“The retreat toward the plant makes sense, now,” Manchon said.
“As does the presence of the Russian your government inquired about,” Ojeda added. “Now they ask for another thing.”
“Yes, we do,” Paredes affirmed, his choice of words very careful.
“The map.” It was handed to Ojeda by Manchon. The colonel studied it for a moment, his eyes surveying the options of advance for his new mission. “Captain, you will move the brigade as planned toward Guilermo Moncada. The loyalists will be forced to advance toward you. If not, it would allow you access to the coastal roads. They will come to a fight. As you do this, I will take three companies to Juragua. We will skirt the swamps and be in position to do as our American friends wish.”
“The swamps, Colonel,” Manchon said, biting his lip. “Even if you do not enter them, you will have no roads, no vehicles to carry heavy weapons.”
“We will carry what we need.” Ojeda looked to Antonio. “Will we not, Papa Tony?”
I had to say ‘we’. “Yes, we will.”
“Get the men ready, Captain,” Ojeda ordered. “We have a long walk ahead.”
* * *
“From the lab, sir,” the director’s secretary said as she handed over the report. “Plus a UID from Miami. And your mail.”
“Thank you, Sally,” Jones said politely, not wanting another scolding from the person who kept his office— and the Bureau, sometimes—in order. He paged through the workup the Audio/Visual Section had done on the tape. “Ninety-two percent probability that it is Castro speaking,” he read aloud. Any doubts that he or anyone might have still harbored had just gone out the window.
All the Bureau could do now was try and find the guys who had killed the keeper of the tape—and of one of his agents. That search was about to swing into high gear according to the latest briefing from the Deputy A-SAC of the L.A. office. Jones’s role was limited to waiting. He had become proficient at that over the years but had never come to enjoy it.
Miami. Jones turned his attention to that. It looked as though the tap team might have come up with something. He opened the envelope that had been sealed down in the crypto room and read the summary first. A D.C. number. A name. Samuel Garrity. Referred to... What? ‘The director’s desk’! He flipped through the transcription of the conversation, reading it only once. Greg Drummond was gonna love this. So would a jury in the near future, Jones thought, if this Garrity guy didn’t cop a plea bargain. The director wondered who the guy was to have access to the head of the CIA. He’d know soon enough, after a quick call to the DDI. Arrest warrants would be issued soon after that.
Jones dialed the DDI’s office and waited, paging through his mail as Drummond’s secretary checked to see when he was due back. He came upon the other report from Miami, the one he should have read after his wonderful night of sleep in the lounge. He scanned the summary, which always preceded any verbatim transcription of a recorded conversation, and stopped cold on the mention of a single name: Portero. Jones read further, then on to the transcription. My God. These were the murderers of his agent, and they were being... controlled?... by the same person who...
“What the hell is going on here?” Jones asked the air.
“Director Jones, Mr. Drummond should be back from the White House in five minutes.”
“Thank you.” Jones punched up a clear line. “Get me L.A.”
He looked down at the transcription again. An address, even. “Stupid sons of bitches.” Whatever was going on, however it was connected to the CIA leak, at least he knew exactly where the killers of Special Agent Thom Danbrook were, and he cursed himself for not reading the report when it came in. It would have saved L.A. a lot of legwork, among other things.
* * *
“Damn the fool!” General Alexander Shergin swore. The loudness echoed through the antiquated secure telephone system that connected the underground headquarters of Voyska PVO to Moscow.
“His intelligence prostitute no longer seems so credible,” the interior minister said from his fourth-floor office near the Moscow Ring Road. Sixty kilometers away, the commander of the nation’s air-defense forces grunted angrily.
“A fucking R-12 left in Cuba,” Shergin scoffed, using the old Soviet designation of the missile known to NATO as the SS-4. “And a new Chinese booster. Hah! And Castro has it pointed at us! What other fairy tales did the American tell?”
“None of consequence. Of course, he promised to provide evidence that his fantasy is true.” Bogdanov stubbed his cigarette out and swung his chair to face the window. Flecks of white pierced the darkness as he looked to the city center, toward the lighted ornate spires of the Kremlin. “He and Yakovlev are sitting there now trying to convince themselves that the Americans’ story is somehow possible.”
“With the evidence, no doubt.” Shergin laughed. “The Central Intelligence Agency is adept at uncovering ‘evidence.’ ”
“Yes,” Bogdanov agreed. He took another cigarette from the case on his desk and lit it, using the lighter his father had given him. He had “liberated” it from a dead German at Stalingrad half a century before. “But this will not end in their favor. The time to move has come.”
There was a surprising pause from the general. “When?”
“Before the sun rises. Before the Americans have a chance to play out this little scenario they have concocted in order to lay blame on Castro.” Bogdanov blew the smoke from his lungs loudly. “Before that missing submarine has a chance to loose its missiles. Yes, Aleksandr Dimitreivich, before that can happen, we will be in power, and the Americans will learn that even though the Motherland is blind, that does not mean even for a second that she is without strength, or without the resolve to use it.”
“And Marshal Kurchatov? He could be a problem, even from where he is.”
Bogdanov laughed. “A man with no voice is as dangerous as a child. Cut him off.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
BEST LAID PLANS
Art watched from his Bureau Chevy parked half a block from motel number three, an inviting sort of place that had no name, just a price listed in faded neon. In his early days with the Bureau, when stakeouts and tails were procedures still to be learned, he had wondered why bad guys, especially the ones who could afford not to, would choose places like these to hide out in. The answer came not in the accommodations, but in the management, who ran their businesses with a see-no-evil, hear-no-evil attitude. Literally anything could go on behind the numbered doors, and as long as the bills were paid—in cash, up front—there was no need to question the activities.
“She’s going in,” Andy Harriman reported from the passenger seat next to Art. He lifted the binoculars to his eyes for just a second and checked the front of the motel. “No visual. It’s a bad angle.”
Art took the mic from its clip on the dash. “King Eight to King Six and King Four.”
“Go, Eight.”
“Go.”
“Frankie’s in.”
Two acknowledgments of the information came immediately. Art and Andy’s unit, King Eight, had the best vantage point. They were parked on Vermont south of Eleventh, and were focusing their attention farther south on the “$22.50” motel, which occupied the southwest corner of Vermont and Twelfth. Agents Dan Burlingame and Drew Smith in King Six were a half-block south of the motel, parked in a strip mall on the opposite side of the street. King Four, with agents Tina Mercer and Tim Russo, was parked on Twelfth, nosed east toward Vermont and had a very limited view of the scene. All three units, however, could be to Frankie in just seconds.
Art cupped his left hand over the small earpiece connected to the receiver. His right hand dropped down out of habit and ran across his jacket. The move did not go unnoticed to a smiling Harriman.
“Mr. Smith okay?”
“Right where he should be, Andy,” Art said unabashedly. The ready signal from Frankie sounded in his ear. “One more time.”
* * *
“Hi!”
“No. No. Nothing like that,” Frankie responded with mild embarrassment. “I’m returning a wallet.” She reached into her oversized purse and retrieved the item. “Mr. Flavio Alicante called our store and said he thought he’d left it there.” She flipped open the “license” and avoided holding her breath. “But he didn’t give me a room number. He just gave this address.”
The clerk eyed the picture, then the lady, then the wallet again. It was bulging with something in its recesses. Money? Hmmm. “You want me to give it to him.”
Yes! “No, it’s got, you know, kinda a lot of money in it, and he made me promise to deliver it in person.” She smiled apologetically.
“Yeah. Okay.” He glanced down at the keyboard beneath the counter. “He and his buddy are in one-oh-six. Out the door and to the left.”
Frankie’s smile dissolved instantly. She dropped her bag and pulled out her shield and weapon, which was pointed upward. “FBI. Do not move, do not say anything.”
The young man’s eyes tripled in size as his hands slowly came up. “Yeah, whatever you say, lady.”
* * *
“Yes!” Art slapped the steering wheel, but a radio call from headquarters interrupted his celebration. He reached for the mic, looking right, and took no notice of the yellow taxi passing to his left and heading south on Vermont. He also missed the lone passenger in back.
* * *
“There it is,” the man said to his partner in the driver’s seat.
“Got it,” the driver acknowledged, sliding the small compact into the northbound left-turn pocket for Twelfth Street. He stopped before reaching the intersection, however, and waited for a break in the midmorning traffic coming south on Vermont. The last car in the traffic wave was a yellow taxi, which turned into the driveway immediately to his left. He cranked the wheel and followed it in. “Time to go to work.”
The man in the passenger seat undid the restraining strap on his shoulder holster. “You got it.”
* * *
“Art, we’ve got the address of where the shooters are staying.” It was Lou Hidalgo calling from the office.
“What? We just found them, Lou.” Art looked right to Andy, who returned the perplexed look. “How did you find out?”
“I can’t explain everything. It’d take too long. But listen, this thing runs deeper than we thought. Much deeper.”
Lou had full knowledge of the whole story, unlike the rest of the agents working on this. What the hell did “deeper” mean in this situation? What could run deeper? “Wait, Lou. We found them. All we do now is set up the plan to take them.”
“There may not be time, Art. A wiretap team in Miami recorded a conversation between those guys and their boss, or their contact. We don’t know exactly. But whoever it was, was sending someone out to get a tape from them.”
“A tape? We have the tape,” Art said.
“I know, but that’s not the point,” Lou explained with frustration. “The whole conversation, even the way they made contact, was set up to keep locations secret. The contact was not supposed to know where they were, but he asked directly for it, with full knowledge that they didn’t have the tape. Just a tape.”
“But why would the person running these guys break security procedures to...” Art froze with the realization.
“They wouldn’t. The shooters could have express-mailed the damn thing back to Miami faster than it would take to send someone out here to get it,” Lou said. “And with less risk. Whoever’s coming is not here to play messenger.”
“Goddammit!” Art keyed the radio. “Okay, I’ll get LAPD to seal off everything fast so our visitor can’t get close.”
“Or visitors, Art,” Lou added.
“Wonderful.” He laid the mic on the seat and pulled his earpiece out. “You listen for Frankie’s signal to close in.”
“Trouble?”
Art grabbed his cell. “I don’t know, but I want blue suits out here fast.”
* * *
“Is there anyone else in the office?” Frankie asked as she walked behind the counter, one hand grasping the clerk’s collar into a bunch.
“No, just me.”
She glanced into the small room off the office. A bed and nightstand were visible, as was an open door to a bathroom. “Anyone in there? In the bathroom, maybe?”
“No. I swear.”
The young guy was too scared to lie, she knew. They had them.
“King Eight,” Frankie said, tilting her head slightly downward toward the mic behind her lapel as she looked across the parking lot and down the street toward her partner’s car. Another vehicle passed in front of the office window, catching her attention before she could finish the message. When she saw who was in the backseat, the word she uttered was not the one those listening were expecting.
* * *
Drew Smith lowered the binoculars, a questioning grimace on his face.
“You see something?” Dan Burlingame asked, his third doughnut of the morning half-gone.
“I’d swear the guy riding in that cab was the reporter.”
“You mean Sullivan?”
“Yeah,” Smith answered. “And a car going north turned into the motel right behind. Two guys in it. Nice clean compact.”
“Are you sure about the reporter?”
“Not positive, but it’s still a lot of traffic for that place this time of day.”
Dan Burlingame nodded, swallowed, and reached for the radio.
* * *
“Sullivan?” Andy repeated with surprise.
Art looked right as he waited for the Metro Division lieutenant to come to the phone. “What?”
“She says Sullivan just pulled in in a cab. Into the lot.”
“Shit!” Art dropped the cell and reached for the mic, but King Six’s call cut him off.
“King Eight, this is King Six. We may have some movement. One cab and one blue compact just entered the lot.”
Art looked back to the motel, following the cab Frankie had mentioned as it came to a stop in the lot. Behind it, pulling into a space, was another car with...
“Damn!” Art dropped the car into gear—you never waited with the engine off while covering another agent— and keyed the mic. “King Four and Six, move in! Now! Watch occupants of blue compact! Possibly armed!”
Art turned the wheel hard into traffic lanes and stepped on the accelerator but had to brake almost as soon as a wave of cars shot by, the lead vehicles honking at the intruder into the lane. Over a block away King Six was moving to pull out of the strip-mall lot, Drew Smith weaving the car through pedestrians and other vehicles. Only King Four, sitting on Twelfth Street, was able to move immediately toward the motel, but neither agent had been in a position to see what the others had. They were going off only the barest instructions.
In just more than a blink of an eye, with careful planning being tossed aside because of circumstances’ intervention, almost everything that could have gone wrong had.
* * *
George Sullivan handed the driver a twenty and looked toward the two-story motel, then to the key in his hand. Behind him there were car doors closing, but he was focused on what he had to do. On where he had to go. Straight ahead. The same number as on the key tab. Room 106.
Were the guys who wanted to kill him in there? He’d tried to convince himself that they wouldn’t be. They would have taken off by now, right? Hanging around would be stupid. All the indicators told him that he’d be able to open the door, find the room empty, and rummage around to see if there was anything he could use to make a story. All the logical things told him that.
And then there was the annoying voice from a higher plane of realization that kept saying “Yeah, right!” And it said it louder.
But he couldn’t listen to it. There was no other way to prove himself. Giving up the bottle
, if he could keep it up, was a personal victory. He needed a public one to make his life worth living. He had to have this story, had to find out who the killers of Portero and the FBI agent were. And the path to that end lay a few feet away.
* * *
The barest opening in traffic appeared. Art didn’t hesitate. He floored it and squealed the tires into the right lane. In the distance he saw the red and blue grill lights of King Six coming in the opposite direction. To his right and ahead, agents Russo and Mercer had stopped their car on the street, the motel building preventing its being seen from the lot. They were advancing along the north wall toward the lot.
That left only...
“No!” Art screamed. What are you doing?
* * *
Frankie Aguirre made the decision in a split second, based upon factors that she could not control but had to confront. There were two known murderers less than fifty feet from her, and a man they wanted to kill was heading for their room. She had no two-way communications with the teams watching her backside and had no way of knowing when they would get there. Quickly, for sure, but quick might not be fast enough. Frankie knew that things were gong to start happening in seconds.
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