24 Declassified: Storm Force 2d-7

by David S. Jacobs

  No one could be allowed to get too close to him emotionally. He avoided making friends with colleagues and associates and others in the profession. The time might come when operational necessity would force him to put them in danger or even sacrifice them to gain an objective. He dared not risk having his judgment clouded by the bonds of friendship, fearing it could compromise the clear-thinking objectivity required of him as commander.

  He himself had killed on behalf of the cause, having personally slain a number of men and women. Some were traitors and double agents, others merely hapless types whose removal was deemed necessary by Havana.

  He'd looked his victims square in the face when shooting them at point-blank range, not flinching when struck by blood spray, brain bits, and bone fragments.

  In the course of his long career, he had ordered the deaths of dozens more, rarely if ever giving a second (or even first) thought about it. His peace of mind was untroubled by compunctions about having carried out his soldierly duties. A revolutionist must obey orders without question.

  He was a hard man, not given to self-doubt or second thoughts. The revolution justified all.

  Yet now he was a worried man. Not for himself — never for himself — but for the cause.

  Seated behind the desk in his office in the showroom of the Supremo Hat Company, he chain-smoked a succession of the little brown cigarillos he affected. He was unsure if the smoking was easing his tension or increasing it.

  Even here, in the matter of smoking, his revolutionary fervor came into play. Back home in Cuba, he'd enjoyed the finest cigars. Compared to them, these cigarillos were only so much dried horse droppings.

  Now, of course, he couldn't smoke those fine Cubanos, not without violating his cover. His mission required that he sanitize himself from all contact with the home island. His connections would have easily allowed him to procure a steady supply of the finest Cuban cigars. But he denied himself even that little luxury, for fear of compromising his cover.

  Here, Cuban cigars were contraband; their possession was a violation of U.S. law. A little thing, but attention to detail often made the difference between concealment or exposure.

  It was a sacrifice, a hardship, for a man who knew and savored the finest in cigars. Yet he continued to smoke these detestable cigarillos, puffing away, filling his office with stale clouds of smoke.

  His desktop ashtray was littered with cigarillo butts. One lay smoking in the ashtray, while another was wedged in the corner of his mouth. He'd set down the first for a moment and forgotten it, lighting up another and going to work on it.

  He had a troubled mind. He was being tossed and gored by a two-horned dilemma. A product of the shadow world of false fronts and double identities to which he'd devoted his life.

  * * *

  The problem was, how far could he trust Beltran?

  The Generalissimo was a fabled figure in the spy world. Back when Monatero was a rookie, a raw recruit in communist Cuba's intelligence service, the phantom spymaster's exploits were already the stuff of legend. As Monatero rose through the ranks, earning ever-higher security clearances that allowed him entree into the deepest secrets of Havana's spy system, his insider's knowledge had only burnished Beltran's achievements with a brighter luster.

  It was a measure of the trust that Havana reposed in his fidelity and ability that Monatero had been designated as the contact for Beltran's ongoing operations in the United States. Even in the top ranks of Cuba's intelligence corps, few were aware that Beltran was still actively engaged in operations in the homeland of the counterrevolutionary Colossus of the North.

  This ultrasecret professional association — his and Beltran's — had resulted on a number of occasions in Monatero's putting the Supremo cell's resources at Beltran's disposal. Due to the paramount operational principle of compartmentalization, Monatero's agents had carried out their tasks without knowing that they were performing at Beltran's behest. They were unaware of his very existence, or at least of his role as invisible puppet master pulling their strings to carry out sensitive missions for Havana.

  Only Monatero, commander of the cell, was privileged to have that knowledge. And yet even he had never come face to face with Beltran. Never met him in the flesh.

  Had no idea of what he looked like, or any other details of his cover or operations in the Gulf Coast, except for those few scraps of hard fact he had managed to piece together over the years in the course of carrying out Beltran's orders.

  To Monatero, Beltran existed as no more than a cleverly disguised fax message, an encrypted e-mail, or, at most, a voice that came to him over the phone. Sometimes, rarely, Beltran found it necessary to initiate telephonic communication with the spy cell commander.

  Such rare encounters could hardly be called conversations. They consisted of Beltran passing clarifications or special instructions that needed to be conveyed in a timely manner.

  At such times, Beltran spoke through some kind of electronic distorter that not only disguised his voice, but digitized and reassembled it so that no identifiable voiceprint could be taken from it.

  Voice patterns are like fingerprints and DNA, each one is individual, unique, and belongs solely to the speaker. Should Monatero's cover ever be blown, his cell penetrated or communications surveilled by NSA or the like, the opposition would be unable to sample Beltran's voiceprint for their records.

  Beltran was always prepared with the recognition codes and passwords supplied to him and changed daily by Havana. These passwords and codes were his sole and singular badge of identity.

  Remarkable measures, taken to protect the identity of a unique asset. They worked: the proof of their efficacy was Beltran's continuing success in the spy game, when even most of the experts were unsure whether the Generalissimo was alive or dead.

  The system worked; Monatero had never thought to question it. Until now. Because Beltran had committed the Supremo cell to an extraordinary risk level based solely on his say-so.

  This was how the system worked, how it had always worked, but never before had the stakes been so high.

  * * *

  The Supremo cell had been uninvolved in today's dawn assault on Colonel Paz.

  Uninvolved was an understatement. Monatero himself had been in the dark about it.

  None of his people had participated in it. Indeed, he would have appreciated some advance notice of the strike, rather than having it fall on him like a stone dropping out of the sky.

  He now knew, on the basis of information gathered from some of his sources and from Beltran's subsequent actions, that the attack had been orchestrated by none other than the Generalissimo himself.

  Confirmation of his darkest suspicions on that score had come thanks to Beltran's communiques that had reached him earlier today. He had ordered Monatero to put three of the cell's best field men under his command: Rubio, Torres, and Moreno.

  Specialists in violence and sudden death.

  Their mission: the abduction of Raoul Garros.

  Monatero had obeyed, of course — as always. As per standard operating procedure, the assignment was handled so that Monatero's men were unaware of the identity of the man for whom they would be working.

  This was accomplished easily enough, the trio being equipped with special cell phones and a specific set of new recognition codes and passwords. They would never meet Beltran or know of his participation or even existence; all they knew was that they'd been assigned by Monatero to another Havana agent, a phantom figure whose identity was top secret and must not be revealed, even to them.

  Their dealings with their new temporary commander would be conducted via the cell phones. They'd carried out similar missions in the past; this was nothing new to them. They knew how to follow orders.

  But Monatero was appalled by the mission.

  * * *

  Getting into a rumble with Venezuela's Paz was regrettable but acceptable. These things happened. Monatero knew that Paz and Beltran were partners in some di
rty business: drug dealing, weapons and people smuggling, murder. All for the cause of the revolution. A regrettable necessity and hazard of the profession.

  Raoul Garros, however, was a whole different order of being. He was a public figure, prominently featured on society pages and the lighter side of local television news shows. He was glamorous, dashing, rich, and handsome; a playboy. Telegenic. He'd have made good copy even if not for his engagement to Susan Keehan.

  But his romance with the Keehan heiress catapulted him to new heights of celebrity. Snatching him would make not only national but international headlines. Worse, Susan Keehan's uncle, the Senator, was not unfriendly to the revolution and the Cuban cause. Why risk alienating him? He and his brother, Wilmont, the girl's father, would make bad enemies.

  Well, the question was academic now. The thing had been done. Monatero only hoped it could be handled without becoming public news.

  Most worrisome of all, he was unsure if this was a Havana-mandated operation or if Beltran had come up with it on his own. Not only the Supremo cell but Cuba itself had been put into an extraordinary state of risk. Stratospheric, dizzying.

  All on the say-so of one man: Beltran.

  Yet that was how the system had been set up by Havana, Monatero's supreme masters. It was the home island spy chiefs who'd invested such extraordinary powers in the Generalissimo, their master spy. The setup had been designed for fast action, bypassing the red tape ("red," indeed) and delay associated with going through clandestine channels to get clearance from Havana.

  The flaw, perhaps fatal flaw of that system was now apparent. Ultimately, it all depended on the reliability and accuracy of Beltran's judgment. And — honesty? Depth of revolutionary commitment?

  Monatero, used to working in the dark, for once longed to contact his superiors in Havana. But Beltran had specifically forbidden him to take such a course, enjoining him to maintain a blackout on communications with the Cuban high command.

  Ordinarily Monatero would have accepted the dictate without question. Now, though, it increased his anxiety, deepening his ever-growing suspicions of the man. He wanted validation, assurance that his chiefs back home were apprised of the situation and approved of it.

  He was seriously considering disobeying orders and contacting Havana.

  Yet it was his business and duty to maintain revolutionary discipline and follow orders without question. His unease was worsened by being pinned down here at the command post, waiting for Beltran's next communique. Whenever that came. If ever.

  * * *

  Beltran, the much-vaunted Generalissimo, had made three serious if not potentially fatal mistakes. At least that was how Colonel Paz saw it.

  The first, and least potentially disastrous slipup, was the use of Beatriz Ortiz as part of the assault on Paz.

  For Paz knew her. Beatriz had recently operated for a time in Venezuela, in the hinterlands of the Orinoco rain forest, participating in a terror campaign against the wealthy, hidebound owners of the estancias, the estates, the sprawling ranches and plantationlike farmlands that had been cleared out of the jungle and employed countless numbers of campesinos, peasants, to do the donkey work on near-starvation wages.

  The land barons would never reconcile with the new Chavez regime; they were the most ultra of the ultraconservative counterrevolutionary faction.

  So it was better, according to Caracas's lights, that they be done away with, liquidated, and the survivors frightened away from their holdings and into exile.

  This would be accomplished by the use of radical militias and death squads, operating in-country, living off the land, and covertly supplied with food and arms by the government. The great estates could then be broken up and redistributed to the peasants, further ensuring their gratitude and dependency on President Chavez's program of twenty-first-century socialism.

  It was the kind of operation that was tailor-made for the likes of Beatriz Ortiz, who specialized in revolutionary activities in agrarian and rural regions, as she had done so notably in Colombia with the FARC militia.

  Paz was a confirmed urban dweller by birth and inclination; his bailiwick was the cities of Venezuela. But as a top hand in President Chavez's secret police, there was little that he didn't know about the regime's clandestine activities in town and country.

  He had met Beatriz Ortiz once or twice in passing in the capital at strategy sessions for solidifying the grip of the revolution in Venezuela and exporting it to neighboring countries.

  When the attack at the Golden Pole went down and he'd spotted her taking potshots at him, he'd instantly recognized her.

  Beltran's second mistake, according to the Colonel's reasoning, was in underestimating Martello Paz.

  This high-and-mighty Cuban revolutionary, Fidel Castro's favorite spymaster, had disdained the Venezuelan as a johnny-come-lately to the world socialist cause, a mere secret policeman, thug, and enforcer. A useful idiot.

  He had forgotten, or never taken notice of, the fact that Paz himself had run a vast and efficient spy system, one using a legion of informers, double agents, and operatives from all levels of society, from shoeshine boys in the slums to elegant hostesses in the most exclusive salons.

  Paz made it his business to know about those he did business with. Beltran was no exception. Paz was a survivalist by nature and needed no encouragement to open a file on the Generalissimo and gather every fact he could about him and his New Orleans operation.

  He'd unearthed vital facts about Beltran's shadow organization, including the man's own tight-knit personal cadre, as well as his association with the Supremo spy cell, which he called upon from time to time for various services as required.

  Paz's spies had spotted Beatriz Ortiz coming from several meetings with Beltran; she was part of a small clique of freelance operatives that he kept insulated and independent of his Supremo cell connections.

  Beltran's third, and most serious mistake, was botching the hit on Paz and leaving him alive.

  In a sense, this could be regarded as an extension of his second mistake; namely, underestimating Paz.

  A fatal oversight, if Paz had anything to do with it.

  * * *

  Beltran wasn't the only one with an organization here in New Orleans. Paz ran a formidable machine himself.

  The Venezuelan Consulate and LAGO offices, with their vital shield of diplomatic immunity, both served as platforms for his spy operations. Yet even they had to be insulated from the down-and-dirty mechanics of violence and murder so necessary to maintain discipline and instill the respect that comes from fear.

  Those chores were handled by an independent enforcement arm, overseen by Paz himself.

  Running a death squad was old hat to him. He'd specialized in violence since boyhood days, first as an up-and-coming street gang tough, later as a police officer.

  Many were the ace murder teams he'd put together and honed to perfection.

  When first posted to the New Orleans consulate, he'd selected a group of his top killers from Venezuela to accompany him on his new assignment.

  He played a rough game. The game was always rough when high-volume narcotics dealing was involved, and Paz was in the trade up to his eyebrows — professionally and personally.

  Why, it was his patriotic chore. No government, not even an oil-rich state like Venezuela, could afford to ignore the sky-high profits generated by the drug trade. There was no such thing as having too much money.

  Besides, the narcotics trade was vital in developing contacts in all layers of New Orleans society. Remarkable, how many of the city's wealthy elite craved illicit drugs.

  Product was power, and Paz moved plenty of product. That required muscle and guns, and he had plenty of both of them, too.

  Earlier today, from his hideout at the abandoned Jiffy Pump gas station, Paz had set the wheels in motion to gather his death squad for action.

  Why had Beltran betrayed him? For his own personal profit, no doubt. That was how Paz's mind worked.
Nobody did anything unless there was something in it for him.

  What was in it for Beltran? Was he simply following orders from Havana, reflecting an abrupt and murderous turn against Venezuela?

  Not likely, not with all the free oil and free money they were getting from Caracas, thanks to Chavez's genuine admiration for Fidel Castro and the irresistible opportunity to stick it to Uncle Sam by siding with communist Cuba.

  So where was the heat coming from? From Beltran himself?

  It was possible; it was possible. Beltran was a deep player; not even his own ostensible masters in Havana could know all he was into.

  He and Paz were joined at the hip in a number of illicit operations: narcotics, first and foremost; but also gunrunning; espionage and sabotage operations; smuggling of priceless pre-Colombian artifacts and relics; and contraband shipments of oil and gas.

  Maybe Beltran got greedy and decided to X-out Paz and keep all the profits for himself. Maybe he'd sold out Paz to the American Mafia, New Orleans branch, a competitor in the drug trade. Or to a rival Latin American drug cartel.

  Why the betrayal? Paz would ask him, should Beltran be taken alive. Not a top priority for the Colonel from Caracas.

  Whatever the reason, Beltran had committed a capital crime for which there could be only one penalty.

  Cross Martello Paz, and die.

  Now, as evening came on, the Colonel had his murder team in place, staked out on a rise several blocks away from the Supremo Hat Company.

  There were two vehicles and eight men. The men were all stone killers; Colonel Paz being the stoniest of them all.

  He scanned the building through a pair of binoculars. There were two men on the roof. They tried to keep out of sight, but the parapet was low and they couldn't help but skyline above it from time to time. A couple of others were posted around the structure at street level, on the corner, and in the parking lot at the rear of the building.

  Paz lowered the field glasses. The approaching storm had brought on a premature dusk. He would unleash the strike in an hour or so, when the gloom had deepened to provide his death squad with the cover of darkness.