by Cliff Ryder
He tucked the guard’s pistol under his arm, grabbed the EMP gun and set it to overload, then launched it down the hallway. There was a loud pop and suddenly all of the lights in the house winked out.
Jonas readied his guns and walked to the archway that led to a landing overlooking the large, two-story, cathedral-ceilinged living room. He heard Theodore bark commands while he tried to raise someone on his suddenly useless cell phone. Peeking around the corner, Jonas recognized one of the men as the African who had helped load the Stinger crate on the yacht.
“Goddamn it, I can’t get a hold of anyone. Get some night vision over here—the bastard’s probably already split. And find out what the hell happened to our dogs! You two, with me,” Theodore shouted.
That’s a ballsy move, Jonas thought. Although if it was three on one, they’d still stand a good chance of capturing or killing him, most likely the latter. As for himself, Jonas had no wish to get involved in the barely controlled chaos of a firefight, particularly in a confined space. Now that he had paused for a moment, the graze on his back throbbed and his vest and shirt were sticky with blood. He needed a way to even the odds quickly. Taking a quick inventory of his equipment, he came across the large canister of tranquilizer he had used on the dogs, and the plan immediately came to him.
The two men were already at the foot of the stairs, backing each other up in a crisp leapfrog pattern. First one would advance, then crouch and cover while the other one moved forward. Jonas didn’t have time to admire their synergy, as they were already halfway up the stairs. He set the nozzle to wide-pattern spray, laid the canister down at the top of the stairs and let it rip.
The cone-shaped cloud of heavier-than-air tranquilizer drifted right into the faces of the men. Before they could react, they leaned groggily against the wall or the balustrade, then both slumped to the floor, unconscious.
“It’s just you and me now, Theodore,” Jonas called out, his modulated voice sounding eerie in the cavernous living room. Three pistol shots answered his taunt, followed by the thump of running feet. Jonas popped up to try a shot, but the larger man eluded his sight again as he rushed out the main doors. Jonas considered pursuing, but he had bigger problems than the mercenary returning with reinforcements.
If he did contact his employer—assuming he really was working with the PMC—and they pulled their forces, the men left on the island would be without any reinforcements.
It would be the Bay of Pigs all over again.
Staying low, he trotted back through the bedroom to the sunroom. The entire house was still dark, and he shimmied down the wall without a backward glance and disappeared into the forest. He heard shouts from the front of the house as he hit the beach, ran to the raft and dragged it into the surf.
Jonas gave the boat one final push and threw himself aboard just as bobbing handheld lights pierced the darkness on the shore.
How in the hell did they find me so quickly? he wondered. He triggered two shots from his pistol, hoping to keep their heads down, then remembered the silencer on the end and cursed. Stabbing the electric start button with his finger, he felt the engine shudder to life. Twisting the throttle, he sped away into the night, ducking low as muzzle-flashes flared from the beach, the shots smacking the water around him. Jonas returned fire, knowing it was futile, and thanking his luck that they weren’t carrying automatic rifles.
The sudden scream of an outboard motor as a speedboat raced out of a hidden cove told Jonas his situation had not improved. The boat sped by, and Jonas saw a flash of muzzle-fire as someone took a shot at him with a short-barreled submachine gun. Fortunately, they were moving much too fast for the bullets to even come close, but if the pilot had any idea what he was doing, Jonas knew he’d get it right on the next pass.
Jonas opened up the motor’s throttle, trying to get far away from the beach while the speedboat came back around.
When at last he was caught in the fixed spotlight of his pursuers, he pushed the raft’s tiller hard left and dived over the right side, letting the Atlantic waters close over his head as the speedboat roared past to crush the raft without stopping.
Damason leaned back in the passenger seat of the 1961
Chevrolet flatbed truck his commanding officer had assigned to him for the duration of his mission. He tried to relax. With Lopez at the wheel, they traveled down the highway that ran from Havana through Matanzas and into the province of Villa Clara, where Raul Castro’s first stop was scheduled, a visit to the sugar and tobacco plantations.
The trip of about two hundred miles would take over three hours in the old vehicle, which Lopez was unwilling to push above about fifty-five miles per hour. They were going to be cutting it close as it was, and this wasn’t going to help matters. After Damason had been treated like a pack mule by that arrogant blond mercenary, he had been escorted back to his own boat with a minimum of conversation, save a warning to be sure to launch the flare once the assassination was completed. “And if you fail, you might as well turn that rifle on yourself,” Theodore had told him matter-of- factly. “As I understand it, it would probably be quicker than going through what you’d endure in your own prisons.”
“I will do my part. Just make sure that your men are ready on your end,” Damason had replied.
Once on his boat, they had sped back to the dock, and then through the quiet streets to Damason’s headquarters. There he had collected the carefully wrapped rifle and left instructions for the men who were to handle things in his stead while he was away. He also left an itinerary of his trip that would be completely void if the next seven hours went according to plan.
But as hard as he tried to focus on his approaching task, Damason couldn’t get the face of the European arms dealer out of his mind. It was like he knew me from somewhere, he mused. Which is impossible, of course. Still, I would have liked to know what was going through his mind at that moment.And yet, for some reason, he also looked familiar to me.
Sergeant Lopez, who had been very quiet all during the boat trip back, as well as the ride out of the city, cleared his throat. “Is there anything you’d like to go over regarding our mission while we have the chance?”
Damason turned to his subordinate, grateful for the interruption of his troubling thoughts. “Yes.” He unfolded a satellite map of the sugar mill and spread it out on his lap.
“Raul will be touring the sugar mill that has been converted to producing alcohol from cane juice. Of course, security will be posted around the building, as well as in the perimeter. I have placed Gonzago here.” He tapped a large cluster of trees that would give anyone in them an unobstructed view of the front of the large processing buildings. “I have manufactured evidence of his involvement with the CANF
exile group, and will denounce him as a traitor to the revolution, should the operation go wrong. I will maintain my story of having discovered the assassination plot and trying to stop him before he could attempt it. Either way, you will be backing me up, both as a rear guard and a witness, to confirm my story.”
“And afterward?”
“All I know is that outside forces are poised to land on the island once they’ve received confirmation that our target is truly dead. My contact has told me that there are other people in the armed forces who will join this revolution, but we have been kept out of communication with each other, so that if one cell was compromised, it wouldn’t lead to the capture of the others. They will block communications between loyalist units and also keep the local militias pacified so that they will not rise up and fight us. The paramilitary forces will strike near Havana and move to seize the capitol building. Once we have that, we can establish the military junta until a new government that is truly of the people can be created.”
At least, that is what is supposed to happen, Damason thought. He knew there were hundreds of things that could go wrong, and each one could have a snowball effect on the entire process. But regardless of the final result, he believed the one thing that must happen t
o bring any change was the removal of one of the men who claimed to have brought it to the people all those decades ago. Damason might not get his shot at the real head of the Communist snake, but assassinating his brother might accomplish the same result, by removing Castro’s successor.
Damason kept repeating that simple goal as he stared out into the darkness, coming ever closer to the dawn of a new era for his country.
“He’s where?”
Kate winced and adjusted the sound on her earpiece.
Using a thermal-tracking satellite, she had been ghosting along with Jonas as he had infiltrated Castilo’s beachfront home. Although outwardly the picture of calm, her heart was in her throat when she was forced to watch, helpless, as Jonas went down as a flurry of gunshots sprayed through the air from a man in the bedroom doorway. When he turned the tables on that same person seconds later, the three cyberjocks cheered and pumped their fists in the air. They all saw him take out the two other men and exit the house, only to be waylaid by the speedboat on the ocean, which forced him overboard and destroyed his raft. Kate had then called Karen and informed her of his current location.
“Beta is fifty yards from the stern of the boat, so please let the rest of your team know to stand down—the last thing we want is a friendly-fire casualty. You might also want to have a couple of people there to assist him.”
“Affirmative,” Karen replied.
Kate heard the message go out, and tried not to tap her foot as she waited. She picked up her cup of jasmine tea and brought it to her lips, only to find that it had gone cold during Jonas’s snoop.
The cell phone’s sensitive microphone picked up running feet, and the authoritative timbre of Jonas’s voice as he snapped out orders. “Head to Cuba at top speed.”
She heard a rustling, and then Jonas came online. “This is Beta. The Miami contact is terminated. Repeat, the Miami contact is terminated.”
“What happened?” Kate asked.
“He had more guts than brains. He tried to tackle me on the way out, and was shot by his own security personnel.
Theodore got away, unfortunately. I left the site, but was attacked by a speedboat. I evaded them in the water until they left the area, then swam back to our yacht.”
Kate heard Karen’s voice in the background. “We’re heading due south at twenty-three knots. Did you know you’re bleeding?”
“Yes, it’s a graze. Please get some peroxide and bandages. You’ll have to put a temporary dressing on it. If you can, seal it against water, too.”
“How about I just simply heal you completely while I’m at it?” Karen said.
Kate heard an indrawn hiss of breath. “Beta?”
“I’m here. The important thing is that the incursion into Paradise is supposed to happen later this morning—
apparently they’ve been waiting for an event that would bring one of the Castros out of the capital city, and it’s happening as we speak. Valdes is the catalyst—he’s going to try to kill Raul Castro later this morning. We’re heading down there at top speed, so if Alpha isn’t moving, he needs to get his ass in gear and meet me so we can stop this. Do you have a fix on Damason’s position?”
Kate relayed the question to the cyberjocks, who put a large map of Cuba up on the big screen. “Signal is weak but steady. Currently he’s traveling due east, on the A1 highway through the Matanzas province. Possible destinations include the airport at Santa Clara, or the city of Sancti Spiritus, both in the adjacent province of Villa Clara.”
“Both good guesses, but right now, that’s all they are.”
Jonas ticked off numbers on his hand. “It’s going to take us probably two and a half to three hours to get down there, and that’s assuming Alpha acquired a fast enough boat to get us back ashore in time. Put up a map of Villa Clara Province, particularly the north shore.”
Kate did so, zooming in on the coastline of the Cuban province, and as she did, it also appeared on a monitor on the yacht. Jonas grunted with satisfaction. “At least there’s plenty of small islands to hide in and around—that should cut down on the chances of the border patrol finding us.”
Kate caught a signal from KeyWiz. “Marcus is on his way. That should shorten your time considerably,” she said.
“Yes, now all we have to do is find a needle in the Cuban jungle. As soon as you’ve pinpointed their exact location, text me the coordinates.”
“You’ll have it.”
“All right, it’s been disinfected, salved and bandaged, so you’re ready to go,” Karen said in the background. “I won’t tell you to go easy on it, since you won’t, but that should see you through.”
“Thanks. Primary, I’ve got to get ready. Is there anything else you need from me?” Jonas faced them again through his tiny screen, pain and fatigue drawing his face tight.
“No, Beta, you’re cleared to go. You know that you both have permission to terminate Valdes. Use whatever force you deem necessary to stop him.”
Jonas visibly deflated for a moment, and Kate thought he was going to pass out. “Beta, are you all right? Do we need to call in someone else on this?”
As quickly as it had happened, the moment passed, and he was the quintessential hardened operative again. “Negative, Primary, I’m on it. Besides, there is no one else. Acknowledge your message—any necessary force has been approved. Beta out.”
Jonas cut the connection, but not before Kate spotted what she thought might have been the gleam of a tear in the older man’s eye. Before she could comment on it, Judy was on-screen.
“Kate, I think you should take a look at this.” She brought up another screen, this one showing a map of the Caribbean Sea. Cuba was featured in the middle, with the various island nations all around it. “We’ve been trying to find out where this force might be located, thinking perhaps they’re coming together on one of the other islands, since there are several that could be potentials in the area. But nothing indicates that anyone has been amassing men and equipment anywhere nearby. There’s nothing in the Bahamas, Jamaica or Haiti, which would be a poor staging ground anyway. Nor is there anything on the mainland, either in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico, and of course, I cannot see anyone being crazy enough to launch from Florida.”
“So while we’ve found out that a force is poised to strike, we haven’t found any evidence that they even exist?”
“Not in the traditional battlefield-encampment sense, no.” Judy zoomed in on the map of Cuba, which now included the shipping lanes. “A better possibility would be that, with the recent increase of tourism in Cuba, TEAR
might have just flown their forces in as small groups of tourists, waiting until they receive the signal to strike.”
“That makes sense. They could disperse until needed, but also take up positions around key areas in Havana and scout certain areas. They would certainly know how to elude the security in the city, and that would be the last thing the government would expect. But where will they get their equipment from?”
“From the only logical source—the harbor. El Supremo, put up that real-time map of the incoming vessels to Havana’s port, please,” Judy said.
The map changed colors, and all of the sea traffic appeared as slowly moving paths of light. Ships all over the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean came and went.
“Limit traffic to incoming to Cuba, please,” Judy ordered.
Hundreds of dots disappeared, leaving only about thirty coming from all different directions. “This is the register for the past twenty-four hours. Any one of these ships could be carrying the several thousand tons of gear and vehicles that a brigade-sized force would need to establish themselves.
They’re all registered with various Third World countries, and any one of them is coming from ports where it would be possible to load arms and vehicles aboard with no one being the wiser. In fact, it’s very possible that there is more than one ship involved.”
“Sail right into port and meet your men already there—
&n
bsp; now, that’s gutsy. Too bad their supply line is about to be cut off.” Kate opened a channel to the three hackers. “Gentlemen, I need an alert from the Cuban Border Patrol to the Havana harbor, requesting that all foreign cargo ships be detained and fully inspected, under guard if need be, and I need it inserted into their communication network immediately. For the rest of those ships, this will be an inconvenience. But for anyone carrying contraband, they’ll be in for quite a surprise. Nice work, Judy.”
“Thank you. I just hope that Jonas and Marcus can stop the other part of this, or else we’re going to be seeing a very different headline on the morning news.”
True, and we’ll also have failed to stop what will most be a senseless slaughter, Kate thought. She banished the bleak thought from her mind and raised the three hackers again. “Once you’re done with that, I want someone to find out exactly where Raul Castro is going to be this morning.”
Marcus couldn’t help feeling pleased at the approving once-over Jonas had given the speedboat he had acquired from the Marina Hemingway in Havana. “If that doesn’t get us there quickly, I don’t know what will. Good job.”
The watercraft in question was a brand-new thirty-nine-foot cigarette boat painted in elegant darts of white, light blue and black, with inboard twin Mercury six-hundred-horsepower fuel-injected engines. Marcus had just shrugged modestly and said, “No problem.”
It really had been easy. Marcus had taken a walk along the marina, which was crammed with a wide array of foreign yachts, including several superyachts anchored offshore.
Strolling along until he had found an unattended boat that suited his needs, he jumped in, hotwired it and set off.
Guided by the downloaded patrol information from Primary, he avoided most of the border patrols, and even when one spotted him and tried to pursue him, he just pushed the throttle forward and left them eating his wake. Now they were refueling at the Deep Water and taking on the necessary gear to make their second incursion into Cuba.