The woman strode briskly down the alley toward her next target. Two men, middle-aged, with identical black mustaches, sat on wooden crates, playing chess. They each held chipped enamel cups of black coffee and they were sharing a plate of roasted pork covered in onions.
“Jaque-mate!” one shouted with glee.
“Puta!” the other man cursed. He slapped his hand down on the board and swept away the pieces. He drained his coffee and scowled.
The winner held his belly and laughed. “No más, comrade?” he joked.
When the men spotted the woman coming their way, they stopped their conversation and their faces turned serious.
She stopped in front of them and looked them up and down warily. “Are you ready?”
The winner of the chess game nodded. “We are waiting for your signal.”
“Here,” she said, passing him a few local pesos.
“What is this?” he scowled. He showed the money to his friend. “What can we do with this?”
The other man shook his head.
“More is coming. American dollars tomorrow,” she said. “That will be your signal. You need to be ready. You need them all to be ready.”
“Manuel, Domingo, Arianna,” the man counted out on his fingers. “Louisa, Marisela, Ramón Grande, Ramón Peque?o. All of our barrios in Santiago are ready.”
“Very good,” the woman nodded.
“When?” the man asked.
“Eight o’clock tomorrow morning.”
The man smiled with approval. “Where?”
“The Plaza de la Revolución,” she answered. “Are you certain you’re ready?”
“Of course,” the winner said. “We have been ready for a very long time. We are now only waiting . . . for you.”
“Viva Cuba Libre!” she whispered.
“Viva Cuba Libre!” the two men repeated in unison.
And she turned on her heels and fled the alley to find her next target.
69.
HOMESTEAD, FLORIDA
FRIDAY, 9:32 P.M.
Jessica pulled the white convertible Ford Mustang off U.S. 1 and turned sharply to the west down another wide, flat Florida avenue. After several more turns, she pulled into the parking lot for the Gator Grill, a fast-food stand advertising fried frogs legs and alligator tacos. At this hour, the place was already closed, and the seating area, a cluster of picnic tables beneath a thatched roof, was abandoned. She backed the car into a space facing the main road and turned off the engine. The land around her, horizontal emptiness in every direction, was punctured only by a sliver of moonlight and the chirping of cicadas.
—
The Deputy Director had been less surprised than she hoped when she called him back to accept the drop mission. Jessica realized the moment she heard his voice on the other end of the line that he had expected her to call back. He knew she would cool off and eventually relent. They both knew it.
“I’ll do it out of my loyalty to you,” she had said, “for everything you’ve done for me.” He pretended to accept her lie graciously and countered with a fabrication of his own. “Apology accepted. You know I wouldn’t knowingly entangle you in a mission that involves family.” Then, gratuitously, “You have my word on that, Jessica.”
She bit her lip. “Yes, sir.”
The lies were out in the open and mutually ignored. She had to focus. She used to wall off her emotions effortlessly, but it was getting harder. Now Jessica had to forget how she felt about her husband, her family, her boss, her future. Just focus on the mission.
The Deputy Director of Operations explained that Jessica’s task was to deliver ten million in cash to a Cuban opposition cell leader. Using the code name Alpha Nine Nine, she was to meet a contact code-named Bravo Zero at the Gator Grill in Homestead, accept the package, and take it to the nearby Air Reserve Base, where she would fly to Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, following regular flight patterns. Just after the approach at Gitmo’s Leeward Point Field, Jessica was to pull up and veer to the south into Cuban airspace to meet a second contact, code-named Charlie Three, in a remote part of Baconao Park. Her instructions were to deliver the money to Charlie and then return immediately to Florida. “In and out,” the Deputy Director had said. “Alpha, Bravo, Charlie—easy.”
His reassurances had the opposite effect. She couldn’t help but wonder what he wasn’t telling her. But what made Jessica really anxious was what she wasn’t telling him.
—
Jessica watched two headlights appear in the distance and then bound toward her location. She stepped out of her car and leaned casually on the hood.
The approaching lights turned into the Gator Grill parking lot and then went dark. An oversized cherry-red Ford F-150 pulled up next to her and a skinny man with long dark hair stepped out of the pickup truck.
The moment he was out, Jessica leapt at him, unleashing a lightning front snap kick to his groin. He groaned and doubled over just as she thrust a palm heel blow to his nose. The man screamed and held his face, blood gushing between his fingers. She snatched one of his wrists and twisted violently, forcing him to spin. Jessica grabbed a fist of hair at the back of his head and jammed his face against the pickup truck. His blood smeared the side of the red cab.