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“We have confirmed that Controller Fourteen did not reveal any operational details before she was removed.”
“But she might reveal them now. If you fired her, she remains a threat to—”
The American voice replied calmly. “She is no longer a threat.”
There was no emotion in the words, but Contreras took them instantly to mean the woman had been killed.
He took a few breaths, then said, “The bots in Mexico. They were all controlled with integrated artificial intelligence, weren’t they?”
The pause was surprisingly brief, and the confirmation delivered dispassionately. “They were. In Cuba, on the other hand, you will be piloting the ISR equipment yourself.”
“No lethal autonomous weapons?”
“Lethality is coming. The man you worked with in Guatemala will be the asset on the ground you are supporting.”
Contreras nodded slowly, still not understanding his mission but satisfied Cyrus was telling him everything he needed to know for now.
Except for one thing.
“Who’s my target?”
“A dossier will be sent to you once you have your equipment ready and we have the target location pinpointed.”
“Muy bien,” Contreras said. He’d been thinking about the job, and at first he didn’t notice he’d absentmindedly answered in Spanish. Once he realized his mistake he began to translate his own words, but the American spoke before he had the chance.
“Estaré en contacto.” I will be in contact. And then the call disconnected.
The American had switched, surprisingly quickly, into perfectly accented Spanish, surprising the young Mexican.
He hit the button on his laptop to stop the recording, and then he rose from his desk and began collecting his things, stuffing them into a backpack so he could go downstairs and call a taxi.
Contreras moved with purpose, because although he remained very much in the dark about much of this, he was back on a timeline.
FORTY-THREE
Twenty hours after the attack at the restaurant by the crew of Jamaicans, Zack Hightower stood alone at a bar on Calle Obrapia in Old Havana. Just past eight thirty, the early evening’s warm rain had come and gone, and Zack nursed a beer while looking off through the bar and out into the night, lost in thought.
He’d escorted Anton to the lab this morning and he’d shadowed him throughout the day. The bandage on the man’s calf muscle was hidden under his track pants, and to Hightower’s surprise he hadn’t made a big deal about it to any of his staff as he went from lab to lab, getting reports about coding in arcane jargon that Hightower didn’t even try to decipher.
Unlike the day before, Hinton returned to La Finca at the more reasonable hour of five p.m., and also unlike the day before, he did not venture back out.
Zack Hightower had been ready to push back if he’d tried, but to Zack’s pleasant surprise, Hinton had just returned to his quarters and given Zack the night off.
Wren had a dinner meeting in La Finca with Kimmie and some of the senior researchers, so Zack borrowed a Land Rover and drove into the city, stopping at a hotel bar in Old Havana that was open to two sides of the street and dripping with old-world charm.
He sipped beer from a bottle, thought about his job here, thought about everything that had happened late the evening before, and he wondered if Anton would venture out again at all before the killings stopped.
If Anton didn’t go anywhere but back and forth between the campus and La Finca, then he would be safe enough.
But if Anton did go out and about in town, or if they tried to leave Cuba before all of this was resolved, Zack was pretty damn sure the enemy would make another attempt on him, because whatever was going on, it was obvious Anton Hinton was a primary target.
His attention shifted from his thoughts about the attacks and back to the bar; his eyes probed around the room as they always did, an automatic function of living a life of danger.
Couples out to dinner, groups of what appeared to be foreign businessmen, seemingly all from China, sitting near the open windows and enjoying the slightly cool breeze in the otherwise stifling room.
He looked up and down the bar. The same eight people who had been here drinking when he sat down were still here nursing cocktails and wine and beers, but a ninth man had seated himself farther down, after the turn in the bar, facing generally in Zack’s direction.
The man wasn’t thirty, he had sandy brown hair, wore a white polo and glasses, and he had a Cuba Libre in front of him, the glass sparkling as it perspired in the humidity.
