by Ben English
Nicole dropped the car into gear and stomped the gas pedal to the floor. Allison yelped in surprise, then braced herself against the dash as the car leaped backward. Twin jets of gravel and dirt sprang up from either side of the vehicle, billowing over the guards and the front gate. Nicole let the tires spin until she hit blacktop. She cranked the wheel over and shifted gears as they spun, then stamped on the gas again.
The convertible fishtailed wildly, nearly went off into the fence, and somehow found purchase on the road. Nicole had to remind herself to take her foot off the gas at the junction with the main road, and the convertible’s tires screamed against the inky-black surface of the road as they streaked past the PicoMorph sign.
Nicole shuddered, and let out a long, wheezy breath. Found Allison Griffin staring at her incredulously.
“Wonderful spot of driving, grandmum,” she said.
*
Jack and Alonzo rewound a few seconds of video and watched the car spin out and rocket away. “I’ll be damned,” Alonzo said.
“Harpo, what was that?” None of the security cameras were pointing up at the sky, but it was obvious by the terrified reactions of the guards that something impressive happened overhead.
“The Cubans brought back all kinds of toys from their training mission in England.” Alonzo grinned despite himself. “What you just saw was a volley from a Starstreak HVM, a man-portable surface-to-air missile. It gets close to the target and launches several tiny submunitions. The whole package is small enough I figured Vern’s boys would bring it along.” Anticipating the next question, he added, “Our people weren’t in danger; it’s a laser-guided system. I made sure nothing blew up over humans.”
“What about the second explosion, from Larry’s position?”
Mack answered immediately. “C-4. The fence was wired for motion, so I figured this would get their attention.”
Jack was impressed. “Nicely done, all the way around.”
“Boss?” Mack’s voice held a hint of regret. Or he might have been running through the jungle under a full pack. “I think I might have brought down a tree or two, by accident.”
“That’s fine. In another life, Harpo and I grew up to become loggers. Rendezvous with Chico and exfil.” Jack traded looks with Alonzo, and both men turned their attention to the digital map.
Jack lifted his hands and let Alonzo scroll across the display. “How’s the PicoMorph response shaping up?”
“A whole lot of things are happening all at once, all over the place. The two guys at the front gate are being replaced by what looks like an evil football team. Another squad of security is already forming up at the breach in the fence; they haven’t entered the jungle yet, but they look primed for some serious badassery.” Alonzo listened for a moment to an audio channel. “Head of security just called the local chief of police with a description of Curly and Shemp, and their car. Now he’s calling the provincial governor’s office.”
“Groucho, one of these calls is going to lead to Raines.”
“Got a program to take care of that,” replied Steve.
“How’s the server thing . . . working?” asked Alonzo.
He could practically hear Steve’s grin. “You’re really not sure what you’re asking me, are you?” Before Alonzo could think of a response, he continued. “Here’s how it works: As soon as the security breach was detected, a whole bunch of extra software protection immediately goes up, boom. Brand new firewall around the entire complex.”
“But you can get in?”
Now the grin was definitely audible. “That’s the beauty. We’re already in, thanks to the hardwire. We’re a trusted part of the system. If anything, my hack just became more secure than before.”
Jack spoke up. “Can you use this to get into other local networks that are part of Raines’ global system?”
“No, those are individually firewalled. I can move around anywhere within PicoMorph.”
“Gather everything on Cayo Verad, all the files that might remotely be attached. Do your thing.”
“Already done.” They could hear his hands on the keyboard. “I should back us out of their surveillance systems now. We’re taking up a lot of internal bandwidth. They might detect us.”
Jack shrugged and looked at Alonzo. The smaller man shook his head. “Give me ten more minutes. If we are seeing the standard security response from the Raines’ company playbook, we should watch them as long as possible. I want to see how they respond tactically.”
“And let’s get everyone back to the crow’s nest,” Jack added. “Time to figure out what we know and what we don’t.”
Playing the Long Game
The mountains above Santiago de Cuba
A dozen men lay splayed in a tangle of dried brush, barely moving, each training a sniper scope on the action below. Far enough away to avoid detection by the mass of Cuban soldiers and policemen, but down slope from the peak of the ridge. If they had to move, they wouldn’t expose themselves against the skyline. If discovered, they’d go right up and over the ridge, and arrive at the beach and the boats after a short downhill sprint. But that wasn’t the plan.
Miklos checked the scope on his M76 rifle again. He’d sighted it for seven hundred yards, an easy shot even with a bit of wind. There was no wind. He needed something to take his mind off of his companion.
Lopez and his muttering were beginning to be tiresome. Imagine the chaos if they’d given him an entire rifle, and not just a scope to look through.
“Do you see anyone you recognize?” Miklos asked. He was careful not to shift too quickly or too much, in case the Americans and Cubans on the ridge below them turned around and played their night vision and other tech against the slope of the mountain.
Picking a spot seven hundred yards from where the enemy would eventually be was a matter of mathematics. There were only a few places where the soldiers and police would choose to gather for an assault on the drug lab, and the American advisers naturally suggested they move on the bogus farmhouse from an elevated position. Miklos sighted down the long barrel towards the officers below. The topography and his enemy’s habits decided the battle for them.
He and Lopez had settled in a few hours earlier, each with his own long-range scope, though Miklos would be damned before he’d put a sniper rifle in the hands of that one. Leave the killing hardware to the professionals, he thought.
He’d take Flynn himself, then hand the long barrel over to Lopez—though in his drug-altered state Miklos doubted the other man’s ability to decide which end of the gun to aim. No, leave the real work to the half dozen armed men concealed in the trees and brush around them. Raines had not been wrong in assigning the group to Miklos. They were workable killers, each of them, in some cases trained by the same class of Soviet masters who had discovered Miklos himself as a boy and trained him up in the ways of the world.
The man near them held another Zavasta M-76, sighting down through the scope like he knew what he was doing. A good sign.
They were good men. Not as proficient as his Ukrainians, but each enjoyed killing, and that made his heart sing.
The group had originally come from Colombia, attached as Lopez’s guard. Loaned thugs from the National Liberation Army, supposedly true believers in the anti-West movement, unexplainably loyal to Lopez. Miklos wondered about that, as Lopez didn’t seem capable of issuing an order let alone forming a coherent thought. This is what comes of sampling your own product too frequently.
He raised his voice incrementally. “I said, is there anyone there you recognize, from before. We believe the Cubans are being advised by the same group that destroyed your labs a few years ago.”
Lopez muttered something, then repeated it.
Miklos leaned close.
“The leprechaun, the leprechaun. The little black-eyed bitch who is married to the American actor. The woman, where is she, I don’t see her –” Abruptly he broke off, looked intently through the scope, held his breath.
&nbs
p; When he turned to respond, he was far more lucid than Miklos expected. “There was an Irish woman with them, when they burned my villa and forced me out of Cuba. I recognize the American Marine, the one standing with the officers. But all the rest are local.” He turned back. “You really should give me your rifle now. It has a good scope. I’d be able to see much better.”
“Undoubtedly.” Miklos kept his weapon.
Disappointing. Flynn’s psychological makeup suggested he’d lead the assault, or at the very least direct it from the field. Miklos felt his stomach sour in disgust. Did Flynn really suppose these Cubans were capable of planning and executing such an operation, with only one member of his team to keep order? Even so, the military force below was taking down the largest drug processing plant in the country; Flynn would surely be present for that. But where was he? Not in the city, that was certain. Then where?
Raines had approved prioritizing Flynn as a target, but none of them would fire a shot unless they could eliminate two or more of Flynn’s team as well. And the American wasn’t even present. Miklos adjusted his scope to maximum magnification and swept over the faces again. Tasted a stirring of impatience, felt fury barely nipping at the edges of him. Perhaps not tonight, but soon.
The workmen at the conference center, the rest of the crew from Cayo Verad, were finished installing the device. Miklos and his team would not remain on the island much longer, and he’d lose his chance unless the other man showed himself at the opening ceremonies of the Goodwill Games.
Was it true the man had a fetish for disguises? He examined each face in detail, finally hovering the targeting reticule over the eye of the U.S. soldier. A Marine, probably; Lopez might actually be correct. The American spoke to no one in particular, then adjusted something in his ear and laughed. A bone mike—connecting him to Flynn? Miklos flipped the safety off without losing his target through the scope.
He hated them all, these useless, glib, whistling Americans. The corn-fed boy before him was no exception. Miklos found them all infuriating.
They did not realize what they were. Their military possessed practically unlimited power, but it was the power and strength of a blind, slow giant. American soldiers would follow orders, right or wrong, but the citizens they served did not honor that contract with respect or support.
The American people had long lost any interest in greatness. They had no concept of survival. Through their caution and aversion to risk, they were making sure their armies would soon lose the ability to wage war in any form. Allowing women to serve in combat positions in the military was a fine idea—some of the best warriors on Miklos’ team were women—but the Americans, driven by their need to make everyone feel good about themselves, had eased their standards for men and women to accommodate all the women who wanted to play soldier. They’d taken physical symbols of the elite forces and given them freely to common foot soldiers, emptying those symbols of the substance that made them elite, or even combat-worthy. Miklos once chanced upon four youngsters in black berets in an ally in Prague, near the river. The Americans hadn’t drawn weapons fast enough to defend themselves. He sniffed. Might as well fight clerks and accountants.
Their natures were contrary to the principles of survival. When the blind, crippled giant finally moved, finally brought down the fist, Nasim and his group had always avoided it, already elsewhere.
The nature of their use of technology further insured future weakness. Missiles launched from hundreds of miles away did nothing to prepare soldiers for the personal business of war, for the reality of face-to-face combat or the actualities of death for death. Firsthand experience was being replaced by real-time video and joysticks.
In 1999 he’d accompanied a cell of men dedicated to the long game of America’s eventual defeat in order to observe the U.S. military training operations in Oakland, California. Operation Urban Warrior was a three-phased exercise testing the American Marines' ability to provide humanitarian assistance in an urban environment, respond to threats of chemical and biological weapons, and restore order after a state of civil unrest.
It was largely a joke. The soldiers proved to have little ability to wage house-to-house and close quarters combat, especially in their own country. They had no desire to protect themselves. These damnable, useless, whistling Americans.
But Jack Flynn . . .
Jack Flynn and his team were something else entirely, a creature Miklos had never before met. He thought back to their encounter in London, to the brief conversation in the Tower and immediately after, the quick and dirty fight in the doorway of the pitching helicopter.
He halfway hoped there was a uniqueness to Flynn, a secret Miklos could break apart and discover, something new. He suspected there was indeed. Miklos Nasim had personally killed more people than any other fighter he’d met, and he’d looked in the faces of as many as he could, at their final moment. But Flynn . . .
Whether Jack Flynn had been on the floor under Miklos’ gun or diving and angling himself around the helicopter cabin or fighting the local workmen in the Mercado Nocturno, Miklos saw in him a thing unique.
Watching Jack Flynn, regardless of motion or context, was like looking through a window of calm, like glimpsing a sunlit forest meadow through a break in the trees.
There was no other explanation. This . . . brightness, peace – it infected other people around the man. Through the rifle scope, Miklos saw it in the face of the American soldier, and it made him want to squeeze the trigger. He applied nearly a pound of pressure before tactics won out over passion, and he stopped. Worked out a kink in his neck, and safed the weapon.
Soon.
An exclamation of surprise brought him fully to the present, and Lopez pointed. His eye already tracked the flash of arcing light up into the sky and down over the flat farmland. A missile launch. It exploded harmlessly, high in the air, then exploded again a dozen more times near the ground, but nowhere near the cocaine plant. A misfire?
The men around him shifted, gathered themselves. “That was a Starstreak,” one said. “Or a portable THOR,” another answered. “They brought much hardware back with them after their training in England.”
The men missed the most obvious point. The missile exploded above one of Raines’ companies. A pharmaceutical plant. Curiouser and curiouser.
Wait and watch. Watch.
Microcapsule
By the following morning Alonzo couldn’t turn around without falling over a news story trumpeting the death of the drug trade in Cuba. The radio stations, always quicker at the draw than the Cuban television outlets, had already aired interviews with the commanding officers of the Cuban military forces which had seized the cocaine processing plant, while bloggers from Santiago de Cuba and the online versions of the local newspapers all ran cameraphone photos and video clips of the burning warehouse. Scrabbling half a step behind the locals were the international news operators with active bureaus in Havana, which was everyone. All the media players were fully staffed to cover the launch of the Goodwill Games the following day.
Espinosa himself declined to comment, but his administration lost no time in reminding reporters that the night’s victory was only the most recent encounter in a long-standing campaign against cocaine and other illegal drugs. The administration was keeping its campaign promises, safeguarding the children of Cuba, keeping additional drugs from reaching the shore of the larger country to the north —and the fact that half the Cuban voting constituency resided in the continental United States was lost on no one.
Jack and Alonzo set the video wall in the hotel to display a local Spanish news station while they set up breakfast. The coffee arrived the same time as Allison Griffin, newspapers under each arm.
So far the media were overlooking reports of a misfired rocket detonated over the PicoMorph facility. Rocket damage was reported at three other properties already, one of them a farm five kilometers from the cocaine processing station. The actual target itself had been completely and utterly raze
d. Enough explosive ordinance and bullets had rained down upon the warehouse that it would forever be unrecognizable as anything other than a melted, charred ruin. The actual raid brought in few arrests; these were all low-level workers who had been thrown clear by the first explosions. All were currently hospitalized and would be presented with a lawyer if and when they woke up.
Cubans had no love for drug traffic.
Meanwhile, the street price of heroin, methadone, and crystal methamphetamine (none of which had any connection whatsoever to the cocaine lab outside Santiago de Cuba) skyrocketed in Miami.
Another major PR win for Cuba.
Irene arrived a few minutes before the meeting, wheeling a lab display. She and Nicole collected plates of fruit and sat next to Allison at the end of the table.
As soon as all three women worked through their first cups of coffee, Jack got Nicole’s attention. “Hey, can you call Mr. Swanson this afternoon? Make sure Allison gets on the team insurance plan.”
“That smacks of Hollywood spy code,” she said, and Jack laughed.
“No, really. There really is an insurance plan. He’ll have a few questions and some legal advice for you.”
Allison nodded. “I knew there had to be a lawyer in with your bunch somewhere.”
Steve returned to the table with another plate of eggs. “Mr. Swanson is more of an accountant.”
“Even better,” she replied. “Is it a good plan? Does it come with dental? Maternity leave?” She eyed Ian’s plate of sausages and bacon. “Does it cover angioplasty?”
Ian sat next to her and reached for the juice.
Doing her best to ignore the stack of grease and protein, Nicole said to Irene. “So I hear you’re leaving us this afternoon.”
“I was on vacation right before this case opened,” Irene said, “So my husband’s been fending for himself for a few weeks.”