Ghosts of Havana (A Judd Ryker Novel) (28 page)

“Twenty-five million in unmarked, nonsequential bills. It has to be untraceable, sir. That’s what I need right now or it’s all over.”

“Judd, is this for real? Is your life in danger?”

“Yes, yes. That’s correct,” Judd said. “I know it’s impossible, Mr. Parker. That’s what I told our contact, but he’s insisting that you can make it happen. If I don’t come up with twenty-five million, we are dead in the water. That’s why I’m calling you.”

“Judd, I have an idea.”

“That’s what I thought, Mr. Parker . . . Very well . . . I will pass that message . . . Yes, I can give you my location.”

More muffled noise. “Here are the GPS coordinates . . .”

Jessica wrote the digits that her husband recited on her arm with a pen and then quickly hung up. She dialed another number.

A young female voice answered. “Coney Island Pizza.”

68.

SANTIAGO, CUBA

FRIDAY, 5:32 P.M.

T
he woman strode briskly down the alley toward her next target. Two men, middle-aged, with identical black mustaches, sat on wooden crates, playing chess. They each held chipped enamel cups of black coffee and they were sharing a plate of roasted pork covered in onions.

“Jaque-mate!”
one shouted with glee.

“Puta!”
the other man cursed. He slapped his hand down on the board and swept away the pieces. He drained his coffee and scowled.

The winner held his belly and laughed. “
No más
, comrade?” he joked.

When the men spotted the woman coming their way, they stopped their conversation and their faces turned serious.

She stopped in front of them and looked them up and down warily. “Are you ready?”

The winner of the chess game nodded. “We are waiting for your signal.”

“Here,” she said, passing him a few local pesos.

“What is this?” he scowled. He showed the money to his friend. “What can we do with this?”

The other man shook his head.

“More is coming. American dollars tomorrow,” she said. “That will be your signal. You need to be ready. You need them all to be ready.”

“Manuel, Domingo, Arianna,” the man counted out on his fingers. “Louisa, Marisela, Ramón Grande, Ramón Pequeño. All of our barrios in Santiago are ready.”

“Very good,” the woman nodded.

“When?” the man asked.

“Eight o’clock tomorrow morning.”

The man smiled with approval. “Where?”

“The Plaza de la Revolución,” she answered. “Are you certain you’re ready?”

“Of course,” the winner said. “We have been ready for a very long time. We are now only waiting . . . for you.”

“Viva Cuba Libre!”
she whispered.

“Viva Cuba Libre!”
the two men repeated in unison.

And she turned on her heels and fled the alley to find her next target.

69.

HOMESTEAD, FLORIDA

FRIDAY, 9:32 P.M.

J
essica pulled the white convertible Ford Mustang off U.S. 1 and turned sharply to the west down another wide, flat Florida avenue. After several more turns, she pulled into the parking lot for the Gator Grill, a fast-food stand advertising fried frogs legs and alligator tacos. At this hour, the place was already closed, and the seating area, a cluster of picnic tables beneath a thatched roof, was abandoned. She backed the car into a space facing the main road and turned off the engine. The land around her, horizontal emptiness in every direction, was punctured only by a sliver of moonlight and the chirping of cicadas.

—

T
he Deputy Director had been less surprised than she hoped when she called him back to accept the drop mission. Jessica realized the moment she heard his voice on the other end of the
line that he had expected her to call back. He knew she would cool off and eventually relent. They both knew it.

“I’ll do it out of my loyalty to you,” she had said, “for everything you’ve done for me.” He pretended to accept her lie graciously and countered with a fabrication of his own. “Apology accepted. You know I wouldn’t knowingly entangle you in a mission that involves family.” Then, gratuitously, “You have my word on that, Jessica.”

She bit her lip. “Yes, sir.”

The lies were out in the open and mutually ignored. She had to focus. She used to wall off her emotions effortlessly, but it was getting harder. Now Jessica had to forget how she felt about her husband, her family, her boss, her future. Just focus on the mission.

The Deputy Director of Operations explained that Jessica’s task was to deliver ten million in cash to a Cuban opposition cell leader. Using the code name Alpha Nine Nine, she was to meet a contact code-named Bravo Zero at the Gator Grill in Homestead, accept the package, and take it to the nearby Air Reserve Base, where she would fly to Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, following regular flight patterns. Just after the approach at Gitmo’s Leeward Point Field, Jessica was to pull up and veer to the south into Cuban airspace to meet a second contact, code-named Charlie Three, in a remote part of Baconao Park. Her instructions were to deliver the money to Charlie and then return immediately to Florida. “In and out,” the Deputy Director had said. “Alpha, Bravo, Charlie—easy.”

His reassurances had the opposite effect. She couldn’t help but wonder what he wasn’t telling her. But what made Jessica really anxious was what she wasn’t telling him.

—

J
essica watched two headlights appear in the distance and then bound toward her location. She stepped out of her car and leaned casually on the hood.

The approaching lights turned into the Gator Grill parking lot and then went dark. An oversized cherry-red Ford F-150 pulled up next to her and a skinny man with long dark hair stepped out of the pickup truck.

The moment he was out, Jessica leapt at him, unleashing a lightning front snap kick to his groin. He groaned and doubled over just as she thrust a palm heel blow to his nose. The man screamed and held his face, blood gushing between his fingers. She snatched one of his wrists and twisted violently, forcing him to spin. Jessica grabbed a fist of hair at the back of his head and jammed his face against the pickup truck. His blood smeared the side of the red cab.

“What are you doing here?” she snarled.

The man coughed and wheezed.

Jessica punched him hard in the kidneys. “I said what are you doing here,
Ricky
?”

“I’m—” he began.

She unleashed another blow to the back of his head and then forced him to the ground.

“How did you find me, Ricky? Or should I say Ricardo Cabrera!”

“Alpha . . . Bravo,” he moaned.

“You’re . . . Bravo Zero?” she gasped, releasing her knee from his back.

“In the cab . . . your packages,” he groaned.

Jessica checked over both shoulders. They were still alone. “Don’t move!” she hissed, pushing her foot against his neck, his face rubbed into the gravel. Ricky nodded and winced.

Jessica slowly backed away from Ricky toward his truck. Satisfied that he wasn’t getting up, she clicked open the cab door. Inside she saw five black hard-shell suitcases piled on the passenger seat. She turned back to Ricky, now in a fetal position.

“Don’t you move, Ricardo.” He shook his head.

Jessica transferred four of the cases into the trunk of her Mustang, the fifth she strapped like a child into the passenger seat. She returned to Ricky and bent down close to his ear.

“I should kill you right now,” she hissed.

“No,” he moaned. “I didn’t know we were on the same side.”

“Never say that!” she barked, and kicked him again in the kidneys. “I don’t care who you think you work for. We are
never
on the same side.” She got into her car, slammed the door, and revved up the engine.

As she pulled out, Ricky sat up, coughing and spitting blood into his palms. The Mustang suddenly jolted to a halt and the door swung open.

Jessica stepped out, marched over to Ricky, and stood over him. He looked up at her and raised his bloody palms. She snap-kicked him just under the jawbone, sending him sprawling flat on his back in the gravel parking lot.

“I’m Alpha.”

70.

GEORGE WASHINGTON MEMORIAL PARKWAY, McLEAN, VIRGINIA

FRIDAY, 9:48 P.M.

W
hen the black Audi A6 veered off the parkway and into the scenic overlook, the white Cadillac Escalade was already there.

“She’s early,” the Deputy Director of the CIA said aloud. He pulled into the space next to Adelman-Zamora’s SUV and cut the engine. He removed the batteries from each of his three cell phones and shoved them in the glove compartment of his wife’s car. Then he exited the Audi, checked that no one was watching, and opened the Escalade’s passenger door.

“What the hell’s going on?” she chirped before he had climbed in.

“Madam Chairwoman—”

“If you don’t stop calling me madam, I’m going to throw you into the fucking Potomac,” Brenda hissed. “Where are we with our goddamn operation?”

“
My
operation,” he said slowly, “is proceeding. It’s all going according to plan. We are moving into the final phase now.”

“What kind of tradecraft bullshit is that? Why don’t you tell me again in English.”

“OPSEC.”

“What?” She scowled.

“Operations security. We agreed that I shield you from the details and just give you the big picture. That’s what I’m doing. It’s for the safety of the operation. And just in case something goes wrong.”

“What’s going wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” he said.

“I don’t believe you,” she said. “Those four soccer dads? They have to be yours, right?”

He looked at her, giving nothing away.

“Don’t give me that blank-stare spook crap,” she scoffed. “I’ve been around long enough to know their capture can’t be a coincidence. They have to be yours. And if one of your teams is sitting in a Cuban jail, then something went god-awful wrong.”

The Deputy Director blinked. “Yes they’re mine, some of them. But, no, nothing went wrong. I told you, it’s all going according to plan.”

“You sent a team into Cuba to be captured
on purpose
?”

He didn’t reply.

“Who would possibly agree to such a high-risk kamikaze operation?”

He continued to stare coldly.

—

T
he look of confusion on her face slowly melted away. “You evil fucking genius,” she whispered. “You played on their emotions. You knew that they’d want redemption for their grandfathers. You duped them into a failed invasion to create an international incident.”

He blinked.

“Don’t tell me you promised them”—she swallowed hard—“air cover.”

He shook his head. “They knew the risks. They just didn’t know the bigger picture.”

“So, now what?” she asked, bouncing in her seat. “You have to tell me what’s next. I have to know!”

“We’re moving into the final phase.”

“That’s all you’re going to say?”

“I’ve got multiple people in the air as we speak. It’s all converging. Everything is a go. That’s all I’m going to tell you. Anything more might compromise the operation.”

She exhaled loudly.

“You do your part and I’ll do mine,” he said. “That’s how we achieve mission success. That’s how we finally make history.”

Brenda Adelman-Zamora knew that the Deputy Director was right, but she pouted anyway. “At least tell me how long I have to wait.
When
can I expect good news?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Her eyes brightened and she licked her lips. “We’re that close?”

He nodded, suppressing a smug grin that was like a baby bird trying to break out of its egg.

“Is our candidate on his way already? I mean, he’s in the air and coming home?”

“I shouldn’t say,” he whispered as he flashed her a wink.

“Do you promise . . . tomorrow?”

“There are no promises in covert operations. You know that already. But confidence is high.”

“Good.” She spun her wedding ring on her finger. “I want you to update me as soon as you have some news.”

He nodded.

“You’re going to make a brilliant CIA Director. Think of everything we will do together.”

He nodded again.

“Who knows? Maybe you’ll go higher. Like the next Director of National Intelligence. How would you like that?”

“One step at a time.”

“I can’t believe it’s finally happening,” she said, reaching down and squeezing his inner thigh. “After all these years, it’s
finally
happening.” She leaned in to kiss him.

The Deputy Director turned his head and removed her hand from his thigh.

“I’m sorry,” she said, looking away. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Don’t apologize, Brenda. It happens when an operation reaches its climax. People get excited.”

“I’m not regular people,” she insisted.

“Everyone responds differently under stress,” he said.

“I still shouldn’t have done that.”

“No, you shouldn’t have,” he said. “Not here.”

71.

HOMESTEAD AIR RESERVE BASE, FLORIDA

FRIDAY, 9:56 P.M.

S
he’d never seen anything like it before.

“Here she is,” said the young man proudly. “The latest Sikorsky S-97 Raider.”

Jessica eyed the helicopter, a shiny black beast with a narrow nose like a shark. She, too, in a skintight black flight suit with black combat boots, looked like an animal ready to attack.

“Actually,” he whispered, “this baby is the S-97 Raider X2. Experimental prototype.”

“I’ve flown Black Hawks, Apaches, and Little Birds. Even an old Huey.” Jessica tried to hide her childish excitement. “But I’ve never seen her. What’s with the double rotors?” she asked, pointing to the two sets of rotor blades stacked on top of the fuselage.