Give the Russians their due—whatever trees they’d made the old lifeboat from were as tough as the best iron. The staves bent and groaned, but didn’t break. I fell against the outboard at the fantail, knocking the world sideways for a few moments.
The merchant ship had been moving all this time, so when I finally cleared my head and got up to start the outboard, it was a good fifty yards beyond me. The sailors who’d been shooting at Mongoose’s raft spotted me and turned their attentions and bullets in my direction, firing from the rail at the stern of the ship. I couldn’t hear their gunfire over the motor or the sea, but their muzzle flashes were plenty obvious.
I reached to scoop up my gun and return fire, but I’d lost it going down. It probably wouldn’t have mattered much—I’d lost the spare magazine I’d had as well and was out of bullets. I stayed down, turning the tiller so the boat moved away from the Cuban vessel. Finally, with my head a little clearer, I saw that there were no more flashes along the rail of the Cuba Libre, which by now was about a quarter mile away.
I turned back in the direction where I thought Mongoose would be. It was too dark to see anything, and the motor was so loud my head was vibrating. I turned it off, then cupped my hands over my mouth and started yelling.
“Mongoose! Mongoose, you jackass! Where the hell are you?”
“Jackass my butt,” came the answer.
“That’s right,” I said. “You do have the butt of a jackass. Now tell me where the hell you are or I’ll make you swim all the way back to Norfolk.”
___________________
39 Since naming the actual village might jeopardize Crusty’s relatives, we’ll leave the name out in this account.
40 Yes, there are nonhostile amphibious operations. These ships, their crews, and the marines working with them have an enviable record of helping people out after natural disasters, such as tsunamis in Southeast Asia.
41 There may have been some Seahawks and other types below decks, but we didn’t see them.
( I )
The navy helicopters found us about a half hour later. By that time, I’d bandaged Mongoose’s shoulder and Win had regained enough of his strength to lecture me about the dangers of touching raw blood. The Cuban doctor I’d taken with me was still out cold.
One of the Seahawks dipped down close and sent a basket for my passengers. I went up last. The Cuba Libre was a mile or so away, black smoke still trailing from the bridge. Even so, I half expected it to launch an antiair missile in our direction.
“Come on,” growled Doc as I twisted upward in the wind. “Get in here so we can get the hell home.”
He helped me into the cabin. I gave him a quick brain dump on our search and our guest.
“Give my friend there something to keep him sleeping until we’re back aboard the Wasp,” I told the corpsman.
“Morphine’s good for that,” he said, digging into his bag.
Mongoose got his own dose. The bullet that hit him had had the good sense to go straight through his shoulder and come out the other side. This was a lot better than many of the alternatives, though I can’t say that Mongoose appreciated that. He sat back against the hull of the helo, trying to slow his breathing as his wound was cleaned. As the morphine took hold, he starting humming a song his Filipino grandmother had taught him when he was little.
Win sat on the bench. Yes, he was wearing his sweatshirt. Yes, it was pulled down over his head. And yes, it was sopping wet. But what the hell, everybody has to be sentimental about something.
Frenchman had been hit in the heart, the head, and the neck; take your pick on which bullet killed him.
Every time another soldier goes down, you think of the ones who’ve gone before.
And their families. Especially in this case. Frenchman wasn’t a shooter or an ops guy or anything like that; his wife and kids, if they had any, probably didn’t even know he was working for the company. It would all seem very unfair. And it was.
He’d done an important job for his country, but the odds were that no one who was close to him would ever know that.
Instead of flying us to the Wasp, the helicopter brought us to a navy command ship. The CIA officer who’d helped plan our visit was waiting. So was Ken.
“Dick, what the hell happened?” demanded Ken as I walked across the deck from the chopper. “Was there a nuke or not?”
Two seamen carrying Frenchman on a stretcher passed. Ken didn’t even glance at him.
“No nuke,” I told him. I kept walking. My clothes were still wet and I wanted to get the hell out of them. I also wanted to check on Trace and the others; by my reckoning they should have been scoping out the bar action in Miami by now.
“Wait—who the hell is that?” the admiral asked, pointing to the stretcher taking the Cuban from the helo.
“That ship had a sickbay better equipped than the one aboard this ship. A dozen beds at least. And the latest med gear. And these, in a refrigerator.”
I handed over the test tubes I’d retrieved.
“He’s some sort of doctor,” I said. “I figured we’d want to know why.”
“What the hell is this stuff?” asked Ken, looking at the vials.
“Damned if I know. Here’s a question for you: is there any Bombay Sapphire aboard this ship?”
( II )
Junior had told Trace that he would sit tight, but the odds of that happening were about the same as Fidel having a deathbed conversion to capitalism, and Trace knew it.
“We need the bikes,” she told Shotgun, turning back for them.
“Hot dog,” he said. “I’ll race ya.”
Junior did actually try to sit tight . . . for about ten seconds. Then curiosity got the better of him and he started looking for a way to get past the inner fence and take a look inside the compound.
He didn’t have to look very far. There was a narrow trail about thirty yards from the bluff where he and Crusty were hiding. The trail led from a part of the beach that couldn’t be seen from the compound or marina to a hole under the fence. The trail was undoubtedly used by workers sneaking away for trysts or the usual recreational activities.
(Are you following this at all, grasshopper? There are two sets of fences, an inner one and an outer one. Junior and Crusty are inside the outer one, and outside the inner one. Though not for long in Junior’s case.)
Junior had no trouble slipping under the links. The woods were still relatively thick, and once he was off the trail a few feet he had trouble even spotting it. He made his way back in the direction of the building they’d seen earlier, stopping every thirty seconds or so to make sure he wasn’t being watched.
It took him over a half hour to get close enough to the building to survey it. By now the sun had started to set. This provided him with more cover, but it also made it harder for him to see where he was going, and he walked straight into a triple-strand barbed-wire fence about eight feet high and black, about ten yards from the building.
(That’s the third fence set, if you’re keeping track. Glad someone is.)
The barbed wire ripped up his clothes and put a gash into his thigh, but the most severe injury was to his pride. But that was a good thing—it reminded him that he hadn’t been watching what he was doing carefully enough. He untangled himself, then pried the strands apart and slipped past.
A four-foot chain-link fence (number four) ran across the grounds, marking off a lawn area from the trees. The building had a half-dozen spotlights near the roof, but they were widely spaced and it wasn’t hard to pick out a path through the shadows. Junior made his way to a side door, but sensing that it would be attached to an alarm, began looking for another way in.
Around the corner he came upon a window cracked open at the bottom. The curtains were drawn and the room was dark. He slipped his fingers in and pried it upward. Then, after leaning halfway in and listening to make sure no one was there, he wiggled through, climbing onto the floor as quietly as he could.
It took a few s
econds for his eyes to adjust to the dim light in the room. The air had a bleached scent to it, as if he were in a laundry. But the room was a regular office, with two metal desks and several filing cabinets. Junior went to the door and listened for a while without hearing anything. Then he went back to the desks and began going through them.
The few papers he found had to do with supplies. The file cabinets were stuffed with files, each with handwritten notes and sheet upon sheet of documentation. While he had a workable knowledge of Spanish, he couldn’t decipher the handwriting. He took two of the files at random, folded them, and stuffed them in his waistband under his shirt.
A lab coat hung at the back of the door. Junior took it, then cracked open the door.
He could feel his heart pounding in his throat as he peeked out. He suddenly froze, unable to move. He’d lost his nerve.
For a few seconds, Junior considered backing out—moving quietly to the window, and going back to Crusty. But then he asked himself, What would Dad do?
Junior managed a breath, then stepped out into the hall.
Like hell.
I would’ve gotten my butt out of there pronto and done as I was told.
Past history and all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.
Junior—Matthew—was raised by a single mother in suburban Virginia. There’d never been a father around. He’d been an extremely bright kid in very difficult circumstances. For most of his life, his mom worked two jobs.
When he was little, she got a night job, arranging her schedule so she would get back in time to wake him up and get him ready for school before going to bed. When he returned from school, she’d be there as well, ready to supervise his homework.
By the time he was in fifth grade, Junior was what they called a “latchkey kid”—he let himself into the house when he got home, called his mom, then did his homework and other chores. Now, most kids—myself included—would have gotten into plenty of trouble under that sort of arrangement, but Matthew was different. He had a tremendous sense of responsibility, not to mention love for his mom, and instead of cutting class left and right or sneaking off with friends after school, he hit the books, read a lot, taught himself computer programming and a million other things.
I don’t mean that he never got into any trouble, but his name was known in the principal’s office for achievement, not misbehavior, and the only reason the local cops knew him was that his mother worked as an assistant dispatcher part-time Saturdays to make some extra money.
But growing up without a father wasn’t easy. When he was five or six, Matthew asked his mother where his dad was, then who he was. She gave him various stories, not exactly lies, but not exactly the full truth, either. She told him his father was in the navy, away on a dangerous mission, and that maybe someday he would return. Then for a while she claimed that he’d been wounded, and might never come back. And then after that, when he was ten or eleven, she confessed that she didn’t know where his father had gone.
Somewhere around his sixteenth birthday, she told him I was his dad. Actually, he guessed it based on different things she said and hints she dropped over the years. Before telling him he was right, she made him promise that he would not try to contact me.
I had no idea I even had a son—or if he was it. As I’ve said, the circumstances make it possible . . . but this is about Matt, not me.
When his mom died, Matthew felt relieved from his promise. Still, it took him roughly two years to get in touch with me, working his way slowly by befriending Shunt and some other mutual acquaintances. It wasn’t until we’d both gone through North Korean hell together that he got up the courage to tell me who he was. He felt that having survived that first op, he’d proven he was related, not to me so much as to himself.
That’s why he wanted to be a shooter, part of the action side of the operation. He wanted to prove himself to himself. And then to his dad.
I guess most men are like that. We need to show ourselves as well as others we belong. The impulse can lead us to achieve great things. But it can also make us a little reckless.
All right. Maybe I would have gone into the hall myself.
But that’s just me.
The corridor was empty. Junior walked swiftly to the end, where a set of double doors led to a staircase up and down. He chose the ones leading downward, and soon found himself in a maze of laboratories. A few had people working inside them, but by moving swiftly past the doors he managed to avoid being stopped or perhaps even being seen.
Junior found an empty room at the end of the hall. Binocular-style microscopes were lined up on three benches near the middle of the room. Petri dishes were stacked in an incubator against one wall. The dishes were labeled with letters and numbers that gave no clue about what experiments might be conducted here. There were no logs or computers anywhere to tell him.
Maybe if Junior had studied biology rather than computer science, he would have been able to figure things out. But instead he took two Petri dishes from the middle of one of the stacks and put them in his pocket. He went back to the stairway and tiptoed all the way up to the third floor, which was the top of the building.
This floor was very different than either the basement or the floor where he’d come in; it looked like a traditional hospital or nursing home, though there was no nurses’ station in the middle. Patient rooms lined the hallway, which led to a large common room at the far end. All were empty. The place was definitely lived in, however. Though the rooms were generally neat, some of the beds were messed up, and there were books and magazines on the night tables, and clothes in the closets.
In the third or fourth room, Junior picked up one of the books on a side table. He stared at it for a moment, knowing something was unusual about it but not quite able to figure it out. Then it dawned on him—it was in English. So were all the other books there.
It was the same way in the next room. The four paperbacks on the nightstand were all American paperbacks. There was also a small Spanish-English dictionary at the side of the pile.
Junior took a mental inventory of everything else in the room: suitcases, shoes, a pair of sweaters. Then he tried to note what he didn’t see: no clothes in the drawers, no newspapers, no private papers, no clipboards or folders with patient data.
Survey complete, he left the room and went to its neighbor. But before he could do little more than confirm that all the books here were in English, he heard voices in the hall. The people who lived here were returning from wherever they’d been.
Junior took a deep breath, then tilted his head slightly, and walked swiftly from the room. He turned right, in the direction of the common room.
It was the wrong way to turn—he thought the residents would be coming up from the stairs at the opposite end of the hall, but it turned out that there was another set of stairs in an alcove at the side of the common room that he had missed earlier. It was too late to turn back, so he strode with his head down, walking against the flow.
The people passing him ignored him, or at least didn’t stop him. Junior, his heart thumping so loud he swore it was bouncing off the floor and walls, made his way through the common room and into the alcove at the side. He grabbed the door from someone, nodded purposefully, then trotted down the steps.
On the second floor he was caught in a flood of people, apparently returning to their rooms from dinner there. Nodding and smiling, Junior waded through them, pushing gently until he was able to get through. He reached the first floor and went out of the stairwell, walking past an assembly room and down the hall. The room he’d come in through was near the very end of the hall; all he had to do was get into it, then go out the window.
Junior was about six feet from the door when a female voice behind him ordered him to stop. He ignored her, pretending he didn’t hear. As he heard her walking swiftly down the hall behind him, he considered whether to just make a run for it but decided that was too risky; he could make it out of the building but she would un
doubtedly set up an alarm and he would never make it past all those fences.
The woman called to him sharply. He turned around, expecting a nurse, but saw instead a security officer, who already had her hand on the holster at her hip. She was maybe three feet away.
“Sí?” said Junior.
“What are you doing?” asked the officer.
“Working,” said Junior. He had to stick to one word responses so his accent and limited vocabulary wouldn’t give him away.
“You should be at dinner with the rest of the staff.”
Junior shrugged.
“Why aren’t you upstairs at dinner? Are you sick?”
“Not hungry.”
She looked at him suspiciously.
“You don’t have your ID,” she said.
Junior made a show of patting his chest.
“I’ll get it,” he said, turning away.
The officer grabbed his shoulder.
“You don’t look familiar,” said the officer.
Junior realized he had pushed things as far as he possibly could. There was only one thing left—push some more.
So he pushed the security guard. Then swooped over her and grabbed her gun. She bit and clawed at him; Junior gave her a kick, whipped the pistol in her direction once or twice, then ran into the room he’d used to enter, escaping out the window.
It took nearly two hours for Trace and Shotgun to get north. By now Danny had been able to get a rough fix on where the facility was, and gave them a good set of directions tracing the route Junior and Crusty had taken. He also scrambled M.W. and his trusty PBM flying boat; M.W. headed north with Red in case a rescue at sea was needed.
Trace and Shotgun ducked the checkpoints easily enough, but found that the roads near where Junior and Crusty had been chased were now completely blocked to all traffic. They detoured through a pair of empty fields, cut back to the west, then found another road heading along the coast.
RW15 - Seize the Day Page 37