Six Minutes To Freedom

by John Gilstrap

  Also by John Gilstrap

  Nathan’s Run

  At All Costs

  Even Steven

  Scott Free

  SIX MINUTES TO FREEDOM

  KURT MUSE and JOHN GILSTRAP

  CITADEL PRESS

  Kensington Publishing Corp. www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowlegments

  Prologue

  PART 1 - April 1989: “Shopette”

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  PART 2 - “No One Walks Out Alive”

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  PART 3 - Acid Gambit

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  Afterword

  Final Thoughts

  Authors’ Note

  Copyright Page

  To Anne, my beautiful bride, my sweetheart, my best friend, and simply the most extraordinary woman I’ve ever met.

  And to Joey Skinner, whose smile is sorely missed.

  —KM

  To Joy and Chris, who make every day exciting, every voyage worthwhile.

  —JG

  Acknowlegments

  So many people believed in this project. Through their support, a bit of history that would otherwise have gone unnoticed has found a voice. Our agent, Anne Hawkins, played a big role in that, as did our friends at Citadel Press. Special thanks to Steve Zacharius, who’s been in John’s corner for a long time, and to Michaela Hamilton, whose excitementand enthusiasm are contagious to everyone.

  President George H. W. Bush kept others waiting in the anteroom while he continued talking with us for nearly an hour longer than we’d scheduled. As we were discussing the military heroics that are so much a part of Six Minutes to Freedom, there came a moment when his eyes filled with tears and he rhetorically asked, “My God, where do we find these men?” There’s no answer, of course, but we traded theories, and the moment was as special as moments get.

  The meeting with President Bush never would have happened withoutthe assistance of General Brent Scowcroft, and for that and for his valuable time, we offer thanks. Similarly, Senator Connie Mack of Florida gave generously of a morning over breakfast.

  But for the intervention of Pat Barney and “Sam” Shockley, neither author would likely have ever met the other. Thanks to them, Kurt and Annie met John and Joy, and we all realized that we’d stumbled onto something special.

  Thanks also to everyone whose special cooperation helped us get this story straight: Carol and David Skinner, Charlie and Peggy Muse, Kimberly Muse, Eric Muse, Robert Perry, Marcos Ostrander, Jim Ruffer,General Fred F. Woerner, Richard Dotson, Fulo Morales, Bosco Vallarino, Rita and Alex Sosa, Roderick Esquivel, J, K, L, T, P, S, and, of course, Father Frank.

  Prologue

  The first thing Urrutia noticed was her body. It’s the first thing every man noticed when encountering Betty Fernandez, and for years she’d played it to her advantage. It didn’t matter to her that she was married, and it apparently didn’t matter to her husband that she flaunted her shapely breasts, narrow waist, and perfect hips. She liked the attention, and maybe her husband enjoyed it, too. Perhapsthere was a vicarious thrill in having a woman that other men wanted.

  Until they saw her face.

  Urrutia allowed the possibility that she might be naturally attractive,but if so, the beauty lay perfectly camouflaged behind thick layersof makeup. It was as if she’d learned cosmetology in the circus, or perhaps in a mortician’s office. The cosmetics were trowled on so thickly that they had a texture of their own. Now that she was crying, the mask had started to melt, and it had become too hideous for Urrutiato look at.

  He decided to speak to her breasts.

  “You can’t do this to me,” Betty sobbed. “What will people think? What will they say?” They both spoke in their native Spanish language.

  Urrutia tossed a quick shrug and allowed himself a smile. They sat in the opulent casino manager’s office on the fifth floor of a downtown hotel. “God only knows what they’ll think,” he said. “But I imagine they’ll say that you have a gambling problem that is out of control. They’ll say that you owe this establishment many thousands of dollars and that you steadfastly refuse to pay your debt.”

  “I don’t have this kind of money,” she sobbed. “You know that. I’ve told you that.”

  “But your husband does,” Urrutia said. “For him and his family, your debt is pocket change, a few boxes of cigars.”

  “I can’t!” she shouted.

  It was their third go-round on the same conversation, and as he’d hoped, her frustration was morphing to desperation. “Then you shouldn’t have made the bets,” he said. “The casino extended credit on the good faith that you would repay it. It is a business, Betty, not your personal amusement park.”

  Urrutia allowed himself another look at her face to witness the meltdown. It was important that the next part be her idea, not his. When he saw the realization dawn in her muddy eyes, he looked away again.

  Betty straightened her posture and rocked her shoulders back. “There has to be some way to make the debt go away,” she cooed, folding her arms to emphasize her cleavage.

  The sexual advance disgusted him. He was an officer in the PanamanianDefense Forces, not some john on the street, willing to forgive real debt for services from someone who looked like a clown-painted whore. “It’s not my money,” he said, working hard to filter the disdain from his voice. “It’s not even the casino’s money. You know that.”

  Of course she knew that. The casinos were indeed a business, purportedlyrun by the gambling commission, but the managers of record were in fact minority shareholders in their lucrative offerings. The lion’s share of profits flowed through circuitous routes into the pocketsof the man who could make or break anyone in Panama: General Manuel Antonio Noriega.

  “Tell me, then,” Betty begged. “There has to be something. Some way that I can please you and General Noriega without disgracing my husband.”

  Urrutia gave it some thought. It was almost time for him to spring his trap. “Is it true that your husband, Simon, is active in the National Civic Crusade?”

  The despair in her eyes turned to panic. “Please don’t harm him,” she said.

  Urrutia laughed derisively. “Do not worry,” he said. “No one fears the revolutionary fantasies of men like your husband. His words mean nothing to us.” Sedition was nothing more than navel gazing when the dissent remained confined within the Union Club. Rich and powerful men like Simon Fernandez were too comfortable in their wealth to risk it all by putting their words into action. The hearts and minds o
f peasantswere the real key to power, and General Noriega kept the rabble well contained.

  Urrutia leaned closer to his prey, folding his arms on the polished cherry desk. “But he knows many like-minded people, does he not?”

  The realization registered as horror. “I cannot spy on my husband,” she gasped.

  Urrutia considered that for a moment, then sighed. “Very well, then,” he said. He stood. “You leave me no choice but to call him to collect your debt.”

  “No, please.” Betty jumped to her feet and reached across the desk to stop him. “Don’t call him. I can do it. I know I can. I was wrong before.”

  “No,” Urrutia said, recoiling from her reach. “You’ve made your position known. I cannot take the risk of having you—”

  “He’ll never know,” Betty sobbed. The running mascara had turned her eyes black. “Please, I swear to you, I can do this. He’ll never know.”

  “I cannot ask you to do something you find to be objectionable.”

  Betty leaned closer still. “I know I can help you,” she said. “I hear things all the time. I can pass them along to you.”

  Urrutia held her gaze for a long moment, then eased himself back into his chair. “We’re interested in important information, Betty. You understand that, right? The money we’re talking about here—the money that we’re willing just to wipe off the books in return for your cooperation—runs to the thousands. You can’t repay a debt like that with information that I could find later in the newspaper.”

  “I understand.”

  “The type of information I want is first and foremost factual. And I want it to be unique. Do you think that you can supply that to me?”

  Betty nodded frantically, launching a tear onto the polished surface of the desk. “Yes, I’m sure I can. Simon talks all the time about his conversations.What sort of information are you looking for?”

  Urrutia thought for a moment then shrugged. “I think we both know the kind of information that we would find useful. Do I really need to go into the details?”

  Betty sat there for a long moment, clearly searching her brain for something—anything—she might know that would prove her worth as an informant. Urrutia had seen the look countless times in countless other faces, victims hoping to stave off the dislocation of another bone or to silence the screams of their loved ones. His was not a pleasant business, but it was necessary to maintain order in today’s chaotic world. It was rare in his experience to see such total capitulation after threatening to destroy something as inconsequential as dignity.

  It was only a matter of time. He would wait silently, allowing her to scour her brain for some tidbit of information that would prove her value as an informant. Everyone knew something that was useful, afterall, and the first bit was always the most difficult to extract. Informationwas like water in a siphon. Once the flow started, it was merely a matter of opening the spigot.

  It took less than five minutes for Betty’s lightning bolt of inspiration to strike. “I do know something,” she said, her voice trembling with excitement. “But first you must swear again that my husband will not be harmed.”

  Urrutia renewed his promise, and as he listened, it occurred to him that this was perhaps the best $15,000 he had ever spent.

  PART 1

  April 1989: “Shopette”

  1

  The American Airlines jet banked hard to the left, revealingthe lush jungle landscape below. Still too high to make out individualpeople on the ground, Kurt Muse could nonetheless make out the major landmarks of the Panamanian countryside. Over there, the islandof Taboga rose out of the murky waters of the Pacific. If he squinted and used a little imagination, he thought he could see the ranch his fatherhad cut by hand from the dense tangle of undergrowth. That body of water he could see in the far distance—actually, it looked more like an extension of the overcast sky, but Kurt knew it was there—was the Atlantic Ocean. It was the rare visitor to his adopted home who didn’t find it thrilling to swim in two oceans on a single afternoon.

  The floorboards rumbled as the pilot lowered flaps and slats, markingthe beginning of their final approach to Panama City’s Omar TorrijosInternational Airport. Kurt looked away from the window and scanned the faces around him. He’d made this trip dozens of times, and over the past couple of years, it seemed that each approach brought a deepening sense of dread among the passengers. What little conversationexisted on the flight—one never knew the true identity of one’s seat mate—all but ceased.

  The flight had originated in Miami, the home of shopping malls and the kind of freedom once known in Panama. Ahead lay a regime of daily oppression and humiliation. Yet, here they all were, drawn back to misery by the simple pull of home.

  Kurt had lived in Panama since he was five, the son of Charlie and Peggy Muse, whose pioneer spirit had brought Kurt and his brother and sister to Central America in pursuit of a simpler lifestyle and warmer climate. They’d found all of that, plus remarkable success in business. It helped, Kurt supposed, that the country teemed with Americans, thanks to the Canal Zone, but Charlie Muse had wanted more for his kids than a little slice of the United States relocated a thousand miles to the south. Whereas the Canal Zone kids kept mostly with other Americans and attended American schools staffed by American teachers,the Muses had always lived on the local economy. Kurt and his siblingsspent their childhoods in Panamanian classrooms, learning and playing Panamanian games with Panamanian children, easily identified in any crowd as the only fair-haired gringos in a sea of brunettes. Now, at age thirty-eight, Kurt’s towering frame made him easily identifiable from a hundred yards away.

  Kurt so wished that he could spin the clock back to those simpler times, back to the days before Noriega’s rise to power, when you could say what was on your mind without fear of arrest and torture, when people who killed others were few, and those who dared to do so were punished for their crimes. Panamanians were by nature so nonaggressiveand polite that they made easy pickings for a brutal dictator’s rise to power.

  Here on his return flight, with feet dry on Panamanian soil, the PDF sapos—Panamanian Defence Force snitches—no longer needed to keep their profiles low. Even without the uniform, you could tell who they were the instant they stood from their seats, strutting like thugs, pushingtheir way down the aisles while the other passengers hurried to get out of the way. The passengers’ fearful deference reminded Kurt of littlekids on the playground. Bullies versus victims, with no referees.

  In a month, Kurt thought, it would all be over. In just over thirty days, the people of Panama would go to the polls, and when that time came, Kurt and his La Voz de la Libertad—Voice of Liberty—would be ready for them. The transmitters were in place—cold ones, tuned to frequencies they’d never used—and poised to override the commercial stations with messages from Guillermo Ford, Roderick Esquivel, and Bosco Vallarino, reassuring the people that their leaders were ready to lead again. Caught flat-footed, there was no way that the regime would be able to stop the broadcast in time. With that kind of encouragement,maybe the population would flood to the polls. If they did, there could be no stopping the results. The PDF could intimidate a hundred people, or maybe a thousand, but if ten thousand, fifty thousand citizensstormed each polling place, the military and the police would be neutered.

  And once the people had spoken, the United States would have no choice but to protect the voters from Noriega’s retribution.

  Kurt’s dreams harbored fantasies of La Piña—the Pineapple, so named for his acne-cratered complexion—being strung up by his heels and ravaged in the manner of Il Duce in the waning days of World War II. If the citizens could cut his flesh just one time for every murder he’d committed and every life he’d ruined, even the bones would be gone by the time it was all done.

  Kurt waited for the aisle to clear before he stood. Ten rows ahead, he saw his friend, Tomás Muñoz, self-consciously avoiding his gaze. They were too close to the finish line to blow the race through some stu
pid security breach. In a perfect world, they would have taken differentflights; but a perfect world would have provided more flights from Miami to Panama City.

  It was nearly eight o’clock, and Kurt was anxious to get home. He’d left his wife, Annie, back in West Palm, caring for her cancer-riddled grandmother, which meant that their fifteen-year-old daughter, Kimberly,was home in Panama City by herself, no doubt celebrating the absence of little brother Erik, who was spending the week with his best friend. Kurt made a mental note to give her a call as soon as he got through Immigration, before he headed for the car.

  If he ever cleared Immigration. With three flights arriving at the same time, the three customs booths were completely swamped. The lines looked more like a crowd, a group of strangers awaiting their turn under the not-so-watchful eyes of a dozen machine-gun-toting PDF guards in olive-drab fatigues. Most kept their M-16s slung on their shoulders, but a few held them locked and loaded at a loose port arms. Be it ever so humble.

  Kurt tried to spot Tomás again, but the crowd had swallowed him.

  Something jumped in his gut. It was the proximity of their final goal, he was sure. After being so clandestine for such a long period, it was hard not to worry about anything that seemed even slightly out of the ordinary. Noriega had to know that the elections were their final prize, and now was the time when he would sell his soul to stop them.

  Tomás was fine, Kurt told himself. Even if something went terribly wrong, he’d be fine. Tomás was nothing if not a survivor.

  Kurt’s mind drifted back to the ominous conversation he’d had the night before with Richard Dotson. A lifer with the State Department, Richard had been carrying Kurt’s flag through every corridor in Foggy Bottom, and now that they were getting down to the wire, Richard was getting jumpy, too.