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CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE
Cancun, Mexico
The famed “Strip” of the Mexican resort town of Cancun looked more or less like any other overly developed tourist trap anywhere in a tropical paradise. An eight-mile-long row of expensive hotels complete with tennis courts, well-tended gardens, towering royal palms, spacious pools and cabanas flanked one another along a perfect beach. Interspaced with the hotels were concrete, chrome-and-glass shopping malls, exclusive boutiques, world-class restaurants, glittering nightclubs and twenty-four-hour tequila bars. A brightly lit four-lane boulevard crowded with freshly washed cabs and colorful jitneys ferried the fun-seeking vacationers from one destination to the next.
The Hotel Maya wasn’t the tallest building in the lineup, but it was easily the most impressive. From the outside, the hotel attempted to replicate the design of an ancient Mayan stepped pyramid as could be found at several of the neighboring Yucatan archaeological sites. If, that was, the Mayans had been able to build an eighteen-story pyramid in sand-colored concrete with bronze-tinted windows. Even a hardened pragmatist like Hal Brognola had to admit that it was impressive.
It was a warm, sultry evening, and the big Fed was standing on the balcony of his tenth-floor room of the Hotel Maya looking out over the Caribbean as a brightly lit cruise ship sailed out of the port. A raucous pool party fueled by Happy Hour drinks was in full swing around the pools in the courtyard below, and the live music was close to deafening. So far he hadn’t spotted any young buxom women frolicking sans their bikini tops, but the sun had just gone down, so the night was young. A few barrels of cheap tequila later and the place would really start to rock.
This wasn’t quite Brognola’s usual environment. But he was in Cancun on business and had to admit that this faux pyramid beat the hell out of the normal venue for the biannual meeting of the Organization of Justice Departments of the Americas. Usually the international group met in far less spectacular surroundings noted mostly for their rubber chicken dinners and the Gideon bibles in every nightstand. He suspected that his friend Hector de Lorenzo, Mexico’s attorney general, had a personal stake in the resort to have been able to reserve this swanky place for the week-long conference. With the attendees’ tabs all being paid with the public dime, though, the hotel certainly wasn’t going to suffer any loss of revenue with this crowd.
Plus, with everyone at the conference being either a police officer or justice department official, the staff wouldn’t have to go far to call the cops if things got out of hand. Which he knew they would again this evening before much longer. There was nothing like turning a bunch of cops, lawyers and judges loose in a place like this courtesy of the public coffers. Most of the young women he’d spotted so far looked to be working girls instead of the usual mix of coeds and thrill-seeking, young urban professionals who came to try their luck in Cancun. Since there wasn’t a dog among them, he figured they’d been flown in specifically to service the event. Again, he saw de Lorenzo’s deft touch at work.
Brognola enjoyed hanging loose as much as any other overworked public servant and God only knew, he could sure use a few days off. But while this was a premier place for off-duty fun in the sun of any and every variety known to humankind, he hadn’t come south to party. His mission at the conference was to try to get help with something that had been digging at the back of his mind. With the Western World focused so tightly on the “War Against Terrorism” no one was paying much attention to other potential hot spots in America’s backyard. The Middle East crisis hadn’t yet played itself out, and some doubted that it ever would. But it was still the number one topic on the national agenda and rightfully so; 9/11 wouldn’t be soon forgotten.
Nonetheless, America had other, closer enemies who wished her harm and they couldn’t be ignored. It was true that few of them presented as serious a threat as radical Islamic fundamentalists, but a nation, as well as a man, could die the death of a thousand cuts. His mission was to interest his colleagues in helping him look into something that seemed to be lurking just below the intelligence horizon. He’d had no joy with his quest so far; in fact, no one would even talk to him about his concerns. But this was just the second day of the scheduled week and now that the attendees had blown off a little pent-up steam, maybe he could get someone to listen to him.
He walked back to the well-stocked minibar in his kitchenette and was contemplating his choices when someone knocked on his door. He opened it to find Hector de Lorenzo and, even so early in the evening, the handsome, rakish, Mexican cop-turned-attorney general looked to be half in the bag and feeling no pain.
“Hal—” de Lorenzo hoisted his half-empty glass and rattled the ice cubes “—our dinner reservations are getting cold, amigo. And don’t tell me that you want to eat alone in your room again tonight. I went to all the trouble to find us suitable dinner companions and, believe me, we don’t want to disappoint them.”
“Dammit, Hector.” Brognola grinned as he shook his head. Hooking up with de Lorenzo was usually a one-way ticket to the Disoriented Express and this occasion was proving to be no different than usual. “You know how much I hate this social bullshit. I just want to have a quiet meal and go to bed by myself. I really don’t need to have a bad head in the morning. I have work to do tomorrow.”
“Hal, Hal.” De Lorenzo shook his head in mock sorrow. “That’s simply not done around here, and you know it. You have to show your country’s flag, and wave it proudly, by sharing our libations.”
The Mexican leaned closer and smiled. “Don’t forget, we Latinos are a very social people and we’re going to think that you don’t appreciate our hospitality if you don’t break bread with us.”
As much as Brognola hated to admit it, he knew the Mexican A.G. was right. He needed to be seen as part of the extended regional justice family if he was going to get the cooperation he wanted when he needed it. “It’s not the bread I’m worried about, Hector.”
“Never to worry, amigo—” de Lorenzo beamed “—I’ll see that you get served only the best tequila and not that rotgut you Yankees usually drink.”
Brognola shuddered.
“I promise.”
“Let me get my coat,” Brognola grumbled.
“Good man,” de Lorenzo said. “And I swear on my honor that you won’t regret the evening.”
Brognola had heard that line before, but maybe Barbara Price was right and he’d been working too hard and needed to relax a little.
DIEGO GARCIA GLANCED UP from the map of Mexico on the chart table over to the clock on the bulkhead of the spacious cabin of his pleasure boat. It was 2200 hours to the second.
“Team Six is at its launch point, Comrade,” the radio operator reported from the communications console on the other side of the cabin.
Diego Garcia nodded. They were exactly on schedule, and he had expected nothing less of his men. The last two of his assault teams had a more difficult approach to make, and it would be at least another hour before they would be in position to launch. When his teams went into action, they would follow a series of carefully coordinated actions to ensure that his plan would succeed. Nothing less would be acceptable.
His command post this night was a sizable pleasure yacht cruising fifteen miles off the coast of the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico in international waters. Anyone spotting the craft on radar or satellite would see only one more private boat sailing past the Cancun resort complex. Externally, nothing showed to make his boat stand out from the dozens just like it in the region. His communications antennas were all hidden, as was his defensive armament. He even had half a dozen women in bikinis up on deck to aid the disguise. Nothing had been left to chance.
A sharp stab of pain in the side of his head caused the Cuban to blink, but he ignored it. He had no time for anything as trivial as a brain tumor right now. In fact, for the next six months that the doctors had said he had left to live, he would have no time for it. In those few months he was going to be totally focused on creating a new New World Order in the Western Hemisphere that would be his last legacy to the world.
His plan wasn’t just something he’d thrown together when he’d learned of his impending death. Not at all. It was a lifelong dream that had the full approval of the leader of Cuba himself. And while there would be no way to directly connect his operation with the Mother Country, Cuba would benefit greatly from it. She would finally become a real world power because of his effort, and his name would live forever in the minds of millions.
Diego Garcia, a ranking member of the DGI, Dirección General de Inteligencia, Cuba’s intelligence service, headed up the supersecret organization code named the Matador. This section had been named for the brave men who stood alone in the sand facing brutal animals many times their size with only a slim sword in their hand to protect them. His motherland could never best the hated Yankees by brute force. There were far too many of them and they were too strong. But, as with the lone man in the arena, through bravery and a thin blade, even the largest raging bull could be brought to its knees.
Like the matador who faced the bull on the hot sand, Garcia didn’t fear dying. When the tumor ate so much of his brain that he could no longer function, he would gladly put the muzzle of his pistol in his mouth and pull the trigger. His only fear was that he wouldn’t live long enough to see the full extent of America’s humiliation. The Yankees had ground his people under their heels for decades, and it was time for them to pay the bill for their arrogance. He envied the terrorists who had struck New York on 9/11, as the Yankees called it, but his operation would cost the Americans much more than just two buildings and a few thousand lives. They had caused the deaths of far more Cubans than that and one of them had been his dimly remembered father.
He remembered so clearly, though, his mother’s face on the day his hero father had been buried. The Cuban leader himself had delivered the eulogy for him and the other Heros of the People who had fallen turning back the Yankee invasion at the Bay of Pigs. During the long speech, his mother had held herself proudly as befitted a widow of a martyr of the Revolution. She herself had been active in the Revolution and would go on to work for the DGI for the rest of her life.
On the morning after his father’s state funeral, his mother had made him stand in front of a framed photo of Cuba’s leader and recite a vow to dedicate his life to bringing death and destruction to the Capitalists who had killed his father. At the time he’d been too young to really understand what she was asking of him, but he had made the vow to please her. He had repeated it every morning since then and continued to do so to this day as the touchstone of his life.
That same morning, his mother had also started to teach him the things he would need to know to be able to carry out his vow. She had lived in Florida before the glorious Revolution and had started to teach him proper American English. As soon as he had the basics down, she went on to teach him how to blend in with the Yankees. Being from an almost pure Spanish bloodline, his features and coloring would allow him to pass unnoticed in the mixed American society.
After entering Cuba’s secret service himself, he had specialized in the foreign branch of the DGI. With his mother’s thorough training, he had been a very successful undercover agent operating in Florida, Texas and Louisiana. His successes were rewarded with his appointment as the man in charge of the top-secret Matador Section. The plan he was implementing this night had already been in existence at that time, but he’d brought new ideas to it and had expanded the program.
Within a very short period, the great United States of America would be on her knees weeping, and he would be a very satisfied man. Few men had ever had the chance to be the driving force behind the destruction of a corrupt empire, and he would die happy.
Going to the head off the main cabin, Diego Garcia opened the medicine cabinet and took out the bottle of pills that kept his growing tumor partially in check. That the medication he needed to stay alive had been developed in the nation he was trying to destroy was an irony that hadn’t escaped him. Even he had to admit that the Americans were very clever when it came to the sciences and medicine, but they were as heartless with their modern wonders as they were with everything else. He had to have his medicine clandestinely purchased for him in Florida because the company that manufactured it wouldn’t allow it to be sold to the suffering people of his, and other poor countries, at a price they could afford.
That was only one small thing that would be different in the new world he was giving birth to this night.
HAL BROGNOLA HAD to admit that de Lorenzo had been absolutely correct in insisting that he go to the dinner this evening. It would have been a tragic mistake for him not to have made the acquaintance of his dinner companion Elena Martinez. Being a staunch family man, he had no intention of taking this any further than enjoying dinner and a few drinks at the table. But it really would have been a shame to have missed this chance to even briefly enjoy the company of one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen.
A man who was too old to properly appreciate feminine beauty was a completely useless article, and he was never going to get that old.
“Hal—” Hector de Lorenzo’s grin threatened to split his face “—may I present Señorita Elena Martinez.”
In his cop’s mind, Señorita Martinez registered as five-six and a well-distributed one hundred and thirty pounds. The stats, though, didn’t even begin to convey the effect of the complete package. The low-cut, tight-waisted dress she wore was a stunning advertisement offset by long hair combed down over her back.
“Elena,” de Lorenzo said, turning to the woman, “my old friend Hal is one of the American President’s most valuable advisers, so you should make him feel welcome to Mexico. I might need his help someday and I want him to remember me fondly.”
The woman extended her hand and Brognola felt like a fool, but he bent over it like a Spanish grandee in a forties Zorro movie. “I am honored,” he said.
“As am I, señor,” she replied with a smile.
“Let’s eat,” de Lorenzo said.
Dinner was being served in the largest of the hotel’s open-air dining areas adjacent to the main pool. The scent of tropical flowers and salt water on the warm air and the flicker of torch lights created a romantic atmosphere. So did the intimate laughter of the young “dinner companions” each man had at his table. This was the most sexually charged event he’d attended in a long time where everyone still had their clothes on. With the pool close by, though, that could change at any moment.
The music from the live band wasn’t as loud as it had been during Happy Hour, but it was still a force to be reckoned with. It did, though, make dinner conversations more intimate because he had to lean close to Martinez to hear her low, throaty voice. Which, of course, put him in olfactory range of the subtle mix of her expensive perfume and her natural pheromones. It was a very nice combination indeed and went well with her catlike eyes, silky long hair, low-cut dress, soft lighting, Caribbean rum and spicy food.
He was leaning close again, his face inches from her fragrant hair, answering one of her questions when a switch was thrown and the dining area was hit with harsh light from spotlights around the perimeter. By the time he could blink away the retina burn, a dozen black-clad men armed with AKs entered from the shadows and surrounded the diners.
“Aw shit!” Brognola muttered. He’d come to Mexico to chase a hunch, but it looked as though it had come chasing him instead. There was no way this was going to have a happy ending.
“Hal!” Martinez clutched his arm, her eyes wide.
“Just stay calm,” he told her as he tried to figure the odds.
Since none of the diners had foreseen a need to pack lethal hardware while drinking and dining, there wasn’t a gun in the crowd. The exception was the squad of waiters who had all produced handguns from somewhere, but it looked as though they were on the side of the intruders.
“Everyone stay where you are,” one of the gunmen commanded in English and then Spanish.
When one of the diners jumped up, he was instantly shot. He fell dead across his table, scattering the dishes and drinks. This freaked his dinner partner, who also tried to run, only to share her companion’s fate.
“Stay seated!”
If there was something that cops and prosecutors knew how to do it was to listen to men with guns in the hands. Another dozen gunmen started taking the diners and their companions from their tables and searching them before leading them away. When it came his turn, Brognola went along with the pat-down. This was no time for macho heroics. He did, though, try to steady Elena Martinez when the grinning thug took his time running his hands over her.
When they were both found to be clean, they were led away to the main conference room inside the hotel, where they found more armed men waiting for them. Whoever had put this operation together wasn’t missing a trick. Once there, Martinez was led away to join the other women and Hal was sent over to join the men. The guards allowed no talking, so the men waited with their own thoughts and fears of what was coming next.
Brognola had no fears, though. He knew full well what was coming next. He just didn’t know who was sponsoring this mass hostage taking and what they thought they were going to get out of it. Whatever it was, though, it wasn’t going to be pretty.
CHAPTER TWO
Panama Canal
Dr. Richard Spellman wasn’t a man who enjoyed wasting his time; he was much too busy for it. He wasn’t one of those doctors who kept America’s golf courses in business or one who took extended winter vacations in exotic resorts. For one, he wasn’t a wealthy man, and two, he wasn’t the kind of doctor who could take time off. He was an M.D. bench researcher in a university hospital; not too much downtime came with the job. While his salary was less than stellar by current medical standards, he didn’t really care. He loved what he did. He loved it so much, in fact, that his wife had divorced him and taken up with a California plastic surgeon. Not only was she able to get her face-lifts and boob jobs done free now, but her new husband was willing to take her to exclusive, exotic locales and to parade her to show off his handiwork.
So, being on a cruise ship passing through the Panama Canal en route to the Caribbean was a first for Spellman and totally out of character. But it wasn’t really a vacation, either. The sole reason he was on board the SS Carib Princess was that the Society of Genomic Research was holding its annual meeting on board, and he had been invited to present a paper on his work. Even so, if the association hadn’t picked up his tab for the cruise and offered him an honorarium, he couldn’t have afforded to attend.
He’d been prepared to really hate wasting the time both before and after he made his presentation, but he had to admit that he was actually starting to enjoy himself. He’d never been at sea before and found the experience strangely liberating. Also, after a couple of years eating his own cooking, he was thoroughly enjoying the ship’s cuisine on his all-inclusive ticket.
Spellman stood at the rail watching the early evening jungle along the banks of the canal as the ship approached the eastern lock. In a little more than an hour, they would be in the Caribbean steaming for the island of Aruba. That would be another first for him; he’d never been to a tropical island. He turned when he heard footsteps approach.
“There you are, Richard,” a woman in a light tropical dress said with a smile.
Dr. Mary Hamilton was the other reason he had started to enjoy the cruise. Since his divorce, his social life had been pretty much confined to exchanging mumbled greetings with the surly waitress in the restaurant where he had breakfast. When he’d found himself almost the only single guy in a boatload of doctors with their trophy wives and younger girlfriends in tow, he’d been a little overwhelmed. It made him realize how long it had been since he’d enjoyed the scent of a woman. On the second night out, though, he’d stumbled onto Mary.
She was a woman many men wouldn’t notice. She wasn’t a fashion plate, nor was she young enough to be a centerfold. She was, however, trim, confident and intelligent. That rare combination made her more than exotic to his eyes. Best of all, she was also a Ph.D. research director for a major pharmaceutical company. He worked in a smaller university setting, but their professional lives were similar and they could talk shop. Until meeting her, he hadn’t realized how nice it was to be able to talk about his work with a woman who understood what he did for a living.
“You ready to go in to dinner?” she asked. “The eight o’clock bell just rang.”
Being a man who hated to waste time, Spellman took her arm. “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Rather than standing in line with the rest of the herd at the common trough, why don’t we go down to that little French restaurant on the second deck and eat by ourselves. It seemed like a nice place, and the menu looked interesting.”
He didn’t add that this place he suggested was an intimate little bistro designed more for romantic encounters than for pedestrian dining. But if he was going to get to know this woman better, and he intended to, he wasn’t going to waste any more time doing it.
“Great idea.” Hamilton smiled. “I’m up for a few snails in garlic butter.”
Spellman grimaced. He should have checked on her culinary preferences. But in for a penny, in for a pound. If he needed to, he’d introduce her to breath mints.
NGUYEN CAO NGUYEN stood on the deck of the blacked-out canal tug as it approached the stern of the Carib Princess. On deck with him were two dozen heavily armed Matador operatives in black combat suits. Another dozen men stood behind them ready to take command of the ship after the assault teams had secured it. Doing the takedown in the canal made it easier, and his allies at the eastern lock guaranteed that the ship’s passage under new management would go without a hitch.
With the ship brightly lit, the Vietnamese had no trouble seeing the hatch open in the hull above the stern. A figure in a crewman’s uniform rolled out a long rope ladder and lowered it over the side.
“Go!” he said in Spanish, and motioned to the waiting assault leader.
The black-clad commandos swarmed up the rope ladder, their silenced weapons slung over their backs, and disappeared inside the ship. To keep from being spotted, Nguyen had the tugboat captain back off a hundred yards while he waited. He didn’t mind the wait because he’d been waiting for years to get his payback.
During the Vietnam war, Nguyen had been a young Vietcong agent planted in the USAID office in Saigon. In the aftermath of the Tet Offensive, he’d been exposed and sent to a South Vietnamese prison camp for six years. The North Vietnamese liberation of Saigon had freed him, but when he returned to what had been his home, he learned that his wife had moved in with an American foreign service officer in his absence.
The Yankee was already gone, having fled with the rest of his people in the last-minute evacuation, but Nguyen had hunted down his unfaithful wife and killed her and her bastard half-Yankee child. He could now see that it had been an impulsive act, but he’d been imprisoned for a long time. Had he taken the time to think about it, he would have still killed her, but might not have done it so publicly. His wife’s family was high-ranking Vietcong officials, and he’d been forced to flee to Red China to escape their vengeance.
Even though China and the People’s Republic of Vietnam shared the same twisted Oriental version of Marxism, they weren’t quite on speaking terms. In the aftermath of North Vietnam’s takeover of the South, the Chinese were concerned about continuing their expansionistic policies. The unsuccessful Vietnamese military incursions into the disputed Chinese border territory only confirmed their fears. Therefore, working on the enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend theory, Nguyen was welcomed in China.
When his debriefing revealed his vast working knowledge of American military and political activities, the Chinese took him on as an agent in their intelligence service. After extensive training, he’d been infiltrated into a group of “boat people” refugees from Hong Kong being sent to the United States. Once in the U.S., he settled in Southern Florida and, on orders of his Beijing masters, linked up with the Cuban DGI agents active there.
The Chinese considered the Cubans to be rather unimportant in the grand scheme of world history, and bumbling, overly emotional amateurs to boot. But they were the sole Communist state in the Western Hemisphere and a good launchpad for China’s plans for the region. And Beijing had been making plans for Latin America for decades. Since Chinese strategic thought was always couched in terms of decades instead of weeks, Beijing didn’t mind letting someone else be their front man as long as it served their ultimate goals.
When Nguyen discovered the activities of the Matador Section and reported it to his Beijing handlers, he was ordered to try to get accepted into the secret organization and, given local Chinese assets, to offer the Cubans as an enticement. The Cubans fell for it, and Nguyen soon became Diego Garcia’s second in command. As such, he was personally supervising the takeover of the Carib Princess as it was a critical element of Garcia’s overall Matador plan.
If Garcia’s operation was successful, it would advance China’s long-range objectives without their having to expose any of their own operations. Best of all, if it failed, China wouldn’t be caught up in the inevitable backlash. The Americans had been looking for an excuse to obliterate Cuba for many years now, and the Chinese didn’t want Beijing to end up on the same nuclear cruise missile target list as Havana.
When Nguyen heard the code word over his radio, he motioned to his replacement crew that would sail the ship on to Cancun. As per his instructions, the assault team had executed the ship’s captain and most of the bridge crew. The Carib Princess’s first officer, purser, engineering officer and the Black Gang had been kept alive, though. The Matador replacement crew was experienced with large vessels, but in case something came up, he wanted men on hand who knew the intimate details of operating this particular ship.
As soon as the substitute crewmen had climbed the ladder into the ship, Nguyen started up after them. His first act on board would be to notify Garcia that the ship was theirs.
RICHARD SPELLMAN grandly slathered butter on the last slice of thick-crust bread. “I swear this is the last bite,” he said. “I’m going to have to call the ship’s doctor and order a gurney to roll me back to my cabin.”
Mary Hamilton smiled. “Coming here has to have been one of your better ideas, Richard. But wait on calling for the gurney, my cabin’s right down the hallway.”
“That’s an even better idea,” he said. “But on a ship, I think they call it a passageway.”
“It still leads to my cabin.”
