by Nick Cook
A man wearing a white short-sleeved shirt and a slightly fraying fedora hat was peering out of the windscreen of the Cadillac towards our X103 as the stub of a cigar glowed in his mouth. His brow furrowed and then he climbed out of his car. A lad in his late teens, who had to be Antonio, also climbed out of the van and together the duo began to head towards our landing site.
‘Ah, the great man himself,’ Tom said as he shut down the engine. ‘I should maybe warn you now that Glenn is quite a colourful character.’
‘In a good or bad way?’ I asked.
‘Maybe a little bit of both,’ Tom said, unbuckling his harness.
We gathered up our kit and by the time we opened the ramp, a grinning Glenn was standing outside with his son, both staring at the magical door hanging in mid-air that we were about to step out of. As we followed Tom outside, Glenn swept his fedora off with a flourish and bowed to us.
‘Welcome to Cuba, my friends,’ he said in a strong southern accent. Arms outstretched he headed towards Tom, drew him into a hug and kissed him on both cheeks. By contrast, Antonio managed a feeble handshake and couldn’t quite manage to look me in the eye when it was my turn, seeming to prefer to concentrate his gaze on my trainers instead.
Jack leant into me as the teenager stepped back, hands stuck into his jeans pockets. ‘I think you may have snagged yourself your first Cuban admirer,’ he whispered into my ear. ‘It’s probably your long dark Latino hair.’
’Stop that right now, you,’ I whispered back, immediately feeling ridiculously self- conscious in my wig.
Jack grinned at me as Glenn and Tom finished slapping each other’s backs.
Tom pulled away, holding the other man by the shoulders. ‘Good to see you, you old pirate.’
‘Hey, less of the old,’ Glenn said, revealing a gleaming gold front tooth.
He then shook hands with Jack and Mike, but kissed Ruby and I on both cheeks as Tom introduced us all.
‘My, what beautiful women you both are,’ Glenn said with a toothy smile that couldn’t have been more roguish if he’d tried.
Ruby, much to my surprise, instead of punching his lights out simply smiled. ‘Hey jamonero, good to meet you.’
Glenn burst out laughing. ‘Just so.’
‘Sorry, what did you just say? I haven’t powered up my earbud.’ Mike said.
‘That was Spanish for a creepy, touchy-feely guy,’ Ruby replied. ‘I did a stint in Venezuela fighting the drug cartels so I picked up the lingo.’
Glenn grinned. ‘Oh now this one I like! With the spirit of a Cuban too.’
‘Well if you want to give me one of your cigars we can be best buddies,’ Ruby replied.
‘Now we’re talking.’ Glenn took one out of his front pocket, offered it to Ruby and gave her a light.
A moment later she was blowing smoke rings with a blissed out expression on her face. ‘Oh now that is so damned smooth.’
Glenn looked past us to the X103, the cockpit the only part still visible through the open doorway. ‘It looks like you’ve got yourself a fancy new set of wheels there, Tom. I guess Sky Dreamer Corp has been busy again?’
‘Isn’t it always?’ Tom replied. ‘We’ll have time later for me to fill you in, but right now we need to get a move on. Mike here needs to head to the western tip of the island to place some seismic probes. Whilst he’s doing that we need to interview this Carlos Fernández about his missing children.’
Glenn nodded. ‘No problem. Antonio, you can drive our guest out there and look after him.’
‘Of course, Papa,’ Antonio replied, the blush that he’d been trying to hide finally fading.
‘One of us should tag along, just in case the Overseers are already here,’ I said, making sure I looked anywhere but at the teenager.
‘I’ll happily watch his back,’ Jack said.
I nodded. ‘Okay, Ruby, you’re with us trying to track down this Carlos guy.’ My gaze travelled to the green classic car with its sloping roofline, built for speed. ‘Please tell me we’re riding with you in that Cadillac, Glenn?’
He pulled a face. ‘You most certainly are, Lauren. But for your information that is something far better than any Caddy. That’s a Ford Fairlane Crown Victoria Skyliner, one of the finest four-wheel vehicles ever built on this planet of ours.’
‘Apart from the fact it breaks down half the time it’s on the road,’ Antonio said, the corners of his mouth curling up a fraction.
Glenn waved his hand at his son. ‘A mere detail when compared to the romance of riding in such a refined vehicle.’
Antonio shrugged. ‘Whatever you say, Papa.’
I had to suppress a laugh. I was already warming to these two.
‘Hopefully, it’ll be reliable long enough to get us to the diving school that Carlos owns?’ Tom asked.
‘Hopefully…’ Glenn replied, winking at Ruby and I.
Like father, like son.
Chapter Five
With the X103 fully locked up behind us and its chameleon camo doing a spectacular job to make it basically invisible, no one would realise our craft was there unless they literally walked straight into it.
We’d just finished loading up the vehicles with our kit. Tom and I were in the back of the Ford Skyliner, and I was already in love with the retro white and green patterned leather seats. Ruby rode up front with Glenn.
We drove in a convoy along a dusty track, Antonio’s beat-up van carrying Jack and Mike just behind us. The rutted surface was seriously testing the Skyliner’s shock absorbers and more or less bouncing our heads into the roof with every rut. Off-roading was so not the intended territory for this car.
We passed a crumbling colonial style building looking out over the beach, with hammocks strung between the trees.
‘Your home, Glenn?’ I asked.
‘Yes, my own little corner of paradise,’ he replied with his signature toothy grin.
We headed past the building, continuing on our teeth jarring journey but then, much to the relief of my already aching spine, we reached a junction with a smooth tarmacked main road.
Antonio pulled up alongside us as he got ready to turn onto the main road in the opposite direction to the way we were headed.
Jack leant out of the open window. ‘Good hunting, guys.’
‘You too. Don’t get into any trouble,’ I replied.
‘We’ll do our best,’ Mike said, leaning across Jack and holding up his thumb with a big smile.
It wasn’t lost on me that Mike certainly looked more lit up than I’d seen him for ages. Yes, maybe coming on a mission had been the right decision after all for him.
With a honk of the horn and a final wave, Glenn turned the car onto the road and we headed away.
As the Skyliner gathered speed I glanced across at Tom who was massaging his neck. ‘How are you doing?’
‘I have had smoother rides over a rough track,’ he replied.
Glenn patted the dash. ‘Don’t you listen to him, old girl. These gringos don’t recognise your charms.’
I snorted and then settled into the seat, looking out at the chain of mountains to our right against the bright blue sky. In the distance ahead, I could already see the city of Havana spread out along the coastline, where lots of small boats were sailing to and fro from its bustling harbour. If the beautiful retro Skyliner we were riding in was anything to go by, the city was in danger of actually living up to my dreams,
Ruby took a long drag of her cigar and blew out a cloud of smoke, pulling me straight out of my reverie as my lungs filled with the fumes. I started coughing.
‘Bloody hell, Ruby, seriously?’ I cranked down the side window and sucked in a lungful of the clear, ozone-rich sea air.
‘Sorry, my bad,’ Ruby said, grinding the cigar out on an ashtray already overflowing with butts.
It was a slight improvement, but as much as I loved the style of our ride, my clothes already reeked of smoke. I was certainly going to need a good shower and lots of shampoo to g
et rid of the stink from my hair.
Ruby took her Sky Wire handset out of her bag.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
‘I’m just checking that we have a solid link back to the X103,’ she said. ‘I have a squadron of WASP drones loaded, which I can activate if we need back-up in a hurry. If it’s really serious I can even remotely bring the X103 in to extract us.’ She peered at her phone’s screen. ‘And yes, we’re all good; we have a rock solid signal via a satellite.’
‘Remember, everyone, that this is just an intelligence-gathering mission,’ Tom said.
‘Have you ever been on a mission with Lauren where a mission didn’t go south?’ Ruby asked.
I grimaced and got in my reply before Tom could. ‘Fair point, but let’s hope this one is the exception.’ I gazed at our driver’s face reflected in the rear-view mirror. ’So, how long have you lived on Cuba, Glenn?’
‘About thirty years, give or take,’ he replied. ‘I met my wife Benita here on a trip from the States and so I set down roots with her.’
‘What led you to working as a spy for Sky Dreamer Corp?’ Ruby asked.
Glenn snorted. ’Maybe a spy with a very small s.’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure about that with your background,’ Tom replied.
‘What sort of background?’ I asked, immediately intrigued.
‘In my former life I used to work for the CIA, that’s how I got to know Tom,’ Glenn replied.
‘That sounds a lot like you were working for the secret services too, Tom?’ I said.
He nodded. ‘Yes, although it was MI6 in my case. Once a spy, always a spy.’
It wasn’t the first time that I realised just how little I knew about Tom, the man who’d been responsible for recruiting me and the guys into Alice’s organisation, back on Orkney.
As the road opened up and we drew nearer to the coast, I could see windsurfers carving through the waves, bright splashes of red, green and yellow against the sparkling blue sea. In another life maybe I’d come back as a tourist to fully sample exactly what this island had to offer. I had a similar thought about Machu Picchu too. But for now, the possibility that Jack and I could lead some semblance of a normal life including taking holidays, seemed like an impossible dream.
After another twenty minutes of driving we were nearing the outskirts of Havana. As the city drew closer we’d started to see more examples of the immaculate cars from the fifties and even earlier.
At last Glenn turned the Skyliner onto a side road and we began to head down it into a rock-filled ravine covered with moss. We rounded a bend and suddenly the view opened out to reveal an Instagram-perfect, white sandy bay stretching in a horseshoe around a crystal clear ocean.
At the end of the road ahead stood a two-storey white stucco building with pendant banners fluttering from its roof. The Fernández Diving School was written in a large flowing script on a sign hanging over the entrance. Beyond it, a couple of boats were moored up to a small jetty but there was no one in sight.
In mission mode as ever, I’d already started scanning for anything out of the ordinary. The next thing I noticed was the distinct lack of vehicles in the car park, that was apart from a small silver Jeep and a truck beside it with the diving school’s logo on its door. As to why it was so quiet, that became more obvious as we passed the open gate with a handwritten sign taped to it: Closed Until Further Notice.
‘Ah, yes, I heard from a local contact that Carlos was broken-hearted about the loss of his son and daughter,’ Glenn said, stubbing his cigar out in the car’s ashtray. ‘Apparently he closed the diving school because he couldn’t face running it without them,’
‘And who can blame him for that,’ I said. ‘But hopefully he’ll still be open to answering a few questions.’
‘I think if we approach it along the lines of trying to find out exactly what happened to his son and daughter, he’ll be more than cooperative,’ Tom said as we pulled up to the front of the building.
As we all climbed out, I took in the white truck with the scuba tanks in the back of it. Next to it, the silver Jeep looked distinctly less grimy than the truck.
A slight squealing was coming from the PADI diving sign as it rocked back and forth above the door in the gentle breeze. I felt like I was heading for a saloon in a spaghetti western before a big shoot-out. I could already feel something was off here and that impression was compounded by our next discovery.
‘Hey, that doesn’t look good,’ Ruby said, gesturing towards the entrance.
I turned to see that the door, which also had a closed sign on it, was partly hanging off its hinges. The window was damaged and broken glass from it was scattered all over the floor.
I didn’t need to say anything as I drew my weapons, because the others already had pistols in their hands.
Tom headed over to the truck and placed his hand on the bonnet. Then he checked the Jeep.
‘Okay, the truck’s engine is cold, but that Jeep is still warm,’ he said. ‘I’d say someone just arrived.’ He took out his Sky Wire and snapped a photo of the vehicle’s license plate. ‘We’ll run a trace on it later. If someone has broken in, odds are that that Jeep belongs to them.’
‘So what’s our next move?’ Ruby asked, looking at Tom and me. ‘And I hate to ask, but who exactly is in charge of this mission because we should sort out the chain of command between you two before we go any further?’
Tom pointed towards me. ‘This is your squad, Lauren, so I’ll defer to your decisions in all of this.’
I gave him a slightly startled look. ‘You trust me that much?’
‘Do you really have to ask after you’ve proved yourself on so many occasions?’ he replied.
I gave him a small smile. ‘Thanks for the vote of confidence, it means a lot coming from you.’ I turned to the others. ‘Okay, I think it’s best to be paranoid until we know differently. Glenn, you’re with Ruby, so go and cover the back whilst Tom and I head in through the front.
Ruby nodded and a moment later she had disappeared around the side of the building with Glenn.
I slipped my earbud in and activated it with a press of my finger as Tom did the same. Then with a nod to him, I took up a position to one side of the door as he did the same on the opposite side.
With a centring breath, I pressed my finger tip to my electronic earbud. ‘Are you in position yet, Ruby?’ I whispered.
‘Roger that, Captain,’ she replied, kicking into formal military speak like she always did when things started to get serious.
Despite the evidence of the broken door, I was still hoping that maybe there was an innocent explanation for all of this.
My ears strained to hear any sound out of the ordinary. But apart from the distant sigh of the surf and the squeal of the sign above us, it seemed to be completely quiet inside the building. Maybe too quiet.
‘We should call out and flush out any intruder who might be inside,’ Tom said.
I glanced across at him. ‘Good idea.’ I returned my attention to the doorway. ‘Hello, Carlos, are you in there?’
No reply came, or – more reassuringly – no sudden shadow of someone diving for cover inside the shop.
I pressed my finger to my ear again. ‘Okay, we’re going in. Get ready, Ruby.’
‘Don’t worry, we’re already locked and loaded,’ she replied.
Without any form of body armour on, I felt distinctly vulnerable as I stepped forward. My shoes crunched on the broken glass as I entered the shop. Holding my pistol in both hands, I swung it in a swift arc to cover the room as Tom slipped through the door behind me.
My eyes took in the usual paraphernalia of diving equipment I’d expect to see somewhere like this. I had some experience of diving schools after earning my own PADI license in the seas of Bali on one very memorable holiday in another life years ago.
Wetsuits of assorted designs and sizes hung from a rail at the back along with a wide selection of flippers and masks. Accessories of
every kind, from spearguns to knives, were displayed in glass cases. I headed for the counter, already bracing myself for the sight of a dead body on the floor on the other side. But when I peered over it, there wasn’t so much as even a few droplets of blood there. So far so good.
I pressed my finger to my earbud. ‘We’re in and nothing obvious so far,’ I said. ‘Enter when you’re ready. If the intruder is in here, we can pincer them.’
‘Okay, we’re about to enter through the back door into what looks like a workshop area,’ Ruby said. ‘I’ll report back if we find anything.’
‘Ditto,’ I replied.
I pointed towards a doorway at the back of the shop. ‘Let’s try through there, Tom.’
He nodded and we stepped through the open door, pistols raised, and cautiously crept into what turned out to be a galley kitchen. To one side of the room was a staircase that looked like it led to the upper floor. Through another glass door at the end I could see a workshop that Ruby and Glen were already searching and clearing.
I pointed up towards the ceiling and Tom nodded.
Once again, taking the lead and creeping catlike on the balls of my feet, I made my way to the stairs and peered up, my LRS aimed and ready.
There was a landing at the top with three closed doors leading off it.
With Tom right behind me, my finger on the trigger, I began to creep up the stairs. I’d almost reached the top when on the penultimate step, a board creaked under my foot.
Adrenaline and instinct kicked in as I immediately heard the muffled cracks of suppressed rounds being fired. I threw myself flat just as three bullets ripped through the closed door ahead and whistled over my head.
No time to even think, countless hours of combat training kicking in, Tom and I returned a barrage of semi-automatic fire, punching more bullet holes through the wooden door and splintering it apart. A split-second later we heard running footsteps and the crash of glass.
‘Are you hit?’ Tom said as he raced up and crouched beside me.
