“María, honey, if you don’t want to hear this, why don’t you—”
Castillo cut him off. He said, “María, the best way I know to convince you to keep your mouth shut about Tío Héctor, or anything else you will hear if you decide to stay, is to convince you that if you run your mouth, you’ll be putting not only Tío Héctor’s life at risk, but your own, and Fernando’s and your kids’ lives and probably even Abuela’s ...”
She glared at him and then icily demanded, “How could you dare to bring this ... this garbage ... here?”
“Fair question. First, I own half of this place. Second, I didn’t know anyone was here. If I had known, we probably wouldn’t be here. But the hand has been dealt, and we have to play it.”
“You are sure about Héctor, Carlos?” Doña Alicia asked earnestly.
“Abuela, I’m sorry, but it’s true. We were just at a secret airport he operates in the Laguna el Guaje. He doesn’t move drugs out of there, just the cash profits from the drug trade. Suitcases full of hundred-dollar bills.”
“My God!”
“It’s important that Héctor doesn’t know we’re here. That no one knows we’re here. I told Pablo that at the airstrip; he’ll deal with it.”
“Gringo, what the hell is going on?” Fernando asked.
“You believe him?” María asked her husband incredulously.
“Yeah, sweetheart, I believe him. And you better believe him, too.”
“I don’t want Héctor to know you know about him,” Castillo said. “If he calls here, and I suspect he will, act normally, but tell him you don’t know where I am, and that you haven’t heard from me.”
Doña Alicia nodded.
“Okay,” Castillo then said, “what are we doing here? Randy, you were aware that the Army, the armed forces, went to DefConTwo a while back?”
“Just before we bombed some place in Africa?”
Castillo nodded.
“Yeah. Nobody would talk about it, but the G-Three’s daughter heard about it, and snooped around. And she has a big mouth.”
“What is that, Carlos? DefConTwo?” Doña Alicia asked.
“DefCon stands for Defense Condition. DefConTwo is the next-to-highest degree of readiness to go to war.”
“Let me take the briefing, Charley,” Uncle Remus said. “You look pretty beat, and we don’t want to leave anything out.”
Castillo gave him the floor with a wave of his hand.
“The reason the Defense Department went to DefConTwo,” Leverette began, “is because the President had learned that the Iranians, the Russians, and some former East Germans were making a biological weapon in the Congo, and he decided that it had to go.”
“How did he learn about it?” Randy asked.
Leverette looked at the boy, then at Castillo. “You’re right, Charley. He does have a mouth.” He looked again at the boy, and said, “You get one interruption, Randy. And that was it. Next time, raise your hand.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Your fa—Colonel Castillo was instrumental in getting two senior Russian intelligence officers to defect. They wanted to get out of Russia for a number of reasons, including that they were unhappy about the biological weapons factory in the Congo. As soon as Colonel Castillo got them to Argentina, they told him about it.”
Both Leverette and Castillo saw Randy look at Tom Barlow and Svetlana, asking with his eyes if they were the Russians, and then saw Svetlana nod.
“Am I allowed to ask questions, Mr. Leverette?” General Wilson asked.
“Yes, sir. Of course.”
“Was that attack based on more than what the defectors told Charley? Or the President? The reason I ask is because there was some talk the President went off half-cocked.”