“Do you speak English?” McGarvey asked.
“Yes.”
“Will Colonel León be returning tonight? There’s something I need to tell her.”
“I’ve not been told.”
“Can you find out? It’s important. Something she needs to know about the gold we were talking about this afternoon.”
“Stop there, please,” Gonzáles said, and McGarvey stopped a few feet away as the guard took a cell phone/walkie-talkie out of his pocket and keyed the SEND button. “Ramiro.”
The walkie-talkie was silent.
“Ramiro, this is Salvador, come back.”
At that moment, the lights on the beach went out, and Gonzáles swung his rifle off his shoulder as he fumbled with the walkie-talkie. Before he could bring it to bear, McGarvey was on him, snatching the weapon and slamming the insole of his foot into the man’s left leg, dislocating his kneecap.
Gonzáles cried out as he fell back, grabbing for the rifle, which discharged one shot, catching him under his chin, the back of his skull blowing out.
Someone came running from the west wing at the same time as what sounded like a powerful engine came to life, and the lights on the beach flicked back on.
McGarvey stepped into the living room into the deeper shadows of a corner a couple of feet away from the open slider, when a series of three explosions came in rapid succession outside in front, in the direction of the west wing. The sounds of the engine—which was likely driving the compound’s emergency generator—died, and the lights went out again.
“Salvador!” someone shouted from the corridor.
McGarvey got the impression of a hulking dark form emerging into the living room, and a second later, a flashlight came on, the beam finding Gonzáles’s body.
“Puto,” the man swore. It was Toro.
McGarvey fired two shots from the hip about where he figured the security officer’s center mass would be: one to the left of the light beam, the other to the right. Toro grunted and his pistol discharged as he was driven against the wall, and he dropped the flashlight, the beam skittering across the floor.
Someone opened fire from out front in the direction of the highway, what sounded like at least a half dozen guns, the bullets slamming into the front of the house, window glass shattering, and a floor lamp exploding a couple feet from where McGarvey stood.
The two security guards in the west wing began returning fire, the chatter of their Kalashnikovs distinct, as McGarvey, moving fast, made his way across the living room and momentarily held up where Toro’s body lay partially blocking the corridor.
More firing started up outside from farther away, up toward the highway. Kalashnikovs, which probably meant Cuban troops catching the rescue party Martínez had organized from behind.
“Otto, down!” McGarvey shouted, and he ducked back around the wall.
“Right,” Otto replied from his cell.
One of the security officers fired a long burst down the corridor. When the man’s weapon went dry, McGarvey stuck his Kalashnikov around the corner and fired a short, controlled burst. A man cried out in pain, and the firing from inside the house stopped.
Outside, the battle was heating up, the rescuers turning their attention away from the house in an effort to defend themselves from the attack at their rear. It sounded to McGarvey as if they were greatly outnumbered.
McGarvey raced down the corridor into the west wing, where at the open door to the radio room, the guard illuminated by the dim light coming from the front panel of what was a battery-driven portable radio looked over his shoulder, a microphone in his hand.
The man said something urgently as he turned around, a pistol in his other hand, but before he could fire, McGarvey squeezed off a half dozen rounds, two catching the man in his shoulder and driving him to the left, a third catching the side of his head, and at least two slamming into the radio.
The fight outside was intensifying but moving away, back toward the highway. The rescuers were sacrificing themselves to give McGarvey and Otto time to get away.
“Mac!” Martínez shouted from the sliders to the pool.
It was a boat’s diesel engine McGarvey had heard. “House is clear!” he shouted. “I’m getting Otto.”
“Move it, amigo.”
The heavy door to Otto’s cell was secured by a thick steel bolt, which McGarvey pulled back. Otto was there, a deep, troubled scowl on his owlish features, his long red hair flying everywhere.
“If something’s happened to Louise, nothing on this planet will stop me from crashing every system in this bastard of a country! I’ll drive ’em back to the Dark Ages, kemo sabe, I shit you not!”
“One step at a time,” McGarvey said, hustling Otto out of his cell and down the corridor to the living room. “First we have to get out of here in one piece.”
Otto suddenly pulled up and turned toward the front door.
Martínez was there at the open sliders. “Mac, rápido.”
“They need help,” Otto said.
“They’re dead!” Martínez shouted bitterly. “Now, move your ass!”
Otto was torn, but McGarvey grabbed his arm and hauled him across the living room, and Martínez led them in a dead run down to the beach, where they clambered aboard the inflatable and headed out toward the dark form of the fishing boat a hundred yards offshore, as the de Havilland touched down fifty yards farther out.
“The dirty bastards,” Otto muttered.
“What about the colonel?” Martínez asked.
McGarvey shook his head. “She left about four hours ago.”
“Our guys walked into a trap, and she probably set it up.”
“I don’t think so,” McGarvey said. “She wanted more from us.”
“Well, someone knew we were coming.”
THIRTY-ONE
María had spotted the bright flashes and heard the intense gun battle a couple of kilometers away from her compound, and parked now at the side of the highway behind a pair of troop trucks a few meters from her driveway, her heart hammering, she monitored the unit’s tactical frequency.
From what she could gather, they were a small specials ops unit out of the army’s Western Command, Seventieth Mechanized Division, based in Havana, but who’d ordered them out here, and whom they were engaged with made almost no sense to her. Unless she was the target.
She tried to use her cell phone to call Ortega-Cowan, but there was no signal. Nor could she reach the OD in the Operational Center.
But it came to her all at once, and suddenly it all did make sense to her. The man who come ashore with McGarvey and disappeared into the bush had mostly likely engineered the attack. It was a rescue mission that had been worked out in advance.
Even now, her people in the compound were most likely dead, and McGarvey and Rencke were on their way out to the same light plane that had landed just offshore the other night. The firefight, which had gradually moved closer to the highway—away from the house and the beach—was starting to die down, lending even more credence to her speculation.
Which left her with a problem that she would have to solve immediately. Within minutes, because whatever force was driving the special ops troops away from the house probably wouldn’t survive much longer. Most of the special ops reports she’d read—the honest ones—generally used the same words to describe the overall efficiency of the two battalions: ineficaz y inepto, “inefficient and inept,” but each truck she was parked behind held sixteen men—thirty-two plus an officer. Even inept, they couldn’t possibly lose against whatever ragtag force McGarvey’s people had managed to muster.
Rencke had not lied about the fortune in gold or about her father’s interest in finding it to help Cuba’s financial recovery—from Batista and from her father’s own destructive fascination with socialism. But if he and McGarvey were to be captured and become military prisoners, CIA spies, the trial would be short and sweet. They would be found guilty and executed.
And she would fall w
ith them. Raúl had warned her about involvement with the American who’d arrived aboard the U.S. State Department aircraft and disappeared. Find him and return him or his body. Fast.
Your father is dead, so you no longer have his protection, Raúl had warned her the afternoon of the funeral.
María switched frequencies to the Santa Cruz del Norte surveillance channel and asked for Lieutenant Vera. When he came on, he was just as helpful as usual. If word had begun to circulate that the head of DI’s Operations Division was on the way out, which was the way things usually worked, it hadn’t filtered down to Santa Cruz.
“Sí, Colonel, Station Guanabacoa has reported the landing of another small aircraft near your compound.”
“Is there a patrol vessel within reach of that location at this moment?”
“Unfortunately not within fifty kilometers. I was just about to dispatch an air asset from Playa Baracoa.” It was home base outside Havana to the 3405 Regiment, which maintained a few MiG-21Bs and -23MFs.
“Don’t,” María told him. “The aircraft is transporting two of our deep-cover spies back to Miami and then Washington. It’s important that they are not interfered with.”
“I understand,” Lieutenant Vera said, “but there may be a fishing boat involved this time. What shall we do with it?”
“Destroy the boat.”
“And the crew?”
“They’re traitors who will try to get word to the FBI that we’re sending people north. They mustn’t be allowed to live to send the message.”
“Sí, Coronel,” the lieutenant said, and he signed off.
Two shots from what sounded like a pistol came from somewhere in the woods to the left, as María switched back to the unit’s tactical frequency, and then the battle seemed to be finished. She keyed the microphone.
“Special ops on-scene commander, this is Colonel León standing by on the highway. Report your situation.”
The radio was silent for several beats, and she was about to resend her message, when someone came back. “I’ll need to confirm your identity,” he said. He sounded out of breath.
“You’re at my house, you idiot, and apparently somebody wanted to assassinate me tonight. I’m on the highway right now, parked behind your unguarded trucks.”
“Stand by.”
Still holding the microphone, María got out of the car. The night was quiet; not even the cicadas were chirping.
“This is Lieutenant Abel Cobiella, I’m the unit CO for this operation. If you’ll stand by, Colonel, we’re making our final sweep.”
“Who ordered this operation?”
“Major Ortega-Cowan. He was concerned that he could not reach you and you might be in trouble. As it turns out, if you had been at home we might have been too late.”
“Thank you for your concern, Lieutenant. I want to know about my house staff. And I had two bodyguards.”
“I’m told that your staff is unharmed, but we have found four men so far who’ve been identified as probable security officers.”
“I only have two on permanent staff, so it’s likely that Major Ortega-Cowan sent the other two. Have you interviewed them yet?”
“Negative, Colonel. They’re all KIAs. But there’s something else. It looks as if they were taken down by someone inside the house. We’re working on it.”
“That won’t be necessary, Lieutenant. I know exactly what happened and why.”
“Señora?”
“One of the two men Major Ortega-Cowan sent was obviously a traitor,” María said. “Did it look as if there was a shoot-out between them?” Once the attack from outside the house had begun, she had little doubt that McGarvey seized the opportunity to take one of them down, disarm him, and kill the other three.
“Stand by,” the lieutenant said.
Every minute of delay here and now gave McGarvey and Rencke another minute to get out of Cuban airspace. And then what? she asked herself. What next? What was her next logical move? She didn’t think her position would remain stable much longer. But like her father, she could feel gold fever coming over her. Not for personal wealth. For the people. Or that’s at least what she wanted to believe.
“One man is down just inside the house from the pool, another on the opposite side of the living room, one in the corridor, and the fourth in the radio room. So you could be correct, Colonel. But I would guess that it’s also possible there were one or more other people inside the house, who might have done some of the shooting.”
“It’s also possible that the attacking force infiltrated my compound, killed the four security officers, and when they realized that I was not home, and that their mission was a failure, they tried to leave, but then ran into your unit. Any survivors among them?”
“No, señora,” the lieutenant said. “Give us another hour to make certain that your compound is secured.”
And in that moment, María made her decision, one that she suspected would eventually put her head-to-head with Kirk McGarvey. It was a prospect she found strangely disquieting while as the same time exciting.
“Take your time, Lieutenant. I’ll spend the night in the city. You can contact me at my office when you’re finished, and I’ll oblige you to keep some men posted here until I can send out a new security detail.”
“Colonel, I’m sorry, but leaving men here is not in my orders.”
“It is now,” María said.
She got back in her car, switched the radio off, and headed back into the city, where she could find a telephone that worked, so that she could order the immediate release of Otto Rencke’s wife. McGarvey was a formidable enemy, but from what she had learned, he was a fair man. But Rencke, if he were motivated, could do much harm to Cuba, devastating harm.
THIRTY-TWO
Louise thought it had to be very late at night when she awoke from a sleep in which she had dreamed Audrey was being taken away from her because she was an unfit mother. And no matter how much she pleaded with the two child welfare officers, she knew nothing was going to work.
Someone was at the door, and she managed to roll off the mattress and get shakily to her feet, when the man who called himself Rodrigo was there with another man who she recognized was the one at the day care center and who had shot Joyce.
They had not brought her food or water, which wasn’t a good sign.
“Two against one?” she demanded. “Not a pair of balls between you?” She took a step toward them.
“Our mission has been accomplished,” Cruz told her.
Louise’s heart sank. Her dream hadn’t been so far off the mark after all. She would never see Audie or Otto again because these two were going to kill her tonight. “Goddamn you to hell,” she whispered.
“It’s not what you think, Mrs. Rencke,” Cruz said. “We’ve been ordered to release you unharmed. We’re going to drive you to the Lincoln Memorial this very moment.”
“A bullet in the back of my head and then dump my body to freak out the tourists? Is that how you sick bastards think?”
Cabrera said something in Spanish that Louise didn’t catch.
“Sí, I wasn’t exaggerating,” Cruz said. “As much as that thought has crossed my mind, because you have been nothing but a royal pain, we have our orders. You are to be set free tonight. Right now. If need be, we’ll tie you up and gag you.”
She couldn’t believe them. She’d seen the man raise his pistol and shoot Joyce, and the teacher was in all likelihood dead. For doing nothing. For simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The third man showed up. “What’s the problem?”
“She’s crazy,” Cruz said. “Thinks we’re going to kill her.”
Álvarez looked at Louise. “Not such a bad idea. But we don’t have time. Tape her hands behind her back and tape her mouth shut. I’ll pull the van around front. Be quick.”
“Bastards,” Louise croaked, and she rushed the men, nearly stumbling and falling down.
Before she could do a thing, they’d ea
sily taped her wrists together, and Cabrera held her head still while Cruz slapped a piece of duct tape across her mouth.
Otto’s sweet face swam into her mind’s eye. What would he do? What would Mac do?
Before Cruz could step back, Louise lunged forward and with all of her strength head-butted him in the nose.
“Dios mío!” he swore, a little blood seeping from his nose. He grabbed Louise’s left arm and roughly hauled her out into the narrow corridor. “Maybe we’ll say the hell with our orders. Maybe we’ll kill you after all.”
THIRTY-THREE
Martínez had gotten word to Langley that he would make a try for McGarvey and Rencke around midnight, and Marty Bambridge waited in the long, narrow operations center called the Watch, located down the corridor from the DCI’s office on the seventh floor of the Old Headquarters Building, until word came that they were safely out.
It was nearly two in the morning, and he’d been smoking heavily and drinking black coffee since he’d come in around ten and he felt like hell. Especially now, this late with no news, good or bad.
Tony Battaglia, the Watch officer, walked back to where Bambridge was sitting at a small desk just within the open door from the corridor. He was a slightly built man with a white shirt, tie loose, jacket off. The heels of his loafers were worn down, and like the other five specialists who worked twelve-on, twelve-off—usually for five or six days in a row—he looked like he was sick or used up, not enough sleep, not enough mental rest, but like he was fond of saying, “This is the greatest job in the world because we get to know everything.”
The Watch was connected by satellite feeds and highly encrypted computer links to every CIA asset around the world, plus information from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency over at Reston, in addition to most of the U.S. intelligence agencies, including the FBI. Flat-panel monitors mounted on the walls displayed just about everything that was going on just about anywhere in the world. It was this room where the raw information to generate the daily National Intelligence Estimate used to brief the president was collated.
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