Chico ran his boats—as did the others—as if they were normal fishing boat captains. And indeed they were. When the DI had need of them, they kept bookings light or canceled them altogether so they’d be available.
No one knew their secret income from the Cuban government made their annual salaries about five times a year greater than the hardest working charter boat captain anywhere in the Keys.
“What you mean to say, Chico, is that I am old and might fall overboard to feed the sharks.”
“We can’t have that happen to you, Comrade,” Chico laughed. “You’re our main connection to Cuba.”
And it was true—he was the primary link between the Cuban Fifth Column in the U.S. and the mother country. Pozo smiled as he settled onto a cushioned bench in the aft of the fishing boat to take in the crisp December day.
He waved to the Cuban Revolutionary Navy crew that had brought him out to his rendezvous as they pushed off from Big Fish IV and came about for the return trip to Havana. The engines roared as they headed out to sea, due south.
He’d had some reservations about using the go-fast boat instead of the slower-moving fishing boat he usually took to the rendezvous point about 20 miles off Tavernier in the Upper Keys. The go-fast boats were watched by the always lurking aerial surveillance teams working under the aegis of HITRON—the U.S. Coast Guard’s Helicopter Interdiction Tactical Squadron—but with only a few days left before Christmas, as second in command of one of the four Operational Divisions of the Dirección de Inteligencia, or DI, Cuba’s famous and deadly secret intelligence agency, he had a lot he wanted to accomplish on this trip into Miami, so he took the faster boat. As a good Communist, of course, he didn’t believe in Christmas, but he had some kids and a couple of women who liked to get presents whether the Castro government approved or not.
Among the other things he wanted to look into was the status of the transfer of the Oyebanjos’ $27 million to the Bahamas using Omer Flores, the new guy they’d met through Derek Gilbertson and Howard Rothberg.
Pozo’d given serious thought to using two or even three of his fishing boats to ferry the money over. At least he could be sure of the integrity of the personnel involved. These were his operatives, people whose allegiance was to him, even more so than the Castro regime. But after giving it a second thought, he determined it was better to bring in some new people for the job. He’d taken years to build up the network of trusted agents in the Keys (not to mention Miami and elsewhere in America), and he wasn’t about to jeopardize them for a mere $27 million. They were much too valuable for that.
The one sure thing about the total incompetence with which the U.S. government handled its finances—especially regarding IRS and Medicare payments—ensured the flow of money, hundreds of millions of dollars, would continue unimpeded year after year, far into the future. The bloated U.S. government was like an aircraft carrier. You didn’t just hit the brakes to make a course correction.
All Pozo had to do, using agents like the Oyebanjos, was to stay a few steps ahead of the Feds. When they swooped in to catch them, his people would already be gone. If the agents’ lawyers—the best ones in Miami that money could buy—were able to get the court to allow them to post bail, Pozo would see that it was posted and get the agents out of the U.S. and safely back to Cuba using one of the fishing boats in the Keys.
They’d been doing this for years without a single hitch.
Occasionally, yes, an agent got caught and went to jail, but no one had ever been able to confirm the link between the IRS and Medicare fraud and the state-controlled Cuban banking system to which Pozo directed all the money flowing out of the U.S.
If for some reason the Bahamas-bound $27 million was lost or the Coast Guard captured Flores and his team, it was not a big deal to Pozo. Flores knew nothing of the Grand Scheme. Flores knew nothing of Pozo. All he knew were the Oyebanjos (and little enough about them) and that they had a friend named Jorge Gonzalez.
Severo Oyebanjo was already complaining that he had another $30 million waiting to be transported out of the country. That, in addition to the $25 million wired out through banks handled by Derek Gilbertson and Howard Rothberg—just last month. No, one thing was sure: the money would continue to seep out of the U.S. Treasury and into the Banco Central de Cuba.
About a half hour later, as Pozo smoked a cigar, Chico came back to him and pointed to the sky. Pozo looked up and saw a helicopter descending swiftly.
“Looks like it might be a HITRON chopper,” said Chico.
“Yes,” said Pozo. “Rig up a line.”
Pozo knew the drill well. A chopper from HITRON must have seen (on radar, anyway) the go-fast boat meet up with the fishing boat and become suspicious. Or a plane patrolling high above observed it and the plane’s crew had sent in the chopper for a closer look.
He saw the MH-65C Dolphin chopper bank over them as it circled the Big Fish IV twice before powering up to follow the go-fast boat.
Pozo took his seat in the back of the boat where one of the crew gave him a rod and reel. To
