RW15 - Seize the Day

by Richard Marcinko

  “Better put your oxygen mask on before you come down,” she whispered to Trace.

  While the ladies were engaged in chemical warfare, Doc and his date hoisted a few in the name of Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway—his connection to Cuba predated the Revolution—was as much a drinker as a writer, and the two devoted fans of literature followed closely in his footsteps as they surveyed the slightly dowdy though well-preserved bar where he had allegedly completed many of his drinking masterpieces.

  Doc spiked his Scotch with large amounts of water and ice, but made sure to ply MacKenzie with rum and Cokes that were very heavy on rum, getting her as sloshed as possible.

  “Can you dance?” she asked as the waiter brought another round. Where most Cubans’ English deteriorates in inverse proportions to the amount of liquor they drink, MacKenzie’s got better. Her Cuban accent faded and a distinct midwestern twang entered her tongue.

  “I’m not much of a dancer,” said Doc.

  “We should dance.” MacKenzie got up and took his hand.

  “There’s no dance floor,” said Doc.

  “We can make our own, come.” She wrapped herself around him and began rocking back and forth.

  “Maybe we should go somewhere else,” suggested Doc.

  “A wonderful idea!” MacKenzie let go, raising her hands excitedly. “Your hotel is only a few blocks away.”

  “I meant a better place to dance.”

  “We can dance there, no?”

  She flashed her best bedroom eyes. Doc didn’t want to go back to the hotel, since Trace wasn’t there, and he was worried that MacKenzie might somehow find out.

  He also didn’t want to go back because he valued his marriage . . . and his life. Some lines can’t be crossed, even in the name of duty.

  “There’ll be plenty of time for that,” he said. “First. Show me the sights.”

  MacKenzie frowned, but quickly regained her enthusiasm.

  “The sights! Yes!” She pulled him from the table toward the door. “Let’s get a taxi. We’ll see the nights. The sights. At night. Night sights.”

  “Why don’t we take a walk around?” said Doc.

  “We’ll walk on the beach! Come on.”

  MacKenzie sobered up as they walked out of the bar, and Doc went on his guard. He thought she was being genuine—but it had been quite a while since anyone had tried to pick him up, and now he wasn’t sure whether he was being played. He didn’t have his radio and wasn’t wearing a bug. Mongoose was watching him somewhere but he wasn’t sure how close he was.

  “Let me check on my boss,” he said as they came out of the hotel. “I want to make sure she’s OK.”

  MacKenzie clapped his clamshell phone closed as he opened it.

  “Don’t use your cell,” she told him. “It goes through the Cuban phone company. They make up dummy charges. The socialists ripping off the idiot capitalists.”

  “I don’t mind,” said Doc, growing more suspicious. “I’m not the one paying.”

  “No, no, no. No. She’s fine. Look, there’s a taxi. Come on.”

  Mongoose had followed them out of the bar and got close enough to see Doc’s worried expression as they got into the taxi. He grabbed his bike, then called me to tell me what was going on.

  “I’m not sure where I’m going. I’m on the bike—we’re heading down toward the old harbor. I’m about a half block from them. I don’t know what’s going on. Humpty Dumpty had a funny look on his face.”

  “Maybe something he ate didn’t agree with him,” I told Mongoose.

  “It looked more serious than that.”

  “Shotgun, you awake down there?” I asked.

  Shotgun being Shotgun, he answered with a mock snore.

  “What’s up, Dick? Why’d you wake me up?”

  “Real funny, asshole. Get on your scooter and go back Mongoose up.”

  “You sure?”

  “Get your ass in gear.”

  “Halfway there.”

  The guard took a quick turn around the rest of the addition, then headed upstairs. Trace and Red made their way downstairs to the maze of offices used by the elected officials and their staff. Trace led the way, their path guided by my miner’s flashlight. Avoiding the main corridor, which was covered by a motion detector, they threaded their way through the narrow passages until they came to the cabinet secretary’s office.

  Trace made quick work of the locks. She checked the door at the inner office for electric current—a telltale sign of a burglar alarm. When she saw it was clear, she nudged the door open, not entirely trusting the electronic gear. But the room wasn’t wired at all.

  They checked the desk. The bottom drawer was locked by a combination lock similar to a safe’s. With the help of the stethoscope, Trace had it open inside of three minutes. Aside from some papers and certificates, the drawer was empty.

  Red had stopped riffling the drawers on the other side, examining a paper instead.

  “What are you doing?” Trace asked.

  “This is a list of criminals of the state,” said Red. “They’re all politicians.25 They’re going to be arrested and executed when Castro dies. Look at what it says – eliminate.”

  “We don’t have time.”

  “This is important.”

  “It’s not what we’re here for.”

  Red was wearing a miner’s-style flashlight on her head. When she looked into Trace’s eyes, she nearly blinded her. “This is important. This is valuable.”

  “Watch your light, for christsakes.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Take pictures,” Trace told Red.

  “I can use the copy machine. It’ll be better.”

  “Go.”

  Trace, annoyed, went through the rest of the desk. The DVD wasn’t there. Nor was it in the two file cabinets nearby. The document of state enemies to be killed was nearly fifty pages long, and Red was still copying it when Trace finished.

  “Come on, let’s go,” said Trace.

  “Don’t be so testy.”

  “Fuck yourself, testy,” said Trace. “We have to finish before the guard makes his next round. Kick butt and let’s go.”

  Red continued to copy the pages.

  “Let’s go!” hissed Trace.

  “Relax. I’m almost done.”

  “Forget almost.”

  “What’s bothering you?”

  “We’re running late.”

  “Something else is bothering you.”

  “You’re just slow. Come on.”

  Downstairs, the guard had returned after his rounds. He and his companion got into an argument about one of the local baseball teams, and within a few minutes the second guard grew so animated he rose and started cursing his companion. Then he turned and began walking away.

  “Where are you going?” demanded the first guard.

  “Doing the rounds.”

  “It’s too early.”

  The Cuban shrugged.

  “Snow White, the guard is starting his rounds,” I warned. “Looks like the standard—”

  That was the last word I got out of my mouth. Just at that moment, I caught the shadow of something running across the yard toward the building. I rose, but I was too late to see who’d entered.

  “Trace, Red, sit tight,” I told them, pulling off my headphones. “I’ll get back to you.”

  I slid the laptop against the wall, closing the lid almost all the way to reduce the amount of light. Then I grabbed the submachine gun and hopped to the doorway.

  Was the person whose shadow I’d seen the only one who’d come in, or was he simply the only one I’d seen?

  I edged out into the hall, trying to hear any sounds below. Most likely, whoever had come into the building was a vagrant. But it could also be the police.

  Shotgun was already halfway to Old Havana to back up Mongoose and Doc. I was on my own.

  Something fell to the floor of the first floor, a rock, maybe, slapping against the concrete with a muffled crac
k.

  I eased over to the staircase and lowered myself to my haunches, trying to see below. The angle was too steep, so I started down the stairs, moving slowly but steadily, twisting my neck over the rail.

  Whoever had entered the building was moving toward the stairs. His feet began shuffling upward, moving quickly.

  A second set of footsteps fell in behind him.

  I reached the floor below the one where I’d been sitting. Slipping from the stairwell, I tiptoed through the hall to the nearest room, then went down on one knee, the staircase just in view. A faint shadow appeared, bobbing upward. It had something in its hand, a pistol, I thought.

  Raising the MP5N, I waited.

  Faithful readers as well as devout practitioners know the MP5N as a relatively quiet weapon. The sound that comes from it is more a metallic shush-shush than the loud bang traditionally associated with a rifle or other gun. Still, it’s not whisper-quiet. Someone on the street below might not hear it, but anyone in the building would.

  I’d have to grab his gun. I had only one spare mag of ammo with me.

  Whoever was coming had stopped trotting and was now trudging slowly. The shadow grew, and then a face in the darkness.

  It was a kid, eleven or maybe twelve.

  With a gun in his hand.

  ( II )

  The kid stepped off the stairs onto the landing. For a second, he looked as if he was going to grab the banister and head on up to the third floor. But instead he stopped and turned, looking right at me.

  “Okay, son,” I said, in slow, curse-free Spanish. “Put the gun down. Now.”

  The kid froze, but only for a second. Then he started to lift the weapon.

  The right thing to do in that situation, the only thing to do, is to shoot the little bastard, even if he is only eleven or twelve years old. Because he has a gun, and it’s either kill or be killed. Shoot first, ask questions—never.

  And that’s what I should have done. That’s what you should do if you find yourself in a similar situation.

  But instead of doing the smart thing, instinct took over and I threw myself forward, flying across the ten or twelve feet between us like a rocket leaving a launch pad. I hit the kid square in the chest. The gun went flying, and so did we, falling down the stairs into the kid’s friend, a girl nine or ten. We tumbled down the stairs together, smacking our heads against the wall and steps.

  The gun tumbled down with us, landing right next to the boy. Fortunately, he was so stunned that by the time he went to grab for it, I had it.

  No, it wasn’t fake. That would put a nice little bow on the story, but this isn’t a story with a lot of ribbons.

  The gun was a .38 caliber revolver older than me, let alone the kid. But it was clean, freshly oiled, and the bullets I took out would have put very nice holes in my carcass.

  Trace and Red had just closed the door to the auxiliary staircase when the door above opened and the stairwell flooded with light. Trace pulled Red under the stairs with her and pulled out her pistol. The guard mumbled to himself as he clambered down the steps, complaining about his companion’s lack of baseball knowledge.

  Both women held their breaths as he came down and walked right past them. As the door swung closed, Trace started to get up, but Red grabbed her, some sixth sense telling her it wasn’t safe.

  Sure enough, the door swung back open a second later; the guard had decided that a precursory glance up and down the darkened corridor—there hadn’t even been enough time for him to locate the light switch—was all that was necessary. He shuffled back up the steps, his grumble becoming less severe as he rose.

  Mongoose had done his best to keep up with the taxi with Doc and MacKenzie, but the driver had stomped on the gas as he reached Malecón, the wide street that ran around the seashore. The street was as wide and smooth as a superhighway, and with almost no traffic on the road he shot so far ahead that Mongoose lost him.

  Shotgun, approaching from the other direction, cut down a cross street, aiming to cut him off.

  “What color is the car?” Shotgun asked as he reached the intersection.

  “It’s a white cab, a legal one,” answered Mongoose. “It was moving like a bat out of hell.”

  “Don’t see it.”

  “Maybe he got past you already. He was moving.”

  “Yeah.”

  Shotgun gunned his scooter westward, the direction the cab was taking. The coast was lined with large buildings and a scattering of houses, nearly all luxurious. Shotgun followed all the way to 5ta Avenida Tunel de Malecón, a tunnel that ran under a finger of water where the sea pierced Havana’s west end.

  “Man, don’t you have a clue where they went?” Shotgun asked. “I don’t see him anywhere.”

  Worried that Doc was in serious trouble, Mongoose pedaled down near the seawall, found a place to stop, and after checking to make sure no one was nearby, took out his sat phone and called him.

  “What the hell are you doing with this gun, kid?” I asked, holding the weapon up.

  The kid made a face, then tried to duck past me and get away. I grabbed him and threw him against the wall. I like spunk in a kid—I was a pretty lively brat myself—but this was way over the line.

  “What’s with the gun?” I asked again.

  “Please, senor, don’t hurt us,” said the girl, still back in the stairway. “We were only going to kill rats.”

  “Why?”

  “For dinner.”

  It took a few minutes and some candy bars to get to the full story. The kids were cousins, not precocious lovers. The girl had found the gun in her father’s bureau and told the boy; the boy thought they should use it to kill the rats they had seen in the nearby building.

  For fun or food, I wasn’t exactly sure which. They were skinny enough for it to be the latter.

  “What’s you father do?” I asked the girl.

  “He is a policeman.”

  “You think you could shoot off a bunch of his bullets and he wouldn’t notice?”

  The kids gave me the blank look kids give every adult when confronted with their stupidity.

  “Do you have any more bullets?” I asked.

  The girl shook her head.

  “Turn your pockets inside out,” I told them.

  I’m not sure whether to blame Murphy or bad parenting, but the kids were a complication that was hard to deal with. I didn’t want to let them go, since there was a good chance they’d run home and tell the girl’s father what had happened. On the other hand, if I kept them here, there was always the possibility that their parents would wake up, realize they weren’t home, and come looking for them.

  “Where do you live?” I asked.

  The boy gave me an address so quickly it was clear that he was lying.

  “What would happen if I take you there right now?” I asked. “And told your father what you did?”

  “Please don’t, senor. Please,” said the girl.

  I looked at the boy.

  “Or maybe I’ll just take you down to the police station,” I said to him.

  His lip quivered a little, then he got control of himself and put the tough-shit look back on his face.

  “So?”

  “If I stole a gun out of my father’s drawer, my backside would have hurt for a week.” I gave them the gun back, but kept the bullets. “Get the hell out of here.”

  “What about the bullets?” said the boy.

  I threw them out of the open part of the building. “Go find them.”

  Doc may have been in trouble, but it wasn’t the kind of danger Mongoose was worried about.

  MacKenzie had the driver take them out to Laguna Salinas, a suburb of the city about fifteen miles to the west. She knew a beach there complete with palm trees and everything except for salsa music.

  They weren’t quite halfway there when Doc’s phone rang. Their agreed protocol was to act as if it was a wrong number; Doc would give his location as best he could.

  “Carlo
, where are you?” asked Mongoose in Spanish when Doc clicked on.

  “Excuse me?” said Doc in English. “Who is this?”

  “Carlo?”

  “You want directions for where? Malecón?”

  “Where on the Malecón?” said Mongoose.

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying, OK? Who are you? You’re looking for directions to the Malecón?”

  “Is that your producer?” asked MacKenzie.

  “No, it’s some drunk Cuban asking where the Malecón is.”

  “Give me the phone,” said MacKenzie.

  “No, no, let me practice my Spanish,” said Doc. “Donde esta?”

  “Havana,” replied Mongoose cautiously. He’d heard MacKenzie in the background, though the tone of her voice confused him.

  Or maybe it was just the slur of her words.

  “You go west,” said Doc, trying to give hints without being too obvious. “Then you will find the beach. I mean, Malecón. Shit, I said that in English, didn’t I?”

  Doc was stalling, trying to think of a way to give him the control words that indicated he was OK, when MacKenzie suddenly grabbed the phone from his hand.

  “Don’t bother with him,” she said drunkenly. “We should be alone tonight.”

  Then she threw the phone out the car window.

  ______

  The kids ran down to retrieve the bullets. I trotted upstairs to the laptop, flicking through the images to find the guards in the building. Trace gave me an earful when she was finally able to answer my radio call. I didn’t bother explaining.

  “You have a clear path up to King’s Castle,” I told her, using the code word for Raul’s office.

  “No shit.”

  “I wouldn’t shit you, Snow White. You’re my favorite turd.”

  “Hah, hah.”

  Trace appeared on the screen, edging around the corner in a crouch, then striding quickly in the direction of the hall that led down to Raul’s hideaway. Red was right behind her.

  “Listen, I have to move,” I told Trace when they reached the building. “I’m going to be off the air for about five minutes. Don’t move until I’m back. You have fifty minutes before the next round.”