by Cuba (lit)
burned immediately."
They paused on a corner, watched the people who filled
the sidewalks under the crumbling buildings. Just down
the walk to the left a Cuban was trying to sell
trinkets to a pah* of Germans and having no
luck. To the right a tall young white guy,
American or Canadian probably, was locked
in a passionate embrace with a local girl.
"Sun, sex, and socialismea"...Carmellini
muttered. "Makes you wonder why there aren't more
Cubans."
Chance closed his eyes, enjoyed the caress of the
breeze on bis face and hair. He could hear
snatches of music amid the honk of car horns and
traffic sounds. Havana was very much alive this
evening, as it was every evening.
Finally he opened his eyes, looked again at the
Cubans and tourists swirling about him. And
Carmellini standing there, quite nonchalant, looking
bored.
"Do they have any ideas about who broke in?"
"Americans. CIA scum. No evidence, but
they're sure."
Chance nodded.
'There was talkea"...Carmellini continued, "of rounding
up likely suspects, doing some thorough
interrogations, just to see what might turn up. That was
Colonel Santana's suggestion: apparently he
is a rare piece of work. Vargas overruled him.
Said they couldn't torture tourists every time the CIA
did something they didn't like or soon they wouldn't have
any tourists."
"Anything else?"
Carmellini shrugged, scratched his chin. "I listened
to almost three hours" worth of that stuff, and you know,
they didn't mention Fidel Castro even once."
"Didn't say his name?"
"Nope. And the technician said he hadn't heard
them mention Castro all day."
"Curious."
"It's odd. I would have thought"
After a bit Chance said, "The lab is just the tip
of the iceberg. There must be machinery for drying out the
cultures, for packing the microorganisms
into warheads or mixing them into some sort of chemical
stew to be sprayed from planes. There must be trucks
that transport this stuff from place to place. And then
there are the weapons: where the hell are they?"
They went into one of the nightclubs and found
an empty table. Six whores were sitting around the
table beside them. The girls were drinking daiquiris and
having a fine, comloud time. One of the girls looked
the two men over while the band tuned up just a few
feet away.
"Washington wants more informationea"...Carmellini said,
ignoring the whores.
"They would."...Chance chewed on his lip for a bit, then
picked up the wine list. "Tonight's the night we go
into Vargas's safe. Are you comfortable with that?"
Carmellini took his time answering. Chance was about
to repeat the question when he said, "If the alarms are
off."
'They'll be off."
"Sure."
'Trust, me."
When the waiter came they ordered dinner.
"So tell me again alxwt the Ministry of
Interiorea"...Carmellini said. "Everything you can
recall. Everything."
Chance leaned back, closed his eyes, tried
to visualize how the building looked when he had
stepped from the taxi
out front on his way to his meeting with Alejo
Vargas.
"There is a guard kiosk out front on the
sidewalk. You then walk through the front entrance to the
guard station inside. They check your credentials
again, call whoever you say you want to see. This
person comes to get you, leads you through the halls to the
office you are to visit."
"Cameras?"
"Security cameras mounted high in corners,
monitored by the main guard station. There are two
separate systems, at least, with pictures playing
on separate monitors."
"Infrared sensors?"
"I think so...."...The fact is he should have paid more
attention. Looked more carefully, consciously noted
what he was seeing. "Yes, I remember seeing
one."
"Motion detectors?"
"No."
"Laser alarms?"
"Yes, mounted at ankle height."...Presumably
these were only on when the building was not occupied.
"Alarms on the windows?"
"Yes."
"Vibrators on the glass?"
"No."...If there had been vibrators, the
computer would have had a much more difficult job sorting
out the voices from the electronic noise of the
vibrators when it tried to read the light refracted
by the crystals.
"Were there internal security doors, doors that
might be closed when the building is not occupied?"
"Yes. Every hall had them, but I doubt they were ever
used."
"And internal security stations?"
"I saw none."
Carmellini thought about it. Closed security doors
made a burglar's access more difficult, but they
provided a peaceful, quiet place for a burglar
to work once he had gained entry.
"Do they have backup power when the power goes
off"..."...Carmellini mused.
"They mustea"...Chance replied thoughtfully. "A backup
generator of some type. I'm going to walk in
assuming that they do, but I'll be improvising as I
go."
"We'll sure as hell find out soon enough,
won't we"..."...Carmellini said, and grinned. That was the
first grin he had managed all afternoon. The death of the
lab worker had hit him hard, but the cool execution
of the guard at the front door by William
Henry Chance had hit him like a punch to the solar
plexus. Chance just gunned the man down and kept on
trucking, as if killing another human being were something
he did every morning before lunch.
All evening Carmellini had studied the older man,
watched him for a sign that the murder of the guard was
anything more than absolutely routine. And he had
seen nothing. Nothing at all. Chance looked as if
he might be having dinner in a restaurant in the
Bronx with a Yankees game from a kitchen radio
as background noise.
Carmellini stared at the food on the plate that the
waiter put in front of him. He didn't want
a mournful. But what he wouldn't give for a stiff
drink! He sipped at a glass of water, felt
his stomach knot up.
"Order a drinkea"...Chance said as he used his knife
and fork. "One. Something on the rocks. You need it
We have a long night ahead."
Carmellini looked around for the waiter, and found himself
staring at one of the whores at the next table, who
gave him a big grin. He grinned back. A
man just has to keep things in perspective.
The sun had been down for several hours when
Enrique Poveda and Arquimidez
Cabrera drove up to the fourth EHV tower they
hoped to blow. After a quick look aro
und, they unlocked
the padlock on the gate and put bn their tool
belts. Each of the men picked a tower leg and started
up. About ten feet above the ground they found the shaped
charges of C-4 plastique still firmly taped to the
steel legs. Working in the darkness by feel, each man
took a chemical timer from his belt, a device about
the size and shape of a fountain pen, and inserted it into the
plastique. The timer was already set to explode as
near to 1:30 A.m. as possible.
After setting the timers, they climbed down to the ground,
then ascended the other two legs. In minutes they were
back on the ground.
They locked the padlock, closed up the back of the
van, and drove away.
"One moreea"...Poveda said. He wished he had a map
or diagram, but all that had been left behind in
Florida. There he and Cabrera and the U.s.
Army power grid expert had labored for days over
satellite reconnaissance photos,
photographs taken from the ground by not-so-innocent
tourists, and computer-generated diagrams. They
selected the target towers and committed their locations
to memory. Not a single sheet of paper
left the room with them.
So now Cabrera pointed down one street and
Poveda motioned toward another. The men chuckled.
"I am very sureea"...Poveda said. "Two blocks
down, right turn, then on for a half mile."
"Okay."
"I am glad it was tonightea"...Cabrera said. "The
charges had been in place too long, the new
padlocks were there too long, I was getting
nervousyou know what I mean, my friend?"
Poveda grunted. He knew. His stomach felt as
if it were tied in a knot. He hadn't felt this
uptight about an operation since his first one, fifteen
years ago, when he was very young. He had been
to Cuba many times since, eight as he recalled, and
none of them were as tense as that first time, until now.
The Cubans had almost caught him and his partner that
time. The partner was eventually caught six years
later and died under interrogation, or so they heard
months after that. Poveda had promised himself then and
there that he would never be taken alive, that he would not
die in a Cuban prison.
Communists! He made a spitting motion out the open
window. The communists took everything from the people hi
Cuba who had worked and saved and built for the
future, and gave it to the people who had not. Now look
at the place! Everyone poor, everyone on the edge
of starvation, the cities and towns and factories
rotting from lack of investment. The communists ran off
the people who could make Cuba grow, the people the nation needed
to feed everyone else. Ah, these bastards deserved
their misery, and by God they had had some. Universal
destitution was Castro's legacy, his gift
to generations yet unborn.
Poveda was a pessimist. He knew that soon
Castro would be dead and things would change in Cuba.
"They'll forget Fidel's faults, remember just
the goodea"...he told Cabrera, for the hundredth time.
"You wait and see. In a hundred years the church
will make him a saint."
"Saint Fidel."...Cabrera laughed.
"I shit you not. That is the way of the world. The people he
pissed on the most will call him blessed."
"Saint or devil, we'll fuck the son of a
bitch a little
tonightea"...Cabrera said as the van pulled up to the last
tower.
Poveda killed the van's engine and lights and the two
men got out. Silence.
"Awful quiet, don't you think"..."...Poveda
asked.
Cabrera stood by the van's rear doors, listening,
looking around. Poveda dug in his pocket for the key
to the padlock, inserted it.
It wouldn't fit. He tried another.
"What's wrong?"
"Key doesn't seem to want to go in this lock."
"Let's get the fuck outta here, manea"...Cabrera
said, and started for the van's passenger door.
A spotlight hit them.
"Put up your handsea"...boomed a voice on a
loudspeaker.
Poveda dropped to his knees, pulled a 9-mm
pistol from his pocket. He didn't hesitatehe
aimed at the spotlight and started shooting.
Something hit him in the back. He was down beside the
rear tire trying to rise when he realized he had
been shot. People shooting from two directions, muzzle
flashes, thuds of bullets smacking into the van like
hailstones. A groan from Cabrera.
"I'm hit, Enrique."
"Bad?"
"I think... I think so."...He grunted as another
bullet audibly smacked into his body.
The bullet that hit Poveda had come out his
stomach. He could feel the wetness, the spreading
warmth as blood poured from the exit wound. Not a lot
of pain yet, but a huge gaping hole in his belly.
He lifted the pistol, pointed it at Arquimidez
Cabrera, his best friend. There, he could see the back
of his head. He fired once; Cabrera's head
slammed forward into the dirt. Then he put the barrel
flush against the side of his own head and pulled the
trigger.
Sitting in the back of a van just down the street from the
Ministry of Interior, William Henry Chance
watched the second hand of his watch sweep toward the
twelve. It passed 1:30 A.m. and swept
on.
The lights stayed on. Carmellini was looking at his
own watch.
"What the hell is wrong now"..."...Carmellini asked.
"I don't know."
"Oh, Lord."
They sat there in the van looking at the lights of the
city.
"It went badea"...Tommy Carmellini said. "Time for
us to boogie."
"We'll give them a few minutes."
"Jesus, when it doesn't go down as
planned, something is wrong. What are you waiting for,
a phone call from Fidel? Let's bail out while
our asses are still firmly attached."
"If I had any brains I wouldn't be in this
businessea"...Chance replied tartly.
His watch read exactly ten seconds after 1:32
A.m. when the lights of downtown Havana
flickered. "All rightea"...Carmellini said, and whacked
his leg with his hand.
The lights flickered, dimmed, came back on,
then went completely out. All the lights. Only
automobile headlights broke the total darkness.
'That's it. Let's goea"...Chance said to Tommy
Carmellini. They opened the back of the van and
climbed out while the driver of the van started the
engine. Chance walked the few steps back to an old
Russian Lada parked at the curb behind the van and
got into the passenger seat. Carmellini started the car
and turned on the headlights while the van pulled
away from the curb.
The two agents drove down the street toward the
Ministry of Interior, a hulking imm
ensity even
darker than the night.
The three guards at the main entrance of the Ministry
were illuminated by the headlights when Tommy
Carmellini
drove up. He killed the engine and pocketed the
key as William Henry Chance got out on the
passenger side.
Of course the guards had seen Chance's uniform from the
car's interior light while the door was opennow they
flashed the beam of a flashlight upon him. Then they
saluted.
Chance was dressed in the uniform of a Security
Department colonel. He had been to the building
several days ago in the daytime wearing civilian
clothes: he thought it highly unlikely mat anyone
who had seen nun then would recognize him now. It
was a risk he was willing to take. Still, his stomach
felt as if he had swallowed a rock as he
returned the guards" salute, and spoke:
"We were just a block away when the power failed all
over this district."
"Yes, Colonel. Just a minute or two ago."
"And you are?"
"Lieutenant G6mez, sir, the duty
officer."
"Have you taken steps to start the emergency generator,
Goodmez?"
"Ahh... I was about to do so, Colonel.
It is in the basement. I was waiting to see if the
power would come back on immediately. Often these Outages
last but moments and"
"The darkness seems widespread, Gomez. Let
us start the generator."
"Of course, Colonel."...The lieutenant began
giving directions to his two enlisted men, who
obviously knew nothing about the emergency generator.
The lieutenant began by telling them which room the
generator was in.
Chance interrupted again. "Perhaps you would like to take them
there, supervise the start-up, Lieutenant. My
driver and I will guard the front entrance until you
return."
"Of course, Colonel."...With his flashlight beam
leading the way, the lieutenant and the two enlisted men
made for the stairs.
Carmellini opened the trunk of the car, extracted a
duffel
bag, which he swung over one shoulder. Without a word
to Chance he disappeared into the dark interior of the
building.
Carmellini took the main staircase to the top
floor of the building, then strode quickly down the
hall to Alejo Vargas's private
office. The door was locked, of course.
Working in total darkness, Carmellini ran his hands
over the door. One lock, near the handle. From the
bag he extracted a small light driven by a
battery unit that hooked on his belt. He donned