Paul Christopher - Valley of the Templars

They had come around Peanut Island now and were heading home again. Peanut Island is a local Palm Beach park with campgrounds, a marina and beaches. It was also the location for JFK’s fallout shelter during his winter visits to the family estate in Palm Beach. They even gave ten-dollar guided tours.

“Even if this was true and Fidel was to die when you say, why do you think anything would change?”

“Because it will be made to change.”

“By the Brotherhood?” Lobo laughed around the stub of his cigar.

“By the Brotherhood and outside interests that would like to see Cuba’s transition from being a pseudosocialist military dictatorship to a true democratic republic be accomplished as bloodlessly as possible. As I am sure you are aware, the Cuban military is effectively impotent and we have taken…steps to see that its remaining counterinsurgency is otherwise occupied.”

“These outside interests. Your interests, Senora Sinclair?”

“America’s interests, Senor Lobo.”

“Given that this ‘change’ as you call it were to take place, what would my interests be, senora?”

“All properties and land holdings owned by your family before 1959 would be returned to you, including the fourteen refineries you operated. At one time your family controlled more than half the sugar output of Cuba; if those refineries were operated by anyone other than yourself, it would be disastrous for the sugar industries of Florida, Louisiana, the Dominican Republic and Hawaii. Under your guidance, that could be prevented. That is roughly eight million tons of sugar annually under your control. Effectively you would control the world cane sugar industry.”

“If such a radical and at this time completely hypothetical event was to occur, I would need further incentives,” Lobo said.

“Such as?”

“As you are probably aware, I own a majority interest in both Royal Tropicana and Tropic Sun Cruise Lines, both of which are based out of Fort Lauderdale. I also own several large construction companies here in Florida. When this ‘change’ of yours occurs, one of those companies will be hired to build a cruise ship terminal in Havana Harbor and my ships will be given the first licenses to dock there.

“Furthermore I wish to be made chairman of the first gambling commission in Cuba when it is established, and to be given ten licenses to be distributed as I see fit. If I am minister of economic development, it will also be a fundamental part of my mandate to control any and all resource development in Cuba, including agriculture, mining and tourism. None of this is negotiable.”

“You drive a hard bargain, Mr. Lobo.”

“My father used to play poker with Meyer Lansky back in the ’fifties. I had excellent role models.”

“I thought perhaps that I might have caught you unawares with my offer, Senor Lobo, but I see now that you have given this a great deal of thought.”

“Senora, for many years now Cuba has been a ripe plum ready to fall from the tree. I knew someone would come along eventually and I would make my deal with the devil. You are simply the first devil to come along.”

“No patriotism to stir your heart? No revenge for the indignities done to your family?”

“Wave your flags elsewhere, senora. Patriotism is a sickness only bloodshed will cure. It is nothing more than men putting real estate above principle, and revenge is for idiots. This is about money, Senora Sinclair. Cuba has always been about money, nothing more, I’m afraid.”

“So we have a deal?”

“Why not?” Lobo said. “I’ve never owned my own country before.”

The flight of six MiL 8 transport helicopters hammered over the jungle and wildwood-covered hills and valleys of the Sierra del Escambray on their way to the town of Aserradero. Lieutenant Colonel Roberto Marquez Orozco sat in the cockpit of the lead helicopter, scanning the ground five hundred feet below them. Nothing to see but treetops, rock crags and the glitter of a meandering mountain stream. Behind him in the rear of the transport, twenty men in full gear sat huddled in jump seats against the bulkheads. Orozco’s helicopter swept over the Habanabilla Reservoir and into the Aserradero Valley. The town and its eight thousand peasant inhabitants lay dead ahead, the single thread of a narrow highway cutting the town in half.

“There,” said Orozco, pointing to a large open meadow just north of the town. It was really the only clear space to land in.

“ Si , Colonel,” said the pilot. He toggled a switch on the radio set into the control panel above him and relayed the information to the other pilots in the flight. All of the big helicopters altered course along with Orozco like giant obedient bumblebees.

Orozco’s helicopter landed first, touching down on the slightly inclined meadow, its tripod gear hitting the dark earth in perfect unison, the huge rotors flattening the tall grass in a perfect circle. The main door opened and the pilot threw the rotors into the off position; it would take some time to unload the men and equipment, and the turbine ate up fuel at a terrible rate.

Behind them the five other helicopters landed in formation, in line with a hundred yards between each machine. When all the rotors had ceased turning, the clamshell rear cargo doors and ramp opened and the men began to file out.

Hidden in the woods two hundred yards to the south, Lieutenant Colonel Frank J. Turturro watched as the helicopters landed and then he quietly gave an order into his headset microphone.

“Lasers on.”

Around the large upland meadow, twelve of Turturro’s men, each with an ordinary green-light laser pointer duct-taped to the telescopic sights of his Vietnam-era M40 rifle, switched the little devices on, aiming at the upper turbine chamber above and just aft of the cockpit. None of the twelve men was a sniper-grade marksman, but none of them needed to be; their only task was to keep the small spot of laser light aimed at the helicopters.

Turturro turned to his radio man and told him to switch frequencies. When the man nodded, Turturro spoke into his microphone again. “This is Bravo. Come in, Flight Leader.”

The response was clear and almost instantaneous. “Flight Leader here, Bravo.”

“What’s your distance from X-Ray please?”

“Four kilometers.”

“Approach southwest, course one eighty. Targets are in line and painted. Fire at will, Flight.”

“Roger that, Bravo.”

From four kilometers away the sound of the three Super Tucanos was no more than the faint, indistinct sound of a swarm of hornets, and it was only at the very last second that Orozco’s pilot saw the glittering of sunlight reflecting from the canopies of the distant turboprops, followed almost instantly by blurred belches of smoke and flames from the turboprops’ underwing pods as each of the aircraft launched four Hellfire air-to-ground missiles at the green patch of meadow two and a half miles away.

“Colonel…?” The pilot pointed out the south-side window of the cockpit.

The Hellfire missiles, traveling at roughly two thousand feet per second, reached their targets-the green light reflecting from the laser pointers-in about the time it took for Orozco to turn and follow the directions of the pilot’s finger. All twelve missiles made contact and the six MiL 8 helicopters and the men remaining inside them were incinerated instantly. Eight seconds after the missiles struck, the three Super Tucanos flew in over the meadow at an altitude of a little over two hundred and fifty feet, raking the meadow with their twin.50-caliber machine guns, obliterating the few dozen men already out of the six helicopters and fleeing toward the woods. Wagging their wings, the three Super Tucanos peeled off and climbed out of sight. Six of the elite Avispas Negras unit managed to evade the missiles and the machine-gun fire before they were fired upon at point-blank range by Colonel Frank Turturro’s men. Within less than a minute, two-thirds of the Cuban air force’s helicopter transport capabilities had been destroyed along with a full one-third of the army’s Special Forces, including their commander.