Valley of the Templars

British are the imperialist colonial war machine. Two hundred years later the war is fought again but with the Americans as the imperialists and the Vietcong as the guerrillas. We never learn, do we?”

“It seems that way,” said Holliday.

There was a short silence. Finally Maximenko spoke up. “You didn’t come to this shit hole to talk to me about old war wounds and tell stories. Why are you seeing Leonid Maximenko in his retirement home?”

“Domingo,” Eddie answered.

“Domingo is an idiot,” said Maximenko.

“You were KGB in Cuba until 1989—you know people,” Eddie insisted.

“I defected,” said Maximenko. He poured another glass of Aguardiente and swallowed it down noisily as though he were drinking mouthwash. He butted his cigarette and lit another. “I retired. I saw the handwriting on the wall, but I saw it too late—call it what you want, but I cannot help you now. I’m too old. I’m out of touch.”

“What do you know about the Ten Families, about the Knights of the Brotherhood of Christ?” Holliday asked.

“I know enough not to say their name too loudly,” the Russian answered.

“My brother has disappeared, Leonid. I must find him,” pleaded Eddie.

“Forget Domingo. Forget he ever existed,” said Maximenko. “Believe me, it would be better for all of us.”

“You know I can’t do that, Leonid. I must find him. You worked with him at the Ministry of the Interior. You worked with him at that place in El Cano…you must know something.”

“What were you doing, listening at keyholes? No one was supposed to know about the El Cano unit.”

“I was only a nino. No one paid attention to me, but I had ears. And none of this matters. What matters to me is my brother, Domingo. I must find him.”

“I cannot help you.” The Russian shrugged.

“Can’t or won’t?” Holliday said. Maximenko threw him a dark look, then turned back to Eddie.

“All I can tell you is this—his last job at the ministry was as bodyguard and driver for Deborah Castro Espin.”

Eddie looked horrified. “La madre que te pario!”

“Who’s she?” Holliday asked.

“I tell you later, compadre,” answered his friend. Eddie turned back to Maximenko. “You still have your motocicleta?”

“In the courtyard.”

“We need to borrow it.”

“Take it; that much I can do for you.” He dug around in the pocket of his grimy cotton trousers and then tossed Eddie a set of keys. By the time they left his room, he was snoring again.

The motorcycle turned out to be a massive Soviet Ural Cossack with a sidecar. The bike was a nondescript army gray-green and it was so old it still had the mount for the MG42 ShKAS machine gun and a cradle for the sidecar passenger’s Mosin-Nagant rifle.

“We’re really going to ride around in this?” Holliday said, trying not to laugh.

“There are hundreds of these in Havana. Leftovers from la Invasion Rusa. They are very often seen on the streets of Havana. We need something to give us…mobility? As I told you, taking taxis is dangerous.”

“We can’t park this at the Hotel Nacional.”

“I know a waiter there. Give him twenty dollars and he will protect it better than he would his own mother.” Eddie grinned and climbed onto the heavily sprung saddle. He fitted one of the keys Maximenko had given to him into the ignition, stood up on the starter pedal and then slammed down on it. The eight-hundred-cubic-centimeter engine roared into life. “Into the sidecar, my friend, and I will take you for a ride.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that,” said Holliday.

The sleek pearl white Piaggio P180 Avanti turboprop landed on the private paved airstrip a mile from Lake Carroll, Illinois, and taxied to a stop. As its two Pratt & Whitney engines spooled down, the door behind the cockpit opened, the automatic steps hissed down into place and a uniformed steward silently assisted a thin and aging Katherine Sinclair to the ground, then opened the door of the waiting Escalade and helped the woman inside. The black SUV with the dark-tinted windows quickly pulled away, leaving the steward on the tarmac. A few moments later the Escalade turned behind the rudimentary automated control tower and disappeared. The pilot of the executive aircraft joined the steward on the tarmac, and both men lit cigarettes.

“What a bitch,” said the steward.

“No kidding,” agreed the pilot.

The northern corporate headquarters and training facility for Blackhawk Security Systems was located eight miles from the airstrip. It was a six-thousand-acre parcel of land in the hill country north of Mount Carroll, Illinois, and was almost completely uninhabited.

Officially known as the Compound, the facility comprised five separate shooting ranges, three outside and two enclosed, a live-fire course, three obstacle courses, a rock wall–climbing course, four “conflict reproductions,” including a war-torn urban area, an underground bunker and an Afghani-style hilltop firebase.

There were helipads, an artificial lake, a six-mile defensive driving course and enough accommodation and supplies for twenty-five hundred men. The Compound was surrounded by a twelve-foot-high double chain-link fence fitted with a razor wire core, three hundred and sixty-two surveillance cameras, its own emergency generators and solar power units, a dedicated cell tower and its own radar system.

Both the inner perimeter and the outer perimeter of the Compound were patrolled by armed guards on a twenty-four-seven schedule. In the center of it all, occupying its own hilltop site, was the Grange, a massive four- story log-and-stone “hunting lodge.”

The Grange had offices and sleeping accommodation for all of the Northern Division executives, conference rooms, a huge dining hall and large commercial-scale kitchen and a belowground “War Room,” which was equipped with a direct-link satellite feed to every area of operations currently being run by Blackhawk around the world.

The offices of Major General Atwood Swann and his second in command, Colonel Paul Axeworthy, were located on the top floor of the Grange, with several large picture windows looking out over the lake and the forested area beyond.

Swann and Axeworthy met with Katherine Sinclair in the large conference room that separated the two men’s offices. The centerpiece of the room was an immense, curving black granite table polished until it gleamed. In the middle of the table, carved into the native stone, was the aggressive Blackhawk that served as the company’s logo. The table, like the rest of the compound, had been purchased with funds from the Department of Defense, Blackhawk’s major client, and provided by Katherine Sinclair’s untiring lobbying efforts in the hidden halls and private dining rooms of Washington.

Sinclair sat at the head of the table, flipped open the ostrich document case she carried and withdrew a red- covered file, which she opened in front of her. “Tell me about Operation Cuba Libre,” she said.

Swann nodded to Axeworthy, who got to his feet and went to the huge flat-screen that took up most of one wall. He tapped the screen with one expertly manicured finger and instantly a relief map of Cuba appeared. He tapped the screen again and a section in the center of the map enlarged to show a central spine of hills and steep valleys that ran through the middle of the island.

“These are the Escambray Hills. During the ‘revolution within a revolution’ that took place shortly after Castro took power, this was where Batista supporters, major criminal elements and anyone else who defied El Comandante went. It took Castro almost three years to clean them all out, including a team of eighty- five or so CIA advisers. If they’d had any real sense back then, Escambray was where the Bay of Pigs should have taken place—not a swamp.”

“If I wanted historical analysis I would have asked for it. Get to the point,” said the woman at the head of the table.

Axeworthy cleared his throat and went on. “We used the old CIA runway for the Tucanos. So far we’ve managed to bring in four of them. In two weeks we’ll have the full complement of eight, ordnance included.”

“I thought the Cubans had good coast guard radar?” Sinclair asked.