" 'The best-laid plans of mice and men'-you ever hear that, Allan?" McFadden asked.

"What went wrong now?" Naylor asked.

"I was just talking with Larry Fremont," McFadden said. "He's been on the phone to the CIA guy in San Jose, Costa Rica:"

"And?"

"The CIA guy says the way the Costa Rican Foreign Ministry is going to handle our ambassador's request for permission to enter their airspace is to stall for at least a couple of days."

"We expected something like that," Naylor said. "So we land without, do what has to be done, and let the State Department pick up the pieces."

"So I would interpret that to mean you believe the CIA?"

"That's a loaded question, Al."

"You want to shoot crap, Allan? How about taking another chance on the CIA?"

"What are you talking about? You sound like you know something."

McFadden laid a small map on Naylor's desk.

"What am I looking at?"

"That's the Golfo de Nicoya."

"Okay. There's nothing on the map but dirt roads and water."

"Larry's guy says there is a sandy beach about forty miles from Tomas Guardia International, and maybe fifty from Juan Santamaria, that'll take the C-17, and there's nothing around it for miles except fishing villages."

"That's too good to be true," Naylor said. "How does Larry's guy know?"

"Larry's guy says he heard that they were moving drugs through the area, went there 'while sportfishing,' checked it out, measured it, did compression tests, found some aircraft tire tracks-he doesn't know what kind of aircraft but not large ones-and thinks it'll take a C-17 , based on what he read in an Air Force Manual about C-17 tire loadings."

"How much credence does he place in his guy?"

"That's a little problem. This guy is like the one in Suriname."

"What does that mean?"

"Think of him as a second lieutenant with the varnish still on his gold bars. What the agency does with their graduates is send them someplace where nothing is happening, where they get to practice being a spy and working under diplomatic cover."

"Oh, Christ!"

"Larry said to tell you this guy sounds like an eager beaver."

"As in, 'There's nothing faster than a second lieutenant rushing to officers call'?"

"I think Larry was being complimentary," McFadden said. "I think he liked what he heard on the phone."

"Where is Larry?"

"He's trying to see if Langley has anything on this beach. He said I should tell you I have everything he knows, and he thought his time would be better spent seeing what else he could come up with."

"The admiral called the DIA and they had nothing on suitable landing areas in Costa Rica," Naylor said.

"Do we tell McNab or not?"

Naylor put his hands together so quickly that there was a loud pop.

"General McNab is not at the moment one of my favorite people," Naylor said. "And when I say, 'Yeah, we have to tell him,' I have that in mind. The decision to use, or not use, this beach has to be his. If it won't take the C-17, there will be a lot of dead people, and the 727 doesn't get neutralized."

Naylor stood up and walked across his office toward the Phone Booth.

[EIGHT]

Tomas Guardia International Airport

Liberia, Costa Rica

1310 10 June 2005

"I'll be a sonofabitch, there it is!" Castillo said as the Learjet taxied down a taxi-way at another small but grandly named airfield.

There was a Boeing 727 aircraft, connected to both a tug and a generator, sitting on the tarmac in front of a concrete-block building with a sign on it reading, in Spanish: central American aerial freight forwarding.

There were red, white, and blue stripes on the vertical stabilizer and along the fuselage that looked to be freshly painted.

"There is a 727 with the right paint scheme and registration numbers. We won't know if it's ours until we have a look inside," Colonel Torine said.

"You're right," Castillo agreed. "But I think we should tell MacDill this one's here."

"You're calling the shots," Colonel Torine said.

"Tell the tower you want to box the compass, Fernando," Castillo ordered.

"I'd rather stay."

"We've been all over that," Castillo said.

There had been no in-flight advisories on their way from Cozumel to Juan Santamaria International Airport in San Jose advising them where the 727 could be found in Costa Rica, and when Castillo had called the two numbers Pevsner had given him both of the people answering said that he must have the wrong number, they knew of no Karl Gossinger.

"What are you going to do, Charley?" Colonel Torine had asked.

"If it's not here, it has to be at the other airport, Tomas Guardia."

"Or it's not here at all. You're still betting on Pevsner? He obviously doesn't know where it is or we'd have gotten the in-flight advisory or one of those numbers you called would have paid off."

"Or something happened. Maybe his people here couldn't find it here and he couldn't get anybody to the other airport to see if it was there. Or he did and there's a communications problem. But he was pretty sure the 727 is in Costa Rica and I think we have to go on that. And if it's not here, then it has to be at Tomas Guardia."

"How are you going to handle it?" Colonel Torine asked.

"We go to Tomas Guardia. Fernando gets permission to box his compass, we go to the threshold of a runway, and Sherman and I get out with the radio, go hide in the grass, and hope nobody sees us. You take the Lear to the nearest airport in Nicaragua, where you can call MacDill and tell them where we are in case Sherman can't get the radio up. And then we see what happens. We may get lucky-and, God knows, I'm not counting on that-and actually find the sonofabitch. If it's there and it looks as if it's going to take off, Sherman and I can probably disable it."

"Why don't we just park the Lear and all of us get out?" Fernando said. "That would give us four people on the ground."

"Because somehow we have to get word to MacDill, and the only way to do that-we can't count on Sherman's radio-is for you to go to Nicaragua."

"Now that they're this close, they probably have some pretty good perimeter defense around the airplane," Fernando argued. "And Special Forces hotshots or not, you and Sherman adds up to two people."

"What I think we should do is split the difference," Colonel Torine said. "I get out of the airplane with you." He looked at Fernando and smiled. "That would make it two Green Beanie hotshots and one Air Commando hotshot. The bad guys won't have a chance."

"I don't like this, Gringo."

"Colonel, Sergeant Sherman and I can handle this," Castillo said. "It doesn't take much skill to shoot holes in airplane tires, but I suspect it's really going to piss off the local authorities. Why don't you go with Fernando? You'll be better at getting through to MacDill than he will."

"I don't know about that," Torine replied. "For one thing, he speaks much better Spanish than I do; he's going to have a lot of talking to Nicaraguan authorities to do. And, for another, this is more fun than I've had in years. I've always wanted to shoot holes in an airplane tire."

Fernando looked between them, shrugged, and then spoke to his microphone.

"Tomas Guardia ground control. Lear Five-Oh-Seven-Five. I've got a compass I don't trust. Request permission to go to the threshold of two-eight and box my compass."

The problem was how to get from the Lear where it sat on the threshold of the runway to a point two hundred yards north of the threshold, where the built-up area leading to the threshold and the runway suddenly dropped off precipitously.