Mesa Perdida - Richard M. Lienau

A clandestine shipment of arms and money delivered by night to southern Lebanon disappears amid the deaths of three people by gunfire. The 15 million dollars in U.S. currency re-appears, again at night, at a remote location in northern New Mexico, where it is buried. An encrypted message concerning the money is mis-directed to a U.S. Navy Code Room, where it is surreptitiously copied by a clerk and his superior. One of the copies is used to threaten a CIA officer, which stimulates a search for the copy on his behalf and that of his partners, rogue ex-agents of the CIA and the Israeli Mossad. A female CIA agent is assigned to join the innocent carrier of the second copy, a middle-aged man, who is to deliver the memory device to an unknown recipient. The delivery is completed, resulting in the assassination of a cut-out courier. The first copier, a retired female Navy Petty Officer, decrypts the message, finds the money, and removes a portion. When the second copy is deciphered and the treasure found by agents of the Third Directorate, a secretive arm of the CIA, they search for her. She is tracked down to face a surprising fate.