Al-Habib rose up over the edge for just a moment and immediately spotted two American Military Police guards outside the tall, razor-wire-topped fence that surrounded the building. They’d stepped around from the guard shack, their weapons slung over their shoulders, and were facing north toward the noise and flashes of the Cuban probe.
No other activity was in sight. No movement, no other soldiers. The Camp Delta inner perimeter fence was across a dirt road and a barren field of low brown grass and gravel.
Al-Habib motioned that he would take out the MP to the left, and for Sufyan to take the other.
“Let it begin now,” al-Habib told himself. “Let my hand be steady and my heart be strong.” He nodded. “Insh’allah,” he whispered.
“Insh’allah,” Sufyan replied.
They both rose at the same moment. Al-Habib centered his reticle on the back of the guard’s head and squeezed off his shot at almost the exact moment as Sufyan’s. Both American MPs collapsed to the ground.
A tall, nicely proportioned, young black woman stepped out of her room in Gitmo’s BOQ near base headquarters and padded on bare feet down the short corridor and outside to an awning-covered patio used as a smoking area. She was dressed only in an brief bra and panties, the white material almost fluorescing against her dark skin. The sounds of the attack had awakened her, and although she wasn’t particularly concerned for the moment, she was curious. The big siren in front of Gitmo’s HQ was blaring, and spotlights along the northeastern perimeter were trained on the hills behind the base. She walked to the edge of the patio to get a better look, but all she could make out from here was an occasional flash in the distance, and the sharp sounds of assault rifles and perhaps a machine gun.
She’d been down here on special assignment for the CIA for ten days now, and this was the third Cuban probe on their defenses. But this morning the firing seemed more intense than it had the other times.
She flinched when another mortar round landed with a big flash of light somewhere in the hills behind the base, and she got the notion that the Cubans weren’t shooting at us, they were just making a lot of noise for some reason.
To draw our defenses away. From what?
“What the hell are you doing out there?” someone called to her from the door of the BOQ.
Gloria Ibenez glanced back and smiled. “Can’t sleep with all this racket.” Her eyes were wide and dark, and her black hair fell in cascades around her high cheeks, full lips, and narrow, finely sculpted nose. She was a beautiful thirty-two-year-old Cuban-born woman, and she turned heads whenever she walked into a room.
“Come on, Ibenez, put some clothes on before you start a riot,” her partner, CIA field officer Robert Talarico, said. He was bare-chested, but he’d pulled on a pair of jeans. He came out to the patio where she stood, and offered her a cigarette.
She shook her head as another flash-bang rolled across the base, followed by a fresh crackle of small-arms fire.
“It’s a big one tonight,” Talarico said. His father had been a tunnel rat in ’Nam, and like his father he was short, slightly built, and moved in tiny swift steps like a bird. He was two years older than Ibenez, but she was the senior partner, a fact he did not resent. He had a lot of respect for her tradecraft and her intelligence.
Gloria turned and stared toward the distant firefight as a pair of APCs roared up Main Street and headed northeast in a big hurry. “Too big, maybe.”
“They’ve hit us before. Nobody gets hurt, they’re just letting us know that we’re pissing them off by being here. No big deal.”
“This time’s different,” Gloria said. “It’s already lasted longer than before. And it’s more intense. Could be a diversion.”
Talarico straightened up. “Okay, you’ve got my attention. This maybe has something to do with us?” He gave her a sidelong glance. “With you specifically?”
“Probably not.”
Gloria’s father, Air Force General Ernesto Marti, who’d been Castro’s chief of air operations, had defected to the United States when Gloria was thirteen. Pretending that he was experiencing engine trouble, he’d landed his Cessna 182 in downtown Havana on the Avenida San Antonio Chiquito in front of the Necrópolis de Colón, where his wife was waiting with their only child. Before anyone could do a thing, he’d taken off and headed northeast toward Key West. Who was going to question the chief of air operations?
But the airplane had developed an actual engine problem, and they’d crashed five miles short of the island. Gloria’s father pulled her out of the wreckage, but she could never forget the look of helpless surprise on her mother’s face as the airplane sank just outside the reef in five hundred feet of water.
General Marti went to work as a special adviser on Cuban affairs to the CIA, and after law school and a brief stint in the Navy’s JAG, Gloria had followed in his footsteps. They were both very high on the Cuban Intelligence Services most wanted list.
“What time is it?” Gloria asked.
Talarico checked his watch. “Quarter to three.”
Gloria and Talarico worked in the Special Projects Division for the deputy director of operations. For the most part their recent assignments had not involved the use of legends—cover stories. Most recently they’d been in Afghanistan, interrogating every peasant and mujahideen they could get their hands on, to come up with some hint of where bin Laden might be holed up. Last week they’d been assigned to Gitmo to see what information they could get from the Afghani and Iraqi prisoners. But it had turned into a dicey operation. The guys working for naval intelligence, which handled most of the interrogations, resented the CIA sticking its nose into their territory, and Amnesty International had been sniffing around lately, looking for another Abu Ghraib scandal.
And now these Cuban probes on Gitmo’s defenses. The last two times they’d hit the perimeter just off the beach below Delta. But this morning the attack was to the north.
Well away from the detention camp. At three o’clock in the morning. When nearly everyone was supposed to be sleeping.
Another flash of light lit up the night sky to the north, followed several seconds later by an impressive boom.
“Get dressed,” Gloria said. “We’re going to take a ride.” She turned and headed back to the BOQ, Talarico right on her heels.
“Where?”
“Delta.”
“You think it’s a prison break?”
Gloria looked at him, and shrugged. “I don’t like coincidences,” she told him. “The Cubans are up to something.”
“That’d mean they were cooperating with al-Quaida,” Talarico said.
“Now there’s a thought,” Gloria replied at the door to her room. “But we are the common enemy.”
“Ain’t it the truth.”
“Bring your pistol.”
Kamal and Sufyan dragged the bodies of the two MPs out of sight in a shallow depression in the sand and gravel next to the road, while Bukhari figured out the control that released the gate lock. Al-Habib stood in the shadow cast by the guard shack, his attention toward the Delta outer fence about thirty meters away, every sense alert for any sign that their incursion had been detected.
But there was no movement, no sirens, no guards coming across on the run. All the noise and activity was directed to the perimeter fence five klicks to the north.
“No keys,” Bukhari whispered urgently.
“What about the gate?”
“It’s electric, I found the switch.”
“Do it,” al-Habib whispered. So far as they knew, opening the gate at this hour of the morning would not trigger an automatic alarm. But no intelligence report was ever one hundred percent certain.
A moment later the gate lock buzzed, and the three bolts snapped with an audible pop.
Al-Habib’s hand tensed on his weapon, and he held his breath, once again listening for any indication that someone was coming for them. His nerves were jumping all over the place. But there was nothing. Their luck was holding,
and for the first time since they’d come ashore he was beginning to feel that they might pull this off.
He motioned for Bukhari to come with him. Kamal and Sufyan would remain outside to cover their backs.
Al-Habib reached the steel door to the low concrete block building and stepped away for Bukhari to mold a one-hundred-gram block of Semtex around the door lock. A heavy wire mesh covered the narrow window beside the door. Someone in an orange shirt was there. Al-Habib urgently motioned for him to get back.
An air-conditioning unit at the rear of the building noisily kicked on at the same moment Bukhari inserted a slender pencil fuse into the gray putty material and cracked the acid chamber.
He and al-Habib moved to either side and turned their backs to the door. Two seconds later, the Semtex blew with a muffled crack, the sound all but lost to the noise of the air conditioner. The smoldering lock mechanism and handle landed in the dirt three meters away.
Bukhari pulled the door open, and al-Habib, his rifle up, safety off, his finger alongside the trigger guard, rolled inside, sweeping his M8 left to right.
There were five prisoners dressed for bed in orange suits in the corner farthest from the door, but no American guards.
“Musafa Bakr,” al-Habib called softly.
A slightly built man with a pencil-thin mustache came forward with a heavy limp. “Aywa,” he said. Yes. The other four were right behind him.
“Are you hurt?” al-Habib asked, concerned that they would have to carry him down the bluff to the fence and then to the beach. It would seriously slow them down.
“Not badly enough to cause a hindrance,” ex-Iranian Navy Commander Bakr said.
“What happened—”
“We can talk later. Do you have a weapon for me?” He held out a hand.
It wasn’t what al-Habib expected, though he could hardly deny the request. He took his 9mm Steyr GB pistol from a zippered pocket and gave it to the man. “Our luck is holding so far, but it won’t last,” he said.
Outside, al-Habib, Bukhari, and the five prisoners hurried across to the open gate. Kamal and Sufyan waited in the shadows, their attention directed toward the main entrance to Camp Delta.
“Anything?” al-Habib asked.
“Nothing,” Sufyan replied.
They shut and relocked the gate, and, al-Habib in the lead, started across the field toward the edge of the bluff. The night sky to the north was lit by the occasional flash of a mortar round. The small-arms fire had not slackened, but it would not last much longer. And once the attack was over, someone might start to wonder what was going on. If a check was made of the guard posts, the game would be up.
They had to be down on the beach before that happened if they were going to have any chance of getting away.
Al-Habib glanced back at Bakr right behind him. If something did go wrong, and the prisoners had to be killed, doing so would be more difficult because one of them was armed.
A military vehicle crested the road that came up from the main part of the base, and headed directly toward Camp Delta, the headlights briefly sweeping across the field where al-Habib and the others crouched.
“Yalla!” al-Habib whispered, his heart in his throat. Let’s go!
“What the hell is that?” Talarico demanded urgently. They had just reached the top of the hill and were heading toward Camp Delta’s main gate. Gloria was behind the wheel of a Humvee from the base motor pool.
“What was what?” Gloria turned to him. He was pointing off toward the edge of the hill that plunged down to sea level.
“Four or five people, maybe more,” he said. “Black outfits, but at least three were wearing orange.” There was the hint of amazement in his voice. “You were right, it’s a prison break.”
“Goddammit to hell,” Gloria said. She hauled the all-terrain vehicle off the road in the direction Talarico had pointed, and pulled up short, in a hail of dust and loose rocks. Nothing showed up in the headlights except for the open field that dropped off about thirty meters away. “Are you sure, Bob?”
Talarico grabbed a flashlight off its bracket on the hump and jumped out of the vehicle. “I saw something out there,” he called back through the open door. He directed the narrow beam across the field, on either side of the swath cast by the Humvee’s headlights, then slowly followed it back toward the Camp Echo facility.
“There!” he shouted. He pulled out his pistol and headed in a dead run around the front of the Humvee back to the ditch beside the road directly in front of Echo, where two figures lay facedown.
Gloria jumped out of the Humvee and yanked the walkie-talkie from her belt clip with one hand, and her 0.45in. ACP MK 23 (SOCOM) pistol from the quick-draw holster at the small of her back, her attention directed across the field.
“They’re dead!” Talarico shouted.
Gloria glanced at him. He was hunched over the two bodies. “Our guys?”
“MPs,” Talarico said, straightening up. “I’m guessing Echo guards. They’ve been shot in the head.”
Gloria motioned toward the drop-off across the field and she headed out. She keyed the walkie-talkie. “TAC One, TAC One, this is a Red Release. I repeat, a Red Release, looks like from Echo. They’re already over the hill.”
Talarico had started after her, keeping a few meters to the left. He’d switched off the flashlight.
“Who’s on this channel?” the on-duty Security Ops officer came back. He sounded harried with all that was happening along the northeastern perimeter.
“Ibenez. I’m with Talarico. We’re on your special ops duty roster,” she radioed back. The Cubans probably monitored all the non-secure channels, but it would take time for someone to figure out she was on their hit list. “You have two friendlies down outside Echo right now. About two minutes ago we spotted two or more figures in black, going over the crest of the hill to the east, with three or more guys in orange pj’s. Copy?”
“Roger, copy that,” the OD radioed back. “What’s your ten-twenty?”
“We’re in pursuit about twenty-five meters out,” Gloria responded. “Standby one.” She motioned for Talarico to hold up just before the edge of the drop-off. She didn’t want either of them to get shot by a rear guard waiting for them to show themselves.
She dropped to her hands and knees and crawled the rest of the way to the edge, where she got on her belly. For a second or two she couldn’t see any movement. A guard tower about sixty or seventy meters directly below was dark, as were the towers to the north, and the one to the south just above the beach.
But then she spotted several figures, maybe half of them in black, and the other half in orange, scurrying across the no-man’s zone where they disappeared one at a time into a tunnel under the fence. She keyed the walkie-talkie.
“TAC One, I count at least four POWs and four bad guys just going through a tunnel under the east perimeter fence, a few hundred meters off the beach.”
“The guy in the tower’s got to be asleep,” Talarico said.
“Or dead,” Gloria replied. She spotted a movement on the other side of the fence, and she keyed her walkie-talkie. “TAC One, they’re out.”
“Roger that,” the OD replied. He sounded disgusted. “It’s not our problem now. If they reach the beach the Coasties will be on them. I have people coming your way. Stand by.”
“Bullshit,” Gloria radioed.
“They’re in Cuba!” the OD came back. “We can’t do diddly.”
Gloria jumped to her feet and started down the steep slope, Talarico right behind her. “We’re going after them,” she radioed. “Tell your tower guards we’re on our way. And warm up a chopper, we might need a quick extraction.”
“The beach will be crawling with Frontier Brigade—”
“Negative. I’m betting that they’re all on the northeast perimeter.”
Gloria clipped the walkie-talkie to her belt, and at the bottom she and Talarico crossed the no-man’s zone to the drainage culvert. She motioned for him to hold u
p, as she cautiously peered into the tunnel. It was possible that the POWs and whoever had sprung them knew they were being pursued, and had stationed someone at the other end.
“You sure we want to do this?” Talarico whispered urgently.
The tunnel was empty. Gloria could see a circle of dim light on the other side. She looked up at her partner. “Why’d they go through the trouble to stage a jail break from Echo when most of those guys are scheduled for release anyway? Unless someone didn’t want us to talk to them.”
He immediately saw her point. “What are we waiting for?”
Gloria nodded. He was a good man; smart, talented, and she had a lot of respect for him. He had a couple of kids and a successful marriage, which was something of a rarity for a field officer. She envied his wife. She ducked into the tunnel and scurried through to the other side, holding up once again at the opening to make sure she wasn’t leading them into an ambush.
The night on this side of the base was quiet. During a momentary lull in the small-arms fire to the north, Gloria was certain she heard something out ahead to the south; someone running through loose gravel.
Talarico was at her shoulder. He’d heard it too. “They’re heading for the beach.”
Gloria grabbed the walkie-talkie and called the OD. “TAC One, this is Ibenez. They’re trying for the beach. We’re going after them, but you’d better give the Coast Guard the heads-up.”
“Stand down, Ibenez, that’s an order direct from Commander Weiss. He’s en route your position.”
“Negative, negative,” Gloria radioed back. “I want a chopper standing by, ASAP.” She switched off the radio, crawled out of the tunnel, and headed south along the perimeter fence, keeping her pistol at her side, the muzzle pointed slightly away from her leg.
The timing of the breakout bothered her almost as much as the professionalism. They’d known the exact route to Camp Echo, which meant there had to be prisoners they wanted out before the CIA could get to them. It was driving her nuts to think that not only were the Cubans cooperating with al-Quaida, but that there might be someone inside Gitmo on the payroll as well.
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