by Cap Daniels
“So what do we do about it?” I asked.
“We make him die trying,” they said in unison.
Thing Two said, “Well, actually, you make him die trying, Chase. You’re going to hop a freighter into the Port of Havana and make your way to an asset we have there. This asset will take you via fishing boat into the mouth of Rio Almendares where you’ll find Suslik, positively identify him, kill him, and get the hell out of Cuba before Castro gets his hands on you. Simple, right?”
“Oh sure, simple,” I said. “I’m going to sneak into a communist country, kill an assassin, and sneak out before anyone knows I was there. Hell, I’ll be back in time for dinner.”
Thing One handed me an envelope. “Inside this envelope, you’ll find a photograph of your Cuban contact and his boat. You’ll meet a helicopter at Homestead Air Force Base tomorrow morning at six. The chopper will take you to the Hondial Shanghai, a freighter bound for Havana. You’ll make the Port of Havana by dark tomorrow night. After that, you’re on your own. If you get caught . . . well, don’t get caught.”
Before I could ask any questions, they headed for the stern and back to their dinghy.
I hurriedly asked, “So how do I get home?”
As Thing Two’s head disappeared over the side, he said, “Just run home to Papa, Chase. We’ll leave the light on for you.”
What the hell does that mean? I should be catching for the Braves, not sneaking into Cuba to kill a gopher.
I spent the next several hours scouring over detailed maps of Havana. I would commit every detail of the area to memory before I let myself sleep. With my geography lesson complete, I slept like a baby.
At exactly six o’clock the next morning, Homestead Air Force Base disappeared beneath my feet as the helicopter climbed and turned toward the south and out over the seemingly endless azure water of the Gulf Stream.
When fear and apprehension should’ve been consuming my mind, my training took over and allowed me to relax and enjoy the ride. I was playing through the upcoming night in my mind, planning as I progressed. There were so many unknowns and so many things that could go wrong. I had packed one small backpack containing three liters of water, my dive knife, about a hundred feet of 550 cord, a pair of waterproof binoculars, a waterproof cigarette lighter, a compass, bug spray, and a few changes of clothes. I knew that I would be given provisions aboard the freighter, but my training had taught me to be prepared to survive in case I never made it to the next provisioning point. I figured I could survive in almost any temperate climate for a very long time with that backpack full of goodies.
The freighter came into view on the horizon and the pilot said, “Three minutes, Chase.”
I would soon watch the chopper disappear, leaving me to my own devices aboard the freighter.
“Thirty seconds,” I heard through my headset as the pilot brought the helicopter to a hover above the freighter.
I removed my headset and slid the door fully open on its rails and locked it into place. Leaning out the door, I tried to estimate how high we were above the shipping containers. When I’d decided that we were between ten and fifteen feet above the huge metal boxes, I looked over my shoulder at the pilot who was giving me a thumbs-up. I tossed my backpack out the door and watched it land with a thud on a container. I was not looking forward to that landing, so I looked back at the pilot, and with a thumbs-down motion, asked if he could get me any lower. He shook his head and pointed out the door emphatically. I sat on the floor with my feet dangling outside the helicopter and pushed off with all my might. I watched the container rise to meet me, and I tucked my knees into my chest, performing a parachute landing fall just as I’d been trained. It worked, and I turned to signal to the pilot that I was all right, but he obviously didn’t care. All that was left of the helicopter from my perspective was the tail rotor. He had turned and flown away in the time it had taken me to reach the container and find my footing.
I slung my pack over one shoulder and climbed down the stack of shipping containers toward the deck of the freighter. When I made it to the deck, I was welcomed by Gunny, the instructor from The Ranch who had beaten the hell out of me on my first day in training. Remembering how he’d left me pinned between a concrete wall and a filing cabinet, I was glad to be on the same team as him. I never wanted to fight him again.
Through the roar of the wind on the deck, he yelled, “Welcome aboard, Chase. Come on inside, and we’ll get you geared up.”
He led me through a hatch into the pilot house and crew quarters, and into a tiny room with one small cot, two footlockers, and a desk. He pulled out a chair from the desk and motioned to the footlocker, so I took a seat. He slid a heavy, plastic Pelican case from beneath the cot and opened it on his lap. He handed me a worn Costa Rican passport with my picture and the name Jason Jones inked inside. The passport had been stamped two days before with a Cuban stamp.
This should come in handy.
“Don’t get your ass caught, but if you do, this is your get-out-of-jail-free card,” he said with a threatening tone. “Your contact on the ground is Domingo Cruz, a Cuban asset we have in place. You probably remember him as Grey, the truck driver who put you in my lake at The Ranch.” A cruel smile crept across his face.
“Ah, yes, I remember him. I’ll see if I can return the favor,” I said.
“Training is over,” he scolded. “We’re all on the same team now. Remember that. Grey will keep you alive as long as you don’t put him in a position to blow his cover or get him killed. So here’s how this works. You’ve been trained to do everything that this mission will require. You are to verify that Suslik is on that yacht. When you’re sure it’s him, you are to engage and eliminate him without being detected. Then, run like hell. Trust me. You do not want to be in Cuba when Castro discovers that Suslik is dead.”
“It all sounds pretty simple right up until that running like hell part. Where will I run? How am I supposed to get home?”
“Don’t worry, Chase. We’ll leave the light on for you.”
Why does everyone keep saying that?
Gunny looked at his watch then started unloading the Pelican case. He handed me a suppressed Makarov nine-millimeter pistol, a night vision monocular, two military Meals Ready to Eat (MREs), a waterproof bag, and finally, a tiny plastic bag with a white pill inside.
I understood everything he’d given me except the white pill. I held it up and looked back at him.
He swallowed deliberately and looked down at the deck. “Chase, if Suslik or any of his people catch you, they’re going to do far worse things to you than we ever did at The Ranch. They’ll torture you until you tell them everything you know, and then they’ll kill you. You will not escape. These people are very good at making certain of that. If they capture you, don’t hesitate. Get this pill down your throat immediately. You’ll be dead before they can get your hands tied up. I assure you that you do not want to go into the next life at the hands of those people.”
For the first time, I realized the severity of my new reality. I was now an assassin and an expendable asset. That’s when it occurred to me that none of this made any sense. I quickly locked eyes with Gunny and demanded, “Why me?”
“What?” he asked. “What do you mean, why you?”
“Why send me to do this? I mean, I’m just a rookie. So far, the only thing I’ve done is endure your training and watch a horse race. Why not send someone more experienced if this Suslik character is so deadly and important?”
“Grow up, Chase,” he said. “You’re trained for exactly this. You’ve endured some of the most grueling training on Earth and walked away smiling. Besides, nobody knows you yet. You’re our invisible man. Every other operator in the service has a reputation and a picture. Nobody has ever seen you. You could stand in front of Mikhail Gorbachev himself, waving an American flag, and he wouldn’t recognize you as a threat. Even if Suslik sees you, he’ll run through his card catalog of operatives in his head and your picture won’t
be there.”
He took a drink of coffee from a disgustingly stained cup, then continued. “You’ll probably fail. Hell, ninety percent of the operators on Earth would fail, but ninety percent of the operators on Earth would be recognized before they ever got within pistol shot range of Suslik. We can hide you right under his nose.”
I thought about what he said and decided to press the issue no further. “So, on the off chance that I do eliminate him and survive, I’ve never been to Cuba. How do I get home?”
He took another drink from the filthy cup and looked at the ceiling. “Chase, you don’t have a home. You live wherever you are. If you get lucky and actually survive, run for the light. The good ol’ Red, White, and Blue will get you out of there.”
I was being left in a communist country to accomplish a job that was nearly impossible, with no egress strategy. That told me that I was being sacrificed. Whoever was paying me to find, identify, and kill Suslik was expecting me to be captured or killed during the mission. Otherwise, there would be an extraction plan in place. I’d spent most of my childhood on islands and on boats in the Caribbean. I was not going to be a fish out of water. This was my element.
I tossed all of the gear he’d given me back into the Pelican case and closed it securely. “Is there anything else?” I asked. “I need to get some sleep before we get to Havana. I have a long night ahead of me.”
16
Catch of the Day
When I awoke, the sun was low in the western sky and Gunny was shaking my boot. “It’s go time, kid. Get your gear in the dry bag. It’s time for you to go for a swim.”
I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, stowed my gear in the dry bag, and followed him from the cabin. He led me down several sets of stairs, each darker and rustier than the last, until we reached a compartment near the front of the ship with an open hatch about twenty feet above the waterline.
“You’re not scared of heights, are you, kid?” He laughed, then tied a gadget around my left bicep. “This is a locator transmitter. Try to keep it out of the water as much as possible. Grey will be along shortly to pick you up. Enjoy the swim. The sharks are pretty much friendly. Oh, I almost forgot. When you hit the water, kick away from the ship like your life depends on it. You don’t want to get tangled up in those propellers.”
He disappeared back up the stairs and left me standing there, twenty feet above the water a few miles off the coast of Havana. I had been well trained at The Ranch, but they never covered jumping from moving cargo ships. Not knowing what to expect, I stepped from the ship and felt my body accelerate toward the water. I tucked my head against my chest and placed my hands over my face to protect my nose and eyes. I hit the water like a missile and felt my body pierce the surface as the dry bag was ripped from my hand. I’d forgotten to deflate the bag before I leapt. I finally stopped my descent into the water with several strong kicking strokes. I could hear the massive freighter plowing through the water just above me, and I could feel the power of the wake that was billowing away from the monstrous hull. When my head broke the surface, I saw my dry bag floating like a cork only a few feet ahead of me. I plowed through the water until I felt my hand strike the bag. I quickly slid my arm through the sling and continued swimming away from the massive freighter. I’d never been in the water that close to a ship, so I had no way to know what forces would be acting on my body and on the water. I was too busy to be frightened. When I finally stopped swimming, I was exhausted, breathless, and alone . . . drifting in the ocean with Havana Harbor only a few miles south. As I watched the freighter disappear, I began the process of keeping myself calm, afloat, and alive while I waited for Grey’s arrival.
Minutes passed like hours as I shivered in the water that felt warm only minutes before. I had been taught to survive for extended periods in the water, but I had forgotten how quickly that even warm water ripped heat from my body. It was becoming increasingly difficult to focus and keep my teeth from chattering as I bobbed in the Florida Straits, using my dry bag like a life ring.
Finally, just when I believed I was going to have to swim to Havana, I heard a boat approaching. I prayed it was Grey—or Domingo—as he was known there. When the boat came into view, I saw that it was a fishing trawler with nets and cables hanging from every inch of her. She was smoking like a locomotive and listing to starboard as if she were on the verge of rolling over. Although I was glad to see her, she didn’t have the look of any boat I would call seaworthy. The man at the helm was round, dressed in dirty coveralls, and wore a big straw hat. It was impossible to tell if it was Grey. It was impossible to tell if it was human. He never looked at me. He never reacted to my presence except for dropping a net directly on top of me as he motored past. I grabbed the net, wrapped myself once in the tattered fabric, rolled onto my back, and kept my head above water as much as possible. Just as I thought I might drown while being dragged through the water, I felt the fabric of the net tighten, and my weight filled the sagging lines. The fisherman hoisted the net out of the water. I collapsed onto the deck of the decrepit trawler with a thud, thankful to be out of the water.
Without looking at me, the man at the helm said, “Every time I see you, you’re trying to drown yourself, kid. How’ve you been?”
It was Grey, and I was happy to see him.
“Yeah, well, last time you were the one trying to drown me, but this time, I’m sure glad you came along. I was getting damned cold out there.”
“That’ll happen. Okay, no more English, gringo. Welcome to Cuba,” he said in extremely good Cuban Spanish.
I answered, trying to sound like I was from Costa Rica, but my Spanish was very Panamanian, “Sí señor. Gracias por pasar por mí.”
He continued only in Spanish. “There’s a towel in that box and coffee in the cabin. Dry off and pour us some. While you’re at it, throw that mannequin overboard. Now that you’re here, we don’t need him anymore.”
I found the towel, stripped off my wet clothes, and stepped into the coveralls the mannequin had been wearing. I found a pair of rubber boots and stuck my feet inside of them. The air was much warmer than the water, so my shivering stopped, but I was still thankful for the towel and coffee. I liked the piece of visual deception Grey pulled with the mannequin. If anyone had seen him leaving the port alone and returning with me aboard, he would have a lot of questions to answer, but with the mannequin onboard, any prying eyes would be expecting him to return with his trusty sidekick.
Between sips of coffee, he said, “Please tell me that you have a stamped passport.”
“I do.” I reached into my dry bag to show him.
He took the passport from my hand and inspected it closely before tossing it back to me. “Good. Now pull those tarps off that stack.”
I did as he instructed, and I was surprised to see hundreds of fish in huge, clear plastic bags lying on the deck. I had no idea why he had live fish in water-filled bags aboard his boat.
“Now spread out that net I caught you in, and roll those bags into the net.”
Again, I did as he instructed, and he pulled the lever that operated the hoist, lifting the net back into the air and over the side of the boat. When the net was suspended alongside the boat, he leaned overboard with a huge machete and cut away the plastic bags, letting the water pour out and leaving the fish trapped in the net. He lowered the net back into the water and began to troll back toward Havana.
“Things are rarely as they appear,” he said.
We found ourselves near two more fishing trawlers as Grey hauled up the net that we already knew was full of fish. The fishermen aboard the other boats barely seemed to notice as we poured the contents of the net onto our deck. The fish went into the hold, and we headed for the mouth of the Rio Almendares.
As we motored into the river, Grey said, “Don’t look, but the yacht anchored about a thousand yards to port should be very interesting to you. The tide will come in tonight, and he’ll swing around bow to sea, and you’ll be able to look right
up his ass.”
It took all of my willpower not to stare at the yacht. I kept my eyes cast straight ahead and never acknowledged it.
When we tied up alongside the dock, Grey and I went to work unloading the day’s catch into giant plastic tubs of ice under the watchful eye of two Cuban soldiers with AK-47s slung across their backs. I never so much as glanced at the soldiers, but I could feel their suspicious eyes burning into my back. I tried not to look like an American assassin sent to kill a Russian assassin aboard a mega yacht less than half a mile away.
“Toma lo que quieras y lo pagas,” ordered one of the soldiers.
A wrinkled, worn-down old man handed a wad of bills to Grey and pulled three of the best of the day’s catch from the ice. The soldiers then walked away as the tubs were loaded onto a waiting truck that must’ve been fifty years old.
Grey dragged a wooden dinghy from the dock onto the deck of our boat, and instructed me to cast off the dock lines. With smoke billowing from the old diesel engine, we motored away from the dock and found Grey’s mooring ball in the shallows, about eight hundred yards from the yacht that held my prey.
Grey lifted the dinghy overboard and let it splash into the water. As he climbed overboard into the dinghy, he said, “Keep your head down. Don’t turn on any lights. Don’t get caught spying. And for God’s sake, don’t be here when I show up in the morning.” He rowed away, leaving me alone on the decrepit boat.
I decided to eat the first of my MREs that claimed to be ham loaf. There was no evidence of anything resembling ham, but it was definitely a loaf. Although it tasted like cardboard, I needed the calories, and I wasn’t sure when I’d eat next.
Just as Grey had predicted, the tide came in, turning the yacht on her mooring so that the bow pointed out to sea, and the stern pointed up the river and directly toward me. Darkness had fully consumed the sky, and thanks to a low, overcast cloud layer, there was very little light from the moon. It was the perfect night for spying, and I had the perfect vantage point.