Don Pendleton - Havana Five

“No,” Bolan said. “But it’s been a while.”

“It’s damn hot down here,” the Marine said. Bolan looked at him with disbelief at first but then noticed the broad smile on the soldier’s face. “Just kidding, sir. I knew you’d already figured that out.”

Bolan nodded, acknowledged the quip with a half smile and then decided to take his own advice to lighten up. They made small talk the remainder of their five-minute drive from the airstrip to the main detention facility. The Marine indicated he’d wait until Bolan finished.

“Might be a while,” the Executioner said.

“No problem, sir. I’m your escort while you’re on the base. Once we’ve finished here, I’ll show you to the VIP billets.”

Bolan nodded and moved inside. He passed through two metal detectors—requiring the removal of all his brass and medals and submission to a hand wand before they cleared him—and then signed in. Once the basics were complete, a Marine cadre escorted the Executioner to a six-by-six room occupied by a bare, gunmetal gray table bolted to the floor and two plastic folding chairs. He waited nearly ten minutes before a door with a wire-mesh window opened and a short man in neon-orange coveralls stepped into the room under heavy guard.

Bolan stood against the wall, arms folded, and gestured to the unoccupied chairs. “Sit down.”

He studied Basilio Melendez as he sat. The man had black hair and a matching beard. His brown eyes possessed a beady curiosity. A pair of faint scars ran down the right side of his neck. His arms were grimy and soiled, and his fingers were stained yellow from years of continuous tobacco use.

“You’re Melendez,” Bolan said.

The man said nothing as he obviously perceived Bolan hadn’t meant it as a question. That demonstrated he wasn’t obtuse, and the Executioner knew he’d have to tread cautiously on this one. Bolan wouldn’t get far being coy with Melendez; the Cuban was obviously intelligent. Besides, he’d met guys like Melendez before and he’d found he could never quite trust them. They were always studying the angles—looking for the best possible way to get ahead—and they had a knack for manipulating even the most unfavorable circumstances to their advantage given the time and opening.

“My name’s Stone,” Bolan began. “I’m with the Criminal Investigation Division of the United States Army. I’m told you have information that’s of great interest to the U.S. government.”

Melendez didn’t say anything for a minute. He just sighed deeply a couple of times and peered at Bolan from under hooded eyelids. It looked as though he’d been through hell. Bolan wanted to offer him something to drink, maybe get him some cigarettes because he knew prisoners weren’t permitted to smoke; anything that might help establish a rapport with him. That was assuming Melendez wanted to cooperate.

Abruptly, and in flawless English, Melendez said, “What do you wish to know?”

“That’s a start,” Bolan said, and he took a seat across from Melendez. “Tell me how you know about Colonel Waterston.”

“I spend lots of time in Cuban jails,” he said. “I overhear things.”

“Okay, fine, but why would Waterston’s name come up in a Cuban jail?”

“It seems you know very little about my country, Stone,” Melendez replied. “You have heard of Havana Five?”

Bolan shook his head, although he knew plenty about them. The crime lords of the Cuban underworld controlled nearly all the illicit trades throughout the country from their power base in Havana, and had done so for the past three decades. Beginning in the early seventies, Havana Five overwhelmed the Cuban community with drugs, guns, sex and every other profitable vice imaginable. Five men, each with a specific piece of the Cuban island, pooled their resources and built the single most powerful crime cartel in history.

“Many believe they do not exist,” Melendez said. “That they have never existed. But I, you see…I know better. I know these men are real. I know they exist and I know what they’re capable of doing. And I know exactly what they did to your friend, Waterston.”

“And what’s that?”

“They killed him,” Melendez said. “I hear they shot him through the head and they dumped his body.”

“Where?”

“How should I know this? The men I heard talking did not say. Perhaps he was buried, perhaps he sleeps with the fishes. The point is that I hear he’s dead and I believe it. And if I say more, then I’m dead.”

Bolan shook his head. “You’re under our protection now, Melendez. We’re not going to throw you back into circulation again.”

“You? You think you can protect me here?” Melendez scowled and emitted a scoffing laugh. “Don’t be naive. Nobody is safe from Havana Five. My days are numbered, of this I’m sure.”

Bolan leaned forward. “Then why come to us if you don’t think we can protect you? Why not take your chances out there on the streets of your own country?”

“Because maybe in here I have a small chance. Out there, I am dead for certain.”

“Why? What makes you think they even know you have this information?”

“Because the people I know, they know other people. And those people are connected to Havana Five. There is much money to be made in their business, American. And they do not like when others interfere with their profit. They will go to great lengths to keep making money, to keep their society secret.”

“To the point they think they can hide an ELN terrorist training camp inside Cuba without us finding out?” Bolan asked.

Something changed in Melendez’s expression, but the Cuban quickly recovered. Not before Bolan struck a nerve, however. For a long time they shared only silence. Bolan didn’t plan to say anything else. It seemed the better tactic would be to wait for Melendez to speak first, to betray something he thought Bolan didn’t know about. Melendez would hold on to every ace he could in the hope of swinging a better deal down the line if things went sour or the scanty information he provided didn’t pan out.

“How do you know about this?”

Bolan decided to show his own cards. “Come on, Melendez. It’s what Waterston was working on. We both know it. Just like I know it’s pretty unlikely you would overhear talk of Waterston’s murder without mention of why he was killed. So quit pretending and talk.”

And for the next half hour, Basilio Melendez talked of two men—Americans being held in a Cuban jail—who spoke of killing Waterston and how they were betrayed by someone inside Havana Five. He also told how they talked to each other in English because the cops weren’t present and he was the only other one in the jail, and how he’d pretended not to speak a word of it. And they talked and talked, and they revealed how they had made a deal with someone to let them in on the location of the training camp, and instead they were betrayed and barely escaped with their necks intact. And finally they had traveled to a remote suburb of Matanzas and purposely got arrested in the hope of evading their unnamed pursuers. It was a wild story.

And Mack Bolan believed every word.

“But you never heard where this training camp was at?” Bolan asked after Melendez finished his narrative.

The Cuban shook his head. “I do not think they knew.”

Bolan rose then. “I’m going to look into this, Melendez. In the meantime, I’ll see about getting you moved off the base and back to the U.S. I think you’ll be safer there.”

“Please, Stone,” Melendez said with pleading eyes. “I care nothing for myself. Like I said, I’m a dead man. But my little sister…she has been good. Please, you must protect her. I will do anything.”

Bolan would only promise he’d look into it and then left the detention facility. He needed to run this new intelligence by Brognola to see what came of it before he’d know the best way to proceed. Stony Man maintained a technological resources network more advanced than anything available to Bolan in the field, and Aaron “The Bear” Kurtzman—a cybernetics wizard extraordinaire and intelligence sponge—could run through the scenarios and come back with more sound leads in one-tenth the time it would take Bolan to run down the old fashioned way.