Black Ops

heard us land, saw you get off the plane, and decided that anywhere else would be the safest place to be.”

The kitchen door opened again. Corporal Lester Bradley, USMC, walked in. “Well, the Marines have landed,” Fernando said, “but I don’t think the situation is well in hand.”

“Be quiet, Fernando,” Dona Alicia said. “Hello, Lester.”

“Ma’am,” Bradley said politely.

“Semper Fi, Les,” Fernando said.

“I told you to be quiet,” Dona Alicia said. “What can we do for you, Lester?”

Bradley turned to Svetlana.

“Colonel, do you know where the colonel is?”

“What did he call her? ‘Colonel’?” Maria said.

“The colonel is looking for his goddamn bathrobe, that’s where he is,” Castillo called from the corridor, and then came into the kitchen, buttoning the shirt he’d worn the previous day. Its tail covered—mostly—his undershorts.

Svetland pulled the robe tighter around her as she crossed her arms. “Oops!”

“Surprise, surprise, Casanova,” Fernando said.

Bradley said, “Sir, Mr. D’Allessando’s on the AFC. He says it’s important.”

“Stall him for a couple of minutes, Les.”

“Yes, sir.”

Lester quickly disappeared from the room.

“I didn’t know you were here, Abuela,” Castillo said.

“We sort of guessed that,” Maria said.

“Or you,” Castillo added.

“We were just having a nice chat with Svetlana, Carlos dear,” Dona Alicia said. “Fernando and Maria were nice enough to fly me up here, and now they’re about to leave.”

“And you’re not?” Fernando asked.

“I need to talk to Carlos,” Dona Alicia said. “Privately.”

Fernando, to no one in particular, said, “That’s what she used to say in the old days when the Gringo was caught, so to speak, with his hand in the cookie jar. It means she’s about to drag him to the stable and have at him with a quirt.”

“I’ll have someone drive me home,” Dona Alicia said. “You and Maria want to get back to the children, I’m sure.”

“I wouldn’t think of leaving until I hear how the two colonels met,” Maria said. “You’re old Army buddies, is that it?”

“Something like that,” Castillo said. “I’ve got a plane here; I’ll take Abuela home.”

“I saw the Lear in the hangar,” Fernando said. “What happened to your G-III?”

“I’ve got to take that call,” Castillo said, avoiding the question. “You’re going to have to excuse me.”

“May I stay, Carlos?” Dona Alicia asked.

He looked at her for a moment.

“You know you don’t have to ask, Abuela,” he said finally.

[THREE]

0735 8 January 2006

“Sorry to keep you waiting, Vic,” Castillo said. “I was in bed.”

“I heard about that,” D’Allessando said. “When do I get to meet her?”

“Soon enough. Look, Lester’s rounding up the others; it’ll take a minute.”

“Everybody knows everything, right?”

“Right.”

“You were just a wee slip of a lad when I taught you that,” D’Allessando said.

“And you still had hair, Vic. It was a long time ago.”

“Actually, I thought about those days this morning, while jogging around Smoke Bomb Hill with Colonel Hamilton.”

“And the general?”

“I have no idea who you’re talking about, Colonel,” D’Allessando said.

Castillo waved for Bradley to bring the crowd into the room.

“Everybody’s here, Vic,” Castillo said.

Including my grandmother, whom I’m not going to run off; she’s not a Russian spy. I’m sleeping with the Russian spy. Who is here with her brother, also a Russian spy, who just shook hands with my grandmother.

“Hello, one and all,” D’Allessando said. “Our problem is Colonel Hamilton, with whom, as I just told Charley, I took a jog down memory lane around Smoke Bomb Hill. He was crushed to learn that the barrack in which he once commanded a platoon was long ago torn down.

“He also told me, ‘Of course I’m going into the Congo.’ ”

Castillo said, “Absolutely out of the question. He can go as far as Bujumbura, and even that makes me uncomfortable.”

“Well, you’re going to have to tell him that, Charley.”

“I’m a lowly lieutenant colonel. He’s a more than a little starchy full bird. Get McNab to tell him.”

“Get who?”

“General McNab.”

“I thought he told you . . .”

“Told me what?”

“The general doesn’t know you anymore,” D’Allessando said. “He hasn’t seen you since you went off to Washington a long time ago, where he hears you went off the deep end. He knows you snatched two Russian spies away from the CIA and won’t give them back. He thinks you’re a disgrace to the uniform and has already taken steps to see that you’re booted out of the Army. He wouldn’t talk to you even if, by some wild stretch of the imagination, you had the effrontery to try calling him.”

Castillo saw the look on Svetlana’s face and then on Abuela’s.

“I’d forgotten,” Castillo said.

I remember him telling me, “From the moment I walk out that door, I don’t know where you are, or what you’re doing, or anything about you except that I agree you’re not playing with a full deck.”

But, until just now, what it meant just didn’t sink in.

“Keep it in mind, Charley,” D’Allessando said.

“Where is Colonel Hamilton?”

“I choppered him out to Camp Mackall. I thought maybe seeing what the guys in the last stages of training have to go through might discourage him. I’m not holding my breath, Charley.”

“Get him back. Get him on the horn. How long will that take?”

“An hour, give or take.”

“Do it. Anything else?”

“Air Tanzania is all painted and ready to go. Uncle Remus is in the process of picking shooters; he’s almost finished, he said. The maps we got from the Air Force at Hurlburt have been digitalized and sent to you. Lester didn’t tell you?”

“Not yet. I’m going to have to go buy printers—”

“And/or some external drives. Those things do eat up the bytes.”

“I remember. That it?”

“I’ll call you when I get Hamilton back to civilization. D’Allessando off.”

“Russian spies?” Dona Alicia asked. “General Naylor said something about that.”

“General Naylor said something?”

“He came to see me. Very upset.”

“Well, Abuela, I’m as anxious to hear about that as you are to hear about the Russian spies. But for right