Clear and Present Danger

Not for the first time, F lix thought that his main objective was to take the money and run... perhaps a house in Spain... or, perhaps, to supplant this egomaniacal buffoon. That was a thought... But not for now. Escobedo was an egomaniac, but he was also a shrewd one, capable of rapid action. One difference between this man and those who ran his former agency was that Escobedo wasn't afraid to make a decision, and do it quickly. No bureaucracy here, no multiplicity of desks for messages to pass. For that he respected El Jefe . At least he knew how to make a decision. KGB had probably been that way once, maybe even the American intelligence organs. But no longer.

'One more week,' Ritter told the National Security Adviser.

'Nice to hear that things are moving,' the Admiral observed. 'Then what?'

'Why don't you tell me? Just to keep things clear,' the DDO suggested. He followed it with a reminder. 'After all, the operation was your idea in the first place.'

'Well, I sold Director Jacobs on the idea,' Cutter replied with a smile at his own cleverness. 'When we're ready to proceed - and I mean ready to push the button - Jacobs will fly down there to meet with their Attorney General. The ambassador says that the Colombians will go along with almost anything. They're even more desperate than we are and -'

'You didn't -'

'No, Bob, the ambassador doesn't know. Okay?' I'm not the idiot you take me for , his eyes told the CIA executive. 'If Jacobs can sell the idea to them, we insert the teams ASAP. One change I want to make.'

'What's that?'

'The air side of it. Your report says that practice tracking missions are already turning up targets.'

'Some,' Ritter admitted. 'Two or three per week.'

'The wherewithal to handle them is already in place. Why not activate that part of the operation? I mean, it might actually help to identify the areas we want to send the insertion teams to, develop operational intelligence, that sort of thing.'

'I'd prefer to wait,' Ritter said cautiously.

'Why? If we can identify the most frequently used areas, it cuts down on the amount of moving around they'll have to do. That's your greatest operational risk, isn't it? This is a way to develop information that enhances the entire operational concept.'

The problem with Cutter, Ritter told himself, was that the bastard knew just enough about operations to be dangerous. Worse, he had the power to enforce his will - and a memory of the Operations Directorate's recent history. What was it he'd said a few months back? Your best operations in the last couple of years actually came out of Greer's department ... By which he meant Jack Ryan, James's bright rising star - possibly the new DDI the way things looked. That was too bad. Ritter was genuinely fond of his counterpart at the head of the Intelligence Directorate, but less so of Greer's ingratiating prot g . But it was nevertheless true that the Agency's two best coups in recent years had begun in the 'wrong' department, and it was time for Operations to reassert its primacy. Ritter wondered if Cutter was consciously using that as a prod to move him to action. Probably not, he decided. Cutter didn't know enough about infighting yet. Not that he wouldn't learn, of course.

'Going too early is a classic error in field operations,' the DDO offered lamely.

'But we're not. Essentially we have two separate operations, don't we?' Cutter asked. 'The air part can operate independently of the in-country part. I admit it'll be less effective, but it can still operate. Doesn't this give us a chance to check out the less tricky side of the plan before we commit to the dangerous part? Doesn't it give us something to take to the Colombians to show that we're really serious?'

Too soon , the voice in Ritter's head said urgently, but his face showed indecision.

'Look, do you want me to take it to the President?' Cutter asked.

'Where is he today - California?'

'Political trip. I would prefer not to bother him with this sort of thing, but -'

It was a curious situation, the DDO thought. He had underestimated Cutter, while the National Security Adviser seemed quite able to overestimate himself. 'Okay, you win. EAGLE EYE starts day after tomorrow. It'll take that long to get everyone up and running.'

'And SHOWBOAT?'

'One more week to prep the teams. Four days to get them to Panama and meet up with the air assets, check communications systems and all that.'

Cutter grinned as he reached for his coffee. It was time to smooth some ruffled feathers, he thought. 'God, it's nice to work with a real pro. Look on the bright side, Bob. We'll have two full weeks to interrogate whatever turns up in the air net, and the insertion teams will have a much better idea of where they're needed.'

You've already won, you son of a bitch. Do you have to rub it in? Ritter wanted to ask. He wondered what would have happened if he'd called Cutter's cards. What would the President have said? Ritter's position was a vulnerable one. He'd grumbled long and loud within the intelligence community that CIA hadn't run a serious field operation in... fifteen years? It depended on what you meant by 'serious,' didn't it? Now he was being given the chance, and what had been a nice line to be spoken at the coffee sessions during high-level government conferences was now a gray chicken come home to roost. Field operations like this were dangerous. Dangerous to the participants. Dangerous to those who gave the orders. Dangerous to the governments that sponsored them. He'd told Cutter that often enough, but like many, the National Security Adviser was mesmerized by the glamour of field ops. It was known in the trade as the Mission: Impossible Syndrome . Even professionals could confuse a TV drama with reality, and, throughout government, people tended to hear only that which they wished to hear, and to ignore the unpleasant parts. But it was somewhat late for Ritter to give out his warnings. After all, he'd complained for years that such a mission was possible, and occasionally a desirable adjunct to international policy. And he'd said often enough that his directorate still knew how to do it. The fact that he'd had to recruit field operatives from the Army and Air Force had escaped notice. Time had been when the Agency had been able to use its own private air force and its own private army... and if this worked out, perhaps those times would come again. It was a capability the Agency and the country needed, Ritter thought. Here, perhaps, was his chance to make it all happen. If putting up with amateur power-vendors like Cutter was the price of getting it, then that was the price he'd have to pay.

'Okay, I'll get things moving.'

'I'll tell the boss. How soon do you expect we'll have results...?'

'Impossible to say.'

'But before November,' Cutter suggested lightly.

'Yeah, probably by then.' Politics, too, of course. Well, that was what kept traffic circling around the beltway.

The 1st Special Operations Wing was based at Hurlburt Field, at the west end of the Eglin Air Force Base complex in Florida. It was a unique unit, but any military unit with 'Special' in its name was unique by its very nature. The adjective was used for any number of meanings. 'Special weapons' most often meant nuclear weapons, and here the word was used to avoid offending the sensibilities of those for whom 'nuclear' connoted mushroom clouds and megadeaths; it was as though a change of wording could effect a change of substance, yet another characteristic of governments all over the world. 'Special Operations,' on the other hand, meant something else. Generally it denoted covert business, getting people into places where they ought not to be, supporting them while they were there, and getting them out after concluding business that they ought not to have done in the first place. That, among other things, was the business of the 1st.

Colonel Paul Johns - 'PJ' - didn't know everything the wing did. The 1st was rather an odd grouping where authority didn't always coincide with rank, where the troops provided support for the aircraft and crews without always knowing why they did so, where aircraft came and went on irregular schedules, and where people weren't encouraged to speculate or ask questions. The wing was divided into individual fiefdoms that interacted with others on an ad hoc basis. PJ's fiefdom included half a dozen MH-53J 'Pave Low III' helicopters. Johns had been around for quite a while, and somehow had managed to spend nearly all of his Air Force career in the air. It was a career path that guaranteed him both a fulfilling, exciting career, and precisely zero chance at ever wearing general's stars. But on that score he didn't give much of a damn. He'd joined the Air Force to fly; something generals don't get to do very much. He'd kept his part of the bargain, and the service had kept its, which