Senora Munz. In a moment, Munz had his arms around all of them.
Castillo looked at Dona Alicia and saw that she had a handkerchief to her eyes.
And mine aren't exactly dry, either.
He went to his grandmother. She put her arms around him.
"Hey, Abuela, how's my favorite girl?"
"Very annoyed with you, as usual," she said, and kissed him.
She looked at the Munzes.
"How long is he going to stay?" she asked.
"Until I need him, and that will probably be soon. A couple days."
"And when will it be safe for his family to go back to Argentina?"
"Not for a while yet."
"And when are you going to come and stay longer than ten minutes?"
Divulgence of any detail of any operation conducted under the authority of a Presidential Finding to persons not holding the specific Top Secret Presidential security clearance is a felonious violation of the United States Code, punishable by fine and imprisonment.
"A drug enforcement agent in Paraguay has been kidnapped by drug dealers," Castillo said. "The President wants us to try to get him back, and I have no idea how to do that."
She looked at him but did not reply.
"I don't have to tell you to keep that to yourself, do I?"
She shook her head to show the admonition was entirely unnecessary.
"I don't know whether I'm very proud of you, my darling, or very sad for you," she said. "I guess both."
Five minutes later, the Gulfstream III broke ground.
[SIX]
McCarren International Airport
Las Vegas, Nevada 2055 2 September 2005 A tug stood waiting outside the AFC hangar, and as a ground handler signaled for Castillo's Gulfstream III to shut down its engines, the doors of the hangar began to slide open.
Inside the hangar, Castillo saw that a glistening new Gulfstream V, three older Lears, a Beechcraft King Air and an old but nicely refurbished Cessna 150 had been moved to one side to make room for his G-III.
And then he saw there was a Cadillac Escalade in the hangar. Dr. Aloysius Francis Casey, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of AFC, Inc., was sitting sideward in the driver's seat, the driver's door open. He was wearing his usual baggy black suit.
The tug hooked up to the nose gear of the G-III and dragged the aircraft into the hangar. Two men in white coveralls with the AFC logotype on the chest hooked up an auxiliary power cable.
Castillo opened the stair door and went down it, with Torine following.
Casey pushed himself off the seat of the Escalade and walked to them.
"How are you, Charley?" he asked, shaking his hand, then Torine's.
"Always good to see you, Colonel," Casey said.
"Always good to see you, too, Dr. Casey," Torine said. "And we really appreci-"
"Goddamn it! I keep telling you and the Boy Colonel here that it's Frank," Casey said. "I'm starting to get pissed off about that!"
"Sorry, Frank," Torine said.
Casey looked toward the men in coveralls and raised his voice: "Get the luggage off of that, and put it in my truck."
The men hurried to do his bidding.
Tom McGuire, Ed Lorimer, and, bringing up the rear, Charley Mullroney came down the stairs and somewhat hesitantly walked to them.
Casey put out his hand to Lorimer and said, "Any Special Forces guy is always welcome. My name is Frank Casey. Call me Frank. I did some time as a commo sergeant on an A-Team in 'Nam. Mostly over the fence in Laos and Cambodia."
"Yes, sir," Lorimer said.
"You call me sir one more time, and you can sleep on your airplane. Clear?"
"Yes, s-Frank."
"You're learning," Casey said, then pointed his right index finger at Castillo and Torine. "Which is more than I can say for these two."
He turned to McGuire and Mullroney and said, "Usually I have as little as possible to do with cops, but since you two are Irish and with these guys you get a pass."
He shook their hands, then said: "Come on and get in the truck. We'll go out to the house and hoist a couple and burn some meat."
They had turned off U. S. Highway 93 a few minutes before, and were driving down a macadam two-lane road toward the mountains. Castillo, sitting beside Casey in the front seat of the Escalade, was wondering what electronics were behind the dashboard to power the two telephone handsets and a large liquid crystal display screen-now displaying the AFC logo and STANDBY-mounted on the dash.