“How come we’re not flying FedEx?” Akil asked.
“Because FedEx is an American company, and they don’t like Americans. The Cuban authorities fucking hate us. DHL is German owned.”
“They gonna seal us in a box?”
“I don’t care what they put us in. Neither will you at that point. Get jocked up and ready for the jump.”
Guapo, Osito, and Stallone sat in the RAV4 taking turns watching Crocker’s driveway. When no one arrived by 2 a.m., they took a vote and decided to try Mancini’s house, which was a couple of blocks south. Palmetto Drive was even more desolate-a two-lane country road with modest one-story ranch houses on large plots of land. Number 1005 featured a front lawn half the size of a football field, with an American flag hanging from a pole in the middle next to a family of ornamental deer. To the left of the deer stood a dark blue Real Estate Group FOR SALE sign.
Guapo parked the vehicle in a church parking lot across the street. From that vantage, they saw a late-model blue Mustang resting in front of the two-car garage. Lights shone through the front windows.
The sicarios tucked Glocks into the back waistbands of their pants and crossed together. Through sheer white curtains they saw the profile of a man sitting in a brown recliner watching TV. The theme song from Friends wafted under the front door.
Guapo indicated to the other two men to hide in the bushes on either side of the door; then he rang the bell. Ten seconds later, a hand pushed aside the curtains, and a bearded face peered out at him. Guapo smiled, waved, and pointed to the door.
Mancini’s young brother, Paul, opened it a crack and spoke past the safety chain. “What d’you want?” he asked.
He’d been living there for three weeks now and planned to stay until either the house was sold or he traveled to College Park, Maryland, to start engineering school in the fall. His brother’s wife and two young sons had recently moved to a new colonial-style house farther south on Dam Neck Road.
Guapo flashed his friendliest smile. “Sorry to bother you,” he said, “but my car broke down, and my cell phone is out of juice.”
“You live nearby?” Paul asked.
“I drove down from New Jersey. I’m visiting my cousin.”
Twenty-three-year-old Paul, dressed in shorts and a sleeveless Terrapins T-shirt, gave him the once-over. “Wait here,” he said, “while I get you the cordless.”
“Thanks.”
Half a minute later, when Paul reached through the door to hand Guapo the phone, Guapo grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him forward abruptly. Though Paul was strong enough to have won several fights as a UFC light heavyweight before he ripped the rotator cuff in his left shoulder, he was caught off guard, fell forward, and slammed his forehead against the doorframe, which caused him to drop the phone. Guapo aimed the silenced Glock through the crack in the door and shot him once in the side of the head. Paul groaned, “What the fuck did you do that for?”then slumped to the floor.
Guapo instructed Stallone to run back to the Toyota, bring it around to the front of the property, and keep the engine running.
Then he and Osito entered the house and searched the bedrooms. In a closet they found old camouflage boots and uniforms. Aside from clothes, some furniture, and a few items in the kitchen, the house was empty.
Miguel X had told them that the SEAL named Joseph Mancini was married. But the two sicarios saw no evidence of a woman or any other person living in the house. So they dragged Paul’s big body back to the recliner, sat him in it, wiped the butt of the Glock clean of fingerprints, and placed the pistol in his hand.
They used rolled-up newspaper to set the curtains and rug on fire before they exited.
“One gringo down,” Guapo announced when he returned to the RAV4 and flames lit up the night sky. “One more to go.”
Chapter Twenty
Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.
– Mike Tyson
At 7,980 feet the back door of the C-23 Sherpa aircraft swung open and Akil pushed the platform with the Zodiac, forty-horsepower engine, fuel tanks, and paddles out. The SEALs waited until the CRRC landed safely in the water. Once the aircraft circled back over the target, Crocker gave the signal to jump.
He loved to free-fall, even if this was only a hop and pop at two thousand feet. Still, it was exhilarating-diving like an eagle through the fresh ocean air and steering the risers toward the Zodiac with Havana glowing in the distance.
He and his men had trained hundreds of times for infils like this, and they executed this one to perfection, all splashing down within ten yards of the boat.
They slammed into action immediately, cutting the CRRC from the wooden platform, inflating the keel (a fin at the bottom of the boat that helped convert sideways force into forward propulsion), attaching the engine, loading their gear, and assuming their preassigned positions in the boat.
“Ready?” Crocker asked Akil, who sat next to him in the stern.
“Ready, boss.”
He fired the engine as Akil fixed the location (approximately 23.10 north/82.22 west) on his digital compass. The boat took off with a low growl.
“¡Cuba libre!” Suárez shouted from the bow.
The temperature hovered at around eighty-two degrees Fahrenheit, and there was a mild nine-mile wind blowing in from the east. The tide had started to recede, and the current in the Straits of Florida wanted to pull them northwest into the Gulf of Mexico.
Crocker and Akil worked in tandem to keep the boat on course. All four SEALs were wearing a combination of Sharkskin with Polartec lining and more lightweight Lycra dive skin, which Crocker preferred.
As the Zodiac climbed up moderate swells and rode down, the men slipped Rocket Fins over their IST Proline 3mm boots and got the LAR V Dräger rebreathers ready to strap to their chests.
Crocker had chosen a DZ west of the commercial shipping lane into the port of Havana. When he saw the lights of a vessel to their left, he instructed Akil to cut the engine. The four men paddled, making little progress against the current.
“We need to pick up the pace,” Crocker said as the muscles in his back and shoulders started to burn.
Once the lights faded out of sight, he instructed Akil to restart the engine and checked his watch, which read 0417. They had to move faster if they were going to reach the target on time.
Crocker visualized the mission in his head-the bridge and tunnels, the bend in the river, Almendares Park on their right. When they got within a mile and a quarter of shore, Mancini spotted another vessel directly ahead through a pair of Night Owl Tactical Series G1 Night Vision binoculars. He couldn’t tell if it was a Cuban patrol boat or a fishing vessel puttering along the coast. The SEALs cut the engine again and paddled.
Cuban security forces were no joke. Led by Commander in Chief Raúl Castro, they consisted of a highly trained and largely Soviet-equipped army, navy, and air force. In the past they had foiled a number of CIA plots, including the 1961 U.S.-planned invasion at the Bay of Pigs.
When the boat got within three quarters of a mile of the coast, Crocker saw additional small vessels ahead to their left. He said, “Strap on your Drägers and get in the water. We’ll sink the Zodiac here and swim.”
First they dropped the engine and fuel tanks into the bay, and then they attacked the rubber vessel with Leatherman knives.
The water they dove into was cool and pitch black. They swam in teams of two, connected by a swimmer’s lanyard, with forty-pound packs on their backs and waterproof weapons bags slung across their shoulders, secured with bungee straps. Crocker was paired with Akil; Suárez followed with Mancini.
Akil led, focusing on the luminescent dials of his dive compass and MUGR GPS, while Crocker timed each leg with his watch. Every fifteen minutes of swimming at a particular bearing, he’d squeeze Akil’s arm, which signaled him to stop and reset the direction on the compass.