AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Zack sighed. “Let’s hope not, right?”
Wren’s eyes widened dramatically as he himself headed for the hall. “Unfortunate choice of words on my part.”
•••
The restaurant was quaint and simple, a freestanding cinder-block-and-masonry structure just off a highway in the Boyeros municipality of southwestern Havana. The lights of cargo aircraft taking off from nearby José Martí airport rose over the street; the restaurant glass shook every now and then as larger aircraft rumbled over on their way to the south towards Mexico and South America.
Warm mist hung in the air; it had rained earlier, but only for a short time, and though the streets were slick and the humidity high, the skies were again clear.
Stars sparkled, the waning moon hung high to the north.
Anton Hinton climbed out of his Sprinter Jet on Road and was met immediately by Zack, who had already scanned the street with the help of his four men. Together all six of them stepped up to the front door of the small restaurant, and the proprietors, a husband and wife in their seventies whom Zack assessed as no threat whatsoever, ushered them all inside.
Zack lagged behind to scan the dark street some more, letting his team of Cubans shoulder up to Hinton as he entered.
Two pickup trucks from the regular Cuban army were already parked out here; men stood in the beds behind machine guns, with two more at the ready standing outside the cab of each truck. To Zack they looked relaxed but competent. A half-dozen soldiers with a pair of light MGs was a significant show of force, and Zack was satisfied with his outer protective cordon.
All the buildings up and down the cobblestone street, roughly the same size and construction of the whitewashed restaurant, were darkened, giving Zack the impression that this wasn’t a very active neighborhood at this time of night. It was a commercial district, but there was just the one restaurant. A pair of auto garages, some sort of a health clinic, and a shop that sold sports equipment and uniforms were all shuttered. Still, he peered into windows, eyed rooftops, and noted a few deeply shadowed alleyways that ran off the main road.
It was a good place for an attack, but Zack knew that any enemy would have to come in significant numbers to get to his principal.
He turned and went inside the restaurant, ready to set his inner security.
Hinton and several of his people began to sit at a large table near the front of the room, but Zack stepped up behind them, then interrupted his employer’s conversation with the English-speaking proprietors.
“Sorry, Anton, I’m going to need you to sit in the back over here, in front of the wall.” The teal-green-painted rear wall was cinder block, Zack had noticed, while windows ran up and down the front of the restaurant, making Hinton an easy target from the street if he sat near them.
Hinton nodded, then asked to be moved to the back of the room. The female proprietor led him there while her husband went back to get the kitchen ready for the influx of twenty or so guests.
Once at his table, Anton turned to Zack. “Hey, big guy. Any chance you’ll let me take off my suit of armor so I can eat?”
Zack wanted to say Hell no, but he caught himself.
“Of course, let me help you.” He unfastened and then removed the armor, then took it over to the closest empty table and laid it out flat so it would be ready to go if Zack had to throw it over Hinton’s head in an emergency.
Anton was joined by Gareth Wren, Kimmie Lin, two of the campus’s lead engineers, both from Romania, and the seventy-five-year-old female proprietor of the restaurant, who herself sat down and began pouring small glasses of straight Cubay Anejo Suave rum for everyone at the table.
Other Hinton Labs staff filled the rear half of the dining room at tables of two and four.
Kimmie was served first, and she sniffed the drink, took a tiny sip, fought back a wince, then drank the shot down. The elderly owner of the restaurant laughed and then poured the woman another despite her friendly attempt to demur.
Soon everyone was toasting and drinking, while the bartender across the room prepared an impossibly long row of mojitos.
Zack conferred on the radio and learned that the Cuban army had stationed three men in a gun truck at the back door, in addition to the six men in two vehicles at the front. The four men working for Zack had taken up positions near the front entrance and the hallway to the kitchen, the only two ways into the dining room.
It wasn’t great coverage considering the threats against his protectee, but Zack didn’t see any way to improve it. He told himself he would stand no more than ten feet from Hinton, and he’d be ready if anything went sideways.
The server was male, gray-templed, and well into his fifties, and he treated the tech guru like an old friend. They embraced, in broken English the waiter said he prayed every day for Anton’s safety, the New Zealand native thanked the man, and then they embraced again.
The mojitos came, Zack was happy to see everyone place their dinner orders quickly, and the military security force outside reported in that all was quiet.
After the menus were taken away, Anton stood and held up his glass, and everyone in the restaurant raised glasses of their own.
“I just want to give a toast to the friends we’ve lost in the past week. Tomer and Maxim and Lars, Kotana, Amir Kumar, Rene, Montri, Ethan, and all the others.
“It is a sad, horrible, scary time in our industry right now, but I always look to the future, no matter what. I take comfort in the fact that we are all here, together, and I believe Hinton Labs holds the key to help the world understand the new and dangerous threats on the horizon.
“I learned a lot from all of you today, and we must keep working tirelessly to try to find some resolution to this bloody madness. I want to thank you all for your efforts.
