Once activated, they would work in shifts so that at least one was always on duty.
Judy was also in the room, and greeted Kate with a nod.
“Who’s heading this one?” Kate asked.
“We’ve got KeyWiz as team lead, with El Supremo and NiteMaster as seconds.”
Kate shook her head. “Boys will be boys. Speaking of, where’s ours?”
Judy contacted KeyWiz, who was running his op out of a bedroom in Alameda, California. “Key, please show us the operatives.”
He raised a finger and a moment later a map of Miami appeared, with two tiny green blips representing Jonas and Marcus, traveling south on Forty-second Avenue toward Coral Gables. They pulled into a side street a few blocks from the Miracle Mile.
“Operatives are entering a custom tailor’s clothing store.”
All the operatives who agreed to work for Room 59 were implanted with a small passive microchip that wouldn’t show up on any body scans or airport security equipment, but would enable Room 59 to track them wherever they went. The chips had saved the lives of several operatives in the past and were mandatory for anyone in the field or their handlers—Kate, Judy and Denny included.
“Jonas must be getting outfitted.” Kate shrugged. “I suppose you have to look the part.”
“I just hope he upgrades his wardrobe enough for the yacht he’s going to be playing arms dealer on.” Judy brought up a picture, and Kate’s eyebrows shot up in disbelief. “This is what one of the Bogota cartel was running around in a few months ago,” Judy explained.
“I think my entire town house can fit on the bow, with room left over for something small, like, oh, Yankee Stadium,” Kate said.
Judy stared at the picture. “It’s times like this when I find myself reconsidering the decision to leave the field.”
“Maybe so, but then again, we won’t be facing Cuban exiles forming their own army to try and take back their homeland, either, and I can have a great pina colada at any one of a dozen places in New York City.” Kate paused. “That is, if I ever took a night off.”
Another chime rang, and a moment later Denny appeared in the room, knotting a black tie around his neck. “Kate, Judy, good to see you both. I’ve got the information requested on one of the leaders of this exile group for you to pass on to Jonas.”
Before replying, Kate isolated their conversation from the hackers. “Wonderful. Got a minute to give us the highlights?”
“Sure, the Ingersoll Rand party doesn’t start until five.”
Denny finished knotting his tie and straightened it, staring off into space as if he was looking into a mirror. “Our most likely suspect is a man named Rafael Castilo.” He brought up a photo of a stocky man with thick dark hair and wearing a tailored, tropical-weight silk suit, shaking hands with another suited gentleman. “The man on the right is Castilo.
He’s shaking hands with the mayor of Miami as they celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of his very first business, a delivery service he started when he was seventeen. It’s the largest intracity delivery service today, holding a near monopoly on the trade.”
“A self-made man.” Kate studied the picture. Mr.
Castilo was the poster boy of American prosperity.
“What’s his background?”
“He came to Florida in 1967 at age fourteen, a victim of the purges during the 1960s. His parents were both killed in Cuba. He landed in Miami right after the U.S. passed the Cuban American Adjustment Act, intended to give exiles and refugees a leg up in making a life for themselves. Castilo is certainly one of the success stories— entrepreneur at seventeen, branched out into real estate at age twenty and engineered his first hostile takeover, of Miami Imports/Exports, at twenty-four. That business has grown twenty times larger in size in the past three decades. He has a master’s degree in business administration from the War-rington College of Business Administration. Even though the Ivy League courted him, he said he wanted to learn where he had grown up. Estimated net worth, approximately 1.2 billion.”
Judy pursed her lips. “Surely he has a few tens of millions available to give to Cuba’s poor, right?”
Denny chuckled. “He might have tried that, if Congress hadn’t made it illegal for U.S. businesses to deal with Cuban businesses. He does send money through his overseas branches, but that’s a drop in the bucket. Apparently he’s decided to raise the stakes a bit. Representatives from all of the major PMCs have recently taken meetings with his people. In fact, the folks at one of them passed this info on to us. Castilo’s rep was always very careful not to say anything incriminating, but he was just looking for a PMC that could field a force as large as two battalions, with equipment for an overseas mission in a tropical climate for up to six months, citing foreign expansion into potentially dangerous markets. Since there’s no way any American group will take this on, most likely we’ll be looking at foreign PMCs, probably operating on the shady side, since they will basically be invading a sovereign country, for all intents and purposes.”
“Great, the first attempted takeover by a private army since William Eaton captured Derna in Tripoli in 1805, only this time it’s about to happen in our own backyard.” Kate shrugged as both Denny and Judy stared at her with their mouths open.
“What—I like military history. So, Jonas drops Marcus off to find our contact, and he goes after Castilo. One question—if Jonas is an arms dealer, why wouldn’t he deal with the PMC
directly?”
Denny nodded. “That’s a good one. Jonas and I discussed that, and we both believe that Castilo’s flamboyant nature and overwhelming desire to help his countrymen will make him take unusual risks, even for a prominent businessman, such as setting up a meeting between his PMC and a seller.
The trick will be to appeal to his revolutionary side, as it were.”
“Well, Jonas and Castilo are close in. I’m sure he’ll come up with some points in common that they both share—the oppression of communism, for example,” Judy said as she clasped her hands on front of her. “How are you getting those two face-to-face, by the way?”
“One of Castilo’s hobbies is greyhound racing. We’ve set up Mr. Heinemann to casually run into him at the Palm Beach Kennel Club. Of course, that’s once he drops Marcus off in Paradise.”
“I wonder what Marcus will think of his homeland today.” Kate turned back to the three hackers and opened a voice link to them. “Everything ready here?”
KeyWiz responded immediately. “We’ve got scheduled satellites orbiting over Cuba and the surrounding waters, providing coverage for the next seventy-two hours, and we’re on top of your man in Miami, as well.”
“All right, it’s show time.” Kate crossed her arms, resisting the urge to nibble on her nails, a nervous habit she acquired whenever one of her operatives entered the field.
“Let’s do it.”
Marcus couldn’t stop staring. “It’s unbelievable.”
“And I thought I was the tourist here.” Jonas nudged him.
“Close your mouth—the flies will get in.”
They both gazed at the luxury yacht that Jonas would be using for his cover while in Miami. The
“Unfortunately, you will not be accompanying me on it, as getting you to your destination will mean relying on speed and hopefully stealth, not opulent luxury,” Jonas said.
“Too bad, I’ve always wondered what the interior of one of those looked like.”
“Make division head, and you’ll find out.”
“Yeah, speaking of, that does bring up a question, sir—
just why are you overseeing this operation?” Marcus asked.
Jonas stared at him from behind his sunglasses. The kid’s not just charm and good looks, he thought. “Our superiors felt that I was the right person to handle this op, and that’s all you need to know. Now, come on, let’s get
