Ghosts of Havana (A Judd Ryker Novel) (24 page)

“See!” Crawford shouted. “Deuce’s with me. What the fuck’re you two really up to?”

“And the bonefish turned into diamonds. But, why did you need all those guns, Al?” Dennis was waking up.

“Is this another Agency clusterfuck? I’m the SEAL. Dennis is, what, the techie? What’s Al supposed to be? Is this your half-assed operation, Brink?”

“This was all a huge mistake,” Brinkley insisted. “A big misunderstanding.”

“Either you are a fool or someone set you up, Brink,” Craw said. “Someone set us all up. No other way to explain it.”

“All that matters is that we’re getting out of here soon,” Brinkley insisted.

“I don’t care what you and Al are up to. Go ahead, get yourself killed on some weekend warrior yahoo bullshit,” Crawford said. “But why would you drag us into it?”

“I want to know what we were really doing?” Dennis shrieked. “If we weren’t fishing, and we weren’t treasure hunting, then what the heck were we really doing out there?”

No one said anything.

“Al? Brink?” Dennis squealed. “I almost died. You have to tell us!”

No reply.

Dennis calmed his voice to a whisper. “What is 1961?”

Brinkley shook his head and turned away. “We’re all getting out of here alive.”

54.

GUANTÁNAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, CUBA

FRIDAY, 9:56 A.M.

T
he yellow school bus carrying Judd passed by a large concrete pillar wrapped in barbed wire,
ENTER IF YOU DARE
painted on the side. The bus climbed a hill and then stopped. The hydraulic doors released with a pucker and swung open.

“Northeast Gate! Last stop for Cuba!” shouted the driver, a uniformed Marine, who eyed Judd warily in the rearview mirror. Judd, wearing the old suit he had been given, pulled down his hat and stroked his false beard. It was a convincing disguise, but he was beginning to sweat and the beard tickled.

“Just you today, Grandpa?” the driver asked.

Judd shrugged and rose to leave.

“Can’t believe you old guys are still working after all these years. Helluva commute,
señor
.”

Judd coughed, his hand covering his face, as he descended the steps. Outside the bus, a modest gatehouse was surrounded with yellow-and-red concrete barriers, the closest ones painted with the letters
USMC
. A six-foot-high fence topped with razor wire ran in both directions as far as the eye could see.

“Make sure you stay on the road, Grandpa!” the Marine shouted. “It’s a minefield out there!” He laughed as he closed the door and pulled away.

Judd turned back to the security gate in front of him. On the other side of a narrow no-man’s-land was a second gate about eighty feet away. A friendly, soft-pink-and-white building with a prominent, not-so-friendly sign:
REPUBLICA DE CUBA / TERRITORIO LIBRE DE AMERICA
.

Judd walked slowly, with a slight hobble, and, as promised, was waved through both gates without incident. On the other side, tall cacti grew on the hills overlooking the border post.

Where’s my taxi?
He was sweating more. His beard was itching fiercely. He had no phone, no ID, no money—nothing. He was standing in Cuba, alone, waiting for a car that might never come.
Then what?

Judd looked up to the sky. Vultures flew high above in wide, lumbering circles. At least his back spasms had settled down.

Just then, he heard the soft rumble of a car’s engine. Through the vapors of the hot morning sun on the road suddenly appeared what looked like a smiling face. The mouth of a shiny chrome grille, the bright eyes of the headlights, a V-shaped nose in the center. Just above the nose was the giveaway:
CHEVROLET
. Judd rubbed his eyes as a 1957 Chevy Bel Air rolled to a gentle stop in front of him. The car was an immaculate turquoise blue like the Caribbean Sea, with a white roof, the insets of the rear wings also a perfectly polished white.

The door swung open with a slight creak. Judd bent over to peer into the car at the driver. A short Hispanic-looking man with muscular arms and black eyes looked back at him.

“Taxi,
señor
?”

55.

CIA HEADQUARTERS, LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

FRIDAY, 10:08 A.M.

T
he bottle was calling him, but he knew it was too early for scotch. The Deputy Director of Operations needed something else to calm himself. This often happened just as an operation was moving into the critical phase. It was mostly an adrenaline rush, he knew, but he didn’t want the excitement of the moment to cloud his judgment. He would need to make important decisions in the coming hours. He needed to have a clear mind.

His ex-wife used to make him protein shakes with a raw egg on the mornings when she knew he was hyped-up. But now she was making breakfast for an investment banker in Chicago. His second wife, he barely even saw her anymore.

The Deputy Director swore to himself then flipped on a headset. He touched his earpiece. “Connect me to Romeo Papa Eight.”

A few moments later, his earpiece clicked and he heard a familiar “Sir?”

“What’s your status, Romeo Papa Eight?”

“We’ve got an inbound bird, ETA Luanda, Angola, in just under an hour. They can run an accelerated turnaround and
be wheels up by 1800 local time departure. That’s 1200 Eastern, sir.”

“What’s the bird?”

“Dassault Falcon 7X.”

“Meets all our specs?”

“Yes, sir. It’s right at the limit of the range, but Luanda to Cuba can be done nonstop if the load is light.”

“One passenger.”

“No problem, sir.”

“Fingerprints?”

“The Falcon is registered to a Brazilian agroprocessing firm, via São Paulo, Dubai, and the Caymans. Pilots are from Odessa, hired through a third party in Cape Town. It’s so clean, you can eat off the fuselage.”

“Better be,” he said, and tapped his ear to hang up. He opened his drawer, pulled out a short glass tumbler, and set it on the desk. He ran his finger around the rim as he tried to slow his breathing.

The Deputy Director tapped his ear again. “Connect me to Oscar Sierra Two.”

Seconds later, he was on the line with another of his operations teams.

“What’s your status, Oscar Sierra Two?”

“The package is being extracted. Bravo Zero is on his way to the site. It’ll be ready to fly in two hours.”

“What’s the weight?”

“Two hundred and four pounds total.”

“Bundled how?”

“Just as you requested, sir. Five cases, forty pounds each.”

“That’s two million per case?”

“Yes, sir. Ten million total. Do you need more? We can pack whatever you need, sir.”

“Ten will do for now. But be ready in case we need a second shipment.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I want it at the gator drop near Homestead by twenty-one thirty. That’s as far as I need Bravo Zero to take it.”

“Yes, sir.”

He hung up. The pieces were falling into place. He had compartmentalized the entire operation. He was the one person on the planet who knew how it all fit together. That was the only way to make it work, he knew. That was the downfall of Rainmaker, Pandora, Pit Boss, and all the other operations that had failed before. Too many cooks, too much groupthink, too many leaks. The only way to beat Oswaldo Guerrero in his own backyard was to do it all
himself
.

One more tap of the ear. “I want Yankee Tango Four.”

While he waited to connect, he walked over to an antique credenza on the far side of his office. He opened one of the doors and extracted a bottle of eighteen-year-old Oban Single Malt Scotch Whisky. He had bought that bottle on a long-ago trip to Scotland, an excursion after visiting GCHQ in Cheltenham. He’d been waiting for a reason to celebrate.

Click-click!
“What’s your status, Yankee Tango Four?” he asked, returning to his desk and setting the bottle next to the tumbler.

“No bread tomorrow.”

“Are you sure?”

“Wheat stocks are down. The imports won’t be arriving.
We’ve made sure of that. When Mama Bear goes to the cupboard, the cupboard will be bare.”

He poured two fingers of scotch into the glass.

“And the streets?” he asked.

“Yankee Tango Four is ready in Santiago. Just waiting for the payouts to arrive.”

The Deputy Director nodded to himself and took a healthy sip of the Oban.

“Operation Triggerfish is a go.”

56.

FORT LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA

FRIDAY, 10:15 A.M.

J
essica tried to concentrate on
Treasure Island
. Her sons, Noah and Toby, were splashing in the pool, the sun was hot, the day was perfect. Except that Judd wasn’t there.

Late the previous night, she had told the Deputy Director of the CIA that she was opting out of his Cuba operation, whatever he was up to. She had fed Judd a few clues and had Sunday digging for more back at Langley. She had helped her husband because he asked. That was their deal.
Assist.
But don’t get too close. Jessica was pulling back from Cuba. She was putting an end to the unavoidable lies.
Eight lies already was enough.
This was the only way.

Jessica tried to relax. That was why she was here in Florida, she told herself. She stared at the words on the page. But she couldn’t concentrate. She couldn’t read. She couldn’t clear her mind.

The Deputy Director had agreed to let her off . . . too easily. That wasn’t his way. He must have sent her down to South Florida for . . . something else. It couldn’t have been to just check out one missing fishing boat. He could have sent a rookie operative
to do that. Hell, he could have sent Aunt Lulu. No, Jessica was certain there was something else going on here and that the Agency—
her Agency
—was deeply involved.

She had pieced together a lot and had told Judd what she knew. She had gone to the fund-raising party for him, too. That was the deal.
Did that make up for the lies?
Then Ricky Green had tried to kill her at the party. She had decided not to tell Judd about that. And now Judd—
her Judd
—was in the middle of some murky diplomatic backchannel. It didn’t add up. It made her nervous. But she had decided to let it go.
To avoid.

Then Judd had called that morning and asked about one Oswaldo Guerrero. That was why she couldn’t relax. The web of lies—to her boss, to her husband, to herself—wasn’t clearing.
It was thickening.
That wasn’t the plan.

The deal with Judd was supposed to unburden herself.
Assist, avoid, admit.
Rather than rise above all the lies, she was somehow getting in
deeper
. And the more she tried to pull back, the farther in she waded. There was nothing left to do but . . . to push through and come out the other side.

She stared again at the pages of
Treasure Island
without seeing the words. She was plotting. She decided the logical next step was figuring out exactly who Judd was meeting. How to help him succeed one more time so they could start all over again? So many unanswered questions, but right now what she needed to know most of all was . . .
who is this Oswaldo Guerrero?

On cue, her phone rang.

“It’s me, ma’am,” Sunday said.

“Why are you out of breath?”

“I ran into the parking lot to make this call. It’s not good.”

“What’s not good?”

“You asked me to look into O. To find out what I could about Oswaldo Guerrero.”

“I’m worried that he isn’t real. Don’t tell me you found
nothing
.”

“Just the opposite. The file on O is as thick and ugly as I’ve seen.”

“What does that mean?”

“Guerrero is the Cuban military intelligence chief. The one who’s foiled virtually every U.S. covert action to destabilize the regime over the past twenty years.”

“So O’s smart,” she said.

“More than that. O’s ruthless. You ever hear what went wrong in Santiago?” Sunday asked.

“Tell me,” she said as her heart rate quickened.

“An op that went bad a few years ago. The last real attempt to incite a counterrevolution in eastern Cuba. In the city of Santiago. We sent in some of our people and it was”—Sunday coughed and cleared his throat—“a bloodbath.”

She exhaled loudly. “Rainmaker,” she whispered.

“Yes, ma’am. Our operatives walked right into O’s trap,” Sunday said.

“And?” Jessica’s heart raced.

“That’s why they call Oswaldo Guerrero . . . El Diablo de Santiago.”

57.

EASTERN CUBA

FRIDAY, 10:23 A.M.

T
he taxi had driven in silence, away from the gate at Guantánamo Bay. For the past fifteen minutes, the ’57 Chevy Bel Air had wound down a dirt road that cut through the hills of rural Cuba. Judd tried to keep track of their direction—first northeast, then east, then north again—but he lost his bearings in the twists and turns of the road. He tried to memorize markers just in case he needed to make his own way back to the base. He made a mental note of a small tobacco farm, a pink-and-blue dilapidated shack, an abandoned church.

Judd eyed the driver. “Where . . . are we going?”

The driver shrugged without turning around. Then he reached forward to the dashboard. Judd could see scars along the driver’s muscular forearms and a nose that must have been badly broken at least once. An ex-boxer, perhaps? The man grabbed the radio’s knob, twisted, and suddenly the cab was filled with the rhythmic drums and a wailing trumpet of Cuban rhumba.

“Are you taking me to Oswaldo?” Judd asked over the music.

The car screeched to a halt.

Judd looked through the windshield.
Nothing in the road.
He looked out the windows both ways.
No homes. No buildings.
They were in the middle of nowhere.