Authors: David Hagberg
“There is no gold.”
“Yes, we know that. What happened?”
“Captain Fuentes did not believe me, so he opened fire, killing one of his own men, and I was forced to shoot him.”
“What about Lieutenant Jiménez?”
“The situation is what it is. I was defending myself.”
One of them said something in Spanish to the other, which McGarvey didn’t catch.
“What about the colonel?”
“If we can resolve this situation, I’m going to offer her amnesty. She can’t return to Cuba now.”
“And us? Will you have us arrested?”
“The crowd is going to disperse sometime tonight. You’re free to go back across the border with them. No one will be stopped.”
“There are soldiers out there.”
“You’re on a military reservation, but they have been instructed not to interfere with anyone so long as the demonstration remains peaceful.”
Both men looked pointedly at the three bodies.
“Leave your weapons and get out of here,” McGarvey said. “Go home.”
The men exchanged a glance, then slowly laid their weapons on the ground and disappeared back down the trench to the north side.
McGarvey picked up his pistol and holstered it, then speed-dialed Otto’s cell phone, which wasn’t answered until three rings.
“We’ve got big trouble here, Mac!” Otto shouted, all out of breath.
And in the background, McGarvey could hear the sounds of sporadic gunfire. “I’m on my way!” he said, his gut tied in a knot, but the connection was terminated. And when he tried to call again, he could not get through.
SEVENTY-NINE
María had brought a subcompact Glock 36 Slimline .45 Auto across the border this afternoon. It held only a six-shot magazine, but even with the silencer attached, it was very small and deadly at close range. Walking away from the crowd in the darkness, she checked the action by feel, then took out her DI credentials booklet as she approached an unmarked Ford Taurus with plain hubcaps and government plates about one hundred yards out.
A slender young man in a business suit was leaning against the car, and when he spotted her coming out of the darkness, holding up her credentials, he straightened up and tossed his cigarette away.
“Federal District Chihuahua Police,” she said from ten feet away, and the cop—she took him to probably be FBI—relaxed.
“Looks like it’s about over.”
“FBI?”
“Don Schmidt from Albuquerque,” he said, and he reached for his credentials.
María brought the pistol round from behind her right hip, and before the agent could react, she pointed the pistol at his head. “Throw your gun to the ground, along with your cell phone and your badge, and walk away or I will shoot you.”
No one from the crowd still gathered in front of the two mounds waiting for something to happen, maybe someone else to talk to them from the big screens, could see what was happening here, and as far as she could tell, the nearest Fort Bliss soldiers were at least one hundred yards away in the opposite direction, and the cops had stopped at the military reservation limits. Only a few FBI agents had come in closer. No one wanted to spook the crowd.
“Who the hell are you?” the agent demanded, but he was nervous.
María motioned toward the crowd that was already beginning to head back to the highway. “You’re going to join them.”
The agent held for a moment, like a deer caught in headlights, but then he pulled out his pistol and dropped it to the ground along with his identification wallet and his cell phone, and turned and headed toward the crowd.
Shoving the pistol in her purse, she picked up the agent’s badge, pistol, and cell phone.
Checking one last time that no one was coming her way, she got behind the wheel and headed for the west checkpoint on the narrow two-lane Forrest Road that ran straight across the base from Airport Road to Highway 54, which in turn would take her a few miles south to I-10 and from there only three miles farther to El Paso’s international airport.
Even if McGarvey came looking for her, no one would suspect she’d used the local airport to make good her escape instead of returning across the border to Mexico.
She had been standing in the shadows at the bottom of the trench, just a few feet from where Fuentes had taken McGarvey, and she’d heard everything. The gold was at Fort Knox, not here, and the traitors from Miami had gone there to claim it. It all had been a gigantic ruse that had claimed the freedom and probably the lives of Román and the attorney Rosales. Fuentes was dead, by McGarvey’s hand, and there was a good chance that she would be assassinated if she ever returned to Cuba, unless she could make another end run. God, how it rankled, how it hurt, how it was so stupidly embarrassing. She’d reached high—El Comandante’s daughter had—and she was on the verge of failure. No going back for her. Not now, not like this. No settling in with the traitors in Miami, either. They would kill her the moment they saw her.
Unless she could make one final deal. A desperation move, but she figured it was her only avenue.
A Hummer was parked on the side of the road, and María held the FBI badge out the window, and the soldiers waved her through.
As soon as she hit Highway 54, she used her BlackBerry to connect with an airline booking agency for any flight direct to Atlanta, and she got a first-class seat on Delta flight leaving at nine this evening. She paid for it with her Ines Delgado credit card, which she thought would raise no red flags anywhere except Mexico City and Havana. With luck, the FBI agent would not be believed by the army units without identification long enough for her to get away, and his car wouldn’t be discovered in the airport parking garage until morning, by which time she would be long gone.
Her father had made her promise: for salvation. He’d meant Cuba’s salvation, or at least that’s what she thought he’d meant. But now it was for her own salvation, and maybe her personal retribution, because she was angry that she had been so easily used.
Her grip tightened on the steering wheel as she made the connection with I-10 and headed east. She had been angry for as long as she could remember, and for just a few beats now, she wondered if it had been worth it. If she’d ever accomplished anything worthwhile because of it.
And another thought crossed her mind—so sudden, so compelling, and so alien to everything that she believed in, it almost took her breath away.
She realized, just then, that she had fallen in love, which in a way made her even more angry than she’d ever been. It was a weakness that she despised.
EIGHTY
The gunfire had been reduced to sporadic shots around the nearly three-quarter-mile perimeter just outside the depository’s fence line. Raúl was hunkered down behind his Cadillac with Otto, who was trying to establish contact with someone, anyone, via computer.
“Anything yet?” Raúl asked.
“Cell phones have been blocked.”
“I know, I can’t contact my lieutenants to find out what the hell is going on. But I think the goddamn DI infiltrated us in Miami. What about your sat phone?”
“I’m searching who on Fort Bliss has one. Maybe I can get patched through to Bogan.”
Minutes after the first shots had been fired, the tanks blocking access to the roads leading off the base had rumbled closer, and the one on Bullion Boulevard to the east had moved to within twenty or thirty yards of the line of cars and buses that stretched along Gold Vault Road.
“Whatever it is, do it fast,” Raúl said. He pulled out his 9 mm Beretta and checked the load.
Otto looked up from his computer and blinked furiously. “Where are you going?”
“The DI has infiltrated us, and someone has to take care of it, because most of these people aren’t armed.”
“What about your lieutenants?”
“I told them no shooting unless their lives depended on it.”
Otto cocked an ear. “Well, it’s calmed down for now, but if you go out there and get into some kind of a gun battle with the bad guys, the general is likely to send his troops in, and then we’ll have a big mess on our hands.”
“We’ve already got a big mess,” Raúl said.
“Mac said that he was on his way before we were cut off.”
“That’s a thousand miles or more to Louisville and twenty miles by road here. So even if he’s already in the air, I don’t think we can hold out that long—maybe until two this morning—unless we do something right now.”
Martínez was a lot like McGarvey: almost impossible to argue with once his mind was made up.
“Don’t get yourself shot to death,” Otto said. “Mac would never let me forget it. Besides, you’ve got a lot of work to do after you get back to Miami.”
“Try to reach Bogan,” Raúl said, and keeping low, he scrambled to the two dozen people flat on the ground behind the bus that had brought them north. Many of them were women with a few children. But most were men and they were angry.
“You said there would be no gunfire!” one of them shouted.
“Keep it down,” Raúl said. “Did you see anything?”
The man, who was at least in his mid-seventies, noticed the pistol in Raúl’s hand. “Muzzle flashes about fifty yards maybe a little closer to the west, but that was fifteen minutes ago.”
“I maybe saw something on the other side of the depository,” another man said. “But it’s quiet now.”
“What about the military?” the old man asked. “Are they going to try to arrest us, or move us out?”
“They will if this shit keeps up.”
“Is it the DI
bastardos
?”
“I don’t know who else,” Raúl said.
“Where is he going?” one of the other men said, pointing down the road.
Raúl turned in time to see Otto marching along the line of cars, past where people were huddling, directly toward where the tank had taken up position.
“Dios mío!”
Raúl shouted. He jumped up and raced back, catching up to Otto who was just coming abreast of the last bus before the intersection with Gold Vault Road which went left.
Otto had his hands up and Raúl grabbed his arm and tried to stop him, but Otto pulled away. “Get your pistol out of sight, and stay right here. I might have a chance to buy us some time.”
“You’re going to surrender to the tank commander?”
“What do you think he’s going to do, order his crew to shoot me?”
“He just might,” Raúl said. But he stuck his pistol in his belt beneath his jacket. “I’m coming with you.”
“Stay here,” Otto said, but Raúl shook his head.
“If I let you get shot to death, Mac would for sure never forgive me.”
“Let me do the talking,” Otto said, and keeping his hands up, marched past the bus and across the intersection, Raúl right behind him, the people behind the bus watching them as if they were
muy loco.
The tank’s turret swiveled so that the main gun was pointed right at them, and they stopped about ten yards away.
“Either shoot me, or pop out of there so that we can talk!” Otto shouted.
The Abrams M1A2 battle tank’s engine rumbled softly, and in the distance they could hear other engines, but most of the helicopters had landed in the field near the woods to the east, only one in the air at least a half mile south.
“I don’t think they know what to do with us,” Raúl said at Otto’s shoulder.
The tank’s top hatch opened, and a man with lieutenant’s bars, a tank commander’s helmet, and headset appeared. “Gentlemen, state your names and business.”
“I’m Otto Rencke, and I work for the Central Intelligence Agency. Please relay to General Bogan that I was the one who hacked your communications system and unless you pull your heavy hardware back, we could have a serious situation here.”
“Yes, sir, stand by,” the tank commander said. He spoke into his headset for a bit. “Who is the other man?”
“My associate,” Rencke said. “Kirk McGarvey should be here in two or three hours, at which time the entire situation will be explained.”
The lieutenant was relaying Otto’s words. “General Bogan asks that you immediately disperse, return the way you have come.”
“That’s not possible at this time.”
“You will be subject to arrest and prosecution.”
“I think that General Bogan has other orders from President Langdon.”
In this instance, the delay between the time the lieutenant relayed Otto’s words and the general’s response was longer. Almost a full minute.
“There has been gunfire from your group.”
“We believe that several Cuban intelligence officers have embedded themselves within the exiles. So far as we understand, none of it has been directed at your people or at the depository.”
“Why are they here?”
“To stop us,” Otto said. “Mr. McGarvey will explain everything as soon as he arrives. He’s flying up from Fort Bliss aboard a CIA Gulfstream, and he’ll want clearance to land at the nearest airstrip. I would expect Godman.”
“That’s not possible.”
“Tell the general that the president will in all certainty direct otherwise.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Rencke, but the general again orders that you immediately disperse.”
Otto took two steps forward, when he was flung face-down onto the pavement, and seconds later, the sound of a rifle shot whip-cracked from somewhere behind.
EIGHTY-ONE
In the air, McGarvey tried twice again to reach Otto’s cell phone with no response, and he was beginning to get seriously worried. It was a little after nine in the evening Mountain Standard, and the pilot had given him an ETA at Godman Air Field of 12:45
A.M.
Eastern, two hours plus, during which a lot of bad things could happen.
“We still don’t have clearance to land at Godman,” the pilot, Roger Darling, told him.
“They give a reason why?”
“No, sir. But from what I’m reading between the lines, something big is happening out there, and they’ve got the entire complex on lockdown.”
“Who’d you talk to?”