She felt herself becoming queasy. The speedboat’s progress had been so fast—more than seventy miles per hour for most of the trip—that the ocean swells hadn’t been noticeable beyond a constant heavy chop. But now, puttering along at a snail’s pace, the waves felt as high as a skyscraper.
She forced herself to ignore the sick feeling in her stomach. Hopefully it would disappear shortly after her feet were back on solid ground.
Behind her, the man guiding the boat tapped her on the shoulder and grunted something unintelligible. He hadn’t spoken a word since they departed Homestead and she wondered what he wanted now. Then he gestured with his hand and Tracie saw it: the Cuban shoreline was approaching faster than she would have anticipated.
The little rubber boat glided smoothly toward a small strip of bleached-white sand. The beach was miniscule, surrounded by thick foliage and mature palm trees. Tracie wondered how often Gonzalez’s men landed their little boat here and what sort of mischief they inflicted on Castro’s government when they did. The location was hard to find, yet the silent man behind her had guided the little boat to the inlet with no hesitation whatsoever.
This was obviously not his first incursion into Castro’s Cuba.
The boat bumped up onto the beach and the man killed the electric motor. He sat motionless while Tracie shrugged her backpack onto her shoulder and stepped for the first time onto the shores of Communist Cuba.
***
With less than twenty-four hours of preparation time, Tracie wasn’t about to kid herself that she was ready for this mission. Self-delusion was the sort of thing that would get her killed.
And while covert ops required the ability to adjust to changing circumstances and to make things up on the fly when situations started spiraling out of control, as situations inevitably did, there were still tangible benefits to be gained through preparation. Those benefits were lacking in this hastily devised mission.
She walked away from the rubber boat, on which Gonzalez’s man sat as unmoving as a gargoyle, and plunged into cover of the tropical vegetation. Once certain she was out of view of the man, she stripped off her rain gear, folded it neatly, and weighed it down with a rock at the base of a palm tree.
With any luck she’d be able to locate it upon her return—assuming, of course, she was still alive after the next few hours—but if not, it wouldn’t be the biggest tragedy in the world. The prospect of spending three-plus hours getting soaked to the skin in a boat rocketing along at seventy miles per hour didn’t seem so bad if it meant she was finished with this dubious little mission inside this dubious little country.
She covered the rain gear and then straightened, checking her waterproof watch. It was ten-fifteen p.m., which meant she had four hours and forty-five minutes to complete her mission and get back here before Silent Cal in the rubber boat fired up his electric motor and putted back to his equally tight-lipped buddy on the Scarab.
Hopefully it would be enough time, but she couldn’t afford to drag her ass. She began walking as she mentally reviewed one of two maps Gonzalez had provided and which she had committed to memory. This one gave an overview of the Santa Cruz del Norte area and would be essential to her locating the home of her target, General Antonio Polanco.
If Gonzalez’s information was accurate—always a questionable assumption when working with a new or unproven informant—Tracie needed to hike west, toward the town.
This area was sparsely populated, which was presumably why Polanco had chosen it as the location upon which to build his palatial estate. Private, but still close enough to Havana to make the commute an easy one should Castro summon him.
She worked her way toward the road, which Gonzalez had labeled “Villa Blanca,” and which more or less followed the waterline. When she reached it, Tracie double-timed along the verge, keeping a close eye out both in front of and behind her for the headlights of oncoming cars, planning to melt back into the foliage when she saw them.
Traffic was minimal, though, and she made excellent time. The crumbling pavement was badly in need of repairs, but it still made a much better hiking surface than the sandy terrain, most of which was overgrown with vegetation.
Tracie pushed hard, conscious of her limited time on the island, and fifteen minutes later acquired a visual on her target’s home. Gonzalez’s crudely drawn map had been right on the money, but there would have been little chance of her mistaking the general’s residence for any other—the houses she had seen during her hike were little more than shacks in comparison to this massive, ostentatious mansion.
Still, Tracie breathed a little easier. She would be relying on Gonzalez’s second map to get around inside Polanco’s home, and it came as a welcome relief to learn that the displaced Cuban’s intel was solid.
So far.
Tracie approached, easing forward under cover of the vegetation. She swatted mosquitos as quietly as she could and wiped sweat from her eyes as she surveilled General Polanco’s home. She set her backpack on the ground and unzipped it quietly, then lifted out a pair of binoculars. Slowed her breathing and trained the glasses on the house.
The mansion was a thing of beauty, flowing and graceful, and to Tracie’s untrained eye looked like something that had been designed with an architect’s touch. Even in the States the house would have been something special, but here in Cuba, decimated as the country had been by more than a quarter-century of Communist rule, the structure stood out like a jewel among lumps of coal.
A red brick walkway ran from an oversized dock that jutted into the Atlantic Ocean—there was no boat tied to the dock, Tracie noted—all the way along an immaculately maintained lawn sloping gently up to the house. The walkway ended at a patio, also constructed of red brick pavers.
Jutting off the rear of the house onto the patio was a screened-in addition, what would be called a three-season room in the northeastern U.S. where Tracie had grown up. Venetian blinds hung from the ceiling on all three exterior walls, giving Polanco the option of lowering them when he wanted to shut out the tropical Atlantic sunshine. At the moment, all of the blinds had been raised, allowing Tracie a full view of the room’s interior.
A man sat inside it, smoking a cigar and sipping what looked like a glass of wine. He puffed contentedly and stared out at the empty Atlantic. A single low-wattage yellow-tinted bulb hung from a lamp in the corner, providing soft illumination that was probably easy on the man’s eyes but that made it difficult for Tracie to distinguish details, even with the binocs. Bamboo furniture dotted the interior.
Tracie focused the glasses on the man and studied him closely. He wore loose-fitting camouflage trousers and black t-shirt, with partially laced combat boots on his feet. A bushy moustache that had once been black but was now as salt-and-pepper as his hair sprouted under his nose.
It was General Polanco. He matched perfectly the description—not to mention the photograph—provided by Gonzalez. The snapshot was out of date, having been taken years ago, but this was definitely the same man. He was in his late fifties, but looked at least ten years younger, strong and fit and confident.
Tracie’s pulse quickened as she breathed a sigh of relief. There had been no guarantees the general would be home, and she hadn’t relished the prospect of leaving the island with her mission unaccomplished and then trying to persuade Gonzalez to transport her back here again in a few days.
She slowly scanned the rest of the house—at least the portion she could see—with the glasses. Most of the windows were dark, and the ones that weren’t glowed with the same low-wattage illumination. The lack of strong interior lighting struck Tracie as a good indication the homeowner was alone.
That was by no means certain, though. Tracie had learned from Gonzalez that Polanco was unmarried and lived by himself. She had also learned, however, that the general had an insatiable appetite for young women, sometimes entertaining three or even four pros in the same night. He was also rumored to enjoy underage girls, a fact that, if true, disgusted Tra
cie.
Well, she thought, he won’t be entertaining anyone after tonight: old, young or otherwise. He’ll either be dead or on his way to a U.S. prison.
Although conscious of the time passing and well aware that her three a.m. deadline to get off the island was approaching rapidly, Tracie was determined not to rush things. Her lack of opportunity to plan ahead for this mission didn’t need to translate into recklessness now, and she remained in her surveillance position for nearly half an hour.
During that time, no cars came or went, either on the general’s property or along Villa Blanca. The same lack of activity was true inside the house. No lights went on or off, no shadows passed behind closed shades, and no activity disturbed the nighttime stillness.
Polanco sat nearly motionless, sipping wine and puffing cigar after cigar with the look of a man content with his circumstances in life.
That would soon change.
Eventually, the general crushed his tiny remaining cigar stub in a small ashtray, drained his wine glass and rose. He turned and entered his home and closed the door behind him. A moment later the light went off behind the door.
It appeared the general was going to bed.
It was time to act.
15
Breaking into the house via the three-season room presented obvious challenges and risks. Tracie would be fully exposed as she crossed the general’s lawn, and also during the short time it would take to slice through one of the screens encircling the room.
She wasn’t particularly concerned about being seen by a passerby. There had been little vehicular traffic and no pedestrian traffic along Villa Blanca during her surveillance, plus the front of the massive mansion would shield her from view of the road.
Gonzalez had said nothing about video surveillance, and Tracie had seen no evidence of cameras anywhere on the property.
But the three screen-covered walls meant there would be nowhere to hide should the general—or a guest, if it turned out Polanco wasn’t alone—decided to take a little stroll or get up for a midnight snack.
On the other hand, the hour was late enough that the general was likely doing exactly what it appeared he was doing—going to bed. He had turned and presumably locked the door as he entered his home. And he had extinguished the interior light. And she had observed the slight but very definite wobble of a man who had had too much to drink.
All of it added up to manageable risk. Even now, Polanco was probably snoring away in his bed.
Tracie had spent several minutes of her surveillance scrutinizing the interior door as much as possible with the binoculars, and as far as she could tell it offered very little in the way of real security. A locking brass knob seemed to be the only barrier to entry. And if that were the case, it should take Tracie less than a minute to pick the lock and access the home.
Her next move now set, she prepared to break cover. But there was still one wild card that was cause for concern: a large, indistinct object she could see at the far end of the property. The object was covered in shadows, and even with the glasses, Tracie couldn’t determine to her satisfaction what it was.
That was a problem.
The object didn’t seem to be the right shape for a guardhouse, and it would be in a poor location strategically if it were. Gonzalez hadn’t mentioned anything about private security in his briefing, but how trustworthy was he, really? She wasn’t about to take anything he had said, or any information he provided, for granted.
She had to check it out herself.
She reversed course, backtracking along the side of Villa Blanca until out of sight of anyone inside Polanco’s home. Then she crossed the empty road and disappeared into the brush and vegetation on the other side.
From there, she turned and paralleled the road until reaching a point west of the mansion and, again, out of sight. She crossed the road once more—it remained empty—and made her way slowly and as quietly as she could manage, back in the direction of the house.
When the side of the mansion became visible through the scrub brush, Tracie turned north and moved toward the water. The thing that had been a vague, indistinct object from her surveillance point on the other side of the house suddenly appeared directly in front of her, and her eyes widened in surprise.
It was a helicopter.
General Antonio Polanco owned his own helicopter.
The craft was sitting in the middle of a small helipad, secured by four cables connected to iron bolts sunk into the pavement. An orange windsock hung limply a few dozen feet away, and in the starlit darkness Tracie could clearly see white markings painted on the pad.
Apparently the prospect of driving the short distance from Santa Cruz del Norte to meet with Fidel Castro in Havana was too daunting for Polanco. She wondered whether the general flew the chopper himself or whether he had his own personal pilot.
More importantly, what were the chances that if he did have his own pilot, the man lived here on the estate?
This development had the potential to change everything, and Tracie melted back into the trees to consider altering her plan. Ultimately, even if a pilot lived somewhere in or around the rambling home, her mission remained unchanged. She might have to add one step: immobilize the pilot before capturing or eliminating Polanco.
It would be a hurdle, but not an insurmountable one.
She slipped her combat knife out of its sheath and held it loosely in her left hand, then pulled the Berettta 9mm out of her shoulder rig and held the weapon in her right. Then she eased out of the scrub brush and walked boldly toward the three-season room.
There was no way to advance under cover, thus no reason to attempt stealth. If she was wrong about the general being asleep in his bed and he happened to look out a window, he would see her crossing his lawn. And if that happened, she knew she would find out about it quickly enough.
Seconds later she arrived at the screened-in room. No shouts of alarm went up inside the darkened house; no gunshots rang out in the night. She worked quickly and sliced a north to south gash in one of the screens along its aluminum frame, widening the slit just enough at the top and the bottom to permit access.
Then she placed the knife back in its sheath and slipped through the opening.
She was in.
She moved to the rear door and examined it closely. Tracie still wasn’t one hundred percent certain the general’s mansion had no electronic alarm system, and she wasn’t anxious to find out the hard way she way that had missed something. She peered through the glass in the door, looking for telltale wiring or the magnetic connections that might trip an alarm the moment she opened the door.
Nothing. It was difficult to be certain, since the general had turned off the interior light, but it appeared as though the man’s confidence—maybe even arrogance—had convinced him that no one in Cuba would be foolish enough to attempt a break-in at the home of one of the two or three most powerful men in the country.
Tracie guessed that his confidence was probably well founded. She didn’t know what the punishment would be for any peasant foolish enough to get caught attempting what she was about to do, but she assumed it would be something extremely unpleasant. And that would be nothing compared to what she would face, were she to be apprehended.
She turned her attention to the lock built into the knob, feeling exposed and vulnerable. The lock’s design was nothing complicated and it would offer virtually no resistance to a skillful and determined lock-picker, both of which Tracie Tanner was.
She placed her backpack on the floor and unzipped it slowly, doing her best to muffle the zipper’s noise. Then she pulled her lock-picking tools from the pack and straightened, turning toward the knob.
And was shocked to see the door swing open.
16
Tracie dropped her tools and brought her gun to bear, swinging it up and dropping into a crouch.
But she was directly in front of the door, within arm’s reach of a surprised General Polanco, and the older man move
d faster than Tracie would have expected. His left hand flashed out in a reflexive slapping motion and he swatted at the gun, connecting and knocking it out of her hand and across the brick floor.
The weapon clattered away and Tracie unleashed a sidekick at the general’s knee. She overcompensated for her crouch and her foot grazed the joint rather than connecting solidly.
Still, the general’s leg buckled and he gasped in pain, falling sideways into the doorframe but recovering immediately and launching himself at Tracie. His bulky body smashed into her slim one and they tumbled to the floor, rolling once as each desperately worked to get leverage on the other.
Tracie knew she had to subdue the general fast. The longer the fight went on, the more likely Polanco would be able to use his superior size and strength to his advantage. She allowed herself to be rolled onto her back, and the general reached up with one ham-handed fist to punch her in the face.
Tracie waited a split-second for his fist to pound down at her. When it did, she twisted her head to the side and lifted hard with her legs and Polanco tumbled forward, trying desperately to stop the downward motion on his punch, which was now aimed at the brick floor.
While he was preoccupied attempting to prevent a broken hand, Tracie reached up and laced her fingers together behind his head. Then she yanked hard, using his own momentum against him, and his forehead smashed into the bricks.
He groaned and rolled onto his side. Tracie scrambled to grab her gun, which had bounced almost all the way to one of the screens. She picked it up and whirled to see Polanco still prone on the floor, his hands clasped to his head in an effort to halt the flow of blood.
“Don’t move,” Tracie said quietly, her pulse pounding but her hands steady and her voice calm.
“What is the meaning of this?” the general said in heavily accented English.
“We need to talk.”
Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set Page 59