by Cliff Ryder
His tone made her snicker, and he chuckled, too. “We’d better go.” He started the engine and piloted the raft across the water to the pickup zone, where the rest of the team waited for them. As he grounded the raft, Jonas noticed that there was the same number of men as had left. “What happened?”
The commander’s face was grim. “Safedy was gone when we got there. We must have just missed him. Come on, we have to go if we’re to stay on schedule. What happened at the mill? We saw what was left of the place from a mile away.”
Jonas filled him in on the ambush, and what he had done to break it up. Reinmann was impressed. “Good work, and good thinking, especially considering that we used the tertiary route, which is why we took so long. But you had things all wrapped up here anyway, eh?” He clapped Jonas on the shoulder. “Time to go. Everyone aboard.”
“Right, I’ll be with you in a moment.” Jonas got to his feet and hobbled over to Marisa, who was standing off to one side as the rest of the team piled aboard the raft. For a second he was seized by the insane idea to bring her along, but he knew that could never happen. “We have to go.”
She nodded. “And I will never see you again.”
“I don’t know. I will try to come back, but I need to know where you live, so I can find you again.”
She whispered the name of a village in his ear. “It’s on the north coast, not far from here.”
“I will come back and find you, I promise.” His back to the other men, Jonas grabbed her hand and held it between both of his. “Thank you—for everything. I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“Adios, señor.” She stepped back, as did he, their hands being the last things to separate. He limped back to the raft and took his position, ignoring the sly looks and teasing whispers exchanged between the rest of the team. The commander signaled them to move out, and they paddled away, with Jonas taking one last look at Marisa before she vanished into the jungle.
WITH A START, Jonas came back to the present, glancing around guiltily.
He had tried to go back, but his duty had kept him with GSG-9 for three more years, and he wasn’t able to return until 1976. He had found the village, but the people there said Marisa had gone to Havana, even then a bulging city of more than two million people. Jonas hadn’t given up easily. He traveled to the city as often as he could, and searched for her day and night. But he had never seen Marisa’s face again, until the first time he had seen Damason’s eyes in the surveillance photo taken while he had been in Spain. Then, for a brief moment, he had seen the eyes of the woman he’d fallen for in one night staring back at him again.
Jonas had been involved with his share of women over the years, but none had ever taken the place of Marisa in his heart. He supposed that it was partly a fantasy that he clung to, an idealized image of the woman who had fought beside him that night.
The faint sound of a boat’s motor carried to him on the quickening breeze, and Jonas took out a small LED key-chain and held it above his head, activating the bright light that could easily be seen on the ocean. Three short flashes, three long, then three short again. He was answered in kind, and the boat revved its engines and headed to shore.
It was another cigarette boat. The cockpit was crowded with two men, a woman and two little girls, about ten or eleven years old. The man behind the wheel jumped out and met Jonas in the surf, holding out his hand. Keeping his left hand behind his back, Jonas took a small money belt off his shoulder and tossed it to him. The man opened it and examined the bundles of hundred-dollar bills inside. Nodding, he signaled to the other man, who motioned for the woman and her children to get out onto the beach. Jonas waded out to the side of the boat and addressed the woman in Spanish.
“I believe you have something to show me.”
She looked puzzled for a moment, then nodded and opened her small purse, pulling out a slip of paper and handing it to him. Jonas unfolded it to reveal one half of a torn picture, showing her on a city street. He brought out another slip of paper and unfolded it, revealing the two girls as they had walked up the stairs to her former home in Cuba. He brought the two halves together to form a complete shot that Marcus had taken with his spy-glasses in Havana. He compared the woman standing before him with the woman in the picture, and was pleased to find that she matched, as did as the girls.
“Come, I’m not going to hurt you. I was a friend of your husband’s.”
The worried expression on her face lessened, and she helped her daughters into Jonas’s arms, letting him carry them ashore. The girls stood on the beach, giggling as the surf tickled their legs. Jonas told the woman to wait up by the dune in the distance, and he would be along shortly. She nodded, gathered up her girls and headed up the beach.
Jonas heard one of the girls ask, “Are we in America, now?”
“Yes,” she replied, sounding very tired.
Jonas turned back to the smugglers, who had been paid a hefty fee above their usual rate to insure that these three got to Florida safely. “You were never here, and this never happened. I’ll be watching over them, and if I ever hear of anyone asking questions, I’ll come and find you, and you won’t like what happens next. Now, get out of here.”
The smuggler clutched his payoff and splashed back to the cigarette boat, started its engines and roared off into the night. As Jonas waded back to shore, his cell phone surprised him with its insistent tone. He unclipped it and checked the incoming number, then flipped it open. “I thought I had turned this damn thing off,” he said.
“We always have ways of making you talk, Jonas.” Kate’s voice filled his ear. “Do you have a minute?”
“Actually, Kate, I’m sort of busy right now—”
“Don’t worry, this won’t take long. Look north.”
Jonas turned, and saw a familiar figure walking toward him out of the darkness. Kate appeared on the beach, clad in black slacks, a white blouse and a black suit jacket. “You saw the whole thing, didn’t you?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Saw what? As far as I’m concerned, that boat was just dropping off three tourists after a night ride. I have no idea where they came from, and I don’t care, either.
That’s not important right now.” She turned and looked out over the rolling ocean.
“Oh?” Jonas turned to stand beside her, looking out at the water, as well.
“I know what happened down in Paradise, and I know about your relationship to Valdes. It took a while—and one of our guys accessing GSG-9’s classified files—but don’t worry, their secrets—and yours—are still safe.” She glanced back at the trio. “They’re his wife and children, correct?”
He nodded. “My family. I couldn’t let them stay down there, not after what had happened.”
Kate touched his shoulder. “I understand, but I wish you’d come to us—there might have been something we could have done to help.”
“Like what? Use the forces of an ultrasecret black-ops department to smuggle three ordinary people out of Cuba?
I think Room 59 has better things to do,” Jonas said.
“Perhaps. Still, it all turned out mostly all right.”
“Except for we were left behind.” Jonas stared off to the south, down the beach and beyond.
“Jonas, Damason made his choice, just like you had to make yours. I am sorry it didn’t work out better, but you did the right thing, no matter how it must have hurt at the time.
But what you said to Marcus’s mother was also true—he sacrificed his life to save thousands—just like the sacrifice you made.”
“And in doing so, I took away a father and a husband to a woman who will never know why he died. I stood by and watched my own son die, Kate. Hell, I ordered Marcus to pull the trigger. They’ll never know that. But I know and I have to live with it for the rest of my life.”
“That’s the high price of the work we do. In the end, we have to look at the bigger picture, and hope that the sacrifices we ask of one or two people prevent the sacrific
e of hundreds or thousands down the road. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but we’re going to keep trying—and I hope you will, too.”
“Does that mean you haven’t come down here to fire me?” Jonas asked.
“On the contrary—your position is waiting for you when you’re ready.”
Jonas glanced at the woman and children waiting for him. “I’ll need another few weeks to get them set up, and then we can talk about it.”
“No problem. You should get going. I’m sure they’re hungry and exhausted.”
“Right.” Jonas began trudging to the hill, then stopped and looked back at her. “Kate?”
“Yes, Jonas?”
“Thanks—for the time, and the space. And for believ-ing in me.”
“Good operatives are hard to find—I didn’t want to lose you, too.”
He nodded and continued walking to the group on the dune. A moment later, the Jaguar started and drove away, carrying the three recent arrivals to the start of their new life.
KATE WAITED until the sound of the sedan’s engine had died away, then hit a button on her phone. “Midnight Team, stand down. I repeat, stand down.”
At three points along the beach around her, clumps of sand and grass rose off the ground as three men dressed in black, lightly armored stealth suits from head to toe, their faces covered with high-tech masks, appeared from conceal-ment. Each was armed with a high-powered rifle. They had watched the entire exchange.
“Gentlemen, thank you, you are relieved.” The three men melted back into the darkness, and as Kate watched them go, she couldn’t help but shiver. If she had given the code word, the trio would have killed everyone on the beach except her without hesitation. Operating in groups of three, five or seven, Midnight Teams were Room 59’s last resort, a cleaning squad of unparalleled, ruthless efficiency.
“Jesus, was bringing a team out here really necessary?”
Jacob rounded the dune and walked up to her. “I told you Jonas wasn’t up to anything that hinky.”
“I was ninety-nine percent sure—but after what happened down in Paradise, I wasn’t going to take any chances on that other one percent.”
“You aren’t going to let the higher-ups know about this, are you?”
“This was personal for Jonas, not business. I figure it’s on a need-to-know basis, and they don’t need to know. However, we’ll keep Jonas at his desk in Europe from now on.
Come on, I’d like to get at least a few hours of sleep before the next operation.”
“Kate?”
“Hmm?”
“Would you really have given the signal if you thought what he had been doing was wrong?”
She turned to him, her face expressionless. “Jake, you should know me at least that well by now.”
His eyebrows raised. “Yeah, I do. Sometimes you are one stone-cold woman—that’s for sure. Come on, let’s get out of here. I never did like the beach at night.”
Jacob didn’t offer his arm, as he was too busy checking for any possible threats in the area. The two of them walked back to their vehicle, leaving the deserted beach and the incoming waves that were already removing any evidence that anyone had been there at all.
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Document creation date: 07/30/2012
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