hammered and colored spots flickered before his eyes. Gratefully he sat down, panting.
He reached under some bushes, groping for and finding the package he'd left there earlier. It was a rifle inside a gun-carrying case, a form-fitting plastic sheath.
He unzipped it, hauling the rifle out of the shroud. It was a high-powered deer rifle with a telescopic sight. He sat on the ground with his legs crossed, laying the rifle across the tops of his thighs. While he panted for breath, trying to recover.
A gap in the greenery surrounding him gave him a view of his surroundings. The east side of the power trail embankment was a gentle slope tilting downward for about thirty yards before leveling out on the paved lot of a mini-mall.
The mini-mall's main feature was a Kwik-Up Konvenience store whose rear faced the bottom of the slope. Behind the back of the building stood several Dumpsters and a pile of wooden pallets. To the right could be seen part of the parking lot, crowded by a fair amount of vehicles. People were doing their prestorm stocking up on food, water, flashlights, batteries, portable radios, and so on.
Standing atop a twenty-foot-pole, shaking and swaying in the wind, was a marquee reading KWIK-UP KONVENIENCE STORE.
The building fronted a highway that ran north-south, parallel to the power frail.
The strip was lined on both sides by big-box stores, discount appliance centers, fast-food joints, car stereo installers, and the like.
Apart from the vagaries of operational details, Belfran's master plan had only one potential flaw, but that was a big one: namely, that Rubio, Torres, and Moreno might decide to go into business for themselves and abscond with the ransom money.
The rifle and sniper's nest was his insurance against their going rogue. Their honesty was about to be put to the test. Belfran waited for their arrival; he would not have long to wait.
The sound of motorbikes was very near, a jarring physical presence. They were almost upon him. Should they fail the test, he was prepared to deal with the contingency.
Belfran's gut feeling was that there was little likelihood of that happening; by all accounts, the three men were dedicated soldiers of the revolution whose loyalty had never been called into question. Of course, his masters in Havana had reposed a similar confidence in him, and look what had happened.
Spymasters are a dangerous breed. Both to their foes and to those for whom they work. Their business is to ferret out secrets; they can't help but find out the way things really operate. Everyone's dirty little secrets, especially those of the high and mighty.
Making the spymasters potentially the most dangerous threat to those who employ them. What keeps them in check is the nature of the job itself. Secrets are their business, currency, and pleasure.
Beltran was no exception to the occupational hazard of his profession, that too much knowledge is a dangerous thing. Once, long ago, he'd actually believed in the revolution.
He could look back on that period with amused tolerance; it was like a child believing in Santa Claus. Beltran had never believed in Santa Claus, or the saints, either. But he had once believed in the revolution. That naivete had died early.
One didn't have to be a spymaster, not even back in the days of his youth, to realize that the revolution was a lie. Without the massive influx of aid, material and financial, from the old Soviet Union, the Cuban socialist regime would have gone bust virtually overnight.
By the time the Soviet Union had itself failed, swept up in the dustbin of history, Cuba's Fidelista regime had already consolidated its police state apparatus to such an extent that its overthrow was a virtual impossibility. For one thing, the majority of the populace subsisted on a near-starvation diet that kept them too weak to resist the police state whose control reached into every level of Cuban society.
Beltran had long moved past that, into a higher realm of awareness. His professional duties had kept him out of Cuba for most of his life; in all honesty, he preferred it that way. The creature comforts of the arch-capitalist American state where he was posted far transcended the economy of scarcity and privation on the home island.
For long years now, decades, his true devotion had been reserved for skullduggery itself, intrigue, the clandestine. The spy game was his true love; the cause itself was immaterial. Ridiculous, really, if one gave it a moment's thought.
He'd carved out a special niche for himself, one allowing him extraordinary freedom of movement, open comm lines to the top of the leadership, and the authority to commandeer vast resources of the state and the spy service. His virtually unique position of trust had offered him limitless opportunities to feather his own nest.
Why had he gone into business for himself? Why not?
Age was the main reason. Time was overtaking him. He'd lasted longer than most, but no one lasted forever. Retirement beckoned. A tricky proposition, for one in his profession. At his rarefied level.
The best-case option was that his masters would put him out to pasture somewhere in Cuba, under close surveillance, to make sure he didn't get gabby in the manner of senile old duffers who were best put to sleep. Which was no option at all, as far as he was concerned.
He'd banked away a fair-sized fortune over the years. Cuba's illicit drug trade with the United States generated mountains of money. He oversaw the Gulf Coast part of the operation. It had been child's play to divert masses of cash into his offshore and Swiss bank accounts — he had both. What he'd come to think of as his retirement fund.
To enjoy it, he had to be somewhere other than Cuba, out from under the watchful eyes of the police state. He'd been looking to make a break for some time. To close out accounts by making one last big score before jumping down the rabbit hole and closing it behind him.
Then, as if in answer to his prayers, along came Vollard. Major Marc Vollard, of mercenary infamy. The go- between had been Dixie Lee, killer and gunrunner. He was scum, but useful scum, whose connections in the extremist militia movement included sympathizers in important positions in U.S. military arsenals and National Guard armories.
Dixie Lee had come to Beltran's notice through the Generalissimo's dealings in the drug trade. One could never have too many weapons, especially not in the narcotics business. Guns and bombs were much-valued currency, and Dixie Lee was a dependable supplier of both.
Beltran made it a practice to know as much as he could about the people with whom he did business. In recent months, it had come to his attention that Dixie Lee had a new client. A rich and powerful one, whose needs had come to monopolize more and more of the gunrunner's professional attentions.
Beltran's business was finding out secret things and he went to work, putting his network of informants and contacts on the case. They first fastened on the new player's associates.
Most of them were outsiders, real outsiders. Not gringos but Europeans, or at least of European origin, although their resumes reflected extensive acquaintance with the battlefields of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.
Beltran had had excellent contacts with the old Soviet spy system, contacts that were largely carried through into the new era of the Russian Federation as the KGB morphed into the new FSB. Different initials, similar functions. From these contacts, he was able to identity the new gang in town.
They were a band of professional mercenaries, Dogs of War, whose leader was Major Marc Vollard.
The laws of physics hold true for the spy world as elsewhere; every action produces an opposite and equal reaction. Beltran's probe of Vollard's operation had triggered a counterprobe by Vollard. Contact.
A prickly mating dance followed, operating first through emissaries, ultimately resulting in Beltran and Vollard holding an exploratory meeting in search of common ground.
Already each of them had enough on the other to put them in bad with the U.S. government. They also shared this in common, that both of their respective operations were hostile to Washington: all its interests and all it represented.
Here was the basis for a frank and full exchange of ideas. Both men were professionals with an eye on the main chance: what's in it for them?
The answer: a great deal of money.
