They could see they were in some kind of garage. Vehicles of all descriptions-twenty-five or thirty, perhaps more, including several taxis and a nearly new Mercedes-Benz 220-were parked closely together, noses out, against the walls. There was a ramp at the end of the room leading upward.
"Is this where we go fishing, Colonel?" Chief Warrant Officer Five Colin Leverette asked.
The bus driver opened the door.
Munz stuck his head into the bus.
"We change vehicles here," he announced.
"What's going on, Alfredo?" Castillo asked in German.
"In a moment, please, Karl," Munz replied in German, then said in English, "Would everybody please get off the bus?"
Max needed no further encouragement. Munz ducked out of his way at the last possible second.
Max ran around the area-In a strange gait, Castillo noticed, almost as if he's running on his toes. He's hunting, that's what he's doing. I'll be damned if he didn't sense that just about all us warriors of legendary icy courage on the bus were scared shitless by this mysterious little joyride-found nothing that worried him and returned to Munz, where he sat down and offered him his paw.
"Max says it's safe to get off the bus, fellas," Davidson said.
"Don't laugh at him," Castillo said. "Remember the last time he went looking for something in a garage?"
"Who's laughing?" Davidson said agreeably.
Everybody piled off the bus.
The driver went to the rear and started unloading the luggage. Two more large men who looked like cops-the ones who had been in the backseat of Munz's BMW, Castillo decided-moved quickly to help him.
Castillo caught Munz's eye and wordlessly asked who they were and what was going on.
"I'll explain this all in a minute," Munz said. "We're pressed for time. Lester, could you find Acceso Norte from here?"
"Yes, sir," Corporal Bradley replied. "I am fairly familiar with the area."
"Yung?" Munz asked.
"Yeah. I know my way around B.A."
"Karl, would it be all right with you if Lester and Yung drove everybody not needed here out to Nuestra Pequena Casa?"
"Who's 'needed here,' Alfredo?" Castillo asked.
"Edgar and Jake should be in on this, Charley," Alex Darby said.
"Okay," Castillo said. "Are we going to need a radio right now?"
Darby shook his head.
"Okay, load the cars that Mr. Darby's going to give you," Castillo ordered. "Neidermeyer, if you ride with Two-Gun, we won't have both radios in one car. Otherwise, suit yourselves. Take all the luggage. Edgar and Jake, you'll stay."
They nodded.
Two minutes later, the corrugated steel door clanked noisily up. Yung drove a Volkswagen Golf out of the building. The door came clanking quickly down again, to rise two minutes later to permit the exit of a Jeep Grand Cherokee with Bradley driving.
When the corrugated steel door had crashed noisily down again, one of the cops who had helped with the luggage raised his hand toward the ramp.
"Please," he said in English.
They started to follow him up the ramp. Max ran past him without difficulty. The others had a little trouble. The ramp was quite steep, not very wide, and had six-inch-wide anti-wheel-slip bumps running across it.
At the next level, they found themselves in an area much like the level they had just left. Vehicles of all descriptions were parked tightly together against the walls.
Max was standing in the middle, looking at a brown uniformed gendarmeria sergeant sitting on a folding chair with an Uzi in his lap. The gendarme sat in front of a steel door in an interior concrete-block wall.
As the man led them across the open area toward the door, the gendarme, eyeing Max warily, got quickly out of his chair and had the door open by the time the man got to it.
The man went inside, and there was again the flicker of fluorescent lights coming on.
"Please," he said once more, as he waved them inside.
Max trotted in first.
The room was dominated by an old desk-once grand and elegant-before which sat a simple, sturdy, rather battered oak conference table. There were eight chairs at the table. The wall behind the desk was covered with maps of Argentina in various scales, including an enormous one of Buenos Aires Province. Along both walls were tables holding computers, facsimile machines, telephones, a coffee maker, and some sort of communications radios. All of it looked old.
"Please," the man said again, this time an invitation for everyone to sit down.
"That will be all, thank you," Munz said to the man.
"Si, mi coronel," the man said, and left the room, closing the door behind him.
Max lay down with his head between his paws and looked at the closed door.
"Okay, Alfredo," Castillo said. "What's going on, starting with where are we?"
"We have a law of confiscation in Argentina, Karl," Munz said. "This building was being used as a warehouse for cocaine and marijuana; it was seized. And so were the vehicles you saw. Comandante Liam Duffy of the Gendarmeria Nacional now uses it, unofficially, as an office and base of operations."
"He's the guy who the DEA guy was on his way to see when he was snatched?" Delchamps asked.
Munz nodded.
"So what are we doing here?" Delchamps went on. "And who are all the guys with guns?"
"Comandante Duffy thought there was a good chance that you would be at some risk at the airport…"
"How did he know we would be at the airport?" Torine asked.
"He was with us at the house when you radioed saying you were going to Ezeiza instead of Jorge Newbery," Darby offered.
"You had this guy in Nuestra Pequena Casa?" Castillo snapped at Alex Darby. "That's supposed to be our safe house!"
"A lot of things have happened, Charley," Darby replied.
"Obviously," Castillo said, thickly sarcastic.
"Easy, Ace," Delchamps said, then looked at Darby. "Like what, Alex? What has happened?"
"The bottom line is that Chief Inspector Jose Ordonez, of the Interior Police Division of the Uruguayan Policia Nacional, is back in the game…"
"Jesus Christ!" Castillo exploded. "How the hell-?"
"Let him finish, Ace," Delchamps said reasonably.
Castillo glowered at him but said nothing.
"If I may…," Alfredo Munz began, and when Castillo motioned impatiently for him to go on, Munz picked up the explanation: "The day I came back here, I called Jose Ordonez. For several reasons. One, to thank him for what he had done for us. And to tell him that I was back. And, frankly, the primary reason I called was to ask him how well he knew Duffy. I knew we had to deal with Duffy, and I knew Duffy only casually. And I knew Duffy would know that I had been 'retired' from SIDE, and was afraid that he wouldn't want to have anything to do with me."
"And?" Castillo said.
"Jose told me that Duffy had come to Uruguay to see him, and that as a result of the interesting conversation he'd had with him, he had called Bob Howell and asked him how Duffy could get in touch with me. And, more important, with you."
Robert Howell, the "cultural attache" of the U.S. embassy in Montevideo, was in fact the CIA station chief.
"And what did Howell tell him?" Castillo asked carefully.
"The truth-or what he thought was the truth. That both you and I were in the United States, but that he would relay the message."
"And what did Howell do?"
"He got on the next plane to Buenos Aires and came to see me," Darby said. "So I took him out to Nuestra Pequena Casa to see Alfredo to see if he had any idea what this was all about."
"Did you?" Castillo asked.
Munz shook his head.
"I don't think we were in the house thirty minutes," Darby said, "when Duffy showed up at the front door."
"The front door, or at the gate?" Castillo asked.
"The front door," Darby said. "Obviously, he had people on me or Howell-more likely both-and they followed us from the embassy. And no country club security guard is going to tell a comandante of the gendarmeria he can't come in."