W. E. B. Griffin - Presidential Agent 07 (2 page)

Sympathetic to the feelings of the Mexicans, Ambassador McCann had told the military attaché—Colonel Foster B. Lewis, MI—to make sure that Lieutenant Colonel Ferris was made aware that he agreed with the Mexican position that American diplomats should not go about armed absent a clear situation in which they might be in genuine danger.

When Colonel Lewis had a chat with Lieutenant Colonel Ferris about this, Ferris replied in a somewhat blunt manner perhaps to be expected of a Special Forces officer.

“Fuck him. I have no intention of getting blown away by some drug lord’s banditos without a fight.”

“Colonel, you have been informed of the ambassador’s desires.”

“Colonel, if you order me not to be armed, I will of course obey. I will also get on the horn to General McNab and request immediate relief.”

Colonel Lewis’s military superior was Major General Amos Watts, the Defense Intelligence Agency’s commander. Lieutenant Colonel Ferris’s immediate military superior was Lieutenant General Bruce J. McNab, the Special Operations Command (SPECOPSCOM) commander.

When Lewis reported the substance of his conversation with Ferris to Ambassador McCann, the ambassador considered the political ramifications of the impasse, the most important of these being that General McNab and Secretary of State Natalie Cohen were, if not friends, then mutual admirers.

It had been the secretary’s idea—rather than a proposal from one of her subordinates—to have Army Special Forces personnel sent to Mexico to train the Mexican military and police forces so that they could better wage their war against the drug cartels.

Ambassador McCann’s predecessor had protested the idea as best he could and had been overruled. The secretary was in love with her own idea.

Ambassador McCann’s predecessor had reported the substance of that conversation to McCann during the turnover.

“She told me that she had learned from General McNab that the primary role of Special Operations—despite all the publicity that Delta Force and Gray Fox get—is the training of indigenous forces to fight their own battles, and their success in doing so is judged by the amount of fighting the trainers have to do themselves, with no fighting at all being a perfect score. She said that seemed to her exactly what the situation in Mexico required.

“She also told me that she had prevailed upon General McNab to send her the best trainers he could, and that he had—‘reluctantly, we’re friends’—agreed to do so. So that’s what Ferris and his people are doing here—they’re on loan to the State Department for ten months. Ferris has been down here three.”

Ambassador McCann had told Colonel Lewis, “I’ll give this matter due consideration and make a decision about it later.”

Although Colonel Lewis considered himself a loyal subordinate of Ambassador McCann, he could not help himself from thinking that that was the sort of response one could expect from a career diplomat:
Never decide today that which can be put off until tomorrow—or even later.

Whenever Lieutenant Colonel Ferris knew that he and Danny Salazar would be traveling through what he privately thought of as “Indian Territory,” accompanied by members of the DEA, or sometimes the FBI—the latter known as “legal attachés” and with
the
legal attaché afraid to defy Ambassador McCann, they also went unarmed—Ferris elected to arm himself and Danny with AR-15A3s in addition to their .45s. He had done so today when he headed for Acapulco.

He reasoned that if they were bushwhacked by drug scum, and the DEA or FBI guys happened to pick up the .45s that he and Danny happened to drop while grabbing their A3s, and that extra firepower kept everybody alive, he would hear nothing from Ambassador McCann.

The roadblock on the highway ahead consisted of six black-uniformed Federales operating out of a Ford F-250 6.4L diesel crew cab truck, which Colonel Ferris suspected had been paid for by U.S. taxpayers.

One of the Federales, an AR-15A3 slung from his shoulder, stepped into the road and held up his hand, ordering the Suburban to stop.

“There’s a CD plate on this,” Danny said. “Jesus H. Christ!”

A
corps diplomatique
license plate on a vehicle was usually enough to see the passengers therein waved through roadblocks.

“Make nice, Danny,” Ferris said, “remembering that we are guests here in sunny Meh-hi-co.”

Danny slowed the Suburban to a stop, simultaneously taking from his shirt pocket his diplomatic
carnet
and holding it up.

Ferris, doing the same, ordered: “
Carnet
time, guys. Smile at the nice Federales.”

The Federale who had blocked the road approached the car.

“Good morning, Sergeant,” Ferris said in Spanish, holding up his
carnet
. “What seems to be the problem?”

“Out of the truck, please,” the sergeant said.

“Sergeant, I am Lieutenant Colonel James D. Ferris, an assistant military attaché of the U.S. embassy.”

“Get out of the truck, Colonel.”

“I demand to see the person in charge,” Ferris said as he opened the door and stepped to the ground.

He saw a Federale lieutenant standing with the others.

“Over there,” the Federale said, nodding toward him.

“Thank you,” Ferris said.

“Everybody out,” the Federale said.

Ferris walked toward the
teniente.

“Good afternoon, Comandante,” Ferris began.

Ferris knew that a
comandante
actually was a captain. But he had learned over the years that people are seldom offended by a promotion, even one given in error.

“Comandante, I am Lieutenant Colonel James D. Ferris, an assistant military attaché of the U.S. embassy.”

The
tenientes
did not reply, but three of his men, two second sergeants and a corporal, walked toward the Suburban.

“This is my
carnet
,” Ferris said.

There was a burst of 5.56mm fire.

Ferris spun around.

Salazar and Torres were on the ground. Martinez, a surprised look on his face, was on his knees, holding his hands to his bleeding abdomen. Then he fell to one side.

“You murdering sonsofbitches!” Ferris shouted.

Another second sergeant struck Ferris in the back of his head with a pistol.

When Ferris fell to the ground, the second sergeant who had pistol-whipped him quickly pulled Ferris’s wrists behind him, fastened them securely with “plastic handcuffs,” and did the same to his ankles.

The
teniente
pulled a black plastic garbage bag over Ferris’s head and closed it loosely. Four of the Federales picked up Ferris and loaded him into the rear of the Suburban.

The
teniente
and one of the second sergeants then got into the Suburban, and with the second sergeant driving, made a U-turn and headed in the direction of Mexico City. The others got into the Ford F-250 and followed the Suburban.

 

 

There were two telephones—one black, the other red—and an open leather attaché case on the desk of Lieutenant General Bruce J. McNab, the small, muscular, ruddy-faced officer who, sporting a flowing red mustache, commanded SPECOPSCOM.

The red telephone had both a buzzer and several light-emitting diodes (LEDs). The red one began to flash as its buzzer went off. When McNab grabbed it, a green light-emitting diode illuminated, indicating that the encryption system was functioning. Protocol required that persons privileged to have a Command Net telephone—one notch down from the White House switchboard network—answer the telephone within thirty seconds. A timer on the telephone base informed General McNab that he had done so in seven seconds.

“General McNab,” he said.

“This is the White House switchboard. Please confirm functioning encryption.”

“Confirm,” McNab said.

“Go ahead, Madam Secretary,” the White House operator said.

“Bruce, this is Natalie Cohen,” the secretary of State said, then chuckled, and said, “who has just decided to call you later.”

“Yes, ma’am,” McNab said.

The LEDs had gone out by the time he replaced the handset.

He turned his attention to the attaché case, which held what looked like a normal Hewlett-Packard laptop computer and a device that looked like a BlackBerry. They were cushioned in rubber foam with a small row of buttons and LEDs. Neither the laptop nor the BlackBerry was what it seemed to be.

The attaché case was known as “The Brick,” a term going back to the first cell phones issued to senior officers that had been about the size and weight of a large brick.

He picked up that device that looked like a BlackBerry. It was known to those who both were privileged to have one and knew the story as a “CaseyBerry.” He knew that when Secretary Cohen said she would call him later, she would do so immediately using the CaseyBerry in her Brick.

As McNab looked at his CaseyBerry, a green LED indicating an incoming call lit up, as did a blue LED indicating that the encryption function was operating.

Those who believed the White House switchboard and its ancillary encryption capabilities were state of the art were wrong. State of the art was really what Aloysius Francis Casey, Ph.D., termed “Prototype Systems, Undergoing Testing.”

When, for example, the encryption system in the “Prototype, Undergoing Testing” Brick that General McNab held had all the bugs worked out, it would be made available to the White House and to the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland.

In the meantime, even if NSA intercepted the signals transmitted—via satellites 27,000 miles over the earth—between the AFC Corporation’s test facility in Las Vegas, Nevada, and the Bricks in the hands of a few more than a dozen people around the world, they would not be able to break the encryption. Dr. Casey was sure of this because AFC, Inc., had designed, installed, and maintained the decryption computers at Fort Meade.

Before he would turn over to the government McNab’s “Prototype, Undergoing Testing” Brick with all the bugs worked out, Casey would ensure that McNab and others on the CaseyBerry network had a newer “Prototype, Undergoing Testing” Brick whose encrypted signals NSA could not crack.

General McNab pressed the TALK button.

“McNab,” he said.

“Bruce, I just sent you a radio I just got from Mexico City. Do you have it?”

“Just came in,” he said.

The monitor of the laptop had illuminated and was now showing the message the secretary of State had received from Ambassador McCann.

McNab pushed three buttons on his desk, simultaneously informing his secretary, his senior aide-de-camp, and his junior aide-de-camp that he required their services.

He still had his fingers on the buttons when the door burst open and Captain Albert H. Walsh, his junior aide-de-camp, who was six feet two inches tall and weighed 195 pounds, quickly walked in.

“Just you, Al,” McNab said. Then he made a push-back gesture to his secretary and his senior aide, who were now standing behind Walsh. They turned and went away.

“Just got it,” McNab said.

McNab pointed to a chair and pushed the LOUDSPEAKER button on his CaseyBerry. Captain Walsh sat down and took a notebook and ballpoint pen from the pocket of his desert-pattern battle-dress uniform.