Havana Harvest (50 page)

Lonsdale, like all members of his team, was dressed in workmen's fatigues, flak jacket, workman-style boots, and a knit cap to cushion the fit of his helmet. A holstered, loaded Colt automatic hung on his right hip, a deployed respirator on his left. Four stun grenades adorned the front webbing of his flak jacket. In his pockets he had an Argentinean passport, fifty U.S. one hundred dollar bills, a pair of black leather gloves, and two sets of handcuffs; no personal effects, no compromising documents, no identification papers of any kind, no insignia of rank—nothing to show who he was.

The computer and the satellite imaging system were on a table that folded out from the partition separating the body of the truck from the driver. Lonsdale's seat was a one-legged stool, screwed into the floor of the truck.

The computer clicked and the screen turned blue. Lonsdale hit the exclamation mark followed by Enter. This signaled his technicians, looking at a display identical to his on board the Barbara anchored twelve miles out opposite Havana, that the mission was about to begin. A dialogue box appeared on the screen with the word “READY” at top left. Lonsdale rapped on the partition separating him from the driver. Gal eased the truck into gear and began to drive slowly toward where the periphery road intersected the Via Monumental. Lonsdale hit 1, then Enter. The screen blinked and a picture of the courtyard of La Cabaña prison, as seen from above, appeared. The resolution was good, but Lonsdale wanted a closer look. He pressed D and the camera began to zoom in on its target. A couple of clicks and Lonsdale could see the tops of two vehicles in the courtyard, parked in front of the prison building's entrance. Three dots, presumably guards and drivers, moved about, waiting for their orders.

Lonsdale fiddled with the U and D keys to adjust the picture up or down to his liking, then hit X, followed by 2, then Enter. The screen showed the northern entrance of the tunnel with the jeep and the cab parked fifty yards away from it. Lonsdale watched as the maintenance truck he was sitting in came into the picture and stopped behind the jeep. Gal got out and one of the military policemen took his place behind the wheel. He opened the right rear door of the truck and got in.

While Gal assembled and screwed the second stool into place, Lonsdale hit 3, then Enter, and an image came up of the southern tunnel entrance and the cab parked fifty meters up the road from it. He adjusted the view then went through the same routine with the picture of the western corner of Maximo Gomez Park not far from the southern entrance of the tunnel. He tested the left, right, up, and down arrows and found that by using them he could track moving objects with the satellite camera.

He now had the system calibrated so that Picture 1 showed the courtyard of La Cabaña Prison and its surroundings; Picture 2 the northern tunnel entrance area, which was near the prison; Picture 3 the southern tunnel entrance area on the Havana side; and Picture 4 a soccer field on the western corner of Maximo Gomez Park.

Lonsdale looked at his watch: 0627 hours. He dialed up Picture 1 and gave Gal the thumbs up. The Israeli put on his helmet and plugged himself into the appropriate port of the communications console in front of him. Lonsdale did likewise, then pressed the On button and cleared his throat. Gal nodded. The intercom system between him and Lonsdale was operational. Gal could hear Lonsdale, but no one else could. But everyone could hear Gal, including Lonsdale. Gal adjusted the microphone in his helmet so that it almost touched his mouth.

“A … check in,” he said in Hebrew.

“A checking in,” came the reply, also in Hebrew, from the Team A leader, who was Israeli, as was the Team B leader.

“B … check in,” said Gal.

“B checking in,” in Hebrew again. This arrangement afforded additional security. There was little likelihood of Cuban military listening posts being manned by Hebrew-speaking personnel.

Lonsdale glanced at his watch then at the screen. There were now six dots milling about the two vehicles in the courtyard. Lonsdale zoomed up. Traffic was still light on the highway, but intensifying. He zoomed back to the original setting, then hit
H
, followed by question mark, then Enter.

“Helicopter deployed, ready to go,” appeared in the dialogue box.

Lonsdale hit a few more keys and then read, “Argentine Patrol overhead, has started routine patrol with hub centered
on Barbara.”

He looked at Gal and smiled. Everything was in place. All they needed now was for the Cubans to move.

That's when Lonsdale's inner voice chimed in loud and clear.
This is too easy … this is too perfect … be careful … watch your back … the Agency, the Agency …

He shook his head to shut the voice up, but he kept hearing it. He loosened the straps of his flak jacket for easier access to the small, breach-loaded Berretta automatic he had taped to the inside of the garment, just in case.

The voice stopped when the dialogue box lit up: “ALERT ALERT ALERT.” Lonsdale glanced at the TV screen. The dots were getting into the cars.

Lonsdale made a few more keystrokes and then nodded to Gal.

Gal spoke into his microphone in Hebrew: “Target on its way. Respirators, helmets at the ready. Turn on engines. Action in five minutes. Lock and load.”

Wednesday, January 3
La Cabaña Prison, Havana, Cuba

Casas had slept even less than usual. Things were going from bad to worse. He had been allowed to meet with his daughters, but only in the presence of two of his interrogators. The girls were in tears. They knew it would be the last time they would be allowed to speak with their father. He tried to help them by attempting to sound determined and dignified. He said he had, indeed, committed acts that had gravely harmed the Fatherland, the Revolutionary Government and Fidel Castro, and for this he deserved to be punished. He admonished them to hew to high moral and ethical standards, to choose their friends and life-partners carefully, to be unquestioningly loyal to them and to expect unquestioning loyalty in return.

He asked them to be kind to their mother and to help their paternal grandmother who was suffering greatly as a result of her son's misguided conduct. He reminded them of the many joyful occasions they'd shared with their father, and then asked them to forgive him for having caused them pain and humiliation. He had then embraced each of them, in turn, lovingly and with great tenderness and had wished them a long, happy, healthy, and productive life.

After the meeting, his interrogators told him that De la Fuente was a CIA agent and the brain behind the drug-smuggling operation. He wouldn't believe them, not even after they showed him Oscar's signed confession.

He was devastated. To have been duped so completely, to have accepted so readily that the Revolution and its leaders had been corrupted, and to have then actively striven to bring down the Revolutionary government and Fidel, his idol, now appeared to him as a preposterous act of disloyalty that nothing could justify.

He had failed as a revolutionary, and he'd betrayed his comrades by not believing in their integrity. He was accountable for his mistakes and had to pay for them—or so it seemed to him after four weeks of intense questioning, physical deprivation, and the propaganda directed against him by the State-controlled media. And the only currency with which to pay his terrible debt was his life, for even his honor had been stripped away.

On Monday, New Year's Day, they had made him put on his dress uniform and had taken him before a secret Military Tribunal of Honor, a Preliminary Court Martial, composed of forty-seven of his peers. There he confessed to all his wrongdoings.

The Military Tribunal of Honor reconvened in public at six o'clock in the evening, after five hours of deliberation, its sessions televised, as agreed by participating journalists, via two networks: Cuban National TV in Spanish and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in English. No other TV cameras were authorized, but journalists were welcome to attend all proceedings open to the public.

The Tribunal's verdict found him guilty of grave misconduct as an offcer and revolutionary. It stripped him of the decorations and honors bestowed on him by the Party and La Patria, and reduced him to the rank of private. It then discharged him dishonorably from the Revolutionary Armed Forces. He was ordered to be held for Court Martial as soon as possible before a Special Military Tribunal.

The Special Military Tribunal convened on Tuesday morning to hear the charges against him and his co-accused. By noon, the formalities over, his trial could begin.

With a repentant and cooperative Casas on the witness stand, it took four hours of questions and answers to get to De la Fuente's role in the operation. The Court ordered a recess until Wednesday morning. The unveiling of CIA participation merited a full day of questioning.

Casas now understood why the CIA man had been so adamant in Budapest about obtaining proof positive of complicity in drug smuggling by the Cuban government. Without such proof and with De la Fuente telling all on the witness stand the CIA would look very bad.

How did Military Intelligence find out that the CIA was involved
, Casas asked himself.
Is De la Fuente a double agent or only stupid? Lonsdale, must have known that De la Fuente was working for them
Why then did he not approach De la Fuente and try to save him rather than Casas? Nothing made sense, especially not Lonsdale's assurances of friendship and promises of help.

And he had fallen for it all: Oscar's scheming, the CIA's cajoling, the glitter of gold, the feeling of security derived from having a few cents to his name. Today was the day they would expose him for the fool that he had been and nobody was going to be there to help. Certainly not Oscar De la Fuente, his erstwhile comrade-in-arms, who was now preparing to bear witness against him in court to save his own neck.

Casas reckoned that, in the final analysis, nobody helped you except yourself—and, at times, God.

Wednesday, January 3
Havana Tunnel, Havana, Cuba

At 0657 hours, Lonsdale watched the lead car leave La Cabaña and head for the
Via Monumental.
The second car did not move.

Suddenly, Lonsdale felt confused. Who was in which car? Were two prisoners in one car with guard and driver, and four men escorting them in a chase car? Or was there one prisoner per car?
Damn Bellon! Why couldn't you have been more specifc?

Was the first car a decoy, or was it a scout car, checking that the coast was clear? Or was it unobtrusively transporting two manacled prisoners in the back seat with a guard between them?

With tiny beads of perspiration on his forehead Lonsdale stared at Picture 1 and with all his might willed the second car to move—to no avail.

At 0701 hours, Lonsdale zoomed up and watched the first car reach the spot above the northeast entrance of the tunnel where he and Gal had powered up their equipment a while ago. The car stopped and waited; the second car remained still.

Lonsdale's inner voice piped up:
It's a scout car. If you don't get everyone inside the tunnel your goose is cooked.

He leaned over the table and opened the sliding window behind the driver's head. “Drive into the tunnel
now!
Stop within five meters of the entrance. Tell your buddy in the jeep to stay put.” Then he turned to Gal. “Tell Team B to back up as close to the tunnel as possible. Tell Team A to follow us into the tunnel and stop in front of the truck.”

No sooner had the truck started to move than the dialogue box came to life again. “ALERT, ALERT, ALERT” it flashed. Lonsdale watched Picture 1 as the second car moved to the courtyard exit and was joined by another. He wondered if it was the two-car convoy they had been waiting for.

The convoy started off at speed toward the periphery road and reached the scout car above the tunnel entrance in minutes. As he was switching to Picture 2, Lonsdale shouted to the driver, “Tell your buddy to move as close to the tunnel entrance as possible.” He glanced at the screen. The three vehicles were now proceeding as a convoy to where the periphery road intersected the Via Monumental. “Advise the teams that there are potentially three cars, not two, and that there may be as many as ten guards in the convoy,” Lonsdale said to Gal. The cars were almost at the intersection. “We'll have to help take out that third car somehow.”

Gal shook his head. “Too confusing at this late stage. Let the boys do their work.”

The vehicles slowed down as they approached the Via Monumental. Suddenly, the lead car sped up and entered the intersection during a break in the traffic, effectively blocking the highway and doing what Lonsdale had wanted his military policemen in the jeep to do. Lonsdale yelled out to the driver. “Tell your buddy to speed through the tunnel and go home.”

After a full minute's wait—to let the traffic ahead get away— the two other cars turned onto the Via Monumental and accelerated toward the tunnel.

“Action imminent,” Lonsdale said to Gal who transmitted the message to the teams. Then he unlatched the truck's rear doors. Lonsdale typed on the computer's keyboard, and the dialogue box answered with “Helicopter will go within three minutes.”

At 0707 hours, the two-car convoy flashed by the maintenance truck. “Team A, go!” commanded Gal as Lonsdale switched to Picture 4, which showed Maximo Gomez Park. “Go, go, go,” he screamed at the driver. The truck shot forward causing the unlatched doors to snap open. Smoke canisters exploded on impact and filled the tunnel behind Lonsdale with thick, black smoke.