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“Aye, aye, sir!”
“Carry on, Gunnery Sergeant,” Castillo ordered.
About five minutes later, a very large man in a rubber suit and carrying a CAR-4 got out of one of the Policía Federal Suburbans and, looking more than a little uncomfortable, walked onto the veranda.
“Welcome to Hacienda Santa Maria,” Doña Alicia said.
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am. I’m looking for Colonel C. G. Castillo.”
“Congratulations, you have found Lieutenant Colonel C. G. Castillo, Retired. And you are?”
The man in the black rubber suit came to attention and saluted.
“Sir, Lieutenant Commander Edwin Bitter, SEAL Team Five, reporting as ordered to the colonel for hazardous duty.”
“Hello, Eddie,” Major H. Richard Miller, Junior, said. “Long time no see. How are you?”
“I will be goddamned!” Commander Bitter said.
“Probably,” Castillo said. “I have heard some really terrible things about you SEALs. But I must warn you, if you keep talking like that, my grandmother will wash your mouth out with soap.”
“And I know who you are, too!” Commander Bitter said excitedly.
“Indeed?”
“When Dick Miller dumped his Black Hawk in Afghanistan, with me and some other SEALs on it, you’re the crazy sonofabitch who stole another Black Hawk and came and got us off that mountain in the middle of a blizzard. The last I heard they were either going to court-martial you or give you the Medal of Honor.”
“In the end, wiser heads prevailed and they did neither,” Castillo said.
Sweaty came onto the veranda.
Commander Bitter’s face showed great surprise.
“Good morning,” Sweaty said, and offered Bitter her hand.
He took it and said, “A great honor, Miss Ravisher. I’m one of your biggest fans!”
Commander Bitter suddenly found himself flying through the air.
Castillo walked to the edge of the veranda and looked down at Bitter, who was now lying on his back on the hood of one of the Policía Federal Suburbans with his feet on the roof.
“If you think you can ever get off there, and make it back up here, Commander,” Castillo said, “and apologize nicely, I will ask the Widow Alekseeva to give you back your CAR-4, and then I will attempt to answer any questions you might have.”
“What he didn’t tell you, Commander,” Juan Carlos Pena said ten minutes later when Castillo had finished explaining the problem and what the role of the SEALs was to be in dealing with it, “is what at least three of the drug cartels want to do with him.”
“Which is?”
Pena looked uncomfortably at Doña Alicia.
“How do I say this delicately?” he asked.
“What they have announced they are going to do to Carlos, Commander,” Doña Alicia said, “is behead him, and then hang his head from a bridge over the highway in Acapulco.”
Juan Carlos Pena nodded. “They seem to feel Carlos had something to do with the untimely deaths of about a dozen of the drug cartel people who murdered—”
“Danny Salazar?” Bitter interrupted, and when Pena nodded again, said, “We heard about that.”
“He also didn’t tell you we are going to be married in Cozumel,” Sweaty said. “We would be pleased if you and your men were to come.”
