by Don Mann
Just when Crocker’s body begged him to stop, he felt an enormous rush of adrenaline that pushed him past the second tunnel and under the Avenida Septima Bridge. It was another quarter mile to the park. His legs and shoulders burning, he glanced at the luminescent dial on his watch: 0518 hours.
He squeezed Akil’s shoulder again, and the two men pushed their bodies harder than they wanted to go.
Crocker was concerned about overswimming the rigs and developing a CO2 hit, which felt like an ice pick thrust into your brain. Reaching the bend in the river that marked the location of Parque Almendares, Akil stopped, changed bearing, and continued the leg until they neared the shoreline. Even in less than three feet of water, the SEALs were undetectable from the surface.
Akil conducted a slow, quiet recon of the beach, exposing only the top of his hooded head and mask. When he saw that all was clear, he squeezed Crocker’s shoulder four times in succession, which was the signal to climb up the rocky slope to shore.
They peeled off the Drägers and masks and replaced their diving boots with black ankle-high trekking shoes that they’d carried in their packs. Then, moving together, they removed their weapons from the watertight bags and slipped the Drägers back into the water, along with the discarded dive boots, fins, weapons bags, and masks, tied to their weight belts so they wouldn’t resurface.
Akil, in his role as point man, led the way through the park, which rested deep in shadows with secrets hidden behind Spanish moss. They passed the figure of a life-sized Tyrannosaurus rex, then entered a narrow street with large houses behind overgrown walls that ran into one another. Akil indicated “heads down,” and they knelt behind an ancient Mercedes sedan as a delivery truck with only one working headlight rumbled past and turned.
The sun was starting to rise past Crocker’s right shoulder. His heart leapt when he recognized the Clínica Central Cira García on the corner—an image he had memorized. The white-and-beige three-story layer cake looked like it had been built in the 1950s.
Akil turned right and hugged the wall along the opposite side of the street from the circular drive in front. Then he looked in both directions for oncoming traffic and motioned to the men to cross.
They passed through a modest-sized parking lot that was empty except for an old Toyota van and a newer Russian-built sedan and hid behind thick tropical foliage that covered the end of the building that had no windows. Crocker decided this was a good place for Mancini to launch the cannon-shaped RAIL, which made a loud whistling sound as its titanium claw shot into the air and landed on the roof.
As the lead climber, Crocker tested the sturdy nylon-jacketed line to make sure it was secure to the lip, then proceeded to grapple up the side of the building the way he’d done so many times on oil rigs and ships.
“Show-off,” Akil whispered as he joined him on the roof , lugging his pack, ammo, and weapons.
The four SEALs knelt on the flat surface and huddled around Crocker. He used hand signals to remind them that he and Suárez would enter the third deck and clear right while Mancini and Akil cleared left.
Suárez readied an explosive charge to blast through the door. But it wasn’t needed, because the door was wired shut. Mancini snipped it open. Heckler & Koch 45 automatic pistols and MP7A1 submachine guns ready, they ran down the concrete steps.
A split second after entering the fluorescent-lit hallway and turning right, Crocker saw a soldier in a blue-and-white uniform hurrying toward him carrying a Soviet-made SKS carbine. The man looked like he couldn’t believe was he was seeing. Before he was able to shout a warning, Crocker cut him down with three 4.65x30mm rounds to the chest.
When the guard’s SKS banged against the linoleum floor and echoed, the element of surprise was lost.
Olivia Clark lay on something soft. She wanted to focus and see where she was but couldn’t lift her head. Nor could she see, because a strong light blinded her.
Her body felt as though it had been inflated with air.
Something brushed across her arm, sending shivers up into her neck and head.
“Miss Clark, can you hear me?” a gentle voice asked in accented English.
She tried to say the word “yes.”
“Please squeeze my hand.”
As she squeezed, someone pressed a rubber mask over her nose and mouth. She inhaled something with a metallic sweetness, then lost consciousness and drifted across a black sea that seemed to go on forever.
She drifted until light broke through the darkness and she heard the sound of voices whispering in Spanish.
From near the ceiling, she looked down at heads and figures in light blue and white huddled on either side of a long table. Lights, monitors, and little tables were scattered behind them in no order. When they stepped back, she saw a woman lying on her back, with long blond hair. She was naked from her neck to her groin, which was covered with a white sheet, and she had a clear tube in her mouth.
She appraised the young woman’s smooth pale skin and the contours of her breasts and stomach, then realized she was looking at herself, or someone who looked just like her.
A male doctor wearing a face mask stood to the right of a table covered with stainless steel instruments. Behind the table hung a thick blue curtain.
The doctor gestured to a female doctor who was looking at a machine with glowing numbers.
Olivia watched as the doctor pressed two fingers into the flesh on the right side of her abdomen, beneath her diaphragm and above her stomach. Then he used a little sponge to paint iodine on her skin. He stopped, placed a hand on her forehead, and grew still, as though he was saying a prayer.
When he finished, he nodded to a female nurse, who grabbed the blue curtain and pulled it aside with a metallic squeal. On the other side sat another long table, occupied by a man with sallow skin, covered with a blue blanket and breathing through a tube.
The doctor turned to him and pulled away the blanket, revealing catheters in the man’s neck and groin. Then a nurse placed a scalpel in the doctor’s white-gloved hand and he started to cut into the man’s flesh.
The blade made a slanting incision just under the ribs on both sides of the abdomen that extended up over the breastbone. It passed through a layer of skin, white muscle, then pink flesh, and deeper through darker stages of red to dark red and almost brown.
The male nurse helped the doctor attach a circular clamp that pulled the man’s abdomen wide open and exposed his organs. Then the doctor carefully placed several metal clamps over arteries and veins to stop the blood flow to an organ that had a rough nodular surface.
He handed the scalpel back to the nurse, who set it on the little table and replaced it with a clean one.
The doctor turned, leaned over Olivia, and started to cut.
Sadness came over her as she watched from the ceiling. She wanted to beg him to stop, but the command from her brain didn’t seem to reach her body. Or did it? Because suddenly the doctor stopped and looked up as though he was going to address her. Instead, he turned to a woman in a white blouse and black pants standing at the door and shouted something in Spanish.
Crocker had entered eight rooms along the right side of the hallway, most of which held sleeping patients, and reached a double door, which was locked. His heart beating hard, he reared his right foot back and kicked it open. Immediately a woman charged at him, screaming. He shoved her away with his left arm so she fell back and hit the wall.
“Where’s the American girl?” he asked, grabbing her roughly by the jaw. “¿Dondé está la niña? ¡La niña Clark!”
“¡No puede entrar!” the woman spat back.
He didn’t see the scalpel in her left hand. As he leaned over, she reached up and cut him across the chin.
Crocker elbowed her, causing her head to snap back, and she lost consciousness. Crouched and ready in case someone else entered, he quickly taped her mouth, wrists, and ankles. He rose and checked the double doors to the operating room on his right. They were locked. So h
e took three steps back, lowered his left shoulder, and crashed through.
Blood spilling from the wound to his face, he confronted five shocked people in surgical masks—two doctors (a man and a woman) and three nurses (one of whom was a man). Seeing that he was armed, several of them raised their hands over their heads, and all of them backed away to the wall.
Breathing hard, he evaluated the situation in an instant: the two patients on separate operating tables—Olivia Clark on the one in front of him and the darker-skinned older man to his left. Both were connected to monitors, breathing through tubes, and had incisions in their abdomens, though the man’s was much bigger and wider.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the male nurse duck behind a monitor and dash toward a fire alarm switch on the wall.
“¡Pare!” he shouted, training the MP7A1 on the nurse.
The nurse continued, so Crocker squeezed the trigger and cut him down, splattering blood against the wall and over the dark-skinned man on the operating table. One of the women screamed.
“Quiet!” Crocker growled. “Another sound or sudden movement and you’ll all be dead! ¡Muerto!”
The male doctor nodded vigorously; others started to cry and pray out loud.
Crocker removed the handheld from his pants pocket and spoke into it urgently: “I need help at the east end of the hall. I found her.”
His mind moved fast, trying to ascertain how to get Olivia out safely and deal with the people in the room.
“Is that Ivan Jouma?” he asked, pointing to the man on the operating table with a clamp holding his abdomen open. “Is that the man known as the Jackal?”
The male doctor shrugged.
“You speak English?”
“A little, yes,” the doctor said through the white surgical mask.
Crocker ripped off the mask. “Is it Ivan Jouma, or isn’t it?”
“It is,” the bearded doctor said. “We had orders to do this. It wasn’t a choice.”
Crocker crossed to where Jouma was lying, removed the forced-air blanket, and ripped the tubes out of his mouth, stomach, groin, and arm. The female doctor gasped.
“He’ll asphyxiate,” she said in accented English, shooting him a hateful look. “Because of the anesthetics, he can’t breathe on his own.”
“Good.”
“It’s not good. No.”
She lunged forward and retrieved the breathing tube.
Crocker stopped her. “You want to die for this criminal?” he asked her.
The woman stared at him through black-rimmed glasses and shook her head vigorously. “No. I have a family.”
“Then sew the girl up. Quickly!”
She turned to the male doctor and started to stammer. “He…Dr. Ramos…He only started to make the initial…t-transverse sub-subcostal…incision, but because of the location I don’t know if the sutures will hold.”
“How deep is it?” Crocker asked.
“How deep is what?”
“The incision, goddammit. How deep?”
“Only as far as the skin and rectus sheath.”
“Then staple her together,” Crocker ordered. “She’s coming with me.”
The two doctors moved toward the operating table, mumbling to the nurses in Spanish. Crocker, who didn’t trust them, watched carefully as they prepared to close the incision.
Suárez entered, crossed to him, and whispered in his ear, “We’ve got to go, boss. Two guards are down. Manny and Akil are holding six people in a room at the other end of the hall.”
Crocker pointed his elbow at the table where the doctors were working on Olivia. “They’re closing her up now.”
“Is that the Clark girl?”
“Yeah. And that’s the Jackal.”
Jouma made a painful choking sound and stopping breathing. His face froze in an awful grimace. Crocker checked his pulse.
“Dead.”
“Excellent,” Suárez said. “I hope he burns in hell.”
“What have you given her in terms of anesthetics?” Crocker asked the female doctor.
“Fentanyl and naropine,” she answered.
“I’m gonna need a thick robe to keep her warm, slippers, a cap of some kind, morphine for pain, and antibiotics to guard against infection. I’m also going to need a laryngeal mask so we can remove her breathing tube. Do you have one?”
“I think so.” The woman bit her lip nervously. “But they’re in another room.”
“Close by?” Crocker asked.
“On this floor.”
“Okay.” Turning to Suárez, he said, “You go with her.”
They left together. Crocker watched the male doctor staple the three-inch-long incision shut, spread local tissue glue over it, and cover it with white gauze and tape.
The doctor warned, “You have to keep her dry and avoid sudden movements. Get her to a hospital as soon as possible.”
Crocker continued to scan the room with a straight finger over the trigger, measuring each second in his head, expecting Cuban soldiers to burst in any minute. The male doctor smeared antibacterial cream on the cut across his chin and covered it with a gauze bandage. Then Suárez and the female doctor returned with the supplies.
“You found the LMA, good,” Crocker said. “Now hand over your cell phones.”
Suárez collected them in a plastic bag. Simultaneously, the female doctor removed the breathing tube from Olivia’s throat and inserted the laryngeal mask, or LMA, which would allow her to breathe on her own until the anesthetic wore off.
Satisfied that it was working, Crocker spoke into the radio: “Manny, we’re moving. Lock the people in, take their phones, warn them not to try to leave for thirty minutes, and meet us at the stairway.”
The male nurse helped Suárez transfer the still-unconscious Olivia to a gurney.
Crocker faced the Cuban doctors and nurses and warned, “I have men guarding the building, so stay here and don’t move for thirty minutes. If you do, they’ll shoot you dead. After thirty minutes, you’re free to leave.”
He and Suárez wheeled Olivia out, then inserted a metal pole through the door handles to bar it from the outside and met Manny and Akil at the stairway. Because of the gurney, they elected to take the elevator. The ground floor of the clinic was completely quiet and the front door locked.
Crocker grabbed Suárez and pointed to a small park across the street. “Go locate the driver. His name is Flores and he should be driving a blue-and-white van with ‘Vizul’ painted on it. Tell him to pull into the driveway so we can load the girl.”
“Will do.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Opportunity does not knock, it presents itself when you beat down the door.
—Kyle Chandler
Crocker was standing beside Olivia, monitoring her breathing, when he saw Mancini in his periphery, pointing to the clock on the wall: 0628. He nodded. Precious time was slipping past. He knew that if they didn’t get out of there soon, they’d be screwed. Looking through the glass front door, he saw Suárez running back.
“What happened?” he asked.
“The van’s not there,” Suárez reported, out of breath.
“You sure?”
“I checked all sides of the park. There’s nothing there. No vehicles.”
Crocker slapped Akil’s shoulder and pointed to Olivia. “Watch her.”
He dashed out the door into the clinic parking lot and found a faded silver 1992 Toyota Previa van in the corner under a tree. The driver’s-side window was broken, so he reached through and let himself in. Using the expertise he’d gained as a wayward teenager, he quickly hot-wired the engine, which clicked in a steady rhythm, indicating that the timing belt needed replacing or the transmission was screwed up.
Crocker put the van in first, spun it around into the circular drive, got out, and helped load Olivia in. Her temperature and pulse felt normal. They carefully laid her across the rear seat. Akil knelt beside her.
“Keep monitoring her vita
l signs,” Crocker instructed. “If anything changes, let me know.”
“Roger, boss.”
“We going to the airport?” Mancini asked from the middle seat.
Crocker steered the van onto a sleepy residential street green with lawns and palm trees as he considered. “Probably not a good idea, since the local contact didn’t show,” he said. “The Cuban authorities might be waiting for us. Let’s get out of Dodge and head toward the coast.”
“East or west?” asked Suárez from the passenger seat. “East will take us over the bridge into old Havana.”
“West is closer to Florida, correct?” Crocker asked.
“Yeah. And it’s the direction we’re headed now.”
“West is good.”
“Then what?” asked Akil.
“Who the fuck knows? Keep your weapons out of sight and try to look inconspicuous.”
“Now that we’re here, let’s find out where the Castro brothers live and kick their asses,” Akil suggested.
Suárez said: “Great idea.”
Crocker found Akil’s face in the rearview mirror and grunted, “Keep watching the girl and keep your big head down.”
The Toyota puttered down a stately avenue with a divider in the center featuring elaborate curved street lamps. Behind walls and gates on either side stood large old houses. Most of them looked like they could use a coat of paint.
“This area is called Miramar,” Suárez explained from the passenger seat. “Back in the day, it’s where wealthy people lived. Most of these houses were taken over by embassies and Cuban government agencies.”
“Won’t this shitbox go any faster?” Mancini asked.
“Forty seems to be its max,” Crocker groaned back.
Traffic was sparse and most of the cars were old—Chevys, Fords, and Buicks from the 1940s and ’50s and several Soviet-era Lada sedans, jeeps, and wagons. When they passed a red-and-white car with elaborate fins, Akil asked, “What’s that?”