by Fred G Baker
“Well, sir, we think there may be people impersonating policemen and driving in Toyotas that are painted to look like normal police patrol cars. We saw several vehicles traveling in a convoy toward the city center a short time ago.”
“I asked for good news.”
“We also drove by the sports facility and found out those men are now gone as well. If you count them, the missing Venezuelans, and the Chinese we saw at the construction site a few days ago, that makes close to three-hundred men we can’t account for,” Wilson added.
Lightchurch looked devastated. “Jesus Christ. This is a disaster!” he shouted to no one in particular. He threw some papers across the room. He stood up and walked to the side counter where he kept an ample supply of whisky—Glenmorangie, his favorite. He poured three fingers into a glass and walked back to his place at the table. He signaled the others to join him with a glass if they wished. They all shook their heads. They were on duty, and would likely be involved in gunplay before long, the way things were sorting out.
“I cannot call the chief or the PM and give either of them more bad news without a plan—something proactive that will solve these mysteries.” He seemed despondent for a few moments. “Come on, everyone. What are they doing? What’s their plan?” He shook his hands in the air in frustration.
“Well, sir, let’s look at it from their point of view, shall we.” Madeline spoke up, seemingly very calm. “Suppose Robert was right, and they planned a soft coup. They would wait for the election results, which would come in around nine p.m., and they could wait for that before doing anything. Normally, the results would be announced on television and the new PM would say a few words.”
“In that case, they wouldn’t need to mobilize for several days—because it would take a while for the new government to get organized, right?” Wilson said. “If their side won the election, they wouldn’t do much—just stand by and gradually take over different ministries.”
“Yes, starting with the police force and coast guard, I would suppose,” Lightchurch mused.
“But what if something went wrong?” Madeline said. “Then, they might change their plan.”
Wilson began pacing the floor, as he did in times of stress. “Suppose something happened that interfered with the plan? Like someone finding out they had military equipment in hiding and ready for use? Or the voting scenario looked like it would fall through? Then what would they do?”
“They may have moved up the timetable. Go to a hard coup!” Lightchurch shouted. “Then, we’re back where the Cubans were thirty-five years ago.” He sprang up from his chair and held his arms in front of him as if he were looking at some dire scenario from the future.
Nash interrupted. “Sir, I’ve just received a call that the national television service and the radio stations have all gone off the air.”
“So, it’s started,” said Lightchurch. He stood next to the table and looked them each in the eye.
“We don’t have a standing army that can counter a takeover,” Madeline said. “We have about sixty people in the coast guard and about nine-hundred police, but they’re scattered all over the island. Most of them don’t carry weapons.”
“I’ll contact the chief and the PM. They need to know what’s happening.” Lightchurch’s phone beeped. “Ah, that’s the chief now.”
Wilson and Madeline continued brainstorming while Lightchurch made his desperate phone calls.
“The obvious things they would do are to cut communications,” Wilson said. “Take over the airport and shipping, then occupy government offices and banks. Later, they may take foreign personnel for hostages. That seems like the terrorist playbook,” Wilson said.
“We had better arm ourselves for a fight. There are extra weapons here in the vault.” Madeline led the others to the storage vault, where they all selected automatic weapons and ammunition. Lightchurch’s guards, Morgan and Mitchell, each took assault rifles and extra ammo. Then, Madeline shouted, “My God! We have rocket-propelled grenades back here, and other hardware.”
Lightchurch finished his conversation with the chief of police and joined them at the vault. “When I had this facility established, I had to plan for all eventualities—including another invasion.” Lightchurch chuckled. “Of course, those weapons are for our own self-defense, mind you.”
Lightchurch called for their attention. “The chief said they’re coming under fire at the main gate to the government houses in the botanical gardens complex. He has a few well-armed men there, but he needs more time to get the rest of his forces organized. His people are in the process of notifying all departments and all his police stations. He feels that his men can defend the stations well, as long as they’re attacked by relatively small forces. They’re much better prepared than they were during the last invasion.”
“What can we do to help?” asked Nash.
“The chief asked if we could act as a relief force at the government offices,” Lightchurch said. “We could engage the attackers from behind as they carry out their assault. He said he’ll send down one man who will coordinate with us. Meet him at the roundabout.” He paused. “Sounds like a valuable idea. We can give them support until they assemble.”
***
Darkness had fallen by that time, and rain fell in intermittent squalls. The wind was still up, but somehow Wilson had the impression that the storm was receding. He hoped the rain didn’t continue all night. It was getting old, and he—like the others—felt soaked through to the skin most of the time.
They loaded all their weapons into the three vehicles they had available and drove along the main road toward downtown, which took them past the government complex. The road that led to the offices turned off the central roundabout on Paddock Road and encountered a gate within forty yards. They saw two Toyota Land Cruisers blocking the entry. They pulled over just past the entry road, and a man waved them down.
“I’m Jeffers. The chief sent me.” Madeline recognized Jeffers as one of the men with them at Wong’s that afternoon. “They have about twelve men at the gate in police uniforms. The uniforms are not like ours. They have an extra flag on their shoulders, but the flags are sewn on upside down. So, you can tell us apart if you have binoculars, or meet them up close. I have men on the far side, but they will now pull back so that we can shoot.” He talked on a handheld radio.
Jeffers, Nash, and Madeline led the assault, with Morgan on the right side of the road. Wilson and Mitchell stayed with Lightchurch as his bodyguards. The idea was that Morgan would draw fire, to get the attention of the foreigners, while the others would drop on them from the left, hopefully catching them off guard.
Theory is always superior to the way things unfold during combat. Almost immediately, Morgan came under heavy fire from the gate’s defenders. He took cover and was hardly able to raise his head to return fire. As soon as the shooting began, Jeffers and the others laid into the gatehouse and dropped three men. Then, they in turn came under fire, and were pinned down. The flash and roar of automatic weapons fire cut through the dark scene.
The situation didn’t look good as more men arrived in the fake uniforms. Wilson saw an opportunity and picked up one of their hand grenades and an H&K MP5 machine gun. He slipped away from the cars and made his way through some bushes on the left side of the gate, where he had a shot at two of the foreign fighters. He pulled the pin on the grenade and stood up long enough to pitch it underhand toward the gate. He ducked down as someone fired at him. He waited three seconds for the blast. The gatehouse exploded in a fireball, and a few attackers crawled out of the small building. Then, Wilson stood up and shot the men who were still armed and ready to fight. He retreated for cover.
Jeffers and the others moved in and killed four more men hiding behind the gatehouse itself. They saw three wounded men, and Jeffers radioed that the gate was open. He went about disarming the wounded and verifying the kills. Then, he zip-tied the hands of the injured men who were still a threat. He and the others move
d up the road and dislodged other foreign fighters. Wilson returned to the cars and stood guard. The fighting went on for thirty minutes, while Lightchurch, Wilson, and Mitchell listened in on the radio. Finally, Jeffers and the others—along with additional police officers—walked down the road and reclaimed the gate. Six police with heavier weapons took over the defense of the government buildings. They still heard gunfire up the hill in the distance.
“Thanks for the help. You arrived at the right time to make a difference.” Jeffers leaned down to talk to Lightchurch through the window of his car. “And thank you, Sir Lightchurch, for the warning. We had time to deploy automatic weapons because of your call. We had more firepower than they expected.”
“How many men did they have?” asked Nash.
“Forty or fifty. There’s a small group of ten or so who escaped up the hill, but they’ll encounter a fence soon, and then we’ll have them trapped.” He saluted Lightchurch. “I had better get back with my men. We have at least three killed, several more wounded.” He turned and jogged away toward the sound of the guns.
“Well,” Madeline said appreciatively. “We don’t have a standing army, but we certainly have some well-trained police. They’re much better armed than they were thirty years ago. That’s a good thing.”
Wilson couldn’t wait to ask, “Did you guys notice these were all Hispanic men, no Chinese?”
“I noticed that they were speaking Spanish to each other, yes. What does that mean?” Nash asked.
“It means the Cubans and Venezuelans took the lead on capturing the government offices here. I wonder where the Chinese guys are.”
Madeline came over. “I was inspecting those bodies by the gate. None of them had IDs on them. They looked Latin to me, maybe Venezuelans.” She looked at Wilson. “Why no ID?”
“Probably so that they can deny involvement if they’re captured. The Russians did that in the Ukraine and Crimea. The little green men, remember? No proof that another country was involved.”
Madeline shook her head. “This is becoming scary now.”
They could hear the sounds of gunfire from two different parts of town, one of them very intense. A fire engine’s siren screamed far away, near Grand Anse. Lights in several parts of town were out.
Two Toyota Land Cruisers rushed up around the circle and slid off onto the entry road toward the government offices. The drivers didn’t seem to notice the three cars pulled over past the circle. One of the vehicles skidded to a halt and lined up with the guard station—or what was left of it. That Toyota had a .50-caliber machine gun mounted on its roof, with a cockpit chopped out behind the gun. A man stood up there and began firing at the policemen. The second Toyota disgorged a half-dozen men, who spread out and attacked the gate.
Madeline was angry, even though her wounded side hurt like hell. “Damn it, we just did this.” She reached in the back of the truck, grimaced, and pulled out one of the RPG launchers. Then, she attached a rocket to it and stepped out for a clear shot at the machine gun. With no hesitation, she fired the RPG at the Toyota and watched it blow up in a fireball.
“Well done, my dear!” Lightchurch called out. Fighting continued, but the foreign fighters were routed quickly.
Lightchurch’s phone beeped and he answered. After a few minutes, he ended the call and spoke to them all. “The police chief is coming down here with one man. He wants us to join him as he investigates the sports facility. He wants to make a quick in and out, but doesn’t want his men tied up. Because we’re not officially allowed to enter combat, he’s enlisted us as his bodyguards. He also thought we would be most interested.”
***
When the chief’s Land Rover appeared, they drove behind him to the facility. Once there, the chief warned them about tampering with possible evidence, but he had to know what the men had been doing there and who they were. That was the sole purpose of the trip.
They entered the building the same way Madeline and Wilson had before, through the large garage-like door at the rear. When it was clear that there was nobody there, they began marching around the interior, following the chief through the main room. They came to the boxes, and the chief donned plastic gloves as he examined the contents of four boxes. They contained uniforms that read FAR-Cuba on them—the Forces Armadas Revolucionarias.
“It looks like they would put these on when the coup was complete,” said the chief. “You men can now look through any of these other bags and boxes. Report anything of interest.” He started stalking along the line of boxes. “Open some of this luggage, but be careful for booby traps.”
The final comment slowed things down considerably. Four people searched bags, while three stood guard in case any of the missing men came back to the building.
After they had moved several pieces of luggage, Wilson saw one bag that looked familiar. It was the huge, square, green-flowered bag he had seen at the hotel.
“Hey! That’s Tori Vargas’s bag, I think.” He walked to it and pulled it free of the other items. It was very heavy, and he became suspicious. He laid it on its side as Madeline approached to see what he had found. It was one of those big, soft-sided suitcases with a zipper on three sides. He unzipped it and then got a bad feeling as something red dripped from one side of the zipper.
He stood up and froze. He couldn’t continue.
“What’s wrong?” asked Madeline. She saw his distress and then the blood that oozed from the bag. She took charge. “Let me do this, Robert.” She leaned down and flipped open the cover of the suitcase.
“Holy Jesus!” She jumped back.
Inside the suitcase was the naked and contorted body of Tori Vargas, who had been roughly stuffed into the case. Her tortured body showed signs of burns from cigarettes and other red-hot objects. She was folded up into a more or less fetal position. Her head was wrapped in a plastic bag and showed considerable blood on its inside surface.
Wilson stared at his former lover. Oh, my God! he thought. He felt sick and rushed for the door. He was overcome with revulsion. He stood outside in the drizzle and fresh air for fifteen minutes. He threw up everything he had eaten that day, and had dry heaves for a while. He couldn’t go back inside.
Madeline came outside to check on him. She treated him gently, placing an arm over his shoulder for comfort. They stood that way awhile. She said nothing. He would learn more details about Vargas’s death soon enough. What a way to die, he thought.
After a few moments, Wilson said to Madeline in a calm voice, “Cortez did this. He tortured her, then killed her.” He paused to see if she understood his fury. “I’ll kill the bastard if I find him. I’ll make him pay.” She kept her arm around his shoulders to comfort him as his eyes welled up.
Nash asked them both to return inside with him. Lightchurch had found something. He was waiting at the other end of the room from Vargas’s remains, which had been covered by a blanket. “We found that the uniforms have the names of the soldiers who had come here for this invasion. All these men are apparently Cuban soldiers. I’m betting they were under the command of your old friend, Major Cortez.”
Wilson focused on the subject at hand. “So, they’re Cubans. That would explain a lot. How many?”
“Based on the uniforms, one hundred and eight. There were spare policemen’s uniforms, too, so it looks like these men were our phony police in Toyotas.”
“We saw a lot of Toyotas here the day we reconned the place.”
Lightchurch’s phone beeped, and he picked up the call. He spoke for a while and then disconnected. “Good news. The police have intercepted and killed several more foreigners at the election commission. They’ll have the election results soon, after nine o’clock.”
“Cubans?” asked Wilson.
“Yes. No Chinese have been seen yet. It sounds like the police are able to handle this conflict fairly well—I’m glad.” Lightchurch looked at Wilson and Madeline. “Look, you two—there isn’t anything more you can do for a while, at least. This place will
be shut down as a crime scene now. Why don’t you take a couple of hours and get some rest? That’s what I’m doing, as soon as we finish here.”
Madeline took Wilson’s arm and tugged at him. “Come on. We can go to your hotel and eat or sit in the bar at least. Try to get your mind off her.”
They drove their separate rides to the hotel. Wilson went to his room and changed into drier clothing. When he came down to the main bar, he found Madeline talking with Tim Martin, both sipping Stag beers. He joined them, but drank water until his stomach settled down.
Martin realized that something bizarre had happened. At first he asked them a million questions, but seeing their faces and getting no answers, he tried to lighten the mood. He poked Wilson in the shoulder. “It looks good for publication tomorrow, but editorial is still screwing with it.”
Madeline’s phone rang and she answered. “Oh really? Well, I’m not surprised. The details will come in the morning . . . Great. Good night.”
“What was that?” asked Martin.
“The election results are in. The National Standard Party won all the ministerial seats like last time. Senjai and the GPC lost all major contests. The commission will compile everything and have it ready for broadcast tomorrow—or whenever the TV comes on again.” She held up her fist and shrieked. Then, she shouted out to everyone in the bar. “The NSP won all seats again. Woo-hoo!”
More than half the people in the bar cheered. The few who had voted otherwise seemed stunned. “I’ll buy a round, guys. Make it a good one.” Wilson ordered Glenlivet and a club sandwich. Martin ordered more beer.
They ate and drank for an hour. Wilson had two whiskies and felt like he might survive the night. He tried to put Tori Vargas out of his mind. He couldn’t think of her, or he knew he would lose control of his emotions. It all felt surreal to him. How could that be possible?