Don Pendleton: Silent Running

He walked back to the well-stocked minibar in his kitchenette and was contemplating his choices when someone knocked on his door. He opened it to find Hector de Lorenzo and, even so early in the evening, the handsome, rakish, Mexican cop-turned-attorney general looked to be half in the bag and feeling no pain.

“Hal—” de Lorenzo hoisted his half-empty glass and rattled the ice cubes “—our dinner reservations are getting cold, amigo. And don’t tell me that you want to eat alone in your room again tonight. I went to all the trouble to find us suitable dinner companions and, believe me, we don’t want to disappoint them.”

“Dammit, Hector.” Brognola grinned as he shook his head. Hooking up with de Lorenzo was usually a one-way ticket to the Disoriented Express and this occasion was proving to be no different than usual. “You know how much I hate this social bullshit. I just want to have a quiet meal and go to bed by myself. I really don’t need to have a bad head in the morning. I have work to do tomorrow.”

“Hal, Hal.” De Lorenzo shook his head in mock sorrow. “That’s simply not done around here, and you know it. You have to show your country’s flag, and wave it proudly, by sharing our libations.”

The Mexican leaned closer and smiled. “Don’t forget, we Latinos are a very social people and we’re going to think that you don’t appreciate our hospitality if you don’t break bread with us.”

As much as Brognola hated to admit it, he knew the Mexican A.G. was right. He needed to be seen as part of the extended regional justice family if he was going to get the cooperation he wanted when he needed it. “It’s not the bread I’m worried about, Hector.”

“Never to worry, amigo—” de Lorenzo beamed “—I’ll see that you get served only the best tequila and not that rotgut you Yankees usually drink.”

Brognola shuddered.

“I promise.”

“Let me get my coat,” Brognola grumbled.

“Good man,” de Lorenzo said. “And I swear on my honor that you won’t regret the evening.”

Brognola had heard that line before, but maybe Barbara Price was right and he’d been working too hard and needed to relax a little.

DIEGO GARCIA GLANCED UP from the map of Mexico on the chart table over to the clock on the bulkhead of the spacious cabin of his pleasure boat. It was 2200 hours to the second.

“Team Six is at its launch point, Comrade,” the radio operator reported from the communications console on the other side of the cabin.

Diego Garcia nodded. They were exactly on schedule, and he had expected nothing less of his men. The last two of his assault teams had a more difficult approach to make, and it would be at least another hour before they would be in position to launch. When his teams went into action, they would follow a series of carefully coordinated actions to ensure that his plan would succeed. Nothing less would be acceptable.

His command post this night was a sizable pleasure yacht cruising fifteen miles off the coast of the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico in international waters. Anyone spotting the craft on radar or satellite would see only one more private boat sailing past the Cancun resort complex. Externally, nothing showed to make his boat stand out from the dozens just like it in the region. His communications antennas were all hidden, as was his defensive armament. He even had half a dozen women in bikinis up on deck to aid the disguise. Nothing had been left to chance.

A sharp stab of pain in the side of his head caused the Cuban to blink, but he ignored it. He had no time for anything as trivial as a brain tumor right now. In fact, for the next six months that the doctors had said he had left to live, he would have no time for it. In those few months he was going to be totally focused on creating a new New World Order in the Western Hemisphere that would be his last legacy to the world.

His plan wasn’t just something he’d thrown together when he’d learned of his impending death. Not at all. It was a lifelong dream that had the full approval of the leader of Cuba himself. And while there would be no way to directly connect his operation with the Mother Country, Cuba would benefit greatly from it. She would finally become a real world power because of his effort, and his name would live forever in the minds of millions.

Diego Garcia, a ranking member of the DGI, Dirección General de Inteligencia, Cuba’s intelligence service, headed up the supersecret organization code named the Matador. This section had been named for the brave men who stood alone in the sand facing brutal animals many times their size with only a slim sword in their hand to protect them. His motherland could never best the hated Yankees by brute force. There were far too many of them and they were too strong. But, as with the lone man in the arena, through bravery and a thin blade, even the largest raging bull could be brought to its knees.

Like the matador who faced the bull on the hot sand, Garcia didn’t fear dying. When the tumor ate so much of his brain that he could no longer function, he would gladly put the muzzle of his pistol in his mouth and pull the trigger. His only fear was that he wouldn’t live long enough to see the full extent of America’s humiliation. The Yankees had ground his people under their heels for decades, and it was time for them to pay the bill for their arrogance. He envied the terrorists who had struck New York on 9/11, as the Yankees called it, but his operation would cost the Americans much more than just two buildings and a few thousand lives. They had caused the deaths of far more Cubans than that and one of them had been his dimly remembered father.

He remembered so clearly, though, his mother’s face on the day his hero father had been buried. The Cuban leader himself had delivered the eulogy for him and the other Heros of the People who had fallen turning back the Yankee invasion at the Bay of Pigs. During the long speech, his mother had held herself proudly as befitted a widow of a martyr of the Revolution. She herself had been active in the Revolution and would go on to work for the DGI for the rest of her life.

On the morning after his father’s state funeral, his mother had made him stand in front of a framed photo of Cuba’s leader and recite a vow to dedicate his life to bringing death and destruction to the Capitalists who had killed his father. At the time he’d been too young to really understand what she was asking of him, but he had made the vow to please her. He had repeated it every morning since then and continued to do so to this day as the touchstone of his life.

That same morning, his mother had also started to teach him the things he would need to know to be able to carry out his vow. She had lived in Florida before the glorious Revolution and had started to teach him proper American English. As soon as he had the basics down, she went on to teach him how to blend in with the Yankees. Being from an almost pure Spanish bloodline, his features and coloring would allow him to pass unnoticed in the mixed American society.

After entering Cuba’s secret service himself, he had specialized in the foreign branch of the DGI. With his mother’s thorough training, he had been a very successful undercover agent operating in Florida, Texas and Louisiana. His successes were rewarded with his appointment as the man in charge of the top-secret Matador Section. The plan he was implementing this night had already been in existence at that time, but he’d brought new ideas to it and had expanded the program.

Within a very short period, the great United States of America would be on her knees weeping, and he would be a very satisfied man. Few men had ever had the chance to be the driving force behind the destruction of a corrupt empire, and he would die happy.