CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
The white C-130 aircraft with the red stripe and seal of the U.S. Coast Guard set down on the single runway of the Marsh Harbour airport and taxied to the ramp. The surviving members of Team Charlie and our little band from Longboat Key stood sweating in the early morning sun. Llewellyn and his five men were sitting with their hands cuffed behind them, their backs against the wall of a small hangar,
“Mr. Algren,” Llewellyn called, “if you’ve got the juice to get hold of a coast guard plane, I’m ready to accept that you’re who you say you are. Can you uncuff us?”
“I’m not convinced you’re who you say you are, Mr. Llewellyn,” said Jock. “We’ll sort it out when we get to Miami.”
Jock had made the call the night before. I didn’t ask who he could call who had the power to send us a government aircraft, but then I’d long since given up trying to discern the breadth of his power. It seemed to be almost unlimited.
Bahamian customs was turning a blind eye to our little group and the cuffed men in our custody. We’d put our weapons in duffel bags, but I doubt anybody would have thought they were tennis rackets. We’d land at Opa Locka airport near Miami and our captives would be taken to a safe house in Miami owned by Jock’s agency. They’d be kept there incommunicado until we figured things out.
Llewellyn had become very cooperative the night before as he began to perceive that Jock might be exactly who he said he was. He called the man overseeing his operation and told them that he had taken control of the situation at Doc’s house, but that he would have to hold the men until daybreak. The Bahamians were getting a little squeamish, but everything was under control. He was in charge and would bring the people he’d arrested out at first light.
We left before dawn, but not as Llewellyn had indicated to his superior. We took our rented boat back to the marina and used the other two boats to transport our men and our prisoners. The marina was deserted and we tied the boats to the docks and disappeared into the darkness. Two vans were waiting on the road that ran next to the marina, courtesy of Chief Constable Gilmore and Tom Llewellyn. We were taken directly to the airport.
The sun was well up by the time we landed at Opa Locka. The August heat beat down on us, a relentless fact of summer in Florida. We were met by two men from the Miami office of Jock’s agency. Neither spoke a word, just nodded as Jock gave orders. One handed Jock a large envelope, and loaded the CIA men into another van and left the airport.
Because his plane in Marsh Harbour was too small to accommodate all the passengers, Doc had arranged for Tom Telson to bring the rented jet from Atlanta to Opa Locka to pick up the men of Team Charlie. They would fly back to Atlanta and check into hotels, taking a reluctant J.D. with them.
My phone call to Bill Lester the night before had not been exactly pleasant. I told him everything we’d discovered in Marsh Harbour. He was relieved that J.D. was safe and he understood the implications of the involvement of rogue CIA agents. Finally, I took a deep breath and told him about the bank account and the fact that J.D.’s name was on it.
His voice was cold. “When did you find out about the account?”
“Yesterday.”
“And you’re telling me about this now?”
“I’m sorry, Bill. I knew J.D. wasn’t involved, but I also knew that you’d have to take some action, give the information to the town manager at the very least. It would inevitably get out, and J.D.’s career would be over. The fact that she was innocent wouldn’t be a factor in the story.”
A stony silence ensued. Then a sigh. “You’re right. I couldn’t report what I didn’t know. But you ever do something like this again and I’ll put your ass under the jail. Are we clear?”
“We’re clear, Chief. And I’m sorry.”
“Forget it. You did the right thing. I’ll square her disappearance with our people.”
He was going to tell them that J.D. had been on an undercover operation that he could not disclose and he was sorry to have worried them. They would be a bit pissed, but in the end would accept her disappearance as just another burp in a cop’s routine.
When everybody was gone, Jock, Logan, and I went into a small office in the coast guard hangar. The air-conditioning was working overtime, blowing a steady stream of cold air into the small space. I had already sweated through my shirt and welcomed the relief the coolness brought. Jock sat at a desk and opened the envelope given him by the agent.
He studied the contents for a minute, shuffling through the pages. “Looks like the director came through. These are dossiers on the Thanatos teams and Nitzler.”
He passed me a sheaf of papers. “You guys take a look at the teams. I’m going to dig into Mr. Nitzler. I think his career is over.”
I began to read the pages, passing each one to Logan when I finished it. The report, written in dry bureaucratic speak, couldn’t obscure the drama. The war in Vietnam was winding down. Nixon’s Vietnamization of the war was in full swing. The only problem was that the South Vietnamese could not win. Their government was corrupt and the people had lost confidence in it. The Viet Cong, supported by the north with money, weapons, and regular troops, were in the ascendancy. The outcome was inevitable. The south would fall. The only thing the Americans could do was prolong the agony in hopes of salvaging some strategic position. Thanatos was born of desperation. It was an attempt to slow the advance of the Communists by assassinating their leaders. While it had some successes, it was in the end, a failure. The teams were disbanded, their members threatened with prosecution if they ever disclosed what they’d done during the last few months of their service.
I read on, absorbed in the futility of the operation, the needless deaths of good soldiers who’d joined the teams, angered by the perfidy of the intelligence agencies that were fighting a war they could not win, killing with no purpose other than to engage in a paroxysm of vengeful murder, >as if saying, “Yes, you beat us, but many of your leaders won’t live to enjoy their victory.” There was nothing about the massacre at Ban Touk. The only reference was that “a successful assault was made upon a refuge of senior Viet Cong commanders and two men from Team Charlie were killed in action.”
I reached the last page of the dossier. It was a list of names. All the men who’d been engaged in Operation Thanatos. “Shit,” I said, “Nitzler was the guy running the teams from Saigon.”
Jock looked up from the papers he was reading. “Yeah, it’s here in his file. He was what the military used to call a barnburner, a man on his way up. He was young to have the job, but he ran Thanatos. Apparently the operation lasted less than a year, and Nitzler came back to D.C. a hero. The fact that the teams didn’t accomplish a damn thing seemed to have no effect on his career. They killed a lot of people and that’s what was important. Vietnam was just a body-counting exercise and the figures were always inflated.”
“There’s more,” I said. “What?”
“Remember Opal? The team leader that Doc and the guys killed?”
“Right.”
“His name was Nigel Morrissey.”