The Last Operation (The Remnants of War Series, Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

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    After a while the conversation slowed and Rollie leaned forward, his eyes fixed and unblinking, getting down to serious business.
    "William has a bad situation he wants us to handle," Rollie said. "I told him I'm in only if you head the team. I think you're the only one who can pull this off and get us out alive."
    "Well, my mother didn't raise any fools," replied Daniels, turning to Taylor, "William, I appreciate this nice dinner but I'm sure it was more than Langley's concern for my nutrition that brought you here. What's the deal? You guys got a problem?"
    William Taylor nodded, took a sip of his Chianti and pulled an envelope from his jacket pocket.
    "Yes, I am afraid we do. We have a most vexing problem," he said.
    Daniels couldn't help grinning a little. William Taylor talks just like that, no contractions and lots of words like vexing.
    "As you know, our intervention in Panama back in the eighties, had been successful, including the capture and conviction of Manuel Noriega on drug running charges," continued Taylor. "There had been somewhat of a brouhaha throughout Latin America, but it fizzed out with time. However, certain developments have come about that could threaten to unravel our entire position in this hemisphere and perhaps bring down this administration. To put it bluntly, we are being blackmailed. The Agency, the Administration and the entire country."
    "Why don't you do what you always do," replied Daniels. "Lie or abandon a few people like you did in Iraq."
    "Please Richard," said Taylor. "The Kurds were not an agency decision."
    "I don't care whose decision it was," replied Daniels. "You pulled our team out after we promised them supplies and air support. We promised them because you told us we would. Then you changed your mind and left them between the Republican Guards and those mountains. So like I said, why don't you just lie about the whole thing?"
    "Plausible denial is not a solution in this case. It is much more serious."
    Plausible denial. Does it mean a lie so good you begin to believe it yourself, thought Daniels as William Taylor continued.
    "Two of our agents were operating with the tacit approval of the South America Desk. It appears that they had withheld some crucial details of their operations. I suppose because of their rate of success, we did not exercise the oversight we should have."
    Rollie burst out laughing. "Bullshit! If we get results you could care less how we do it as long as we have the good grace to die with our mouths shut."
    Taylor shrugged as he replied. "These agents facilitated the passage of large amounts of drugs from Peru, Ecuador and Columbia through Panama and Mexico—very large amounts. Our shares of the huge profits generated found its way into funding big anti-insurgency operations throughout the hemisphere. No bothersome congressional oversights needed. Those funds were instrumental in keeping communism contained in Cuba, Venezuela and other trouble spots."
    "Sounds like a fair trade off," replied Daniels. "You kill tens of thousands of kids, expand a scourge throughout the continent and get political juice. Sound like a good trade-off to you, Rollie?"
    "Sounds good and churchlike to me," Rollie said.
    "We are in the process of severing those relationships," said Taylor, ignoring the sarcasm. "But we are presently stymied."
    Right now he was beginning to look a little more nervous than stymied thought Daniels. He had a hunch that perhaps Taylor's career hung on their acceptance and successful completion of whatever it was he wanted done.
    "You see," continued Taylor, "the agents who constructed these, ahem, relationships, have been captured by a group that stands to profit the most from continuing those activities. By capturing those agents, they very neatly put us in a box. They claim they have documentation of those operations along with their hostages. If it was just one of those things it would be bad enough. But both are devastating. We must free