Cowboy Angels Read Free

drooping rotor blades.
    Tom Waverly told Stone that the helicopter had brought in the Old Man about an hour ago.
    ‘What’s Knightly doing here?’
    The Old Man, Dick Knightly, had been in charge of the Central Intelligence Group’s Directorate of Special Operations ever since it had been set up in 1968. He’d lost his job two days ago, when President Carter had been sworn into office and his reorganisation of the CIG - the Company - had taken effect.
    ‘He delivered four helicopters to Baines,’ Tom said. ‘Crop dusters rigged with rocket launchers and machine guns.’
    ‘Jesus, Tom. They could put him in jail for a stunt like that.’
    ‘He has paperwork showing they were donated by a wealthy patriot. Watch out for him,’ Tom said, as Stone climbed out of the Jeep. ‘He might try to feed you a line about how us old-school guys will need to stick together because bad times are coming down. Don’t believe a word of it.’
    ‘I quit Special Ops, remember?’
    ‘Yeah, and the Old Man got himself fired. But he still thinks he can call on his cowboy angels whenever he needs some help.’
    ‘What kind of help? What is he into?’
    Tom shook his head. ‘I’m giving you some friendly advice, Adam. Don’t try to take advantage.’
    ‘Why don’t you come inside with me? This thing I have to do won’t take long. Then we can talk—’
    ‘I have some business of my own,’ Tom said, and gave Stone a sloppy salute. Before Stone could say anything, Captain Lewis popped the handbrake and the Jeep sped off with a slippery squeal of tyres.
    Stone pulled out his cell phone, called Bruce Ellis, and told him that he was worried that Tom was planning to do something spectacularly stupid. ‘He just rode away from Baines’s HQ with one of the Free American officers.’
    ‘I don’t have any jurisdiction inside the camp,’ Bruce said.
    ‘You have security camera coverage. Can you keep track of him for me? I want to talk to him again as soon as I’ve finished with Baines.’
    General Baines’s aide was waiting on the porch of the farmhouse, flanked by two soldiers. He insisted on patting Stone down for concealed weapons, asked him to open the briefcase.
    ‘What’s in the briefcase is for General Baines’s eyes only,’ Stone said.
    The aide stared at Stone and said with frosty disdain, ‘It is not necessary for me to see, because I know already what you bring.’
    ‘So how about letting me do my job,’ Stone said. ‘Or are we going to stand out here in the cold and keep your general waiting?’
    With the soldiers at his back, he followed the aide into the farmhouse’s front parlour. Blinds pulled down over the windows glowed with the last of the sunlight. Lamps dropped pools of light at a table where men talked in low voices over a tiling of maps, on the desk where a sergeant was typing with two fingers on an IBM Selectric. A grey cumulus of cigarette and cigar smoke drifted under the sagging horsehair plaster ceiling. The air was hot and oppressive, stale with the weary sense of failed intrigue.
    General Wendell Baines was sitting in an armchair in a corner of the crowded room. A short, straight-backed man with a lined and deeply tanned face and crew-cut white hair, dressed in neatly pressed camouflage fatigues, he studied Stone and said at last, ‘I’ve seen you before, son.’
    ‘We met at a briefing at the State Department, sir. Two weeks ago.’
    Stone was sweating inside his overcoat, but he couldn’t take it off because his briefcase was cuffed to his wrist.
    ‘I remember now,’ Baines said. ‘You were with the incoming Director of Central Intelligence, Admiral Turner. How do you like your new boss, by the way? Is he the right man for the job?’
    ‘It’s too early to say, sir.’
    ‘The impression I took away from our brief meeting is that he’s the kind of unimaginative martinet more interested in the state of the cutlery in the canteen than in the morale of his men. Well, I suppose we must get