While that was happening, Colombia itself would be further subverted, but more subtly. That was one more area in which Cortez had been given professional training. The current lords used a brute-force approach, offering money while at the same time threatening death. No, that would also have to stop. The lust in the developed countries for cocaine was a temporary thing, was it not? Sooner or later it would become unfashionable, and demand would gradually diminish. That was one thing that the lords didn't see. When it began to happen, the Cartel had to have a solid political base and a diversified economic foundation if it wished to survive the diminution of its power. That demanded a more accommodating stance with its parent country. Cortez was prepared to establish that, too. Eliminating some of the more obnoxious lords would be a major first step toward that goal. History taught that you could reach a modus vivendi with almost anybody. And Cortez had just proven it to be true.

The phone rang. He answered it. He wrote down the words given him and after hanging up, picked up the dictionary. Within a minute he was making marks on his tactical map. The American Green Berets were not fools, he saw. Their encampments were all set on places difficult to approach. Attacking and destroying them would be very costly. Too bad, but all things had their price. He summoned his staff and started getting radio messages out. Within an hour, the hunter groups were coming down off the mountains to redeploy. He'd hit them one at a time, he decided. That would guarantee sufficient strength to overwhelm each detachment, and also guarantee sufficient losses that he'd have to draw further on the retainers of the lords. He would not accompany the teams up the mountains, of course, but that was also too bad. It might have been amusing to watch.

Ryan hadn't slept at all well. A conspiracy was one thing when aimed at an external enemy. His career at CIA had been nothing more than that, an effort to bring advantage to his own country, often by inflicting disadvantage, or harm, upon another. That was his job as a servant of his country's government. But now he was in a conspiracy that was arguably against the government itself. The fact denied him sleep.

Jack was sitting in his library, a single reading lamp illuminating his desk. Next to him were two phones, one secure, one not. It was the latter which rang.

"Hello?"

"This is John," the voice said.

"What's the problem?"

"Somebody cut off support for the field teams."

"But why?"

"Maybe somebody wants them to disappear."

Ryan felt a chill at the back of his neck. "Where are you?"

"Panama. Communications have been shut down and the helicopter is gone. We have thirty kids on hilltops waiting for help that ain't gonna come."

"How can I reach you?" Clark gave him a number. "Okay, I'll be back to you in a few hours."

"Let's not screw around." The line clicked off.

"Jesus." Jack looked into the shadows of his library. He called his office to say that he'd drive himself into work. Then he called Dan Murray.

Ryan was back in the FBI building underpass sixty minutes later. Murray was waiting for him and took him back upstairs. Shaw was there, too, and much-needed coffee was passed out.

"Our field guy called me at home. VARIABLE has been shut down, and the helicopter crew that was supposed to bring them out has been pulled. He thinks they're going to be - hell, he thinks -"

"Yeah," Shaw observed. "If so, we now have a probable violation of the law. Conspiracy to commit murder. Proving it might be a little tough, though."

"Stuff your law - what about those soldiers?"

"How do we get them out?" Murray asked. "Get help from - no, we can't get the Colombians involved, can we?"

"How do you think they'd react to an invasion from a foreign army?" Shaw noted. "About the same way we would."

"What about confronting Cutter?" Jack asked. Shaw answered.

"Confront him with what? What do we have? Zip. Oh, sure, we can get those communications guys and the helicopter crews and talk to them, but they'll stonewall for a while, and then what? By the time we have a case, those soldiers are dead."

"And if we can bring them out, then what case do we have?" Murray asked. "Everybody runs for cover, papers get shredded..."

"If I may make a suggestion, gentlemen, why don't we forget about courtrooms for the moment and try to concentrate on getting those grunts the hell out of Indian country?"

"Getting them out is fine, but -"

"You think your case will get better with thirty or forty new victims?" Ryan snapped. "What is the objective here?"

"That was a cheap shot, Jack," Murray said.

"Where's your case? What if the President authorized the operation, with Cutter as his go-between, and there's no written orders? CIA acted in accordance with verbal orders, and the orders are arguably legal, except that I got told to mislead Congress if they ask, which they haven't done yet! There's also that little kink in the law that says we can start a covert operation without telling them, no matter what it is - the limits on our covert ops come from a White House Executive Order, remember - as long as we do get around to telling them. Therefore a killing authorized by the guy who puts out the Executive Order can only become a murder retroactively if something extraneous to the murder itself does not happen! What bonehead ever set these statutes up? Have they ever really been tested in court?"

"You left something out," Murray observed.

"Yeah, the most obvious reply from Cutter is that this isn't a covert operation at all, but a paramilitary counterterrorist op. That evades the whole issue of intelligence-oversight. Now we come under the War Powers Resolution, which has another lead-time factor. Have any of these laws ever been tested in court?"

"Not really," Shaw answered. "There's been a lot of dancing around, but nothing actually on point. War-Powers especially is a constitutional question that both sides are afraid to put in front of a judge. Where are you coming from, Ryan?"

"I got an agency to protect, don't I? If this adventure goes public, the CIA reverts back to what it was in the seventies. For example, what happens to your counterterrorist programs if the info we feed you dries up?" That one scored points, Jack saw. CIA was the silent partner in the war on terrorism, feeding most of its data to the Bureau, as Shaw had every reason to know. "On the other hand, from what we've talked about the last couple of days, what real case do you have?"

"If by withdrawing support for SHOWBOAT, Cutter made it easier for Cortez to kill them, we have a violation of the District of Columbia law against conspiracy to commit murder. In the absence of a federal law, a crime committed on federal property can be handled by the municipal law that applies to the violation. Some part of what he did was accomplished here or on other federal property, and that's where the jurisdiction comes from. That's how we investigated the cases back in the seventies."

"What cases were they?" Jack asked Shaw.

"It spun out of the Church Committee hearings. We investigated assassination plots by CIA against Castro and some others - they never came to trial. The law we would have used was the conspiracy statute, but the constitutional issues were so murky that the investigation died a natural death, much to everyone's relief."

"Same thing here, isn't it? Except while we fiddle..."

"You've made your point," the acting Director said. "Number one priority is getting them out, any way we can. Is there a way to do it covertly?"

"I don't know yet."

"Look, for starters let's get in touch with your field officer," Murray suggested.

"He doesn't -"