by Cliff Ryder
As if on cue, a ringtone sounded. “Secure channel. Hello, Beta,” Kate said.
“My ears are burning,” Jonas’s voice came over the line.
Kate smiled—of course he’d know they were watching; he’d certainly done enough of it himself overseeing Eastern European operations. Still, protocol had to be followed. “Report.”
“Alpha and Beta operatives entered Cuban waters at approximately 2342 hours. Although the area was supposed to be clear of government patrols, we were sighted and intercepted. Alpha deployed safely and undetected, then I stopped and let the hostiles board. After completing their search and questioning me, during which I utilized the cover story, I overheard them planning to kill me and seize the boat. I incapacitated them, transferred them back aboard their vessel, disabled its engine and left the area.”
“Thank you. That was very nice work,” Kate said.
“Ach, you are too kind. I’m slowing down—ten years ago I could have had them all on the floor in less than three seconds. I think it took me about four this time.”
Kate and Judy exchanged impressed glances. “Regardless, we’re just happy that you’re all right and that Alpha is safely deployed. Return home and prepare for the next phase.”
“Beta out.”
Kate cut the connection with Jonas and turned to Judy.
“I just hope our man in Havana does, as well.”
Once Marcus hit the water, he descended to about sixty feet, then achieved neutral buoyancy, floating in the pitch-black ocean as the yacht passed by, the pounding of its engines reverberating through his skull. He made sure his gear was intact, then uncovered his dive computer and got his bearings. When he was facing south, he activated the Torpedo 2000 Diver Propulsion Vehicle and let the battery-operated craft tow him toward his destination. After five minutes of hurtling blind through the warm currents, he turned on his dive light, which only penetrated about ten feet of dark water at this depth. For his part, Marcus kept his legs as still as possible, trying not to think about a shark attack.
It took over an hour, but at last his personal sonar indicated that he was approaching a large land mass. Marcus angled the DPV up, breaking the surface about one hundred yards from shore. Inflating his buoyancy vest, he checked the area through a night-vision monocular, scanning the brilliant white beach through the green-tinted amplified light. Satisfied he was alone, he let the Torpedo pull him to the beach, then took off his fins and ran for the jungle.
Jonas had let him off near the Matanzas province, about ten miles from its main city of the same name. Marcus removed the rest of his equipment, buried it deep in the sand and erased all evidence that anyone had been there. He slipped on a pair of cotton drawstring pants along with a loose, short-sleeved guayabera shirt and sandals. Checking his digital compass watch, he headed south again, knowing there was a main road nearby that led into Matanzas, where he could catch a bus to Havana.
The jungle was thick, but he had only gone about fifty yards when he hit the Via Blanca Highway, a well-maintained, four-lane asphalt road. Turning right, his sandals slapped the pavement as he trudged along, shoulders slumped, looking like any other weary Cuban forced to walk to his destination.
MARCUS LET GO of the outside rail of the bus and stepped onto the Havana street. He had been here for less than half a day, and already he was weary. It wasn’t a physical weari-ness, but rather an emotional one.
His tour of Cuba had begun well enough. When he walked into Matanzas, he found a relatively clean city, with several neighborhoods and business sections connected by attractive bridges. Although the buildings were mostly small, one story and crowded together, they were also neat, as were the paved streets they lined.
Asking the locals for directions, he found the bus station, and was surprised to find that he would be riding in an air-conditioned bus to Havana. The trip was very comfortable, as they passed over the Ponte de Bacunayagua, an incredible bridge built over a massive chasm. Marcus stared at the car-pet of lush, green jungle that stretched out and up the hill-sides below him.
Once they hit the outskirts of the capital city, however, things changed rapidly. Although he saw the high-rises of Havana’s financial district in the distance, all around him were blocks of crumbling buildings, their facades worn and fading, with missing windows, doors and sometimes even roofs and walls, lending an eerie, war-torn ambiance to the streets. Many buildings were little more than gutted ruins, long abandoned. Even the splashes of once vibrant paint, greens and pinks and blues and yellows, were faded and flaking away from years of neglect.
People either sat on the stoops of their houses or walked wherever they had to go. The traffic in the city was sparse.
Large buses were packed full of dozens of people, with more hanging on to the outside and riding on the roof. The old, overloaded vehicles labored to haul their human cargo around the city. No one looked particularly ill or hungry, but they also didn’t look particularly happy. Marcus saw many furtive, downcast gazes as his bus drove past slowly disintegrating neighborhoods. It seemed that everyone was concentrating on getting through the day so much, they didn’t have time to think about the future, or even what tomorrow might bring. Here and there he spotted small flashes of normalcy—an abandoned lot transformed into a working garden, laughing children darting back and forth as they played a pickup game of stickball in the street. But overall Marcus felt a sense of oppression, of needs and wants, of hopes, dreams and desires clung to until they stagnated, rather than their holders being able to fulfill their wishes.
The only people who looked even remotely comfortable were the police, who were interspersed with occasional small units of army personnel. They all looked well fed and content in their uniforms, and Marcus saw them detaining and questioning people who didn’t look as if they were doing anything wrong or even out of the ordinary. Once, as he watched two police officers interrogating a young black man, they both looked up, their dark eyes following him as if they knew something was amiss, as if they knew he didn’t belong there. Marcus didn’t drop his gaze, but stared at them until they passed out of view.
He leaned back in his seat, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. He’d known going in that things wouldn’t be pretty. While growing up, Cuba had been the subject of many conversations around the dinner table, and he had heard the arguments on all sides—capitalist, Communist and socialist. He had seen the pictures, went on the exile Web sites and even marched in a couple of lift-the-embargo protests in Miami when he had been in high school. But nothing had prepared him for actually being there, for seeing the seamy conditions that people experienced every day.
It wasn’t the fact that the neighborhoods existed, or even that the people who lived there seemed so bereft of hope.
During his years in the Rangers, Marcus had traveled to places that made Cuba look like a true paradise. He’d been to Darfur, walked through the smoldering remains of villages after the genocidal militias had swept through, slaughtering and destroying everyone and everything in their path.
At least, he thought, the majority of the Cubans still had all their limbs intact. He was also well aware that America didn’t have a glorious record of upholding human rights, either, particularly in areas where they had a vested interest, like the Middle East.
What stunned him was the idea that Castro kept claim-ing to be a progressive leader of this nation, preaching that he was helping his people in the first place, that they were still fighting the revolución despite the fact that the opposite was so obviously true. Cuba had slipped closer to capitalism as it became more dependent on tourism as its economic base. That was just fine with Marcus, since the introduction of free-market, capitalist ideas often opened doors for more democratic and personal freedoms. However, the trickle-down theory of a wider economic base improving the everyday lives of the nation’s citizens had dried up before it could even get started, leaving most of the populace still thirsty for the chance at a decent life.
Even
more amazing to him was the fact that no one had ever been able to stop Castro. Marcus knew of the many attempts to destroy the man over the decades, by the U.S.
government and others, but none had ever come close to succeeding.
It’s tempting to take a shot at him myself, he thought. After all, I’m here, and it would be the one thing no one would expect. I don’t think the home office would be pleased, however.
The bus ground to a stop at the main Havana station, and everyone piled out. Marcus took it all in for a moment, the buses arriving and departing, crowds of people swarming around them. Marcus had no desire to pack himself in like cattle on a city bus, but he knew his final destination was still several miles away.
A familiar if rough-pitched rumble echoed through the station, and Marcus turned to watch a vintage Harley-Davidson Electra Glide rumble up. Its passenger, a long-limbed young woman, got off and gave the driver a long hug and kiss before picking up a small bag and disappearing into the station. Marcus walked over to the bike.
“Very nice,” he said, checking out the motorcyle. Every painted surface of the bike gleamed. “And your friend isn’t bad, either.”
The rider polished his Ray-Ban sunglasses on his shirt-tail. “She’s not my friend—she’s my sister, asshole.”
“And she’s lucky to have a brother like you to look out for her.” Marcus let his gaze stray to the bike again. “The reason I came over is that I don’t feel like sardining it in the buses, but I have to get downtown. Could I pay you for a lift?”
“Sure, sixty pesos.”
“Whoa, man, if you’re going to rob me, then at least take me to a dark alley first. All I got is twenty,” Marcus said.
“Man, that won’t even cover my gas.”
“Yeah, but you’re already out here anyway. If you head back in alone, that doesn’t get you anything.”
The biker watched two slender women stroll by, their colorful skirts swirling around their legs. “Yeah, but I could find a fine lady who wouldn’t mind the wind in her hair as she rode on the back of my hog, either. I might not even charge her, and she’d be a damn sight better looking than you!” The stranger smiled as he spoke.
Marcus laughed with him. “All right, all right, I can do thirty pesos, but that’s it.”
The biker looked him up and down. “You got a ride.
Now, where to?”
“Take me to the Plaza de la Revolución, please.”
Damason drove through the streets in a rusty Lada, the car he was forced to use after Castro had ordered all of the more modern cars—anything European and made in the past twenty-five years—confiscated for the state’s use. He thought the faded, red, 1970s Soviet-built car he was crammed into was horrible. It puttered along on a wheezing, seventy-five horsepower engine, bald tires and no air-conditioning. Damason’s head brushed the ceiling, even when he hunched over the steering wheel, and driving on the inner city’s rougher roads, he often found himself taking more than one knock as he jounced over scattered potholes.
But none of that mattered. The message he had received told him to go to a building on the corner of Placencio and Maloja Streets. On the second floor he would find a package crucial to his upcoming mission. Damason wiped his sweating forehead on his shirtsleeve. Although his army uniform would command more respect from the local populace, it would also attract attention, and that was the last thing he wanted.
As usual, traffic was light except for the buses, and he had no problem reaching the address. Like most other inner-city neighborhoods, this one had seen better days about half a century earlier. The rows of two- and three-story buildings were barren, empty shells of their former magnificence.
Damason locked the car and crossed the street, looking up and down to make sure no one was watching him.
Checking the address again, he wasn’t even sure he’d be able to get to the second floor. He was impressed that the building was still standing, as its bottom walls leaned in different directions, half the roof was missing and the entire structure looked as if it was about to collapse the moment anyone touched it. Damason crossed the street and pushed aside a rotting sheet of plywood blocking the crumbling doorway. It fell with a damp thud on the litter-and-brick-strewed ground.
Sunlight streamed in through empty window frames, revealing what had been a large open room, perhaps a cantina or restaurant once. Now, there were just piles of mortar, broken rocks and moldy, rotting wood. A large portion of the ceiling was missing, and he saw more wreckage on the second floor. Spotting an open doorway at the back of the room, Damason walked over to find a narrow, gloomy staircase leading up. Kneeling, he saw footsteps in the dust on the steps. He cocked his head and listened, but heard nothing upstairs save the cooing of mourning doves. Selecting a fist-sized rock from the floor, he started up, testing each step before putting his full weight on it.
It looked as if the second floor had been an apartment before time and the elements had ravaged it. The remains of an iron-framed bed rusted in one corner under an ancient, ragged bullfighting poster. The hole he had seen from below had devoured a full third of the floor, leaving a yawning pit behind. The remaining boards creaked ominously when Damason stepped on them, and he knew he’d have to get what he came for and get out before the whole place came down on his head.
Edging around the perimeter, he scanned the floor and walls, looking for a loose board, a broken section of wall, anything that would give a clue as to where the package was hidden. Other than a crumbling, weakened wall above the staircase, he saw nothing out of the ordinary. He searched to the lip of the hole on one side, then went back and examined the other side, as well, to no avail.
It has to be here somewhere he thought nervously.
Damason walked back to the doorway and looked around the room again. Nothing looked any different this time around, the collapsed bed, the poster— the poster—surely that would have rotted away long ago. He walked over and examined it closely. The paper looked old, but wasn’t stained or wrinkled as it should have been if it had really been hanging there for months. He pulled it down to find a head-sized hole behind it. Banging on the sagging wall to make sure no rats were lurking, he carefully reached inside.
His questing fingers pushed past spiderwebs and flaking plaster to touch a narrow, cloth-wrapped package. After some maneuvering, he extracted the long, heavy parcel from the hole, and knew he was holding some kind of firearm.
A shout from the street brought Damason’s head up, and a burst of answering laughter confirmed his suspicion.
Creeping to the window, he peeked out to see three young men approaching his car, the only one parked on this street.
He cursed his luck under his breath. The message had been very specific, warning him that he shouldn’t be seen by anyone when he went to retrieve the package. He waited in the shadows, hoping they were just walking by, but the three circled the vehicle, peering into the windows and testing the hubcaps, prying one off with a twist and more laughter.
Damason didn’t think they’d steal the car—that was a major crime, and would send them to prison for years if they were caught—but he didn’t want to sit around and wait for them to become bored, either. He hefted the package in his hands, immediately dismissing the thought of using it as a deterrent. Glancing around the room again, he saw a long crack on the wall facing the street, running parallel to what remained of the roof. It gave him an idea.
Grabbing one of the bed frame’s iron bars, Damason worked it free and made his way over to the wall. He braced it against the crack and pushed with all his might. At first nothing happened, but then the entire section groaned, split and toppled to the street with a crash that echoed off the surrounding buildings.
Damason ducked behind the wall until the noise of the destruction had died away, then peeked over the wreckage.
Instead of chasing the three youths off, the collapsed wall seemed to have piqued their interest in the building. They were walking toward the entrance. Scowling
, he watched them skulk around the doorway. Their laughter and boasts carried up to him as each dared the others to go farther inside. Another inspiration came to him, and Damason grabbed a pebble and tossed it through the back doorway, the rock rattling down the stairway. The trio fell silent, then all of them crept through the room. Lying next to the hole in the floor, Damason poked his head through, trying to see where they were.
The three young men were clustered around the doorway.
Damason got up and tossed another rock at the door. The three whispered among themselves, then one began climb-ing the creaking steps, with the other two watching.
He crept back to the rotting wall that formed part of the stairway and listened to the slow footsteps as the boy approached. When he judged the intruder was close enough, Damason put his shoulder to the wall and pushed again.
The weakened wall crumbled and gave way, collapsing on top of the boy, who screamed briefly as dozens of pounds of mortar and dust rained down on him. The other two scrambled to assist him, shouting his name and digging through the rubble. Damason checked to make sure they were completely occupied, then slid through the hole with the package in his hands, landing in front of the doorway.
He raced to his car, placed the package in the backseat and drove away.
Damason wound through the narrow streets of Havana until he found a deserted alley. He got out, put the package into the trunk and, after another circuit of the city to ensure that he wasn’t being followed, he headed south, getting on the highway that would eventually take him past the military base at Managua. He didn’t give much thought to the three youths he had left behind. If their curiosity hadn’t gotten the better of them, their friend would have been fine. It was a minor sacrifice compared to what he had gained.
Risking pushing the Lada beyond its limits, Damason pressed the gas pedal down harder. He had to be back in the city for a rare speech that Raul Castro was giving in the plaza later that afternoon, but first he wanted to see what he had recovered, and to do that, he needed total privacy.
