RW15 - Seize the Day

by Richard Marcinko

  The guard ignored her.

  “Your cap,” he told me.

  I lifted it.

  “Hey, José,” he said, calling to his companion inside the doorway. “Come here.”

  The other guard walked over, being sure to give Red a wide berth. The two men began talking together quietly, glancing in my direction every so often.

  “What is the delay?” demanded Red.

  “Doesn’t he look familiar to you?” said the guard finally.

  “Familiar? He’s the garbage man. You think I know all of the garbage men?”

  “He could be Fidel’s cousin,” said the one who had just come out. “Change the hair a bit, some age marks . . .”

  Red pulled her eyes deep into their sockets. She drew herself up to her full height—all sixty inches.

  She looked almost as fierce as Trace.

  “I have never, never heard of such a thing,” she spit. “Such—blasphemy! Infamy! Blasphemy!”

  She disappeared into the house.

  The guard who had just come out started to laugh.

  The other did not.

  “Get the hell in there and do what she wants,” he told me. “Be quick. She’ll have us all fired. And we’ll feel lucky that that’s all she does.”

  I don’t think being fired is the worst thing that can happen to a garbage man, even in Cuba, but I complied anyway.

  ______

  Red and Trace had located Fidel’s office on the first floor in the center of the building. While it wasn’t as elaborately protected as the one in the bunker was, it was still isolated from the outside by thick walls, making it relatively safe from a bombing attack. The hallway outside was also under constant video surveillance. The door was locked, and the keys that the cleaning ladies had did not include one for the office.

  A minor problem.

  Red called to me as I shuffled down the two steps to the hallway.

  “In here. You must empty these bags for us,” she said, pointing to the conference room diagonally across the hall from Fidel’s office.

  Trace was down at the other end of the hall with her vacuum, right under the video camera. As I entered the room, I slipped my hand under my belt and took out my lock picks. The vacuum suddenly revved. Rather than sucking in air, it began spitting it out. A huge plume of dust filled the hall—and a small cloud, shot out of one of Trace’s spray bottles, completely obscured the camera lens.

  I trotted to Fidel’s door, lock picks in hand, trying not to cough. Dropping to one knee, I inserted the pick and spring and then worked the lock as quickly as I could.

  Red, who’d gone to the top of the steps, started coughing uncontrollably—the warning that someone was coming.

  The lock finally gave way. I swept inside so quickly I dropped the spring on the floor. There was no time to pick it up, however. I closed the door as quietly as I could, leaning back and listening to what was going on behind me in the hall.

  Red had begun screaming at Trace in extremely loud and heated Spanish that she was a fool and an imbecile, and would have to clean up all of the dirt with her tongue. The guard who’d come down to find out what was going on didn’t say a word; he just turned and walked back upstairs.

  Fidel’s office was laid out roughly the way his office in the bunker was, with the safe behind his desk. I hunched down, tried the lock to see if it would open (it didn’t), then slowly worked the dial through the combination I had used out east, hoping to shortcut the process.

  That didn’t work either.

  I reached for my stethoscope, then realized I hadn’t worn my fanny pack—too much risk of being searched on the way in.

  Duh. Trace and Red had carried the safecracking gear in with their equipment. They hadn’t had a chance to hand it off.

  I went back to the door and knocked twice. Red was nearby, ready to open if the coast was clear. But with the vacuum still going, she couldn’t hear my signal.

  She didn’t answer the second time I knocked, and I assumed the coast wasn’t clear. Rather than waiting, I went back to the desk and started looking for a spot where Fidel might have written down the combination. I couldn’t find anything that looked even vaguely like a set of numbers.

  I tried knocking again. Still nothing.

  The combination had to be some sort of sequence that had something to do with Fidel or the Revolution, didn’t it?

  Dates jumped in my head. 7/26/1953—the date of Fidel’s attack on Moncada Barracks.

  I tried every combination. Nada.

  1/8/1959—the date Fidel entered Havana.

  Nothing.

  Fidel’s birthday?

  Zilch.

  I even tried the address of the house.

  Then I remembered something one of the CIA instructors who’d taught me how to open safes had said at our very first lesson. Safes come with what he called “tryout combos.” These are the company-issued combinations that are supposed to be changed by the safe owners. Most, however, don’t.

  He’d made us memorize the tryout combinations for a number of safes. It wasn’t actually that hard, since they generally fell into predictable patterns—the numbers, after all, were meant to be easily remembered by salesmen.

  The safe in front of me had been made by the Chicago Safe Company in the 1950s. Very useful information, if I could remember the tryout combo.

  I’d aced the exam, but that was years ago. I stared at the dial, trying to will my brain cells to give me the proper combination.

  40-70-50-30.

  No.

  40-50-60-70.

  Click.

  Score one for memory. The safe opened, its door swinging easily on well-oiled hinges.

  Unlike the safe out in the bunker, this one was almost bare. A single DVD in a white envelope sat on the side. The only other item was a pearl-handled revolver.

  I zipped open my garbage man’s coverall and pulled the DVD out from its sleeve beneath my shirt. I made the switch and then, resisting the temptation to see if the gun was loaded, closed the safe, gave the area a quick once-over to make sure it was clear, then went back to the door.

  I was still two or three feet away when it flew open.

  I expected to see Red, gesturing at me to get the hell out of there.

  But instead I saw Raul Castro, face red, stunned into utter silence.

  ( V )

  Brother!” said Raul.

  I took half a breath before I responded.

  “Raul!”

  “Cocksucker!”

  “Motherfucker!”

  He broke into a smile. “Why are you here? Why are you dressed in coveralls?”

  The truth is, Raul was several sheets beyond drunk. The smell of rum was so strong a single whiff was enough to give me a buzz. I’m not sure how he was able to walk, unsteady as he was.

  If he’d been sober, there’s no question he would have realized at first glance I wasn’t Fidel. But he wasn’t, and you go with what works. If the brother of the Western Hemisphere’s biggest scumbag is going to collapse in front of you, you grab him and make a run for it.

  Or at least you slide him onto the couch, which is what I did as Raul began a nosedive toward the floor.

  “Chavez, Chavez, all I ever hear is Chavez,” he said drunkenly, spinning around and plopping onto the couch. “That Venezuelan pig. Believe me, brother, he is a curse on us. The Yankees are calling him Enemy Number One! Enemy One! Hugo. Huuuu-go.”

  Raul shook his head. Clearly he thought his brother should be enemy number one; being displaced as top world slime was disheartening.

  “How does he threaten them?” continued Raul rhetorically. “Oil. Oil! We had nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons, Fidel. Russian weapons, yes, so who knew if they would work? But compared to oil? Oil? A bourgeoisie luxury. That is Huuuu-go’s claim to fame. A bourgeoisie fat pig who pretends he is the keeper of the Revolution!”

  Raul looked up at me and squinted.

  “You don’t look so good, Fidel.” He wriggled h
is nose. “And you smell.”

  “Mmmmm.”

  “I thought you were in the hospital.”

  I shrugged.

  “I don’t blame you for leaving,” added Raul. “What idiots! Their heads come off at the slightest provocation. If I find who put the rumor out that you had a heart attack . . . They are all vampires and witch doctors. They told me to give up smoking! Eh, like you.”

  He winked, then reached into his jacket pocket for a cigar. Except that he wasn’t wearing a jacket, and so came up empty. This puzzled the crap out of him, and he sat dumbfounded on the sofa, opening and closing the imaginary jacket.

  Red hissed at me from the door, signaling with her head that it was time to go—beyond time to go, really. I agreed. But as I took a step, Raul grabbed my arm.

  “How about one of your secret stash, brother?” said Raul. “Eh? I know you have some. I know you sneak a smoke here. Eh? Yes?”

  I frowned at him.

  “Ah, Fidelisimo, holding out on your brother. I think you secretly like Huuu-go Chavez, yes? Huuu-go, scumbag pig.”

  Raul lurched forward. I thought he was about to decorate the rug with whatever he’d been drinking all night, but instead he glided, head down, behind Fidel’s desk. With one hand on the desktop, he reached to the bottom drawer and pulled out two cigars, then laughed.

  “There are no secrets between brothers, eh, Fidelisimo? Heh, heh, heh.”

  He reached into his pocket and took out a cigar cutter. He had a little trouble lining up the cigar and razor blades, and for a second I thought he would snip off his finger and bleed to death.

  Not a bad idea, actually.

  Instead, he snapped the crown off the cigar, then snipped the other one and held it out to me. I stepped toward him and took it.

  If I popped him on the forehead, it would look like he had simply collapsed and knocked himself out. Then I could take the cutter and snap off part of his finger. Lock the door and leave—by the time he was discovered, he’d have bled to death.

  Not part of my assignment, but I don’t think Ken would have minded. Not too much anyway.

  And who cared if he did?

  Red cleared her throat behind me. I looked over and saw that there were two plainclothes men and one uniformed guard in the hall behind her—Raul’s bodyguards and one of the men from upstairs.

  “Have a light, Fidelisimo.”

  Raul held out a flame so high I thought he was going to burn the ceiling. I took the cigar and puffed a few times.

  “Eh, just like the Fidel of old!” Raul laughed. “The hell with the doctors, yes? The hell with this talk of death.”

  He stopped speaking and stared at me for a few moments.

  “You’re not dead, are you, Fidel? Is that why you smell?”

  “Sir, we would like to clean the room,” said Red.

  “Yes, yes, the room. Eh.” Raul stepped out from behind the desk, then veered drunkenly toward the door. “I don’t feel too well, Fidelisimo. I am going to bed.”

  The two bodyguards followed him down the hall toward the stairs. The uniformed guard, however, glared at me.

  “Let’s go, let’s go,” barked Red. “We don’t have all day. Take the trash.”

  She’d managed to sneak a bag near the door. I grabbed it and started out.

  “Wait,” said the guard.

  He stepped up close to me. He had a rifle slung over his shoulder, an AK47 whose folding stock had been removed. Grabbing it and killing him wouldn’t be too hard—but then I’d have to get past the others.

  “Let me see the garbage,” he said.

  I handed it to him. He stepped back and opened it, then riffled through the collection of crumpled papers. He frowned when he was done, and handed it back.

  “Go.”

  I took the bag and started up the stairs, fighting against the adrenaline rush that was pushing me to run. I was just going through the outer door when someone yelled to me to halt.

  It was one of Raul’s bodyguards, double-timing down the steps. He looked me up and down. For a second I thought he was going to frisk me, and I considered what I would do if he found the DVD stuffed into my shorts.

  But that wasn’t what he wanted. He looked me in the eye.

  “If you tell anyone of this, you will be shot.”

  I nodded. He reached over and slipped his hand into my pocket.

  “Discretion pays,” he told me. “Now get the hell out of here. Quickly. And remember, we know who you are.”

  ( VI )

  You were in there a long time,” said Mongoose when I finally reached the truck.

  I tapped the side of the cab without answering, then hopped on the back. My pulse rate was still well into triple digits, I’m sure.

  We finished picking up the garbage on the rest of the block, then took the truck over to the garbage scow in the harbor, completing the regular run so that no one would suspect anything. By the time we got rid of the truck, Red and Trace had finished at Fidel’s office and gone to one of our safe rooms at a different hotel. There Red became brunette; Trace did her hair so that she now had bangs.

  Mongoose and I changed at the garbage compound, then went to yet a different hotel where we showered and got pretty. Doc and Shotgun, meanwhile, were rolling up the operation, making sure we hadn’t been shadowed and tying up a few loose ends that needed knotting. By 3:00 P.M., the entire team was in the lounge at the Santa Clara hotel, sitting at the far end of the room, tall rum libres in front of them.

  Except for yours truly. I stuck with Bombay Sapphire.

  “A toast to sunny commie Cuba,” said Doc, raising his glass.

  Red frowned at him. But then she relented. Slightly.

  “I’ll drink to the people of Cuba,” she said. “And to the future.”

  Shotgun chugged his drink. “This stuff really hits the spot,” he said. “I didn’t know they had a liquid version.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Mongoose.

  “Rum cake. This is the liquid version.”

  We were all a bit cocky. We figured we had a right to be. We’d just pulled off an almost impossible mission. The only thing we had to do now was act like tourists and catch our flights out. The first, Doc’s and Trace’s, left for Canada at six. Shotgun and Mongoose would head out to Mexico at six-thirty, and Red and I would board a similar flight a half-hour later. We had our exit euros ready and all our gear was packed. I would check us out of our rooms at the hotel, dropping the keys off at the desk as I went out the door. Checking out wasn’t an absolute necessity, but the less strings left untied the better.

  I had Fidel’s DVD with me. Since we’d already smuggled one out, I had the option of destroying this one, but I knew Sean had gotten through the airport without any problems. Before we left I’d hit a tourist rip-off joint and buy a CD player and some discs, stuffing it in with them.

  Why a CD player when it was a DVD? Because if anyone at the airport asked me to demonstrate that it worked, it wouldn’t—and they wouldn’t see what was on it.

  We ordered some food. If there had been any bad blood or jealousy between Trace and Red, it wasn’t evident now. Trace can be absurdly professional; if she doesn’t want you to know she’s got a problem with you, you won’t know it.

  Red, on the other hand, keeps all her emotions very close to the surface. That’s one way you can tell she’s Cuban.

  A television was playing at the other end of the bar. There was another health bulletin on Fidel. His doctors said he was doing much better.

  “If he keeps getting better and better, he’ll be immortal soon,” said Doc.

  “He already is,” said Red.

  My satellite phone began to vibrate.

  Not a good sign, I thought.

  I didn’t want to talk in the bar, even though we’d already checked it for bugs. So I let it buzz and took a few sips from my drink before going outside. I glanced at Doc, who immediately realized what was up and sent Mongoose out to trail me and mak
e sure no one was eavesdropping. Then, just to be doubly safe, he sent Red after him.

  I walked a couple of blocks, doubled back to make sure I wasn’t being followed, then headed in the general direction of the Malecón as Mongoose took up my tail.

  Danny had placed the call. He didn’t leave a message—he knew I’d realized he’d been trying to get me and would call him back.

  “This is Dick,” I said when he picked up. “What can I do you for?”

  “Junior has something,” he said. “Hold on.”

  Junior was in Florida, where he had met Sean and copied the DVD. It took a second for Danny to make the connection.

  “Get a tan yet?” I asked him.

  “Um, did you get a chance to, uh, look at that movie. Closely?”

  “Just the opening credits.”

  Damn, I thought, did I grab the wrong one?

  “It’s real interesting,” he said.

  “And?”

  “Well—”

  “Out with it, Junior.”

  “Can you talk?”

  “Damn it, tell me what’s up. Is it the wrong video?”

  “No, it’s the right one. But um, there’s a coded number on the disc. Stamped into the plastic. You got to look at it under a black light.”

  “What sort of code?”

  “Real basic—three of three. Numerals.”

  Three of three?

  As in, copy number three? Of three?

  Ken and his sources had said there were only two copies.

  Doom on Dickie.

  “Dick? Are you still there?”

  “Yeah, I’m here.”

  “You should watch the video if you get a chance,” he added. “There’s a lot more on it than you think.”

  “Are there porn shots?”

  “Just threats. I’m in a bad spot here, Dick. The connection’s not that good.”

  “Find a better spot and call me back.”

  It took Junior a half hour to find a place where he could talk. By then, I’d gone into a club not far from the hotel and borrowed one of the lights that bouncers used to check the stamps they gave people at the door. Sure enough, there was a code on the DVD—1/3.

  After that good bit of news, I headed over to La Epoca, an expensive hard currency department store in downtown Havana. Four stories high and stocked with goods most Cubans can only dream about, La Epoca is open only to party members and rich tourists. It has a two-tiered price system: party members get their goods cheap; tourists pay through the nose. My Chinese-made DVD player cost five hundred euros—which worked out to something like a thousand percent markup at the time.