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Hinton’s smile wavered a moment, and the feeling of dread returned. It was a sensation he’d experienced many times in the past week, but just like in those other times, he pushed it aside.
Next to him an advance Greyhound bot came off the assembly line complete, and was driven by a bot over to a desk where an unarmed bipedal model would animate it with a barcode reader and some inputs on a computer.
There had been setbacks in the past week, this Anton could not deny.
But Cyrus’s intelligence, its initiative, its steadfast commitment to its mission—these were all pluses, not minuses. He and his core of twelve computer scientists, the ones who knew the true scope and purpose of Cyrus, they would find a way to tame the beast.
His smile slowly returned.
•••
At the farmhouse occupied by the CIA in Bauta, some two and a half miles northwest of the campus, the six men of Special Activities Center Ground Branch team Juliet Victor sat at the dining room table, each man with a tablet computer in front of him loaded with satellite images of the old Soviet dormitory grounds as well as the blueprints for the interior from both 1962 and 2007. Travers had added Zack’s notes about the various changes to the location on the 2007 schematic with an electronic pen that showed up on each man’s device, and together they all worked on crafting the mission that they hoped would get a green light very soon.
Court Gentry, Jim Pace, and Zoya Zakharova stood against the wall and looked on, ready to give their input if asked, but also aware that this part of the operation would be led by Ground Branch.
Outside, an old minivan pulled up, and some of the CIA paramilitary men went out to meet it.
They returned a few minutes later with nine wire-stocked AK-47 rifles, along with nine sets of body armor.
The minivan had come from a weapons cache maintained by a group of agents at Havana station, and the gear had been hastily arranged to be brought to the safe house.
The team had decided to field AK-47s for tonight’s raid, after a heated back-and-forth on the subject earlier in the evening.
Most of the guys wanted to use their HK416s, a larger rifle than the MP7s they’d carried in the harbor that morning.
But Violator insisted the 416s weren’t big enough for the fight they had in store for them.
Everyone was concerned about the containers delivered to the SIGINT building, and the weaponized robots inside them. Violator stressed to Travers the difficulty he and Anthem had had destroying the two ground robots in Mexico, and Travers ultimately decided that the Kalashnikov’s larger round and greater energy output at shorter ranges would be needed when engaging any mechanical devices. Their standard HK416 rifles fired rounds that were roughly sixty grains in weight, while these AKs slung a projectile twice the size, though at a slower velocity.
The downside of the AKs was that they were longer and bulkier when the wire stocks were extended, and they were not suppressed, but the men on Juliet Victor all had silencers for their SIG Sauer handguns, so they weren’t totally unprepared for covert action.
The nine men had no night vision goggles, nor did their weapons carry optics or lasers, but they were well-maintained AKs, and the Cuban agents had brought seven loaded mags for each gun.
Court and Zoya stood in the kitchen by the counter when Victor Two entered from the living room, first handing Court an unloaded rifle and then presenting the other to Zoya.
As Takahashi held it out for the beautiful blond woman, he said, “Ma’am, are you familiar with this weapon, because I’d be happy to show you—”
She took it from him with a side glance to Court, then placed the rifle on the counter in front of her without a word. Before Hash could say anything, she began field-stripping the folding-stock firearm, completely disassembling and then reassembling it in under twenty seconds.
Three other Juliet Victor men leaned into the kitchen to watch.
When she finished, she looked to Victor Two. “I should be able to figure it out. Thanks.”
“Fucking Russians,” Court muttered to Hash with a little grin, and then Victor Six came in with tattered olive drab chest rigs with steel-plate armor inside and loaded magazine racks.
To Zoya, he said, “I think it’s one size fits all around here.”
She thanked him, then put the rig over her head and tightened it around her body. It was a little big on her, but she could still move around.
Court got his own set of armor, but before he put it on, he pulled the front plate and looked it over. “A little rusty,” he said, “but beats not having them.”
When all nine—eight men and one woman—were ready, they drank coffee and energy drinks, ate chips and candy bars, and waited for word that the president had approved the raid and the Ground Branch teams were on board the aircraft in Miami.
At eleven thirty p.m., a call came. Pace answered, and everyone looked on expectantly.
“Yes?” he said, then paused. “Wait. You have got to be fucking kidding me, sir.” After several more expletives, he calmed down a little, acknowledged the call, and then hung up.
To the room he said, “That was Hernandez. The president’s decided he’s going to call President Vargas directly, tell him what we know about what’s happening at the SIGINT HQ, and ask him to allow us to send a team into Cuba to conduct a raid at Anton Hinton’s property.”
