Juan agreed with Maria’s assessment for the most part, and himself held no great love for the U.S. But while the passage of time had dulled his anger, it had done nothing of the sort inside Maria. In fact, just the opposite seemed to be true. As the beautiful young woman grew up without a father, immersed in the Cuban expatriate culture and surrounded by stories of the American treachery at the Bay of Pigs, her fury seemed to grow stronger by the day.
As a young teen, Maria Carranco had been welcomed into Omega 7 and had begun working toward the liberation of Cuba. Her early assignments were simple ones—money transfers, courier jobs—but before long her zeal and dedication to the cause had led to more significant assignments.
By the time she turned eighteen, Maria had become one of the most valued members of Omega 7, with the ability to use her dazzling beauty to insinuate herself into places no one else in the organization could.
And there was more.
Her orientation with the group had included training in weapons use, guerilla tactics and bomb making, and instructors had been delighted to discover the young woman possessed a natural aptitude with explosive devices. Their construction and deployment seemed to come as innately to her as her incredible beauty. Assignments taking advantage of that aptitude soon followed: pipe-bomb attack after pipe-bomb attack on wealthy Castro supporters.
It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that Maria came to Juan with an audacious plan: to sneak into Cuba under cover of darkness and attack the Castro government on its own territory, using Gonzalez’s speedboat and one or two of his men for transport.
Although proud of his prodigy and impressed with her dedication to the cause, Gonzalez was reluctant initially to approve the seemingly suicidal mission. Given the plan’s potential for disrupting the Cuban government, however, he eventually signed off on it, praying he hadn’t sentenced the young woman to death. Or worse.
But she didn’t die. Her first incursion into Cuba was a smashing success. Maria blew up a government building, working entirely on her own, in the dark, in Havana. And to Gonzalez’s utter shock, she managed to escape capture and return unharmed to Miami.
Over the intervening months she had returned to the island nation several times, sandwiching the trips in between her other work for Omega 7. Each time, she managed to avoid Cuban naval patrols and inflict damage on the Castro regime before escaping into the night.
At the insistence of Gonzalez and other top members of Omega 7, Maria had been limited to using pipe bombs in her domestic assignments. Utilizing more powerful explosives would result in attention the group didn’t need, and the crude bombs were more than powerful enough to do accomplish Omega 7’s goals of destruction and intimidation.
But for the Cuban missions, Maria had used C4. Where she obtained the C4 was not a question Juan had been prepared to ask, and it was something Maria wasn’t about to volunteer freely. Although unstable, the young woman was incredibly resourceful, able to leverage her extraordinary beauty in countless creative ways. Undoubtedly she had done exactly that in finding a supplier for the explosive.
And there was one more thing about Maria Carranco: she had “signed” her handiwork in Cuba using an unusual symbol, a series of three figures representing herself, her mother and her now-dead father, placed inside the semicircular Omega symbol: Ω. She had shown her “signature” to Juan just once, after her first incursion into Cuba. “I want Castro to know who is destroying his precious Communist government,” she had said proudly, her eyes bright with fanaticism.
He had warned Maria to limit her use of it to her Cuban missions. “We do not need to give authorities in the U.S. any unnecessary evidence with which to identify us,” he had said.
Maria had agreed, and Juan had forgotten all about the odd little “signature.”
Until yesterday, when he had seen it on the sheet of paper the redheaded CIA bitch shoved under his nose.
Maria Carranco was like a daughter to Juan. Her father had been a close friend and confidant, and after Jose Carranco lost his life in the failed assault on his homeland in 1961, Juan had taken it upon himself to care for Maria and her mother.
He was closer to the young woman than to either of his own children, which made what he had to say today that much more difficult.
He steeled his expression and stared the young woman down as she stood inside his office doorway. “You wanted to see me?” she said, her voice sweet and feminine, betraying none of the hardened freedom fighter Juan knew was inside.
“I had an interesting visitor yesterday.” He didn’t invite Maria to sit down.
“Really? What does this have to do with me?” Her tone was polite, almost disinterested, giving away nothing, and for the thousandth time since she was a young girl, Juan’s heart swelled with pride. He wished her father could have seen the accomplished warrior she had turned out to be.
But his pride in her was not limitless, especially not where the future of Omega 7 was concerned. Juan Gonzalez had dedicated his life to the overthrow of Fidel Castro, and he hadn’t sacrificed everything in the name of the cause to see all he had worked for vanish in a blast of C4.
“It has much to do with you,” he said coldly. “It has everything to do with you.”
24
Juan opened his top drawer and removed a sheet of paper.
The moment the CIA bitch left his office yesterday, Gonzalez had copied down she image she showed him: the omega symbol with the stick-figure drawing inside. He gazed at the paper for a moment, and then slapped it down on the desk with a loud thump. Maria jumped slightly in surprise.
“Does this look familiar to you?” He removed his hand from the paper and directed her attention to the symbol drawn on it.
“You know that it does.”
“Would you care to guess where I obtained this?”
Maria shrugged. “I couldn’t possibly.”
Juan leaned back in his chair, his hands clasped together, fingers steepled. He stared at the young woman he had grown to love.
The silence lingered. Maria stood quietly. Expectantly, but not nervously.
At last he spoke. “Have you visited Washington, DC recently?”
“Why do you ask?”
“You know why I am asking.”
Maria shrugged. “Yes,” she said simply, no trace of apology—or of regret—in her tone.
“Would you mind explaining to me why your focus has become so unclear that you are murdering executives in a small technology company we could not begin to care about?” Juan was doing his best to remain calm, but he could hear his voice tightening with rage. He had had plenty of time to contemplate the ramifications of the redhead’s visit yesterday and none of them were good.
“Could not begin to care about?” Maria raised her voice in an angry explosion that caught Juan off guard. “Maybe you have forgotten the people sacrificed by the United States at the Bay of Pigs, but I have not! I can not! I never knew my father thanks to that sacrifice!”
“Of course I have not forgotten. Nor will I ever forget. But seeking vengeance now, more than a quarter-century after the fact, will do nothing to accomplish our long-term goal of retaking Cuba. And, if you determined it was so necessary to blow up United States citizens other than Castro sympathizers, why National Circuit Corporation? What possible relevance could they have to the Bay of Pigs?”
“National Circuit Corporation supplied receivers for the GPS technology that was supposed to give the freedom fighters the edge they would need when the fighting got serious. It was supposed to allow commanders to coordinate troop movements. And if the tide of battle began to turn against our men—people like my father—it was supposed to aid in their retreat and allow them to escape the country safely.”
Maria’s voice was cold and hard, and she took a deep breath before continuing. “It was supposed to do all that. But in reality, it did none of the things the freedom fighters were promised it would do. There were not enough satellites airborne at the time to prov
ide data quickly enough. The data that was provided to commanders lagged badly and was unreliable. And people died because of it. Good people like my father, people who should never have been sacrificed.
“That is why I took action against NCC, because the passage of time has done nothing to ease the burden of guilt they, and others like them, share for the atrocity that was the Bay of Pigs invasion. I do not regret for one second taking the action I did. I would do it again.”
Juan Gonzalez stared at the young woman who had become like a daughter to him. He had heard the stories of everything that had gone wrong during the invasion, of commanders desperate for updated GPS coordinates, some of which would not come for hours and some of which would never come. Of GPS receivers that failed seemingly for no reason, leaving soldiers trapped with no clue as to the whereabouts of troop support and lifesaving medical assistance.
He had heard all the stories, many times. The failure of the new GPS technology was just one of many issues contributing to the disaster at the Bay of Pigs, and most of those who had participated in the attack and survived agreed that the GPS issue was a relatively minor one. Other failures were much more significant.
Obviously Maria Carranco had heard the stories as well, and obviously she did not concur with the general consensus. Or perhaps she had decided the retribution must start somewhere and was even now planning further attacks against others she had determined to be at fault.
Whatever, a terrible sadness clutched at Juan’s heart as he listened to Maria’s passionate defense of her actions. He had expected her to deny involvement, to claim her symbol had been misappropriated somehow, or to break down and cry when confronted with the evidence and ask forgiveness for allowing herself to get so far off-track.
None of those things had happened, however, and it was obvious none of those things was going to happen. Maria was neither ashamed nor regretful. Instead of offering excuses or begging for forgiveness, she stood calmly in front of his desk and nodded at the sheet of paper resting on its surface. “Who was the visitor that brought you the paper?”
Gonzalez considered how to proceed. His goal in arranging this meeting had been to frighten Maria, to intimidate her into ending her campaign of misplaced violence. It was too late to do anything about her destruction of NCC’s corporate structure, but by the same token, Omega 7 was in no immediate danger, either.
By manipulating the beautiful red-haired CIA agent into going to Cuba, Juan had at the very least gained his organization valuable planning time, time he could use to determine how best to shift the agency’s focus elsewhere. The agent would never escape Cuba alive, and with no way off the island it would only be a matter of time before she ended up in Fidel Castro’s clutches.
Once that happened, the CIA—and by extension the rest of the U.S. government—would be far too preoccupied dealing with the public trial and subsequent execution of one of their covert operatives to waste much time worrying about a relatively small anti-Castro group in South Florida.
Juan figured that given the CIA’s well-known reluctance to share information, even among other intelligence professionals, it was entirely possible no one left alive would even be aware of the link between Maria’s clever little symbol of destruction and the Omega 7 organization. Director Aaron Stallings had sent the redheaded bitch to Miami but that didn’t mean he had any actual operational knowledge of the case. The doomed agent had told him Stallings only sent her to speak with him because of his extensive knowledge of the workings of Castro’s administration.
So the immediate danger posed by the CIA seemed to be past.
Still, Juan knew he had to be careful how he answered Maria’s question. He could not afford to slip up and allow her to guess—or even to suspect—his prior involvement with the CIA. To do so would be to ensure his death, given her instability and her virulent hatred of all things American.
The safest course of action would be to put her and keep her on the defensive. He allowed his voice to become even chillier. “It was a young woman. A beautiful redhead. She was almost as beautiful as you. But she was incredibly dangerous. She was from the Central Intelligence Agency.”
“CIA? Why would the CIA come here?”
“Isn’t it obvious? They’ve tracked that little ‘signature’ you are so proud of back to you.”
Maria blinked in surprise. “Tracked it to me? How?”
“How in the hell should I know? But the agent came here looking for you.”
“Then why…”
“Why are you not in custody or dead?”
Maria nodded. She seemed to have lost her voice.
“Because I sent her running off in the wrong direction. I made her believe your ‘signature’ was a symbol belonging to someone else.”
She shook her head in confusion. “Someone else? Who?”
Juan smiled. He was still angry at his protégé but allowed a bit of warmth to creep back into his tone. “General Antonio Polanco.”
Maria’s eyes widened as she considered the implications of what Juan had just said. “You don’t mean to say she—”
“That’s right,” Juan interrupted, his grin widening. “She charged off to Cuba to confront the general. To apprehend or kill him. My men transported her in the boat exactly as they do you. The moment she walked away from the shoreline, they left her. I thought you of all people, given your history on the island, would appreciate the irony.”
She shook her head in amazement. “But she will never…”
“That’s right,” Juan agreed. “She will never.”
Maria’s shoulders slumped in relief and Juan pressed his advantage, his voice growing cold again. “We dodged a bullet over the last two days. We could have lost everything thanks to your rash actions. You must stop your bombing campaign against U.S. defense-related companies immediately, at least until we have succeeded in driving Castro into the sea. Once that happens, feel free to do anything you want to the Americans. But for now we cannot risk a repeat of what happened here yesterday, do you understand, Maria?”
Her face flushed in anger and she clenched her fists. “I cannot agree to that,” she hissed. “My father—”
Juan’s fury erupted. “Your father would agree with me! Your father was a patriot who gave his life to get his country back! Your father would condemn any action that puts our ultimate goal at risk. I know how your father thought. I was as close to him as any man alive, and you never even met him!”
“Exactly,” Maria said quietly, her voice strong and her eyes clear. “I never even met him.”
25
Tracie stretched and yawned, rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and glanced blearily at her watch. Nearly three p.m. She had slept for more than six hours—an eternity for a covert operative in the middle of an assignment—but it didn’t feel like it. Her body ached and her eyes wanted nothing more than to close, allowing her to drift off to sleep for another six hours.
But it wasn’t going to happen. She had work to do. She rolled out of bed and stumbled to the shower, shocking herself awake under an ice-cold spray before adjusting the temperature of the water to a more comfortable level.
After watching Polanco lift off and turn toward Cuba this morning, Tracie had shrugged her backpack over her shoulder and set off in the direction of civilization. Twenty minutes of vigorous walking later she found herself at a franchise motel that looked as though its better days had never existed. The town in the Florida Keys was not Marathon, Islamorada, or Key Largo, but rather a small village whose name she forgot the moment she saw it on a chipped and weathered sign.
But it was large enough to support a motel, and that was all she cared about at that particular moment. Dingy stucco exterior walls covered a sagging, low-slung one-story structure badly in need of overhaul, if not demolition. The handful of cars scattered throughout the pockmarked parking lot told Tracie that finding a vacancy would not be a problem.
She entered and booked a room, a little surprised that the guy behin
d the desk—a middle-aged Hispanic man who looked as tired and rundown as the establishment—didn’t even give her a second glance. She was dirty and exhausted, with no luggage and no companion, and the clerk never even batted an eye. In fact, he barely glanced at her, handing a room key across the desk with the bored expression of someone who would rather be somewhere else. Anywhere else.
Good. The last thing Tracie needed was to draw unwanted attention. She accepted the key and stumbled to her room, stripped down to her underwear and tumbled into bed. She fell asleep in minutes.
Now she showered and dressed. She wasn’t thrilled to be pulling dirty clothes back on, but at the moment, hygiene was the least of her problems. She would buy a new outfit later while preparing for what would likely be a very busy night.
She hefted her backpack and left her room. Walked to the front desk where she paid the clerk—a different middle-aged Hispanic man who looked just as tired and just as rundown as last night’s—and asked for directions to the nearest car rental agency.
The clerk counted her money, the first time a glimmer of interest had appeared in his eyes. “You need to rent a car?”
“That’s right.”
“How did you get here if you don’t have a car?”
“Magic carpet. Now are you going to give me directions or not?”
The clerk made a point of running his eyes up and down her body.
Tracie stood quietly, letting him have his moment, and then held his gaze when his eyes finally rose to meet hers.
“Turn right out of the lot and there’s a rental place about a quarter-mile north of here. It’s hard to miss. I’m surprised you didn’t fly over it on your magic carpet.”
Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set Page 63