Paul Christopher: Valley of the Templars

Both the inner perimeter and the outer perimeter of the Compound were patrolled by armed guards on a twenty-four-seven schedule. In the center of it all, occupying its own hilltop site, was the Grange, a massive four-story log-and-stone “hunting lodge.”

The Grange had offices and sleeping accommodation for all of the Northern Division executives, conference rooms, a huge dining hall and large commercial-scale kitchen and a belowground “War Room,” which was equipped with a direct-link satellite feed to every area of operations currently being run by Blackhawk around the world.

The offices of Major General Atwood Swann and his second in command, Colonel Paul Axeworthy, were located on the top floor of the Grange, with several large picture windows looking out over the lake and the forested area beyond.

Swann and Axeworthy met with Katherine Sinclair in the large conference room that separated the two men’s offices. The centerpiece of the room was an immense, curving black granite table polished until it gleamed. In the middle of the table, carved into the native stone, was the aggressive Blackhawk that served as the company’s logo. The table, like the rest of the compound, had been purchased with funds from the Department of Defense, Blackhawk’s major client, and provided by Katherine Sinclair’s untiring lobbying efforts in the hidden halls and private dining rooms of Washington.

Sinclair sat at the head of the table, flipped open the ostrich document case she carried and withdrew a red-covered file, which she opened in front of her. “Tell me about Operation Cuba Libre,” she said.

Swann nodded to Axeworthy, who got to his feet and went to the huge flat-screen that took up most of one wall. He tapped the screen with one expertly manicured finger and instantly a relief map of Cuba appeared. He tapped the screen again and a section in the center of the map enlarged to show a central spine of hills and steep valleys that ran through the middle of the island.

“These are the Escambray Hills. During the ‘revolution within a revolution’ that took place shortly after Castro took power, this was where Batista supporters, major criminal elements and anyone else who defied El Comandante went. It took Castro almost three years to clean them all out, including a team of eighty-five or so CIA advisers. If they’d had any real sense back then, Escambray was where the Bay of Pigs should have taken place-not a swamp.”

“If I wanted historical analysis I would have asked for it. Get to the point,” said the woman at the head of the table.

Axeworthy cleared his throat and went on. “We used the old CIA runway for the Tucanos. So far we’ve managed to bring in four of them. In two weeks we’ll have the full complement of eight, ordnance included.”

“I thought the Cubans had good coast guard radar?” Sinclair asked.

“They do,” said Swann, sitting on Sinclair’s right. “But they go dark when the Colombian cocaine flights come in, and we’ve got good intel about when that happens. The Colombian flights are usually Beechcraft King Airs or other midsize cargo planes; the Tucanos coming in from the Navassa Island Base read like fishing trawlers if they read on the radar at all.”

“Where is Navassa Island?” said the elderly woman. “I’ve never heard of it.”

“It’s a tiny island between Jamaica and Haiti. It’s about a hundred and twenty miles from Cuba.”

“Whose territory is it?”

“Ours.” Swann smiled. “Under the Guano Islands Act of 1890. It’s uninhabited. The island is about two miles long, flat with a lot of scrub brush, an abandoned lighthouse and one palm tree. It was perfect. We burned off some scrub for a runway, camouflaged a refueling station and that was that. The Department of the Interior will never know we were even there.”

“Are eight aircraft enough?” Sinclair said. “It’s not as though they’re fighter jets and you’re taking on the entire Cuban air force.”

“It’s very much like the Soviet Union before the collapse-an illusion; the props are all there, but none of them work. The Cuban air force, for example,” said Axeworthy. He tapped the screen in three separate places and they blossomed into aircraft symbols. “There are only three operating airfields left-Holguin, which was originally designed to defend against an attack from Guantanamo and which is now almost entirely civilian, San Antonio de los Banos, a little west and south of Havana, and Playa Baracoa, for Havana itself. Recent satellite and drone surveillance shows seven transport aircraft and five helicopters at Playa Baracoa and eleven MiGs at San Antonio de los Banos but only six that appear to be in operation. At San Antonio de los Banos the hardstands for the MiGs were overgrown with grass. I doubt that there are enough spare parts or even aviation fuel to fly more than a sortie or two a month. New storage buildings have sprung up at both Playa Baracoa and Los Banos. It is our opinion that they are using the buildings to cannibalize parts from one MiG to another.”

“How many aircraft do they have officially?” Sinclair asked.

“Supposedly one hundred and thirty-four,” said Axeworthy, “of which the majority are trainers, cargo planes, VIP flights and transports. They list a total of seven attack helicopters and only six MiG 29s, a fighter which was developed in the midseventies and has a very limited range. I think we could conservatively cut that list in half-I doubt they have more than a dozen fighters in flying condition and most of those will be MiG 21s from the midfifties. At a guess the transports and the helicopters are for counterinsurgency use-the Cuban people rising up against Raul and his brother. They simply don’t have the strength to mount an attack against Tortugas, let alone the continental U.S.”

“And the Tucanos?”

“They’re armed with four Hellfire Air to Ground missiles; a flight of half a dozen Tucanos could take out the MiGs at Los Banos from five miles away.”

“What about coastal patrols, the navy?”

“It barely exists, ma’am,” said Axeworthy. “Most of what they had is at the breakers yards at the old Cienfuegos Naval Base. They used to have a bunch of Osa-class missile boats, but they stripped off the Styx missile platforms and put them on land-based mobile launchers. Most of what they have are a dozen or so Zhuk-class coastal patrol boats mounted with a couple of manually operated machine guns and some even older Soviet P6 torpedo boats with antiaircraft guns bow and stern. The torpedos are long gone and their radar is totally out of date. Useless. The coast guard will take you to Mexico for a fat fee and the Zhuks make regular runs to the twelve-mile limit off Puerto Bolivar in Colombia to pick up product from the go-fasts. Most of the money, minus the Raul and Fidel Tax, finds its way into the pockets of one Rear Admiral Carlos Alfonso Duque Ramos, whose daughter is married to none other than Raul Castro’s bodyguard.” He tapped the screen and a photograph of a handsome man in his midforties appeared.

“Is that supposed to mean something to me?” Sinclair asked.

“His name is Major Raul Alejandro Rodriguez Castro; he’s Raul’s grandson and Fidel’s grand-nephew. It’s like a Cuban version of the Gotti family.”

The elderly woman ignored the comment. “The army?”

“Another joke. They have thirty-eight thousand men and women of all ranks, and half of them are employed as waiters and housekeeping staff for GAESA, the holding company for the Cuban Defense Ministry. Since the death of Julio Reugeiro, the Cuban minister of defense, in 2011, the CEO of GAESA is Major Luis Alberto Rodriguez Lopez Callejas, who just happens to be married to Deborah Castro Espin-Raul Castro’s eldest daughter. It’s organized crime run by the military and all in the family-Castro’s family.”