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that the Congo-X the Border Patrol had found just inside the Texas-Mexico border had been flown to Mexico in a Tupelov Tu-934A, and that the aircraft, presumably carrying more Congo-X, was on an air base on Venezuela’s La Orchila Island. He launched an operation to grab both the aircraft and the Congo-X.
    Roscoe J. Danton had been aboard one of the Black Hawk helicopters that landed on La Orchila Island. He had not been sure then, and was not sure now, whether he was there as a courageous journalist following a story no matter where it led, or whether he was a craven coward who believed the Merry Outlaws when they made their little joke, “Now that you know that, Roscoe, we’ll have to kill you”—and actually might have done so had he not climbed aboard the Black Hawk.
    Danton had managed to convince himself, before he had been so rudely awakened, that he had been more the professional journalist than professional coward. He had come to this conclusion after deciding that President Clendennen was a miserable sonofabitch for trying to swap Dmitri and Sweaty—who had also been on the Black Hawk—and Charley Castillo to the Russians.
    “After the island,” when he saw Castillo and Colonel Jake Torine preparing to fly the Tupelov Tu-934A to Andrews Air Force Base, he realized that he had been accepted by the Merry Outlaws as one of their own.
    There were advantages to this—for example, he had been given a CaseyBerry, over which the secretary of State had given him the scoop about the murders and kidnapping in Mexico—and he could see a cornucopia of other news that would come his way in the future.
    But there were manifold disadvantages to his being a professional journalist that he could see as well.

    As Roscoe pulled on his shorts in his bedroom, he said: “Guys, I really don’t want to go out there. Why? Wolf News will carry the President’s press conference from the first line of bullshit to the last.”
    “You’re going, Roscoe,” Yung said. “Charley wants you to go.”
    “When you get down to it, guys, I’m really not one of you.”
    “Charley thinks you are,” Yung said. “That’s good enough for the executive combat pay committee.”
    “For the what?”
    “The executive combat pay committee,” Delchamps replied. “Two-Gun, Alex Darby, and me. We’re the ones who pass out the combat pay.”
    Yung added, “The committee asked Charley, ‘What about Roscoe?’ And Charley replied, ‘He was on the island, wasn’t he?’ ”
    “I was on the island as a journalist,” Roscoe replied. “A neutral, non-combatant observer.”
    But Danton thought, Shit, I don’t believe that.
    I was rooting for the good guys.
    And I took the Uzi that Castillo said I might need.
    “If that was the case,” Delchamps said, “we’d have to kill you. You know too much.”
    There he goes with that “we’d have to kill you” bullshit again.
    The trouble with that being I’m not sure it’s bullshit.
    I do know too much.
    “And if we killed you, then you wouldn’t get the million,” Yung said.
    “What fucking million?”
    “I could set up a trust fund for your kids, I suppose,” Yung said thoughtfully.
    “What fucking million?” Roscoe demanded as he rummaged through his tie rack.
    “Shooters,” Delchamps said, “roughly defined as everybody who went to the island, get a million. Plus, of course, everybody who went into the Congo. Charley, Sweaty, and Dmitri opted out.”
    My God, they’re serious! I’m being offered a million dollars!
    How much would that be when the IRS was through with me?
    Why am I asking?
    Pure and noble journalist that I am, I’m of course going to have to refuse it.
    What is this “pure and noble journalist” bullshit?
    What’s the difference between me taking free meals and booze from any lobbyist with a credit card and taking a million from the Merry Outlaws?
    I write what I want, period.
    And I was on that island, and I could have been killed.
    Roscoe had a sudden,