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Huge flags with a single white star over red and several blue and white stripes hung down from the main terminal building, an indicator to all travelers that they had arrived in the Republic of Cuba.
At the bottom of the jet stairs, four vehicles sat in a neat row, and Zack knew this was the motorcade here to pick up Hinton’s entourage. A Sprinter van was second in line, and its side door was open, with a burly driver beside it.
In front of this, a black Lincoln Navigator had four men around it, and behind the van, a pair of Mercedes SUVs idled, with men lined up in front of them. A total of twelve individuals, all male, stood around the motorcade. They all wore white or light blue guayabera shirts—short-sleeved, loose-fitting, and untucked—and black wraparound sunglasses.
He knew the security officers would be carrying concealed pistols at the very least.
Zack descended the stairs and then was followed closely by Gareth Wren, who immediately walked him over to the Sprinter.
Anton Hinton trailed out of the aircraft with a dog-eared copy of the Torah in his hand that Zack had noticed him reading through much of the lengthy flight. Behind him, his assistant Kimmie carried an overstuffed shoulder bag down the stairs.
In under five minutes they had all loaded up in the van, Zack sitting across from Hinton; their bags had been put in the two Mercedes, and they began rolling for the exit of the airport.
And just twenty seconds after this, the motorcade stopped again.
Zack had at first climbed in the back of the Sprinter for the ten-minute drive to Hinton’s home—he wanted to remain close to Anton, after all—but as soon as the doors closed and the American realized he couldn’t see the road outside because there were no windows in the cabin and no access to the front, he quickly had Wren call the driver on the intercom and order him to stop the entourage.
While still on airport grounds, Zack climbed out of his protectee’s van and then into the front passenger seat of the lead vehicle, the Navigator, sending the security man sitting there back to the van.
The motorcade moved out again, and now Zack was satisfied that he could see any threats materializing around them on the route.
He would have liked a rifle for this work, but the pistol on his hip and the dozen other armed men in the vehicles were at least somewhat comforting.
The four-vehicle motorcade drove along the rolling highway leading west from José Martí. The row of vehicles stood out around here, to say the least. Most of the cars on the road were old, weathered, and rusted, though kept in operating condition by the island’s many capable mechanics. But the Sprinter, the pair of Mercedes, and the Lincoln had been brought in by Anton Hinton through the port of Havana; he even imported the premium gasoline they required, and no one else around here had anything like these.
They drove along a two-lane road of surprisingly good quality that bisected tobacco and corn fields. This was Zack’s first time in Cuba, and while the airport looked like it had seen much better days, once they got out into the land, it appeared no better or worse than any other Latin American country he’d visited.
The poverty in the hovels and little stores on the side of the road was apparent, of course, but the fields were well cultivated and the population seemed well fed.
Here and there men and women looked up from their porches or from out in front of the tiendas and food stalls and waved excitedly. The subject of their affection couldn’t see them, this Zack knew. Hinton was ensconced in his alpha wave music and the soft blue lighting of the inside of his van, oblivious to the world around him.
But it was clear Anton Hinton had done something to earn himself a warm welcome by the inhabitants of this part of the island.
Soon Zack’s Navigator turned off the main road and onto a well-kept gravel drive that wound up a low hill through dense trees, and the other three vehicles followed. Zack looked ahead and saw nothing, but after a series of bends they crested a small rise, and here, on both sides of the road, stood large hardened machine gun nests that had obviously been well weathered by time and the elements.
The American scanned both of the structures as they passed; each one was the size of a minivan, and he saw no evidence of any sentries manning them.
They were simply ghosts from the past, but it made him wonder even more about where they were headed.
After the crest, the road began to descend and the dense flora began to clear a little; they turned a bend to the left that revealed a shallow valley and, in the center of it, some sort of low but massive structure.
Clearly this was not Hinton’s home; it appeared to be a military fortification or public utilities building, the size of a large aircraft hangar and just as ugly from the outside.
A group of four white Jeeps sat parked on the road in front of them, and the Navigator slowed to wait for them to roll off onto the median. The driver next to Zack waved to the Jeeps as he passed, but Zack himself eyed the ten or so men visible with a mistrustful eye.
They wore green military fatigues with the markings of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, along with black body armor. In the back of each Jeep was a mounted wooden-stocked PKM machine gun, made in Russia but also employed by the Cuban military.
Another cluster of vehicles, including more pickups with PKMs and an open two-ton military truck, sat parked in front of the massive entrance to the dark brown structure.
The Navigator pulled to a stop just twenty yards away from the two-ton truck, some thirty yards from the entrance to the expansive low building, which Zack now realized was half buried into the earth, with a domed hill over the roof and trees growing out of it, as if to hide it from the air.
Zack climbed out of the Navigator and into the sunlight. Around him he saw fields, hills, a few fruit trees, but the land just outside the building’s walls had been beautifully landscaped for thirty yards or so.
Zack looked over the structure more carefully, deciding it to be military construction, with blast doors and iron and poured concrete at the entrance.
Wren stepped up to him. “We call this place La Finca. This valley used to be a coffee plantation, then the Russkies built a listening post up the road.”
Surprised, Zack said, “Wait. You’re talking about Lourdes? It’s around here?”
