“Not kinda. Is,” said Trace.
“Tell you what, next time you’re in Cuba, you can look him up,” I said.
“How about you smuggle him out?” asked Junior. “It’d be pretty easy for you.”
“I’m not going to Cuba,” I told him.
Junior looked like a puppy who’s just been told not to pee on his water dish.
“We can’t rescue every person living in Cuba,” I told him.
“I wasn’t talking about every person in Cuba, just the old dude’s brother.”
“If we were going to Cuba,” said Trace, “it wouldn’t be a bad idea.”
“But we’re not going to Cuba.”
The video I’d made was pressed onto a pair of DVD discs. These were supposed to be smuggled into Cuba, where another courier would take them to yet another operative; none of the transporters would know what they were taking.
The smuggler was a Spanish businessman who had a well-paying sideline as a paid CIA agent. The only problem was that he had another sideline as an informant for the Cuban government—something the CIA discovered roughly twelve hours before he was supposed to pick up the discs.
The Christians in Action have never been very good at dealing with a curveball, but in this case they had a backup plan, and a backup to that, and even a backup to that.
Backup plan number two fizzled when the courier, a Canadian national, got cold feet. So the Christians went to door number three, tapping a Dominican national who’d done various odd jobs for them in the past. He was all set to pick up the discs until he got arrested and thrown in jail.
Which is what tends to happen to drug smugglers.
The CIA would have gladly sprung him from an American jail. But he was arrested in Saba, an island that is part of the Netherlands Antilles and thus under Dutch control. And while the Dutch tend to take a relatively lax view about illegal drug smuggling—even several tons of it, concealed among semifresh flowers shipped out of Colombia—they weren’t willing to turn a blind eye to the fact that he had killed two Dutch police agents while resisting arrest.
Yes, those are the sorts of people we depend on to do our spying.
Three strikes, and the Christians decided to look for a new pitcher.
Me.
“All I need is someone to get the DVDs to Cuba,” Ken Jones told me after convening an emergency powwow at his favorite watering hole near Langley. “I have an agent there who will hand them off to someone else, who’ll make the switch. It’s all worked out. I just need a middleman.”
“That’s one position I never really liked. The middle.”
“Could you do it as a personal favor?”
I laughed. That was about the last reason I would do anything for the CIA.
“How about for the oppressed Cubans?” suggested Ken.
“They are oppressed, and I feel very badly for them,” I said. “But I’ve already done my bit.”
“Well then, maybe you would do it because Red Cell International has several government contracts that could evaporate one day. Like tomorrow.”
It was an old but effective ploy. We sealed the deal with a round of Bombay Sapphire on the rocks.
The spot for the handoff to the Cuban courier happened to be only a few miles from the town were Traba’s brother lived. I’d claim it was a coincidence, but I’m the one who picked the spot.
Trace took my decision to go to Cuba as a sign that I was becoming a softie as I matured, a development that she somehow viewed as welcome. Junior puffed himself up, as if he’d had something to do with it.
The truth was, I didn’t particularly want to go to Cuba. But since I was going, grabbing the old guy and getting him the hell out of there was the best way I could think of to give Fidel the finger. The CIA was paying three times my usual fee for the operation, and would cover the expense of taking the old guy out as well. (Not that they knew that in advance, of course.) Besides, Traba had done a hell of a job on my hair; I owed him a decent tip.
We ran the operation out of a small hamlet on the northeastern coast of Jamaica, which will remain nameless in case we need to use it again. Following normal procedure, we arrived there in ones and twos, drifting in over the course of a weekend from a variety of directions. I came from Montego Bay, where I was happy to spend a few days of fun and frolic on an exclusive beach with Karen. It was a treat to lie on a beach without having to duck gunfire or blow something up for a change.
But all good things come to an end. On Sunday morning, she jetted back to her job at Homeland (in)Security and I ducked out a back door at the airport. A short motorbike ride later, I arrived at the small house Doc had rented as our casa away from casa.
“Cheer, cheer, the gang’s all here,” said Trace Dahlgren when she saw me, unleashing a stream of four-letter endearments that told me just how much she really missed me.
Let me take the opportunity to properly introduce you, since I skipped over the niceties earlier. Trace is vice president in charge of shooter development for Red Cell International. She’s part Navaho, part tigress, and I can honestly say she’s bailed my butt out of more hot water than a wonton skimmer in a Chinatown restaurant. There was a time in the not-too-distant past when we were more than fellow employees, but our relationship now is entirely chop-tonic—think Platonic, except that she busts my chops, and I bust hers.
The rest of the team was split between wisdom and muscle, with the usual array of talents and specialties sprinkled throughout. Al “Doc” Tremblay—aka Cockbreath and other assorted terms of endearment—had arrived on Friday to handle the logistics and play team den mother.
Those of you who have been following along at home will recall Doc was one of the original Red Cell plank owners when I was back in the navy raising a ruckus. Doc left the service as a master chief petty officer, and a good one2 . . . good enough to have been a command master chief several times! In fact, the old joke may have been told with him in mind:
An old battleship admiral died and found himself at the Pearly Gates, staring up at St. Peter.
“Tell me there’s no chief petty officers here,” the admiral barked. “The only reason I was willing to pass was the hope that I’d never see one again.”
“No chiefs,” said St. Peter. “None have ever made it.”
The admiral waltzed in, admiral-like. Ten minutes later, he saw a man in khakis and a garrison cap swagger by with a girl on each arm. He had a thick cigar stuck in the middle of his cocky smile.
“What the hell?” thundered the admiral, turning back to St. Peter. “I thought you said there were no chiefs.”
“Oh, that’s just God. He only thinks he’s a chief.”
Danny Barrett arrived about the same time as Doc. Danny’s a former police officer and a security specialist; he was responsible for establishing our security and coming up with a secure communications network for the trip to Cuba. He also took care of some of our contingency arrangements, making sure we could get the hell out of the country if things went sour.
Maria “Red” Ramirez was our Cuban language expert. Maria is a feisty little thing, barely five feet tall with red hair that matches her personality. (Hence the nickname. Duh.) Maria spent some time in the navy and did a little work for the DIA—Dipshits in Action, also known as the Defense Intelligence Agency—but her qualifications for the mission had to do primarily with her language and geography skills. Her father and mother came from Cuba, and she had been on the island a dozen times, legally and otherwise.
Maria was also our team medic. Everyone at Red Cell has passed through advanced lifesaving and taken a host of EMT courses; most could qualify as paramedics in the most demanding ambulance company. Maria had been a corpsman, an emergency-room nurse, and even studied to be a doctor for a year, though she didn’t let that hold her back.
Rounding out the team were three young men who had done yeoman’s work for me, most recently in North Korea: Paul “Shotgun” Fox, his shadow Thomas “Mongoose” Yamya, and Junior.
Shotgun and Mongoose are two special-case hard heads, inseparable but as different as night and day. They lost the FNG3 smell in Korea, where both proved they could chew up an enemy and spit him out—and Shotgun would be laughing his fool head off as he did it. Shotgun proves that Red Cell is an equal opportunity employer: he was in the Army Rangers before seeing the light. Like Sean Mako, another of our blanket-hugger brats, his service experience has stood him in good stead at Red Cell International.
Shotgun is six-eight, weighs at least three hundred pounds, and runs the hundred-yard dash faster than most Olympic sprinters. He runs especially fast if you tell him there’s a Yankee Doodle or some other fast-food snack at the finish line. He’s always eating. Always. I’ve seen him unwrap a Twinkie at twenty thousand feet, waiting to hit fifteen so he could pull his ripcord.
Technically, Shotgun was the team demolitions expert, though we didn’t expect to be blowing many things up. He was also the unofficial morale officer. I have never seen him without a smile on his face. True, it’s often a twisted smile, but it’s a smile nonetheless. If there is a happier man on the planet, I don’t want to meet him.
Shotgun’s mirth is counteracted by Mongoose’s growl. Mongoose is a former SEAL, so I don’t have to say much about his abilities. He is a small guy physically: maybe five-six if he’s on his tippy toes. Which puts him at the perfect height to carve his initials in your heart after he pulls it from your chest.
Actually, he only takes out your heart if you haven’t pissed him off. If you have, his aim is somewhat lower.
Mongoose is Philippine-American, but even Red thought he looked plenty Cuban to pass as a native if necessary. His Spanish had an accent a bit more Filipino than Caribbean, but that could be finessed if circumstances demanded.
You’ve already met Matthew Loring—aka Junior—our technical specialist. Matt came to us to fill in for my friend and standby geek, Shunt, who has a fairly full agenda outside Red Cell. (Shunt’s real name is Paul Guido Falcone. He’s called Shunt because he has them in his brain. Helps him talk to Martians.)
Matthew can hack computers almost as well as Shunt, which is like comparing Mantle to Mays. As an added bonus, he’s developed a taste for blowing things up. What he really wants to do is become a shooter, though he doesn’t have a military background. Trace has taken him under her wing and has high hopes. For me, the jury’s still out.
He’s a tough kid, I’ll give him that; he proved he could keep up with us in Korea. Of course, he’s so damn thin he looks like he could slide under a door.
One other thing about Matt: he says he’s my son.
You’ll have to read Dictator’s Ransom to get the nuances, but the bottom line is that his mother and I had a rendezvous twenty-some years before that—allegedly—resulted in Matthew’s birth.
Matt is sure of it. I’m not. We haven’t had a DNA test or anything that might be conclusive. Our blood types happen to match—but that could easily be random chance. How much he looks like me is a matter of opinion.
Not that I wouldn’t be proud to call him my son. But the responsibilities of fatherhood have never really been my thing.
That was our team. Eight people, with a couple around the periphery, on-call as needed for specific tasks.
The operation itself was straightforward. We were to meet the Cuban courier—a Senor Fernandez—in a small town about seven miles southeast of Jobabo in Las Tunas province Wednesday morning at 0130—1:30 A.M. in civilian time.
Quick geography lesson: Cuba is directly south of the Florida Keys, ninety miles or so from American soil. The island is shaped like a spurt of water erupting from a playground fountain. Development isn’t exactly rampant anywhere on Cuba, but the eastern side of the island is less populated than the west. The Sierra Maestra mountains are in the east, below and to the right of the Bahamas.
The east is also where our navy base at Guantanamo is.
Yes, it’s a navy base. The prison is a tiny part of the facility, even though it’s what’s made the rest of the place famous.
I see a hand in the back of the class. Question?
Why do we have a navy base in the only communist country in the Western Hemisphere?
Good question, grasshopper. Save it for History. This is Geography.
Oh, all right, just this once. When we helped the Cuban people free themselves from Spain, they were so grateful they leased us the base in perpetuity. Fidel has tried denouncing the lease, but it’s held up by international law—and a garrison of some of the most ornery marines you ever didn’t want to meet.
Havana is on the other side of the island, on the northwest coast, 105 miles due south and a noodge west of Key West. The western end of the island is more populous than the south, though no one’s about to confuse any part of Cuba with the northeastern corridor or southern California.
Much of what lies between Havana and Guantanamo is either farmland or jungle, with the occasional swamp or rocky hillside thrown in. There’s no part of the island that measures a hundred miles north shore to south shore. Cuba’s entire area is 42,830 square miles, which is about the size of Kentucky or roughly two-thirds the size of Florida, take your pick.
Las Tunas, the province where we were going, is on the eastern side of the island, just before the mountains. Up near the northern coast, you find a few hardy European tourists taking advantage of the pristine and nearly deserted beaches. Las Tunas, the city, is in the northern end of the province. The population is a little under two hundred thousand, making it a medium-size city for Cuba.
Jobabo is even smaller, with maybe fifty thousand people in the city and immediate area. It sits on the highway between Camagüey and Baymo in east-central Cuba roughly fourteen miles from the Gulfo de Guacanayabo and the ocean. Our rendezvous target was five miles to the east and a hair south. We could get there without going anywhere near the city, traveling through open countryside dotted with sugar fields, swamps, and the jungle.
The hamlet where Traba’s brother had been exiled lay two miles northeast of the rendezvous. We’d located his address with the help of some Miami friends of Danny’s. I didn’t tell the barber what I was up to; I was afraid that he’d do something silly, like call his brother and tell him help was on the way. Obviously, we were taking a risk that he might not be there. But from everything the barber had said and what we could find out about inter-exiles, we knew the odds were extremely high that he’d be at his house the night we arrived.
Doc had rented us a cabin cruiser that we would use as our main transport. Along with Red, Shotgun, and Mongoose, I would take the cruiser and land on a beach in the Gulfo de Guacanayabo at 2300. We’d then bicycle along local roads north to the rendezvous point. The rendezvous was supposed to take place at 0200—2:00 A.M. That gave us roughly three hours to cover fourteen miles—five or six times what we needed, even accounting for Murphy’s4 lollygagging.
While the four of us were on the ground in Cuba, Danny would be sitting back in Jamaica drinking rum and monitoring transmissions from the Cuban defense forces, thanks to a hookup to an intercept station Admiral Jones had arranged. He’d also be in touch with us through an encrypted satellite telephone system.
Trace, Junior, and Doc would form a backup rescue team, orbiting a short distance from the Cuban coast aboard a Martin PBM Mariner—flying boat. They’d swoop in if things got too hot; they’d also be able to watch for Cuban patrol boats and planes.
I suspect a few graybeards among the crowd did a double take at the aircraft type, just as I did when I saw the big bird land on the water in front of our Jamaican beach house. The PBM was a World War II era patrol craft, basically a big boat with two engines mounted on a high wing over the hull. It was one of the most successful flying boats of all time, and I believe a few may have still been in the service when I was getting yelled at in boot camp for not tucking in my shirt.
This particular aircraft had a checkered history. After a brief stint in the U.S. Coast Guard, it had been
mustered out of the service and used as a flying taxi in the Florida Keys and the West Indies. If you think “flying taxi” is synonymous with drug runner, you probably aren’t far wrong.
Of late it had come under the ownership of one Paul M. W. Smith, a man of many talents and dubious tastes, whose main distinction as far as I was concerned was a friendship with Doc that stretched back to Doc’s two-year sojourn in Egypt. M.W., as he was called, was American by birth and accent; whether there was an American passport among the dozen or so he was reputed to carry I couldn’t say. Ken Jones said he was known to the CIA, though what exactly that meant was never exactly explained.
M.W. had invested heavily in his aircraft, updating and customizing the engines, and painted the PBM very dark blue—so dark, in fact, that the plane was invisible at night. The old-style analog gauges and gizmos on the dashboard had been replaced by a state-of-the-art glass control panel. The PBM sported the latest Russian-made military radar—not quite as good as American gear, to be sure, but entirely free of the questions the export control people at Customs liked to ask. The plane was also equipped with a number of so-called passive detectors. There was a 360-degree infrared system that could see heat sources up to twenty miles away and a radar detection unit that could pick up a leaky microwave oven five times farther. M.W. also had several radios, frequency scanning units, a full suite of satcom equipment, and a funky stereo system with MP3 plug-ins and an external blow horn.
“I use the horn every year to lead the St. Patrick’s Day seaborne parade out of Port Saint Lucie,” M.W. told me, showing off the plane two days before our mission. “It’s got a PA attached, and sometimes I sneak up on a fishing boat and pretend to be the voice of God. Scares the piss out of them.”
(Incidentally, that’s just down the beach from the UDT-SEAL Museum at Fort Pierce on Route A1A—well worth a visit anytime of the year.)
Passenger and crew comfort didn’t rate anywhere near as highly with him as electronics. The fabric on his seat was ripped in several places, and the copilot’s seat looked as if it had come from another plane: one that had been flying when the Wright Brothers were alive.
RW15 - Seize the Day Page 2