“Get something for you?”
“No, thanks,” said Patchin. Two drinks was his limit when there was business in the offing; anything more than that and he’d probably wind up on the short end of any bargain.
“Sit,” said Kingman, gesturing to one of the leather armchairs. Patchin sat. The white-haired man dropped a trio of ice cubes into his amber-colored drink and sat down across from the CIA director. He sipped the drink, smacked his lips and set the glass down on the coffee table. He smiled at Patchin. “Canadian rye,” said the older man. “A weakness of my youth. Cheap duds, cheap broads, cheap booze.” Not likely. Kingman had been born with an oily Texas spoon in his mouth.
Patchin smiled and kept his mouth shut.
“How are things working out with Rufus?” Kingman asked. “I knew your man, Mike Harris. Not well, but we’d met on occasion. Drank too much and a bit unstable, frankly. We all thought Rufus would be a perfect fit to replace him and he was being wasted at Justice.”
“He certainly knows what he’s doing,” answered Patchin, keeping his tone neutral. He didn’t ask who the “we” was in Kingman’s statement.
“Surprised at being invited to this boring little get-together?”
“More curious than surprised,” said Patchin.
“More than the walls have ears these days,” sighed Kingman. “If we’d met in a civilized manner—in a restaurant, at your place of business or mine—it would be on everyone’s damnable Blueberry in five minutes.”
Patchin smiled. He was reasonably sure that Kingman knew perfectly well that it was BlackBerry, not “Blueberry,” and he was just as sure that the sly old bastard liked to keep up the sleepy, simple country-boy facade as a way of catching his adversaries off guard. Once again he made no response.
“But I do believe that old saw about there being safety in numbers.” The man who effectively managed the biggest private army in the United States paused for a moment and then continued. “Which is
why I have the ambassador throw these little booze cruises every once in a while.”
In other words, thought Patchin, you’re telling me you’ve got an ambassador and his billionaire wife in your hip pocket; a big stick wielded softly.
It was time to wield his own stick.
“Your corporation does business with the Pentagon and the agency all the time,” he said quietly. “Your son is my deputy director, which is certainly no secret. So, why the need for discretion? Your offices are closer to mine than this house is.”
Kingman picked up his drink, swallowed two fingers of rye whiskey in a single gulp, then cracked an ice cube between his molars and chewed on the bits and pieces. “Some meetings require more discretion than others,” said the old man. “This is one of those meetings.” He rattled the remaining ice cubes in the glass. “The man my son replaced was a fucking cowboy. Ernest goddamn Hemingway on steroids. He made his bed with the wrong whore and he paid for it with his life. We’re hoping you don’t make the same mistake.”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” answered Patchin.
“You don’t know it yet, boy, but the whole world’s about to blow up in your face. It’s going to cost the man in the White House his second term unless he does exactly as he’s told, and whether he does or not you’re going to wind up being a sacrificial goat tied
to a god-awful big stake. We’re offering you a way out.”
That regal “we” again. “Do tell,” said Patchin mildly.
“Well,” began Kingman, “we’ve got this little operation going on in Cuba….”
“The planes out there under the camouflage nets are Super Tucanos. I guarantee you they were provided by International Aviation Services, which is a subsidiary of Blackhawk Security,” said Carrie Pilkington, her voice firm with conviction. “I knew they weren’t Cuban Special Forces.”
“They’re speaking Spanish,” said Laframboise, their pilot. “And they sure as hell aren’t Mexicans.”
“Maybe it’s the Bay of Pigs again—Cuban exiles.”
“Not with that kind of equipment,” said Carrie. “They’re Americans.”
“We’ve been over this a hundred times since yesterday,” sighed the MI6 agent, Will Black. “Let’s give it a rest for a while, okay? I’m hungry, I’m thirsty and I am most definitely not in a good mood.”
Carrie, Will Black, Arango and Pete Laframboise were seated with their backs to the walls in the ruins of a single-story wooden structure that must have been what once had passed for a control tower or
communications shack back in the days when the private airstrip had been in operation.
Over the years and decades since then, the jungle had grown up around the building, hiding it from the air. There was a walled outhouse-style toilet cubicle in one corner of the shack but no running water or any other kind of facility.
“From what I saw, there are at least a hundred men bivouacked here,” said Laframboise.
“There were enough crates of equipment stacked around under those camouflage nets for ten times that number of men,” murmured Carrie. “They’ve got brand-new turboprop fighter planes armed with Hellfire missiles. Whatever this is, it’s major league.”
The old wooden door of the hut opened and four uniformed men appeared, silhouetted by the sunlight outside. Like every one else they’d seen so far, the men all wore mirrored aviator-style sunglasses and had no rank insignia on their battle fatigues or their Special Forces–style berets.
The first two carried in a shaky-looking card table and the other two brought in five folding chairs. The men set up the table and chairs and then withdrew. Two more silent men brought four military-style covered trays and a carton of bottled water bottles, then withdrew themselves. They left the door open.
Peering out, Will Black could see across the dirt
strip to a small clearing carved out of the jungle and topped by yet another jungle-pattern camouflage net. Under the net was a large tent, flaps pulled open to reveal a sophisticated communications setup and manned by another half dozen soldiers, all of them wearing headsets and staring into computer screens and what appeared to be radar displays.
From what he could make out squinting through the open door, they’d pulled the old Wilga off the end of the strip and halfway into the scrub brush beside the burnt-out DC3, then covered it with more of the jungle camouflage.
“I guess there’s no point in making a run for it.” Laframboise grinned, getting to his feet and stretching. “They’ve got poor old
Miroslava
bound up in a girdle.”
“No point at all,” agreed Black. He and Carrie stood up, as well. They went to the table and sat down. Arango joined them silently.
“Even if they didn’t swat us down like flies, where would we go?” Carrie said sourly. “It really is a jungle out there.”
They took the covers off the food trays. “Roast beef, mashed potatoes with gravy, creamed corn, steamed spinach and green Jell-O,” said Laframboise, ripping open the little package of plastic utensils. “Pretty good grub for a prison cell.”
They ate and drank and fifteen minutes later two men appeared and cleared away the trays, then disappeared. Two minutes after that a new figure appeared in the doorway. He turned away for a moment and barked an order in Spanish before he stepped into the old shack. He was tall, hawk-faced and visibly much older than any of the men Black had seen so far. Unlike any of those men, he also had a rank insignia on his beret—the single silver oak leaf of a bird colonel.
“Su español es muy bueno,”
said Black.
“Pero usted no es Cubano.”
“Your Spanish is pretty good, too, and you’re not Cuban, either,” said the lieutenant colonel.
“Benefits of a classical education.” Black smiled.
“Brit.”
“Quite right.”
“I’m from Brooklyn.”
“Gee, I never would have guessed,” said Carrie.
“My name is Frank Turturro.” The lieutenant colonel smiled. “Who are you?”
“My name is Carrie Pilkington. I’m an analyst in the Central Intelligence Agency.”
“I wouldn’t say that too loudly, Miss Pilkington,” said Turturro. “It’s the kind of thing that’ll get you in a lot of trouble in this country.”
“And being a lieutenant colonel in a foreign mercenary army doesn’t?” Black snorted.
“What foreign mercenary army would that be?” Turturro asked.
“BSSI,” responded Carrie emphatically. “Blackhawk Security Services International. The Super Tucanos with all the firepower out there were provided by International Aviation Services, Blackhawk’s air force. Their headquarters is at the old Air Haven Airport in Alhambra, Arizona. You’ve even got half a dozen Lockheed Neptune bombers from the ’sixties that Blackhawk uses to ‘pacify’ natives in your South American operations.”
“You’re very well informed, Miss Pilkington. I congratulate you,” said Turturro.
“It’s my job,” said Carrie. “What’s yours?”
“I follow orders, Miss Pilkington, no more, no less.”
“Where have I heard that before? I wonder,” said Black.
“A Brit who speaks excellent Spanish in the company of a CIA analyst. You must be MI6.”
“Bond, James Bond,” said Black in a terrible Sean Connery brogue.
Turturro smiled and leaned back in his chair. He stared at Pete Laframboise, then reached into the breast pocket of his fatigues and tossed over a package of unfiltered Camels with a matchbook tucked into the cellophane. Laframboise tapped one out of
the pack and lit it, taking a deep drag, and then let it roll out from his nostrils and his mouth with a contented sigh.
“So, who are you?” Turturro asked.
“Nobody,” said the pilot. “Just along for the ride.” He took another drag on the cigarette and smiled. “Actually, I
am
the ride.”
“You own the Wilga?” Turturro asked.
“‘Owned’ isn’t a real word in Cuba, Mr. Colonel, sir,” said Laframboise. “You only own something here until the government or some bigwig gets it into his head that he doesn’t like it or he wants it himself and then, poof, it’s gone. It’s like power, Colonel. It’s an ephemeral thing; it only exists if you can hang on to it and for as long as you can hold on to it.”
“Deep thinking for a crop duster,” said Turturro.
“Before I left the country in a hurry, I was finishing up a postgraduate degree in political science at McGill University in Montreal.” He picked up the Camels from the table. “Mind if I keep these?”
Turturro nodded. “Go ahead.”
Laframboise slipped the matches back under the cellophane, then put the package of cigarettes into his pocket.
“And you?” Turturro asked, staring at Arango. The Cuban turned his head and spit onto the floor.
“I am the man who cut off your compadres’
cojones
fifty years ago. I was also the man who loaded
the rocket into the RPG that brought down that airplane out there.”
“A CIA analyst, an MI6 agent, an old
Fidelista
and a gray-haired grad student from Montreal fly into an armed camp in a piece-of-crap crop-dusting plane. Why?”
“Sounds like the opening to a bad joke,” said Carrie. “We know why we’re here, but what about you?”
“This is the part when the bad guy tells the hero his evil plans for world domination?” Turturro said. “I don’t think so.” He stood up. “You’ll be held here until things…are under way. “After that you’ll be released and you’ll be on your own.”
“Not much of an interrogation,” said Black. “Where are the lasers and the pools full of sharks? Snakes maybe?”
“There are no poisonous snakes in Cuba,” said Turturro. “And I don’t need to interrogate you. For the moment I just need to keep you out of the way. Try to escape and my men will shoot you. Survive that and there’s thirty miles of jungle between here and the next best thing to civilization. So just stay put.” Turturro walked to the doorway, then turned. “Don’t piss me off,” he said, and then he was gone. A guard stepped halfway into the room and shut the door.
“That was a bit weird,” said Carrie. “It wasn’t much of an interrogation, was it?”
“You believe any of that bull-puckie?” Laframboise drawled, still smoking the Camel.
“I don’t think he has the slightest idea of what to do,” said Will Black. “We weren’t part of whatever game plan he’s got in mind. Flies in the ointment, so to speak.”
“So, what does he do with us?” Carrie said.
“He goes up the chain of command until he gets someone who can make a decision.”
“What chain of command?” Carrie asked. “Who is Blackhawk working for? The Pentagon wouldn’t sanction an invasion of Cuba; they wouldn’t dare and neither would the president.”
“I don’t know who his ultimate employers are, but the colonel is in the middle of something very big here. Those men and that equipment aren’t here as some sort of resistance army in the mountains. They’re an assault force.”
“You think this is part of Selman-Housein’s
Operación de Venganza
?” Carrie asked.
“I think it has to be.” Black nodded.
“Okay, I’m lost,” said Laframboise. He wet his fingers and pinched out the butt of his Camel. “What the hell is Operation Vengeance and what does
El Comandante
’s doctor have to do with it?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” said Laframboise. “And neither are you, boss.”
“We’d better be,” said Black, staring at the closed door, his tone ominous.
“Why’s that?”
Carrie answered, “Because pretty soon the colonel’s going to get his orders from on high and he’s going to kill us.”
The old man sat in the shade of the avocado tree growing beside the main house and watched his great-grandchildren splashing and playing at the far end of the large swimming pool. Their laughter seemed very far away, almost as if they were living in a different world from his own. In his world the voices were clear and the images were sharp and brightly colored and there was no need for the hearing aids he wore or the bifocal spectacles that pinched his nose.
He let his head fall forward a little and glanced at his hand on the arm of the old wicker chair. The chair came from the old family finca in Oriente where he and his nine brothers and sisters had spent their early childhood.
Cords of sinew and veins ran like creeping worms beneath parchment, liver-spotted skin, and the nails were thick and ribbed like yellowing horn. The old man lifted the hand and placed the tips of his first and
second fingers below his nostrils, hoping to catch some faint scent of the
cohibas
his man Eduardo Irizarri had rolled for him. There was nothing, not the slightest memory of an odor; not surprising, really. It had been a quarter of a century since he’d given them up, and he chuckled aloud as the thought drifted through his mind like smoke.