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Travers and four of his men showed up here just after one, but Victor Two had stayed behind in the center of the city, ready to collect Jim Pace when he slipped out of the police cordon.
The van with Pace and Hash didn’t make it here to the property until nearly two thirty, and as soon as he limped into the farmhouse, Jim Pace waved off any medical care till he took a long shower. After this he changed into clothes left by the local agents, then sat down at a kitchen chair with a leg up and took a plate of food from the old woman who ran the safe house, a faithful agent of the United States and, perhaps just as important to the men who’d just arrived that day, an incredible cook. While Victor Four expertly cleaned, stitched, and bandaged Pace’s painful but superficial leg wound, the CIA officer chowed greedily on garlicky roast pork shoulder and rice, guzzled bottled water, and took a conference call with Langley that lasted over an hour.
Langley, to put it mildly, had not been pleased with Pace’s report.
The Juliet Victor men who’d fired their weapons today cleaned them and tended to the myriad cuts and bruises they’d picked up this morning. Of the six men, Victor Five was the worst off. He’d been on the right side at the back of the container as it crashed through the fencing, and his right shoulder and triceps caught a horror-show-looking blade from the razor wire as it whipped by. He bled like a stuck pig from the upper arm, but Victor Four had cleaned the wound, administered twenty-four stitches, and applied compression bandages, and Five declared himself good to go.
It was past six p.m. now; the thick gray clouds had returned and everyone expected rain within minutes, but Travers pulled security by sitting on the front porch looking down the driveway, his MP7 resting on his lap. He ate plantain chips he’d found in the pantry, unconcerned that they’d expired nine months earlier, and he drank a bottle of Tínima, a local beer. Just as a low and slow rumble of distant thunder rolled over him, he saw the headlights of a vehicle turn off the main road and begin heading up the gravel drive.
“Finally,” he said, and then he climbed out of the chair, opened the front door, and went back inside, because he knew the man heading this way was skittish when it came to armed dudes who worked for the CIA.
•••
A minute later, Court, Zoya, and Contreras, the latter with his hands zip-tied behind his back, stood on the porch Travers had only just vacated.
An elderly woman, well below five feet tall and hunched with a spinal condition, opened the door and looked at the three with neither surprise nor any emotion at all. After a few seconds she waved them in and shuffled out of the way.
Inside they found a large home in a state of mild disrepair, heavy handmade wooden furniture, and two men wearing pistols on their hips in the living room. One of the men was African American, and he had a big bandage that covered the majority of his right upper arm. He and his partner walked up to Contreras without saying anything, grabbed him, then ushered him down to his stomach where they gave him a good frisk, flipping him over onto his back as they expertly worked.
Contreras, for his part, seemed utterly unfazed by all this. Any surprise or fear he’d felt when the woman had captured him had long evaporated. He appeared to be a man without a care in the world, mildly amused that the Americans had him in their custody, but not put out about it at all.
Finally they pulled him back to his feet, ripped off his sweat-stained shirt, then escorted him into the kitchen. Both Court and Zoya heard a back door opening and then closing again, but still, no one said anything.
The little old lady headed down a hallway, but before they could follow her, Chris Travers came into the dining room wearing a white T-shirt and gym shorts, an MP7 slung across his back, and he shook both of their hands. “Thanks for getting Jim out of there today. That was our job, and we failed, so I owe you both.”
Zoya said, “He told us you guys had your own problems this morning. Everybody okay?”
“Some better than others, but we’re all fighting ready.”
Court said, “We’ve got the laptops and other gear from the van Zoya dumped. They’re in the trunk of the Sonata if you want to grab them.”
Travers nodded, then called out, “Moreno?”
A Hispanic male in his early forties appeared from the kitchen, and Travers sent him outside to collect the intelligence haul.
“And the cargo from the ship?” Court asked.
“Tracker shows it’s still at the container terminal. The concern is everything off-loaded from the Estelle is going to get extra scrutiny, but we are only turning the tracker on for a few seconds an hour, so any handheld radio scanners would have to be damn lucky to find it. Still, the enemy tends to get lucky sometimes.”
Court nodded. “That they do.”
Jim Pace limped out of a hallway that led to the rear of the home. He wore a short-sleeve peach-colored guayabera and khakis, and he walked with a limp. “Which means that drone pilot you two nabbed is our best chance for actionable intel on what the hell’s going on.” He looked around. “Where did you put him?”
Travers said, “Doug and Fish took him to the barn.”
Pace nodded, then shook hands with the new arrivals. “Long-ass time, Sierra Six.”
“I’m sure you’ve been missing me.”
Pace laughed. “Not really, no. But you saved my ass today, and I do appreciate it.”
“You saved your own ass. I showed up about ten seconds late.”
“Well…we’re both still here.” He cocked his head. “You been living in the Sahara? Got yourself a nice sunburn.”
“Yeah, but I moisturize. What’s the situation here?”
“Havana station confirms Kincaid was arrested by the Cubans. Plus Travers managed to extract his team. Although Langley is having a collective seventh-floor shit fit and I feel like there’s a mad hornet living on my right calf, I’m still going to have to call this a good day.”
