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He sent a short encrypted text that notified both Langley and the TL of Juliet Victor that they had arrived and were on schedule.
As soon as this task was complete, they rose back up and resumed their arduous hike.
The march from the airport to the old SIGINT station would take just over an hour, but it would be a hard hour. The good news was their exfiltration plan didn’t involve a hike back to the airport, but Mike Actual wasn’t going to worry about the exfil until his mission was complete.
If the men were captured, they knew they could be shot on sight here in Cuba, although it would be much more likely their faces would be plastered all over the news to be used as propaganda against the imperialist Yankees to the north, which meant even if they somehow avoided a Cuban prison, their careers as CIA black operators would be over.
The eighteen Americans struggled on through the starlit night, well aware that the hard part was yet to come.
•••
Zack Hightower had spent a half hour locked in a windowless room in a basement area that appeared to be an old communications bunker. Rusted-out radios with Cyrillic writing lined the walls, their wires running straight up inside metal tubes and disappearing into the concrete ceiling. Storage lockers appeared empty, but Zack hadn’t checked, because he’d been ordered to a bench by the two Cuban guards and then they’d left him here, locking him in after telling him they’d be taking up positions outside.
Although the guards had left, Zack hadn’t gotten up from the bench because standing across the room from him were two of the humanoid-looking robots with the pistols on their hips. White and black, battery packs worn like backpacks, a pair of cameras and a small display on their faces that seemed to be looking directly at him.
They did not move, they did not speak, they just remained still as statues, each with its right gripper hand frozen about eight inches away from its handgun.
Zack wasn’t any more animated than the pair of bots, but he wasn’t idle. He stared at the machines and tried to come up with a plan to kill them.
•••
Eventually he heard the door unlock; it opened and Gareth Wren stepped in wearing a dark green polo, khakis, and his pistol on his hip. He looked the same as he had upstairs when Zack saw him last, but the expression on his face was even more confident than it had appeared earlier.
He was like the cat who caught the canary, Zack thought to himself.
He motioned to someone outside in the hall, and as two Cuban guards stepped in behind him, Zack saw his Staccato still in Wren’s waistband at his back.
They left the door to the hall open, and Wren turned back to Zack with a smile.
“Sorry for the delay, old chap. I hope these two units have been good company in my absence.”
Zack nodded to the two Cuban guards. “Do these guys know you shot their two buddies at the restaurant?”
“How’s your Spanish?” Wren asked with a sly grin.
Shit, Zack thought. He didn’t speak Spanish. He thought he might give it a try, but before he did, Wren said, “Just kidding. I didn’t shoot the guards. One of those Jamaicans made it into the kitchen, much to my astonishment, and he dumped half a mag into the walls of the dining room before I dropped him.”
Wren was obviously lying, but the men next to him weren’t going to believe Zack over Wren, so Zack let it go.
Still, he said, “And then they just happened to hit Hinton in the armor?”
“Actually, this I did do.”
“Anton’s plan?”
“My own. You weren’t going to buy that attempt the way it went down. You’ve seen more combat than almost anyone on Earth. Those Spangler Posse idiots telegraphed the fact that they were only there to shoot up the soldiers outside. You would have had questions. You would put together that it was a staged operation, and that would have you suspecting Anton. I thought a well-placed pistol round into the boss’s back plate would sell the fact that it was a proper assassination attempt.”
He continued. “I saw an opening to hit Hinton in his plate.” He shrugged. “I took the shot.
“Believe me, Anton was not pleased when I confessed later that night.”
Anton Hinton came around the corner suddenly, flanked by a pair of big four-legged robots with massive rifles on their backs. The units remained in the hall, and Hinton stepped in. “There you are, Gareth. Hullo, Zack. Heard you were out wandering tonight. Something you were looking for?”
Zack said, “Just wondering if there’s a shortcut to the SIGINT building. I was going to go play Cyrus in a game of chess.”
Anton smiled a little. “You would lose.”
“You’re going to need a new bodyguard, because I quit,” Zack quipped.
