at least break his fall so he could tuck and roll away.
Jonas landed hard, but his uninjured foot took the impact, and he rolled away on the ground, tucking his rifle across his chest as he went. He felt the tug of the cord on his wrist, then it went slack, and he hoped that just the pin and not the entire grenade had come free. He came out of the truck in a prone position and kept rolling over and over, his rifle aligned vertically with his body. All the while a small voice in his mind counted down the seconds from five to one.
Jonas came to a stop and covered his head with his arms.
The two grenades exploded almost simultaneously, along with a much louder report as the truck’s gas tank followed suit. The heat and shock wave washed over him, and metal parts hit the ground around Jonas, but none landed on him.
Bringing the rifle to his eye, he looked to the right of the inferno, scanning for targets.
The truck had made it into the middle of the clearing before erupting into a huge, greasy ball of flames that illuminated the surrounding jungle, casting dark shadows of the running men in the flickering flames. At least one soldier had been caught in the initial blast, and he screamed and capered madly as flames sizzled on his back and legs. Others shouted orders and questions, trying to make sense out of what had just happened. Jonas dropped his sights onto a shouting man’s chest, drew in a breath, held it and squeezed the trigger, not needing to compensate for wind or anything else at that range. As soon as the bullet left the barrel, he moved, rolling to the left again as the man jerked in shock, then fell forward to the ground.
He heard the distinct popping of an AK-47 firing on his right, then a scream from the clearing. More shouts, tinged with the high tone of impending panic, echoed across the open space. Jonas came to a stop a few yards away from his first position and brought his rifle up again. His eyes had mostly adjusted to the light, and he saw a dark form move from one side of the old sugar mill to the other. He put three rounds through the building, spaced about a degree apart, and was rewarded with a shout of pain from inside.
The rest of the Cubans were firing, but from what Jonas could see, they had no idea where the incoming shots were originating. Automatic fire filled the clearing, perforating leaves and shattering branches everywhere. He put two 3-round bursts into an area where two muzzle-flashes appeared intermittently, and saw one stop, but couldn’t tell if he had hit the soldier, or if he was just reloading.
Jonas didn’t know how well trained the soldiers were, but he knew eventually someone was going to regain control and order the men to circle around both sides of the clearing to flank their attackers. He needed to make sure the rest of the forces couldn’t get that organized. Rising onto his knees, he pulled the pin and threw another grenade to the left of the sugar mill, trying to bounce it into the nearby jungle. The ordnance made it most of the way before erupting, but his movement must have caught someone’s eye, because Jonas immediately took fire from across the clearing. He hit the ground as 7.62 mm bullets chewed through the foliage around him.
He pushed back into the jungle, then rolled right again, taking cover behind a banana tree, its trunk scored from bullets. Jonas realized someone must have taken command of the unit, since the indiscriminate shooting had stopped. He moved to the other side of the tree, but couldn’t see anything past the broken palm fronds and shattered trunks. Suddenly, he heard something that chilled his blood.
Off to his right, the undeniable scream of a woman echoed through the jungle.
A LIGHT IN THE DISTANCE flared through the binoculars, and Jonas lowered them, blinking away the spots dancing across his vision. He raised them again and looked just to the right of the light. A boat was coming at him, fast.
Jonas grabbed his cell phone and hit the number that would contact every member of his team. “All right, everyone, our target vehicle is approaching at seven o’clock.
Deck team, be ready to secure the vehicle when it comes in, and escort the group to the upper aft saloon. No one is to make any kind of overt move unless you confirm hostile intent. Karen, report to the aft deck.”
He closed the cell phone and kept the glasses trained on the cigarette boat as it cruised around the
Jonas walked inside the salon and put the binoculars away under the bar, then walked over to the Stinger missile case, which had been repacked and closed. Next to it was the smaller metal case containing the gripstock. Jonas sat in a chair and waited for the men to appear.
A minute later, one of the crew opened the door and said,
“This way, gentlemen.”
Theodore trooped in, carrying a small aluminum briefcase. He was followed by two men Jonas didn’t immediately recognize, one a dark-skinned African, and the other a Cuban who, when he stepped into the light, made Jonas’s breath catch in his throat.
He slowly rose to his feet, trying to disguise his shock at seeing Major Damason Valdes—Room 59’s contact inside the Cuban military—next to the men planning to invade Cuba.
Marcus was bored. Totally, unbelievably bored.
For five hours he had been keeping the Valdes home under surveillance, waiting for the major to arrive, or for his wife to leave, or for anyone to do anything. The side street, lined with rows of quietly crumbling two- and three-story homes, many of them subdivided into several small apartments, had been about as busy as an average U.S. city block. Children played, scattering when the police came around on their patrols, then reforming into loose groups to run, laugh and scream in the early evening. Parents had either come home and shooed their kids inside, or called them from the doorway to dinner, the street filling with delicious smells of cooking food, making Marcus’s stomach rumble. He had grabbed a hasty meal at the cantina before the debacle at the hotel, but hadn’t had anything since except a dry, tasteless protein bar and some water.
Of course, I had to freshen up after my intelligence gathering, too, Marcus thought, running a hand over his newly shorn scalp. After ditching the car, he had found a bodega and had grabbed a pair of scissors, disposable razor and shaving cream, and spent twenty minutes shaving his head bare, then wrapping a do-rag around it. That, a pair of cargo shorts and a gaudy, red, green and blue guayabera shirt had completed his quick disguise.
At first it had been difficult to watch the house without being noticed. Enough people passed through the street that he was sure sooner or later someone would remember a young man no one in the neighborhood had ever seen before loitering in front of an army major’s house. The fact that both sides of the street were filled with homes also made his task more difficult, as he couldn’t find a cantina and while away the hours with a drink and a sharp eye. So he had changed up his routine every half hour. Moving around, altering his appearance—sometimes he was the bald, shirtless guy, other times he was the sunglasses-wearing, do-ragged man—and taking up different positions on the street, even parking himself right in front of the major’s house for fifteen minutes, so he didn’t appear to be targeting one particular home. And he always disappeared whenever the police came down the street.
With nightfall, the street had quieted, and Marcus had located a decrepit house that was either abandoned or the residents weren’t coming home. He sat on the front stoop, nursing a bottle of sickly sweet, neon-yellow papaya drink, chasing it with swallows of water to remove the taste from his mouth.
Lowering the bottle, Marcus checked his watch and saw it was about time to check in. He looked around to make sure no one was watching him, then flipped open his phone and dialed the number for Room 59. When the automated switchboard answered, which usually took care of wrong numbers and crank callers, he punched in the day’s code to speak to Kate directly.
“Alpha? Where are you?”
“I’m outside the subject’s house, and have been for the past five hours. There has been no movement, and I have not spotted—”
“No, you haven’t, because Beta is looking at him at this very moment about thirty miles off the Florida coast. It seems he’s linked up with our bad guys. If Jonas confirms that he’s part of their operation, he is to be terminated at the first opportunity.”
Marcus took a moment to digest the news just as he saw a woman with two young kids in tow, stopping at the very house he was watching. He slipped on his sunglasses and recorded the trio. “Primary, the subject’s wife and children have come home. What you do want me to do?”
“Withdraw from your current location and find a fast oceangoing boat. We may need you to rendezvous with Beta at sea. Will be in touch as soon as we have more information.”
“Understood. Alpha out.” Marcus turned off the sunglasses recorder and slipped them into his shirt pocket, then strolled down the street, heading for the tourist section of the harbor and the powerful speedboats docked
