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They waved to him, he waved back, and then he glanced down at his watch again, pleased to see that he’d made up a little time on the back half of his 10K.
Soon he picked up the pace even more as he ran through the manicured lawns and gardens in front of the blast doors, passing Cuban special forces men sitting in vehicles and on camp chairs by a fire pit. Unlike the regular infantry at the perimeter, the Black Wasps at the front of the place paid him little attention; they’d seen him leave forty-five minutes earlier, and he’d been cleared to go wherever he wanted on the property by Señor Wren, but they weren’t going to get chummy with him.
Zack had been assigned his own share of shitty sentry postings in the Navy, and he didn’t begrudge these hard-ass dudes for being annoyed that they had to sit around all day and night protecting a bunch of rich gringos.
He made it back into his room at ten till seven, showered and changed, and by seven ten he was in the cafeteria being served up a massive plate of sausage, fried green plantains, and pastries filled with cream cheese and guava paste. Fresh orange juice and black coffee were placed on his tray next, and then he went looking for his team among the dozens of computer engineers, logistics personnel, and security seated at various six-top tables around the large concrete room, chowing down.
He found the four former Black Wasps officers who were his close-protection employees here, and together they discussed the details of this morning’s plan, a seven-car convoy movement to the campus that would last less than ten minutes.
All four of the ex–special forces guys spoke English, which was handy, because Zack’s Spanish knowledge had been centered on cervezas and señoritas, and this had not proved helpful on his last visit to Latin America, when he got his ass kicked in Caracas and then was thrown into a Venezuelan prison.
He endeavored to speak slowly and clearly and in English while here in Cuba, and he hoped that would help him stay out of any trouble that he wasn’t paid to get into.
Forty-five minutes after he sat down for breakfast, just after eight a.m., Zack Hightower stood bare-chested and in cargo pants in his room as he pulled his big Staccato XC 9-millimeter out of its appendix holster, dropped the twenty-round magazine and then slapped it back in, and checked to make certain a twenty-first round was ready in the chamber. Reholstering, he hooked a loaded triple-mag pouch on the left side of his belt, offering him a round count of eighty-one hard-hitting Federal HST high-power 124 grain ammunition stashed on his body and ready for immediate use.
The little Ruger pistol slipped into an ankle holster he affixed just above the Origin Coronado boot on his right foot, and then he covered it with his khaki cargo pants.
Two folding knives went into his pockets, one on the left and one on the right.
He grabbed a white guayabera shirt off the back of a chair and put it on, smoothing it out so it covered his handgun and extra mags. Checking himself in the mirror, he adjusted his hair a little, formed his beard into a fine point, then slipped a pair of Oakley sunglasses in his breast pocket.
An earpiece went in his right ear, attached by a wire to a radio clipped on his belt at the seven-o’clock position, and his mobile phone went into a back pocket.
Lastly, Zack hefted a polymer-stocked AK-47 rifle from where it leaned in the corner of the room, and he slung it around his back. The rifle was for the convoy work; he wouldn’t have to lug it around all day, but if they were attacked on the road, he knew he needed something that could reach out and touch someone at distance with the power of a 7.62 round.
Two extra thirty-round mags, curved like bananas, went into the side pockets of his cargo pants, and then Zack left the room, locking the door behind him.
Outside in the bright morning sun, Zack and his men waited by the row of four vehicles. A secondary mobile security unit composed of six active-duty Black Wasps would travel with the motorcade over the three klicks of highways and back roads that would take them around farms and forests to the campus, and Zack and his four men discussed the day’s planned movement with them.
At eight fifteen a.m., Gareth Wren stepped out through the big steel blast doors dressed in jeans and a fitted blue polo shirt, as well as the HK handgun he now wore on his right hip. Behind him, Kimmie Lin came out in a light blue pantsuit; an oversized purse hung from her shoulder, and she pulled her rolling bag through the door and then down the walkway through the garden there. She greeted Zack, asking him if he enjoyed his morning run, and soon she was followed by several members of lab staff, men and women from all over the world, all wearing casual clothes, and all carrying backpacks or messenger bags.
Finally, Anton Hinton himself emerged. He wore a white tracksuit striped in red, his bright red headphones sat over his ears, and he had a massive oversized watch that gleamed in the sun.
Anton also wore a large multi-cam-colored bulletproof vest that protected both his chest and his back, and in his hand he carried a thick book that Zack couldn’t make out.
Hinton was all smiles this morning, but quickly Zack turned away from him. It wasn’t Zack’s job to watch his protectee as the man walked through the grounds on his way to his Sprinter van. Instead, he kept his eyes on the other security men, the mobile guys who would be coming along with them as well as the static detail protecting the grounds. He didn’t know any of these assholes, and as near as he could tell, they were the only potential threats to his protectee out here.
Hinton wished Zack a good morning as he headed towards the Sprinter, and as he passed, the American realized the New Zealand native was carrying a copy of the Qur’an.
The convoy rolled out at eight thirty sharp; the sky was perfectly clear, the temperature already in the low eighties, and Zack was switched on, scanning the fields and forests and roads ahead, and in constant radio contact with the four English-speaking men working for him, dispersed in the convoy near the active-duty men, none of whom spoke Zack’s native tongue.
The drive was amazingly short; it seemed they just left the western gate of La Finca, drove south around that property, then looped back to the north, skirting around a few fields and clusters of dense forest, before passing a three-meter-high concrete wall topped with razor wire on their left. The wall was a quarter mile long, and then the convoy turned to the west and approached the University of Information Science from the north.
A cluster of Cuban military vehicles sat parked at the front gate, and the American eyed the uniforms, ages, and equipment of the soldiers as he passed them by. He determined that they were all basic Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces infantry, not members of the Black Wasps. Still, the AKs on their chests and the Russian-manufactured machine guns mounted on their trucks would certainly dissuade most if not all external threats to this facility.
Zack and the entourage drove through the rusty metal gate entrance, passing a fence topped with thick coils of razor wire, and at first the American thought there must have been some mistake. A sign read “Universidad de las Ciencias Informáticas,” and several Cuban flags hung down from the roofs of buildings, but there was no indication that one of the wealthiest and preeminent creators of artificial intelligence had a facility here. Several of the buildings they passed were ugly but sturdy Soviet construction, low concrete blocks or red brick, blast resistant, with small windows, nothing more than three stories high.
Soon they rolled by an electrical power plant, which was located inside the fence line of the property with its own fence and guard force protecting it. The towers and cables and buildings all looked new. They passed a small hospital, several more buildings, a little more advanced-looking than those on the outskirts, and many, many more Cuban flags, seemingly draped off every structure on the huge campus.
A massive structure flew by off Zack’s right shoulder as they rumbled south. The building looked like it could withstand a nuclear attack; it had five separate wings made of poured concrete that jutted out to the east side from the center like the spokes of a wheel that had been cut in half.
But its main feature was on its roof. Rows of massive satellite dishes, all broken and obviously out of commission, pointed in different directions towards the sky, presumably where Russian satellites had been when the place went dark over twenty years earlier.
Zack realized he recognized the structure from images he’d seen in the past. This was the headquarters building of the old Lourdes Signals Intelligence base, ground central for all Cuban and Russian spying in the Americas.
Just like the entire campus they’d rolled into, the old SIGINT HQ had its own fence, and behind it weeds grew around the derelict-looking old building.
The motorcade parked at the edge of a large green space in the center of the complex just a block away. Zack filed out first, his AK slung at his front, and through his radio mic he ordered the rest of his team to dismount before any of the civilians did.
