RW15 - Seize the Day

by Richard Marcinko

  It worked for Norman Vincent Peale. It didn’t work for me.

  “Look, the window is open,” I heard one of the men say.

  I pulled myself back with the best upside-down reverse crunch I could manage. My form may have been off, but I did pull back from the edge before the Cuban got to the window. I held my breath, listening.

  “You don’t think he went out there, do you?” said someone in the room. “El Jefe could not have climbed down. He’s an old man.”

  “I would not underestimate him. He is capable of great things.”

  The men argued a bit, then closed the window.

  Goat fuck aborted. Maybe there is power in positive thinking after all.

  I scrambled to my feet and surveyed the roof. The small little shed I’d seen in the satellite photos was a few feet off center. It had a wooden door that looked as if it had been last painted by the conquistadors. The door itself was locked, but with a quick tap on the upper panel I got my fist through it and opened it from the inside.

  I took two steps, ready to bound down the stairs to the basement. My first step was a good, galloping step, full of spring and vigor. My second step was just as strong, bouncing off the thick riser. My third step was light and airy.

  Good for a cake, ice cream maybe, even a drink.

  Not for a step. I found myself falling—not down a staircase, but the elevator shaft.

  Out of the goat fuck and into the fubar.

  The elevator in the shaft I’d just jumped down turned out to be only one floor away from the roof, a lousy twelve feet that I could have jumped with my eyes closed, though as it happened I kept them open.

  That was the good news. The bad news was that I had no idea of how far it was, and had no way of preparing for the impact beyond murmuring a few favorite curse words to myself.

  I also hit the cable about a third of the way down.

  I rebounded off the thick wire and slammed my head onto the side of the shaft, while my back slapped onto the roof of the car. Dazed doesn’t begin to describe what I felt.

  I’m guessing that the elevator was empty, because I had to have made enough noise to wake up the dead. I was practically dead myself. I have no idea how long I stayed there. Probably I was out for just a few seconds, but if you say days I couldn’t argue. When I finally pulled myself together and sat up, I couldn’t see. My first thought was that I was blind. I blinked a few times before I realized it was just too dark to see anything.

  Maybe if you fall onto elevators a lot you begin to know your way around them in the pitch-black, but my experience set was sorely lacking. I crawled all around the top, feeling with my hands to see if there was a trapdoor or an opening into the car, but there wasn’t. Finally I worked my way around the wall of the shaft, feeling until I found a work ladder embedded in the side. It was too tight to squeeze down past the car, so I went back up to the roof.

  Things had quieted down a bit, but the hospital was still in a lockdown. A pair of uniformed officers walked along the driveway, looking toward the security fence at the edge of the property. It was a perfunctory search, but it was a search nonetheless. Even if video cameras hadn’t been guarding the base of the building, there was no way I was getting out by climbing down the side and going over the wall.

  I was considering going back down into the elevator shaft to see if there was a hidden door somewhere when I heard the heavy beat of a helicopter. I turned to the east and saw a small helo with a searchlight blinking below its nose.

  Danny or Red had gotten to Trace, I thought. Five minutes and I’d be out of here. Two hours from now, I’d be sitting on the beach in Miami, nursing my wounds under the care of the good Dr. Bombay.

  The helo bore straight in on me. I put up my arms and started to wave. I can’t remember being happier to see a helicopter in my life. I realized I’d gone way too far in Cuba, pushing things that even I shouldn’t have pushed. I’d learned my lesson: no more impersonating scumbags from now on. The only bastard I was going to resemble was myself.

  I waved my hands as the helicopter approached. The sun had just set, and the helo was more a shadow than an aircraft.

  Then, as it loomed into view, I realized it was a Russian-made Mil Mi-8.

  A very nice helicopter. But not the one we’d leased.

  The Cuban air force insignia on the side was a dead giveaway. And if that wasn’t enough, the man with the assault rifle leaning out of the cockpit surely would have been.

  ___________________

  28 I should probably mention that we timed our arrival to hit about ten minutes before the shift change. This way, the next set of guards who came on duty wouldn’t realize there was a hearse at the loading dock, and wouldn’t be looking for us to leave at any specific time.

  Nobuddy ever fergits where he buried a hatchet.

  —KIN HUBBARD, ABE MARTIN’S BROADCAST, 1930

  ( I )

  I don’t know why the helicopter had been sent for sure, though I’m guessing that it was part of the general alert initiated by the nurse’s panic. It is possible, though, that the helo was on some sort of training mission and the pilot diverted when he saw what looked like Fidel Castro jumping up and down on the roof.

  As soon as I realized the helicopter wasn’t friendly, I ducked down, steeling myself for a command performance as el Jefe. As soon as they landed, I would tell them a coup was under way, and have them take me to the airport.

  Probably, that wouldn’t have worked. It wasn’t much of a plan, though it was a plan, which is better than no plan. But as it turned out, I didn’t get a chance to try it.

  As soon as she hung up the phone, Red had burned the rubber off her soft-soled shoes getting out of the hospital. It helped that she was on the first floor, near reception; she ran to the door, calling to the guards that there was an emergency—and kept running after they went past. She walked swiftly down past the front gate. The guards started to detain her, but she pointed to the nearby bus and cried that it was hers, and if she didn’t make it her walk home would take hours. One of the men, chivalrous as all Cubans, waved her through.

  The other, not to be outdone, yelled at the bus driver and had him stop and wait for her.

  Red was just going to the door of the bus when she spotted an illegal taxi a few yards down the street. She practically threw herself on its hood hailing it, then had the driver take her to the airport.

  Mongoose was still outside the hospital at this point, not sure exactly what was going on. Red called him on the sat phone and told him that she was on her way to the airport and to meet her there. Rather than calling Danny—who was in Jamaica, after all—she tried calling Trace and Doc herself from the cab, but got no response. So she called the company we had leased the helicopter from and told them that she was on her way for the tour.

  “Tonight, senora?” asked the man who answered the phone.

  “Right now.”

  There was a pause.

  “I was told the aircraft would be ready at all times,” she said. “And of course, there will be a tip for all involved. A good tip. In euros, if you wish.”

  Money talks as loudly in Cuba as anywhere else, and whatever further objections the man who answered the phone had, they went unmentioned.

  Red knew that as soon as she showed up, the pilot would assume that she was trying to escape Cuba, and that he would most likely refuse to fly. So she had her gun in her purse, ready to pull out when the taxi drove up to the hangar where the chopper was sitting. A broad-shouldered man in a light blue shirt and chino pants was standing near the helo and came over as she got out.

  “You’re the one who wants the tour?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “A nurse?”

  He gave her a suspicious glance, then walked toward the chopper. Red followed quickly. Mongoose hadn’t arrived yet, but she decided not to wait.

  “You had better buckle up,” the pilot told her as she got into the cockpit.

  “Yes.”

/>   “Where do you want to go?”

  “Over the city.”

  “And the beach?”

  “We can go near the beach.”

  The pilot started the engines. He didn’t appear to be armed, but it was possible he had a gun strapped below the seat.

  He hadn’t mentioned money, and he was certainly very calm. Red decided there was a fifty-fifty chance he was just playing her along, and intended on taking her to the nearest police station. There was only one way to find out: as soon as they were airborne, Red took her wad of euros from the bag.

  “I want to fly over the Malecón, over this address,” she said, giving the address of the hospital.

  “That’s restricted airspace.”

  “We’ll only be there for a moment.”

  “It’s restricted. We’ll be in serious trouble if we’re seen.”

  “We won’t get in trouble,” she told him, starting to count the bills in her hand. By the time she reached ten—she was counting hundred euro notes—she had counted out more money than he had seen in a lifetime.

  She kept counting.

  “What was the address again?” said the pilot when she reached one hundred.

  The Cuban air force helicopter circled above me slowly, then began to settle toward the roof. I put my arm over my head to shield some of the grit and ran to the spot where he was coming down. I planned to jump into the doorway at the side and immediately launch into my Fidel routine. But just as the helo got close, it suddenly lurched away.

  I turned toward the door over the elevator shaft, expecting that the security people had finally made it to the roof. But there was no one there. I turned back around and saw a second helicopter coming in from the direction of the airport, skimming in low over the city.

  More cautious this time, I pulled out my sat phone and quick-dialed Trace’s number. There was no answer. I edged toward the elevator shaft, waiting—if it started to fire, I’d leap back inside.

  The helo came right over the edge of the building, almost leaning on the roof. Red was in the cockpit on the right, waving frantically. I grabbed at the door handle, threw it back on its rails, and then dove inside. The helo pitched forward, slamming the door closed behind me. Before I could pull myself back upright, we were out over the beach.

  “Now,” said Red in Spanish to the pilot. “We need you to take us east.” She was thinking of one of our backup escape boats near Matanzas.29

  “You don’t want to go to Miami?” said the pilot.

  “Miami would be fine,” I told him, coming into the cockpit.

  “I think the men in the helicopter that is following us would object,” said Red. “I called them off by saying we were with the security service. If we go north, they’ll realize something’s up.”

  The helicopter that had circled the building above me was about a half mile away, on our left side, to the southwest as we flew in a slow loop above the city.

  “Can we outrun them?” I asked the pilot.

  “Probably not.”

  “Let’s try it anyway,” I told him.

  “I think we should improve the odds,” said the pilot. “There is a case in the rear near the bulkhead that contains a grenade launcher.”

  I reached down and opened up the long flat case. A Russian RPG-7 sat inside. I pulled it out and began assembling it.

  “Do you know how to use it?” shouted the pilot, leaning the helicopter northward.

  “I’ve tried my luck with one or two in the past.”

  “Good.”

  I first saw the RPG-7 in Vietnam, where the VC and regulars used it as an antitank and anti-everything weapon. It’s point and fire, so simple even a terrorist can shoot it, and they do. The rocket-propelled grenade it launches is more on a par with a bazooka shell than a regular grenade. It can penetrate armor, though by now most modern tanks have little to fear from it.

  Helicopters and light trucks are a different story. In Iraq, RPGs have taken out Hummers and a number of helicopters, including Apaches.

  Still, hitting a moving helicopter is not especially easy when you’re in a moving helicopter yourself. I waited as our pilot dropped his speed, letting the other chopper pull up alongside. As it drew parallel, I threw the door open. But instead of firing I fell backward, pushed by the strong wind current. Cursing, I rolled to my side and brought the rocket launcher to bear from the other side of the cabin.

  In an instant, I saw the puzzled face of the other aircraft’s pilot. I braced my left foot against the seat, then fired point-blank at the Plexiglas in front of him.

  I missed.

  But not by enough to matter. The missile shot into the fuselage directly behind and a little above my aim point, striking the bottom of the engine. So instead of killing the pilot and copilot outright, they had a few seconds to consider their sins before meeting their maker. The helicopter blossomed into a red fireball, keeling over to the left away from us as we changed course for due north.

  “We have just enough fuel for Miami,” said the pilot after I buttoned the chopper back up. “We will have to fly low, but I believe we will make it. My name is Perez. I have been waiting for this day since you reserved the helicopter. And many years before that.”

  ( II )

  There were five minutes there where I felt really good. Maybe even ten. I was banged up all to hell, but I’d managed to switch the DVDs, and spent face time with Fidel to boot. I’d taken ridiculous risks and come out without a scratch.

  Lots of bruises.

  But as I leaned back in the seat, the euphoria of escaping alive began to wear off. I still didn’t know what Fidel’s surprise was. And that had been one of the main reasons to take all those risks in the first place.

  The pilot kept us at low altitude, the throttle jammed against the last detent. The Cuban air force supposedly scrambled some planes after us, but we never saw them. A U.S. Coast Guard patrol plane picked us up on its radar when we were about ten minutes from U.S. airspace and began hailing us. We had to sweat it out for a few minutes, not daring to identify ourselves just in case we were being trailed by Cuban MiGs, which have been known to relish taking on unarmed aircraft. Then finally the pilot acknowledged the coast guard’s call, popped us up, and declared our peaceful intentions. I got on the radio and asked to speak to a Homeland Security supervisor I knew. He wasn’t available, but the name-dropping had the proper effect, and within a few minutes we had an escort to Homestead Air Force base. Two F-16 Falcon fighters came out to meet us. Our pilot would have done a barrel roll if I’d let him.

  And if he’d had any fuel in the tank. We made the last ten miles on fumes and varnish.

  I haven’t had a chance to mention what happened to Mongoose, whom you last saw on his way to the airport, sent there by Red.

  He arrived at the hangar area just in time to see the helicopter Red had hired take off. After a sufficient amount of cursing, he followed a prebriefed backup plan and went over to the terminal building, where he called Danny for instructions. By this time, Danny had Junior at the ready back in the States, and our resident computer geek hacked into the airline reservation system and planted a couple of emergency tickets, using backup IDs.

  See why he’s behind the lines?

  No, neither does he.

  Trace and Doc, meanwhile, had failed to check back in after Danny’s warning to Doc, and in fact Danny wasn’t sure what was going on until Doc landed in Mexico. He’d immediately gotten on the phone to Danny, who called me while I was trying to explain to an air force intel type at Homestead why I couldn’t talk to him without shooting him first.

  Danny went to work shoring up Trace’s cover story, and even put in a fake call from Canada to the Cuban information ministry as Trace’s boss. In the meantime, I went outside and called Ken, my favorite Christian in Action. It took nearly a half hour of diddling with various assistants and desk people before I finally managed to get through to him.

  He wasn’t exactly the overjoyed, fun-loving admiral
I’d come to know and loathe.

  “Where are you, Dick?” he asked. There was an accusatory tone in his voice, as if he were saying something closer to What the hell are you up to? Or probably more accurately, How am I going to cover up my butt this time?

  “I need a plane and some support for an operation in Cuba,” I told him. “One of my people is there.”

  “You’ve been very busy.”

  “I need a plane.”

  “Dick, where are you?”

  “I need a plane.”

  “We’ll get your person out, don’t worry. Where are you? We need to talk in person.”

  “I need a plane.”

  “My aide here says you’re at Homestead in Florida? I’ll be there in a few hours.”

  He hung up. I’d gone back outside so the air farcers couldn’t hear me, and when I looked around I realized there were plenty of planes nearby. Knowing the air force, it would probably be months before they realized one was gone.

  I didn’t steal one. There were several reasons. Probably the most important was Danny’s call a few seconds after I got off with the admiral. He’d been monitoring the Cuban defense radios and had just heard a broadcast declaring that there had been an attempt on Castro’s life.

  “They’re at high alert,” said Danny. “I think it’s about your high tea with the fearless leader. They mentioned the helicopter. It sounds like all hell is breaking loose.”

  “Anything on Trace?”

  “No. But listen, Junior has been looking at that hard drive and he wants to talk to you.”

  “Put him on.”

  “I have a draft of Raul’s acceptance speech,” said Junior. “He’s being elected president next week.”

  “There’s a shock. I never would have expected it.”

  “Is that sarcasm, Dick?”

  Why is it that nerd types never understand concepts like irony, sarcasm, and humor?

  “What do you think, Junior?”