by Noel Hynd
One of them, she knew by his voice, was Mejias. The other was the female. The vehicle started to move. It stopped and started. Alex guessed it was going through prison checkpoints. Then it was out onto an open road. She could tell it was accelerating, moving onto a highway, probably the one that led to Santa Clara.
Mejias and his female associate talked in hushed voices that she couldn’t hear. There was an occasional crackle of a longwave radio on the dashboard and a GPS that operated in Spanish. Every few minutes, Mejias took a call to confirm his location. The vehicle bounced as it moved along the highway. Alex managed to brush her blindfold against her shoulder so that she could develop a narrow sight line. But that gave her very little. It was an official vehicle of some sort, with boxes and crates next to her. The woman in the front seat was wearing a military uniform. That was all she could see of her: just dark hair and a shoulder with an epaulet. In front of the vehicle, all she could see was the night and the headlights along a winding highway that cut through the center of the island. Maybe it was best that she couldn’t see more, she told herself. Mejias was driving like a wild man. The vehicle hurtled forward at a mad speed. What his urgency was, Alex could only guess.
Guess, hope, and pray.
Another incoming message crackled across the two-way. Mejias answered it and signed off. Then Alex heard him speak to the woman.
“?Ahora?” he asked. Now?
“?Ahora mismo!” she said. Right now!
Something had changed. Or plans were being jerked around. All Alex knew was that the vehicle came to an abrupt halt. She heard a window come down. She peeked through her sliver of sight and saw both of Mejias’s hands on the two-way GPS.
She saw him pull it from the dashboard. She heard a clatter and guessed that he had jettisoned it. Then the car was in motion again. He ripped a vicious U-turn and from the feel of the tires, it seemed they were cutting across dirt or sand for several minutes. Then they accessed another highway or the same one in the other direction, Alex couldn’t tell which. And they were underway again.
First gear, second, third, and fourth, as fast as he could shift. It was like they weren’t driving now, more like flying low. Alex spoke out of instinct. “What are we doing?”
Cryptically, “No es lo que parece,” he answered. It’s not what it seems.
But Alex didn’t even know what it seemed like. She could only tell that the car had accelerated. The conversation between the driver and his accomplice was terse and hushed. Above the rage of the vehicle’s motor, Alex couldn’t hear anything.
The drive lasted many minutes. Eventually, Alex pushed the blindfold farther away from her eyes, so she could at least get a sense of where she was being taken. Outside, the sky was lighter. Dawn was in the offing. She wondered if it would be her last. Distantly, she recalled being warned about the military installations in Santa Clara and Camaguey. But she no longer knew where she was going. Someplace better? Someplace worse? Someplace to be incarcerated for years or hours? Or someplace to die?
The vehicle eventually turned onto what felt like a bumpy off-ramp. The boxes in the backseat slid toward her. Alex steadied herself. Next, they seemed to be on a back road, judging by the speed, then on a very bumpy narrow road, then finally what seemed like a pot-hole-ridden dirt driveway. Then the car rolled to a halt.
Both driver and shotgun rider leaped out. Alex struggled with her blindfold again, and this time she managed to push it half off. It barely mattered. The door flew open, and the woman in uniform reached in and pulled it off.
“Hurry,” the woman said in Spanish.
The other door opened, and Major Mejias reached in with both arms. He too was operating as quickly as possible. He removed the three crates from the seat next to Alex. One by one, he stacked them in a small red wagon that waited nearby. The woman pulled Alex out of the vehicle and moved her a few feet away.
“Where are we?” Alex asked, blinking against the sudden exposure to light. It was dawn and the sky was red.
“You’ll know shortly,” the woman said. Major Mejias was too busy to answer.
They were in a courtyard surrounded by walls. But Alex could hear surf. Like so much of Cuba, they were near the water. She took a reading of the light in the sky and determined where east was. There were two gates. The one behind her, behind the car, faced north. The other faced the other way, and the driveway sloped down toward it. She guessed that it led to the water and that they were, therefore, on the south shore of the island. Mejias went to the outside gate so that no one could follow them into the driveway.
“The Venezuelans took an immediate interest in you,” the woman said in Spanish. “You’re wanted by the government in Caracas. So – “
“Juanita!” Major Mejias shouted.
The woman fell silent.
“Take her inside,” he said, motioning.
Juanita, the woman in the uniform, pulled Alex by the arm. They reached a door to a small ramshackle building.
“Come along!” Juanita demanded. “You have Caracas to thank. This is better than Santa Clara!”
They reached the door and the woman pushed it open. She stepped into the building. In the dim light, two figures rose and stood to meet her.
Alex gasped as if she were receiving a visit from the dead.
Down the beach in his sniper’s lair, Perez, after days and days of waiting, finally got the high sign. He sat ready, his rifle across his lap. His cell phone rang. He answered. Perez and the caller spoke in Spanish.
“Alex is here,” the man announced. “She just entered the building. Everything is complete.”
“How many minutes?” Perez asked.
“Less than ten,” the caller said. “Watch the horizon. You’ll see a bird.”
“I’m watching it now,” said Perez. He spotted a small dot far off, maybe six miles from shore.
“Don’t miss,” the caller said. “You miss, we leave you in Cuba. You hit, and you’re on a plane to Mexico in two hours.”
“I never miss,” Perez said.
“We’ll see,” the caller said.
SIXTY-TWO
There are moments made up of too much stuff to be remembered correctly or to be assessed fully at the time they occur. For Alex, this was one. As it was, the morning had had its own peculiar madness. Events happened too quickly to fasten on any of them too firmly.
She recognized Roland Violette first. Then her eyes shifted to the other man.
“Alex! Thank God!” came the male voice. Paul rushed to her and embraced her. Juanita in the uniform was close behind with a key to the handcuffs.
“What – ?” Alex began.
“We’re going home,” Guarneri said. “Back to the U.S. That’s if our plane gets here. If the Cuban army or air force stops them we’re all shafted.”
Violette said nothing. He only twitched and stared.
Juanita worked on the handcuffs and undid them. Behind Alex, the door opened and closed again. It was Major Mejias. He had taken his cargo down to the end of the pier where it waited. Alex had to fight back her emotions. The loneliness in solitary. The suicidal thoughts. The fear. The torment. She turned toward the major.
“Sorry,” he said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “I had to be rough. We had listeners. All the way. In prison.”
“Seville,” she said.
“Figaro,” he said with a nod and an awkward tip of his cap. “This is my wife,” he said, turning to Juanita, who now smiled. “Those boxes out there are for your employers. Everything I could copy for five years, plus a lot that I didn’t have time to copy. There are papers, discs, flash drives. Defense records, police, militia security. A few personal items as well.”
“Poison. Poison,” Violette said, making no more sense than ever. He moved over to the window and peered out.
“The CIA is bringing us to Miami,” said Major Mejias. “My wife is coming with me.”
“A seaplane’s coming in,” Guarneri said. “Should be here any moment.”
>
“I was told you’d already gone,” Alex said. “Along with Violette.”
“Without you?” Guarneri asked. “Don’t believe everything you hear. You should know that.”
“I should have known that, yes,” she said.
“Airplane,” said Violette. “Airplane, airplane, airplane.”
They all went to the window.
“That’s our exit,” said Guarneri.
Alex watched the Cessna drop low on its approach. The plane hit the water, kicked up a wake, and began to taxi toward the pier. It was an old craft, propeller driven, but had its own beauty.
“If the plane doesn’t lift off, none of us are going,” Alex said.
“I’m going. I’m going. I’m going,” Violette said. “Back to the U.S. of A.”
She looked at him and then looked at Major Mejias. There was no question which of them was the bigger prize. And things started to come into focus.
“Let’s get to the pier,” Guarneri said. Then they all froze. From somewhere there was the sound of a loud bang. Then several more. Someone was trying to crash through the outside gates.
“Army!” said Major Mejias. “Or police!”
“We need to move,” Paul said.
Perez waited. He perched his rifle in the second-story window.
He had a clear line of sight to the small house with the Brazilian flag. He could see the commotion at the other side of the wall too, army trucks unloading soldiers, probably from Cienfuegos. But they weren’t his concern. He was used to shooting under pressure.
He lowered his eye to rifle’s sight. The rear door of the building opened, and a limping man with a hickory cane emerged. Then a woman in a police uniform came out. He waited. Then the woman emerged whom he had missed in New York. He grinned. That tiny miss a few weeks back had created all these complications. The woman, Alex LaDuca, was followed by a man. They were moving quickly, all of them, everyone except the crazy-looking old guy with the cane. Alex and the younger man were holding hands. Well, so be it. Let the lovebirds have their moment.
Perez moved his rifle onto his intended target. The right side of the victim’s head was beneath the red dot of his laser. This was such an easy shot that he almost felt bad. Just as the first of the escapees reached the pier, and he prepared to pull the trigger, an explosion erupted at the gate. The army had blown the door inward. A wave of smoke rolled across the courtyard. Still, it wasn’t enough to distract Perez. His future with his family was at stake, and these CIA guys he had been dealing with would have to make good on their promise to get him and Nicoleta and the girls back together.
He swung the rifle around, put the red beam on the head of his victim, and pulled the trigger. There was nasty recoil to the rifle but a tremendous satisfaction. He knew a single-shot kill when he saw one, a human head blowing apart, a crimson mist of blood and brains exploding from the bullet’s impact. And that’s what he saw.
Alex never heard the rifle shot. But she heard the crack of the bullet on Roland Violette’s skull. She heard a strange guttural sound escape his lungs and mouth, and almost instantaneously, she heard his body hit the ground. His attache case landed nearby.
She pulled her hand free of Paul’s, turned, and stared. And at the same time, she could hear soldiers pushing through the wreckage of the iron gate.
For too long a moment, she stopped and stared at the fallen man. His last wish had been to return to the country he had disdained and be buried on American soil. But old grudges died hard. It was never meant to happen.
The noise of advancing soldiers grew louder.
“Alex! Alex!” Paul was back at her side, barking at her. “Come on! Now or never! We have to get out of here!”
He tried to pull her toward the aircraft, but she balked. She grabbed the attache case from the ground. There was a splattering of blood on it. Then she turned and ran toward the pier.
Major Mejias and his wife were already in the airplane. The propellers started up again, and the door was open. Alex and Paul reached the end of the pier, and the soldiers opened fire. Paul turned and brazenly drew a pistol. He fired wildly at the oncoming soldiers, but, as on the day of their arrival, his volleys only caused them to scatter.
Alex reached the aircraft and darted onto it, crouching into a far seat in the second row. The aircraft started to move from the pier, the door still open and Paul outside. Alex realized that without help, as the plane accelerated, he was in danger of being left behind. Alex bolted to the door and extended a hand as Paul turned toward the plane. A bullet punched the body of the plane and then a second. A third shot hit a few inches above her head. Paul jumped forward and Alex pulled. His foot slipped but he grabbed part of the door frame. She pulled him on board. The aircraft turned rapidly in the water and the passenger door closed. Then a bullet blew out a side window.
The pilot threw the throttle forward, and the plane fishtailed on the water. Facing away from the shore, it was a harder target to hit. But shots ripped past it and into the water. All four passengers kept their heads down. The navigator sat low in his seat, as did the pilot. The plane gained momentum as the first rays of sun started to streak across the sea.
They lifted off, and the Cessna rose above the water. The aircraft was a thousand meters from shore, then twelve hundred. A final shot pinged against its fuselage but didn’t penetrate. Then they were in the sky, getting as far from the island as possible before the pilot banked and turned to the southeast.
A palpable sense of relief flooded the passengers, tempered by the parting sight of Roland Violette lying dead on a Cuban beach. For several minutes no one spoke, aside from the pilot who checked in with air traffic controllers in the Cayman Islands. Alex muttered a silent prayer of thanks.
Finally, Paul broke the silence. He turned to Alex. “Communists,” he said. “Can’t do anything right. Can’t run a captive country and can’t even shoot straight.”
SIXTY-THREE
For the next week, Alex lived in limbo.
In New York, her employers insisted that she go for a physical at New York Hospital, where they had all the proper doctors lined up. Since she knew this was both protocol and a wise health decision anyway, she didn’t protest. So she spent her first three days back in the U.S. in a private hospital.
It could have been worse. She managed to sleep a good deal. Friends came by to see her, including Ben, with whom she made up. She entrusted him with the two letters given to her by the young boy Guillermo and asked him to mail them for her. He said he would.
When she got out of the hospital, on her fourth day back, she took a taxi to her home on West 61st Street. The living room window was still boarded up. The place reminded her of pictures she has seen of Berlin during World War II. The building manager told her that repairs could be made just as soon as they received signed permission.
She signed the form and packed up a few things, called her old mentor, Joseph Collins, and arranged to stay at his son’s unused apartment on East 21st Street.
Then there was her first trip back to Fin Cen. She did this in the evening when most of the personnel were out. It would have been too much to see everyone at once, and there were parts of her trip that she simply didn’t feel like discussing. She spent ninety minutes with her boss, Andrew De Salvo, over Chinese takeout and cold beer. She was put back in charge of Operation Parajo and learned the two most salient details of where Operation Parajo stood:
Numero uno: the gunman who had shot at her had been taken into custody by the CIA and “turned into an asset,” whatever that meant these days. He was, in short, “neutralized.” Then again, other enemies would always be out there.
Numero dos: The Dosis were still out there somewhere, having slipped thought the holes in the worldwide dragnet. Alex’s indictments and the arrests she had ordered had brought much of the Dosi worldwide enterprise to its knees and just about ruined it financially. But the snake still had its head.
“So where are we now?” Alex asked. “
Back at the beginning?”
“No, we’re entering an endgame,” Andrew De Salvo said. “These things take years, not months. And that’s if we’re lucky. You did a whale of a job once again. That’s what they tell me from D.C. Came back with an interesting haul from the Pearl of the Antilles. They want to see you in Washington, by the way. Things are under control here. You can take another ten days for R amp;R if you want.”
“I want.”
“Washington actually means Langley,” he added.
“Doesn’t it usually?”
Two afternoons later, Alex found herself in the familiar office in the west wing of the CIA headquarters, sitting in front of Maurice Fajardie, who was unraveling samples from the mishmash of notes, charts, and printouts that had traveled north with her on the Cessna. The Cubans hadn’t quite entered the twenty-first century of intelligence compiling, so much of the information had a retro look – plenty of colors. Agency analysts were now trying to determine what red and green and orange pages meant. But the preliminary feedback from the intelligence analysts was highly positive regarding the material from both Major Mejias and the late Roland Violette.
“So it was worth my visit?” she asked.
“Very much so,” Fajardie said. “A-list intelligence on a B-list enemy. Not akin to a top intelligence coup against our Muzzie adversaries, for example, but certainly when a hostile regime is ninety miles from our doorstep, an up-to-date snapshot is of great value. Most of Violette’s material was dated and harks back to the sixties, seventies, and eighties. Think bell-bottoms to big hair. But it puts some old cases in order, lets us know who’s still living in Cuba, and fleshes out some other cases. As for the stuff from Major Mejias, we’ve only had a week to look at that, but it’s excellent stuff. Here, let me show you. Look at some of the initial conclusions.”