Final Resort

4

Cuba

“Is everyone in place?” Asim Ben Muhunnad inquired.

“Yes, sir,” said his second in command, Sarsour Ibn Tabari. “I positioned them myself, with strict instructions.”

“Cell phones on?”

“Of course.”

“We’re ready, then.”

“Ready,” his number two agreed.

Muhunnad carried a map of the resort folded in his pocket, but he had already memorized the winding paths, the layout of the various beach cottages and hotel towers, swimming pools and spas. He could find his way around the resort blindfolded. He knew where each one of his six gunmen should be right now, as they prepared to seize control.

And anyone who failed him was a dead man.

Muhunnad and his warriors had concealed their weapons and explosives in their luggage, on arrival at Bahia Matanzas, but the Cuban climate made it impractical for them to wear trench coats or other garments convenient for hiding military hardware. He had suggested beach robes and towels or blankets, soft-drink coolers, baggy shirts and trousers, shopping bags from any of the several boutiques and shops at the resort.

Once their intentions were revealed, discretion wouldn’t matter anymore.

Muhunnad himself had picked a more sophisticated getup for himself and for Tabari. Over the past half hour, they had lured two resort employees to their bungalow, forcing both men to shed their uniforms at gunpoint, then killed both and left them in the bathtub.

Muhunnad and Tabari, dressed in the stolen uniforms—white peasant shirts, with matching shorts—walked side-by-side along one of the concrete paths that made the beach resort a kind of maze, while guaranteeing privacy for guests who spent big money on the beachfront cottages. Tabari pushed a large housekeeping cart, their folding-stock Kalashnikov assault rifles concealed inside a drooping sack filled to the brim with crumpled sheets. Grenades rested beneath an old towel, in the mop bucket. Pistols were warm against their belly skin, under the baggy shirts.

Thus rendered more or less invisible to paying guests, as well as other personnel at the resort, Muhunnad and Tabari skirted swimming pools where women bared their bodies in obscene bikinis, slurping alcohol and teasing men who lusted after them. They passed an outdoor restaurant, where fat white people gorged themselves on delicacies common folk could not afford. At last, they found the service entrance to the main hotel block, used a key card taken from one of the men they’d killed and passed inside.

The plan became a trifle dicey after that, since ordinary personnel were rarely admitted to the executive offices at Bahia Matanzas. Those who made that walk were generally bound for termination, over some offense against the rules prescribed by management.

Muhunnad and Tabari were about to break that rule.

They took the service elevator down one level, to the basement office block. Still trundling the cleaning cart, they moved along a spotless corridor until they reached the door they sought.

Muhunnad turned the doorknob, shoved the door open and held it while Tabari pushed his cart inside. A pretty secretary paused in the act of shutting down her personal computer for the day and frowned at them.

“What’s this?” she asked. “You’re not supposed to be here yet.”

Muhunnad and Tabari whipped their automatic rifles from the linen bag and aimed them at the woman. “If you make a sound, you die,” Muhunnad said.

She made a little squeak, but the Palestinian forgave her, in consideration of the circumstances.

“Now,” Muhunnad said. “We wish to speak with your employer, Mr. Quentin Avery.”

She led them past her desk, down a short hallway, to the manager’s office. It had not surprised Muhunnad in the least to learn that the man in overall charge of Bahia Matanzas was a white Canadian.

What else could one expect, these days?

The secretary rapped on Avery’s door, then opened it without waiting for his summons. Muhunnad and Tabari entered, one rifle covering each of their two hostages.

Avery, a pink-faced, balding man, gaped at the strangers and their guns, then found his voice. “What’s the meaning of this?” he demanded.

“It means,” Muhunnad answered, “that your property is now under new management. If you agree to our demands, you may survive.”

Canal de Yucatán

“TEN MINUTES, SIR,” the Sea King’s pilot said, “before we rendezvous with the Poseidon.”

“Copy,” Bolan answered, just to let the flyboy know that he was still awake.

The officers and crew of the Poseidon had to put Bolan ashore on Cuba without tipping off local authorities to his arrival. As to how or when he’d leave the island, if and when it came to that, details were still up in the air.

The copilot came back to deal with Bolan’s transfer to the submarine. The gear he carried resembled a parachute harness, minus the pack and chute. Bolan stood and slipped it on, cinched up its several buckles, then stood easy while the copilot made sure he’d done the job correctly.

“Quick releases here, here and here,” the flyboy said, tapping each safety catch in turn. “Don’t use them, though, unless you wind up in the water. Shouldn’t happen, but it does, sometimes.”

“Noted,” Bolan replied.

“Another strap here, for your bag,” the copilot said. “Leaves your hands free for the cable.”

Bolan double-strapped the smallish bag to his left hip, then accepted gloves and goggles from the navy airman. Putting on the goggles meant removing his headphones. The copilot replaced them with a set of earmuffs lacking any common link.

“Expect some spray,” the airman told him, now required to shout. “It’s unavoidable. They’ll have dry clothes for you on board.”

“I hear you.”

“Ready?”

Bolan nodded.

“Right. Stand in the door.”

A sea monster had risen underneath them while they hovered in the air, discussing spray and buckles. It was more than five hundred feet long, with water still sluicing from its flanks and conning tower, swirls of foam still visible on deck. As Bolan stood and watched, a hatch opened some thirty feet in front of the Poseidon’s conning tower.

Bolan felt the light tap on his shoulder, used both hands to grip the cable fastened to his harness overhead and stepped out into space. The chopper lowered him serenely, like a hand-cranked bucket going down into a well.

The salt spray started whipping at him when he was approximately halfway down. The helicopter’s downdraft set him slowly spinning, but it didn’t spoil his view of sailors scrambling through the open hatch below, to stand on the Poseidon’s forward deck. Bolan supposed that two of them were there to help him from his harness and get him belowdecks, while the third was sent to supervise.

It was the military way.

He touched down on the deck without a spill into the sea, and seconds later Bolan was without his rigging, saw it hoisting back into the air. An ensign welcomed him aboard without much warmth and led the way below, Bolan’s two escorts steering and supporting him until he found his sea legs.

Poseidon’s skipper met him with a handshake, introduced himself as Captain Walter Gossage, and led Bolan to the conning tower, aft. Some of the seamen watched them pass, but most attended to their duties and ignored the Executioner.

“I don’t know what you heard while you were airborne,” Gossage said, when they were standing underneath the conning tower, “but I’ve got bad news.”

“I’m getting used to it,” Bolan replied.

“Okay. Seems that the people you’ve been looking for have taken over a resort in Cuba. Bahia Matanzas. Ever heard of it?”

The warrior shook his head.

“I hadn’t either,” Gossage told him, “but I’ve got coordinates. We’re on our way.”

Washington, D.C.

BROGNOLA HAD BEEN WAITING for the call. He answered on the first ring of his secure line and recognized Mack Bolan’s voice at once.

“How many hostages?” Bolan asked.

“Based on what we have from corporate headquarters, in Toronto, there should be about eleven hundred. Two or three hundred employees, all depending on the day and time.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Bolan said.

“Stay in touch, if possible.”

“Will do.”

The line went dead without a sign-off, something Brognola had gotten used to over time. Bolan was information-oriented, sometimes short on the amenities, which suited him just fine.

They had a bloody job of work to do, and pleasantries were strictly out of place.

He thought about the murdered hostages aboard the Tropic Princess. He had seen the uncut tape, shot by a member of the SEAL team, and while he had seen much worse over the course of his career, the casual brutality still left him angry and unsettled.

Brognola tried to follow Bolan in his mind, tracked the Poseidon on its run to Bahia Matanzas, where he would meet his contact on the island.

Brognola knew nothing of Maria Santos, beyond what he’d read in her slim CIA dossier. He hoped she wouldn’t clash with Bolan, wouldn’t slow him too much or screw things up somehow by getting squeamish in the crunch. If she knew what was coming, understood how much it meant to all concerned, maybe she’d be all right.

Maybe—and maybe not.

Cuba

MARIA SANTOS LIT a cigarette, cursing her lack of willpower even as she inhaled and felt the first sweet kick of nicotine. She had quit smoking two weeks earlier, but now resumed the habit almost without conscious thought, while waiting in the darkness for a stranger who could change—or end—her life.

That life was tense enough without the latest complication. In fact, Santos led two lives: one as a dutiful and conscientious secretary for the Cuban Ministry of Agriculture in Havana, and another as a contract agent for the CIA. One was an exercise in tedium that paid her bills; the other added spice—and danger—to an otherwise mundane existence bounded by her daytime job, a small circle of uninspiring friends, and dates with men who came expecting sex as payback for a cheap meal in a dreary restaurant.

She could have chosen to decline the job—she had considered it, in fact; but she finally agreed, feeling a sense of obligation that confused her even now. She’d been relieved when half of the escapees turned up on the Tropic Princess, sailing off into the sunset with their mostly Anglo hostages, taking the problem far away from her.

Now, this.

The terrorists at Bahia Matanzas couldn’t sail away. They couldn’t fly—or, rather, most of them could not—because the resort’s helicopter seated only four passengers, in addition to the pilot. They couldn’t even drive or walk away, now that the Cuban army and security police had thrown a ring of men and guns around the great resort’s eight hundred acres.

They were trapped, in fact, together with their hostages.

So, how, in God’s name, did the CIA expect her to transport a stranger—an American—past all the watchers, snipers and patrols, to penetrate Bahia Matanzas? The thought had distressed her, at first.

And then she had an idea.

Santos only hoped the stranger who was on his way to meet her, Matt Cooper, was able to perform the trick she had in mind.

The plan she had devised for Bahia Matanzas put her life at risk, not just her job and liberty. If caught, she might be executed on the spot, without even the semblance of a trial. But if she didn’t try, Santos knew that she would always feel as if the blood of murdered hostages was on her hands.

That was ridiculous, she realized, but logic held no sway over emotion.

Stubbing out her cigarette, she reached for another, then drew back her hand. She would make herself wait a while longer. Ten minutes, or maybe fifteen. An exercise in discipline, to occupy her mind while she waited for the stranger from America.

The man who, if he wasn’t skilled and very careful, just might get her killed.

THE EXECUTIONER double-checked the minimal gear that he’d brought with him from the Farm. He had his shoulder rig for the Beretta 93-R, two spare magazines—making it sixty rounds, in all—and a commando dagger honed to razor-sharpness, in a lightweight nylon sheath.

That hardware wouldn’t see him through what lay ahead, but Bolan had to wait and see what was available once he arrived in Cuba and made contact with Maria Santos. Given Cuban history over the past half century, Bolan expected Russian weapons to predominate, along with knockoffs from the former Eastern Bloc and certain lethal toys produced in South America. In terms of weaponry, Bolan could handle anything that came his way. He only hoped that it would be reliable and accurate, with ammunition plentiful enough to see him through the bloody work ahead.

And he had no illusions as to what was waiting for him, if and when he made his way inside Bahia Matanzas. The eight hostage takers were desperate men, religious fanatics with nothing to lose but their lives—and those lives, Bolan guessed, were already written off as lost in their own minds. The whole bizarre event, from Gitmo to the latest series of impossible demands, smelled like a kamikaze mission from the start.

That understanding altered Bolan’s mission from a hostage rescue to search-and-destroy. Taking for granted that the terrorists were bent on killing their roughly twelve hundred prisoners, once they had managed to insult America as much as possible on international TV, he had to find a way inside and neutralize the enemy before they carried out their plan.

For some at Bahia Matanzas, Bolan guessed, he might already be too late. They had a deadline coming up, and Bolan might not be there to distract the terrorists from making good on their specific threats. If they were operating on the same half-hour deadlines as the group aboard the Tropic Princess, then hostages would die before he reached the scene. More yet, if the police and soldiers ringing Bahia Matanzas slowed him down.

But he would find a way inside. And those he couldn’t save, he would avenge.

Bolan made that a solemn promise to himself.

After fieldstripping and reassembling the Beretta, Bolan relaxed on the short bunk as best he could. Combat experience had taught him to sleep virtually anywhere, if someone wasn’t shooting at him, and the tiny cabin of a submarine felt like the Ritz compared to some of Bolan’s other bivouacs. Running submerged, it had no pitch and roll like surface ships, only a steady thrumming from the mighty engines that propelled it through the depths.

5

Cuba

It took a team of army engineers three-quarters of an hour to clear the access road. Muhunnad had done his best with what he had, telling his men to disable the engine of each car used in the makeshift barricade and to flatten all four tires. Muhunnad had not booby-trapped the vehicles, because he feared that killing soldiers early on would prompt the Cubans to attack with everything they had, ignoring any danger to the hostages.

In fact, although Muhunnad’s men had done their utmost to prevent the cars from moving, short of torching them, it ultimately made no difference. An army crane had been dispatched and hoisted them aside, one by one, until the way was clear.

Now Muhunnad stood and waited in the hotel lobby, peering through a wall of lightly tinted glass, as a Jeep with three soldiers inside it approached. He had no doubt that there were others hiding on the grounds, surrounding the hotel block, weapons trained on every exit and window. And he smiled, knowing their efforts were in vain.

The Jeep drew closer, eased into the hotel’s driveway and stopped. Its driver kept the engine idling, while his passengers stepped from the vehicle. One clearly was an officer, although Muhunnad did not recognize the Cuban army’s rank insignia. The other was a common rifleman who stayed beside the vehicle, his weapon held at port arms while the officer approached the hotel’s air-conditioned lobby.

Muhunnad went out to meet him. He supposed there were snipers hiding in the darkness all around him, any one of whom could drop him with a single shot, but if that happened, it would touch off an immediate bloodbath inside. Muhunnad trusted that the Cuban officer was wise enough to recognize that fact, if nothing else.

When they were ten or twelve paces apart, the officer stopped short and without introduction said, “You speak English.”

Although he had not phrased it as a question, Muhunnad replied, “You know I do.”

A nod confirmed it. “Why are you doing this?” the soldier asked.

Muhunnad frowned. “You’ve heard our various demands.”

“Of course. I mean, why are you doing this in Cuba, when your target is America? We have no currency or influence in Washington. You must know this. Americans do not negotiate for hostages, much less in countries they refuse to recognize.”

“It was convenient,” Muhunnad said truthfully. “After Guantanamo, where was our hope of reaching the United States?”

His adversary seemed to see the sense in that, but plainly did not like Muhunnad’s answer. “You have Cuban citizens inside,” he said. “Employees. Common working people. If you’re wise, you will release them now.”

“Because Havana will not ransom them?”

“We share that trait, at least, with the Americans,” the officer replied.

“Too bad. They’ll have to die, then, I suppose.”

“If you harm a Cuban citizen—”

“What will you do?” Muhunnad challenged. “Storm the place and make us kill them all? I doubt it, but if that is your intention, why delay? By all means, do it. Come ahead.”

“You sound like an American,” the officer declared.

“We’ve learned our lessons from them too.”

“It is unfortunate that you must die, with all your men.”

“We don’t fear death,” Muhunnad said. “Unlike a Communist, we cherish faith in Paradise. Why else have we come here, today?”

“I understand, now.”

“Do you?”

“The demands are all for show. You mean to kill the hostages, no matter what is done,” the officer replied.

“You said yourself, Americans do not negotiate.”

“And if they did? What, then?”

“Then we would use their money and our liberated soldiers to pursue the great jihad.”

“Your cause is hopeless. Spilling blood for its own sake is worse than foolishness. It’s madness,” the officer said.

“Then give the signal to your snipers. Take me down,” Muhunnad said,

“There’s time enough for that,” the officer assured him. “We won’t fire the first shot, but I promise you, we’ll finish it.”

“Good luck,” Muhunnad said. “I hope you brought a lot of body bags.”

Tropic Princess

EMRE MANDIRALI DIDN’T KNOW exactly where they were, but there was water all around the ship, with no land in sight. It troubled him, thinking about the sea and all the creatures swimming in it, some of them miles deep and strange beyond imagination.

Which of them would come to feed on him when he was dead? Or would he simply drift and sink into the freezing depths where sunlight never reached, pickled in brine, preserved forever by the cold?

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