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Wren took a long moment before responding, but finally said, “Okay. Well done, mate. Pace is full of shit, but thanks for trying to talk some sense into him.”
Hightower decided to press. “What makes you say he’s full of shit?”
“Our computers shipped out of HK. They were on the same vessel as this stuff Pace says he was looking for. Sounds just a bit suspect, doesn’t it?”
Zack nodded. “More than a bit.”
“English understatement, mate.”
“Right,” Zack said. “Let’s keep an even closer eye on Anton. If he’s the last one left, and the Agency is looking at him, too, then he’s in even more danger than we thought.”
The men shook hands. Zack detected suspicion from Wren, but not outright malevolence. Like he was sizing his old friend up, trying to figure out what Zack knew, what Zack thought.
What Zack would do next.
Zack headed off for the elevator, deciding to go directly to his room, and to wait until later in the night to check the basement for the tunnel that, if his suspicions were correct, might lead him to Cyrus.
FIFTY-NINE
Fully forty-five minutes after Jim Pace had been told to stand down the Ground Branch team while they waited on a head-of-state conversation between the Cuban and American presidents, he snatched his phone back out of his body armor, extended the small antenna, and answered it. “Yeah?”
He nodded once. “Roger.” Then he stepped out of the room and out onto the front porch to continue his conversation in private.
And a few minutes after this, he returned to find the other six men in the farmhouse standing silently, seated on the couches, or leaning against the wall. He said, “Listen up. The president gave Vargas an ultimatum. Seventy-two hours to turn Hinton over. Vargas said, ‘Go fuck yourself,’ in tin-pot commie diplomatic-speak, of course, but POTUS told him he hoped he’d reconsider over the next three days. He threatened to take it to the International Criminal Court or some bullshit like that in an attempt to throw off the Cubans to the fact we’re hitting tonight.”
Travers was confused. “Wait…are you saying we have the green light?”
Pace nodded. “Three Ground Branch teams just took off from Miami International. All led by Larry Repult. You know him?”
“Fuck yeah, I do,” Travers said. “Good choice.”
Pace smiled now. “We are a go.”
“Holy shit,” Travers said, and then he immediately spoke up to the room. “We leave in ten mikes!” He checked his watch now. “We won’t make the shift change.” Looking back to Pace, he said, “Send a message to Violator and Anthem and tell them we’re en route. About forty-five mikes behind them.”
Pace grabbed his phone and started to type the text. As he did so he said, “They’ll need time to get through the fence, but they should be in place before one a.m.”
•••
Court Gentry had spent large portions of his life, ever since he was a small child working at his father’s firearm school in northern Florida, rolling himself up into as tiny a ball as possible, either to avoid detection or to avoid getting shot. When he’d first perfected the craft of becoming the smallest humanoid target in the room, he’d had no idea that thirty years later he would still need the skill, but right now he found himself tucked so tight in the shallow shadows behind a low row of bushes just ten yards from the loading dock of La Finca that his muscles ached from the effort, the body armor bit into his neck, and his legs felt like they would soon fall asleep.
Zoya was an even smaller ball ten feet away, because she was five foot seven to his five foot ten and a half, she was 140 pounds to his 180, and she was even more limber than he was.
Their body armor, backpacks, and rifles added to their size, of course, but they nevertheless had avoided detection since they’d breached the perimeter fence ten minutes earlier.
Court kept an eye through the bushes on the lighted loading dock, and after waiting so long that he felt his body cramping from his neck to his ankles, he finally saw a two-man security team pass within feet of the foliage, heading to the dock. And as they neared the door there, it opened from the inside.
The two Cuban guards stepped into the hardened facility, two more stepped out, and then the door began to close.
Court started to rise up to catch it before it latched, but just as he did so, Zoya hissed at him. He lowered back down quickly, and another armed man, walking alone, appeared from the opposite direction, ascended the little loading dock ramp, and began punching his code into the keypad.
Court and Zoya both rose up behind him, looked back and forth in all directions, and then approached silently.
The man opened the door and began stepping inside, and Court vaulted up onto the concrete dock, his legs still tingling from the position he’d been holding for several minutes. As he did so he drew a Ka-Bar Commando Short fixed-blade knife he’d scored from one of the Juliet Victor boys.
As the door began to close Court slipped in; the man was just turning around to pull it tight, and Court slammed into him, shoving the four-inch blade hilt-deep into the guard’s side.
He covered his victim’s mouth, dragged him down to the ground, and used his boot to keep the door open behind him.
