“Sorry to hear that,” said the commander. “We may have to get you a coffee IV or something, because we’re going to need your brain firing on all cylinders.”
By then they had reached the door, and the commander was busy showing ID cards and paperwork to the two guards. Satisfied with whatever was printed on the documents, one of the guards pulled out a black cell phone, hit a speed dial key, and spoke in hushed tones.
After about five seconds, there was a harsh metallic buzzing sound and the steel door swung open on some type of powered actuator arm.
The commander went through, motioning for Nathan to follow.
They were half-way down a short hallway when the heavy door swung shut behind them with the clang of steel-on-steel, followed by a snap of automated deadbolts.
The door at the end of the hall was the ordinary interior sort. No automated opener this time. The commander turned the knob and held the door for Nathan to enter.
The area on the other side might have been a briefing room or a classroom. Several tables were pushed against the back wall and stacked with straight-backed metal office chairs.
Two tables had been left in the middle of the floor as a makeshift work area. On one of them was a partially disassembled Sea Bat glider, its disconnected components arranged in neat rows and carefully labeled. Nearby was a freestanding whiteboard, covered with annotations and rudimentary thumbnail sketches in blue, red, and black dry erase marker.
The other table held several cylindrical devices painted in dull gray or drab green, resembling aerosol cans of various sizes, with extraneous hardware attached. There was also a brick of yellow-green clay, wrapped in faintly greasy-looking translucent paper.
At the Sea Bat table stood two people, a man and a woman, both dressed in powder blue lab coats. At the other table stood a single man in a camouflage uniform.
“Let me introduce you to the team,” said the commander. “This is Chief Ruben Goss, he’s our EOD expert—”
Nathan was trying to listen, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the greasy clay brick and the aerosol-looking devices. “Excuse me, are those things explosives?”
“These are mock-ups,” said the man in uniform, “for working out the details of form and function. The real explosives come later.”
Nathan drained the last of his caramel macchiato and looked around for somewhere to put the cup. There were no trash receptacles in sight, and neither of the tables seemed like a suitable place.
He clutched the cup to his chest like a cherished heirloom. “I’m not quite sure what we’re going to be doing here.”
“Essentially,” said the commander, “the plan is to turn your Sea Bats into antisubmarine weapons.”
“I don’t understand,” Nathan said. “Submarines are fast. These things are slow. I mean really slow.”
“That’s the idea,” said the commander.
He glanced down at Nathan’s empty cup. “Can we get you some more Starbucks?”
CHAPTER 54
“This is not a bad way to live,” Cassy said.
Jon nodded absently without replying.
The shade canvas was rigged and both Clarks were laid out in folding chairs on the deck above the cabin, sipping at cans of Cristal and enjoying the morning breeze. Part of the vacation act: lazy and self-absorbed.
Roxy, who hadn’t been briefed on how to behave, was performing splendidly without instruction. At the moment, the Staffordshire Terrier was sprawled in the shade aft of the mast — limbs akimbo — with a relaxed abandon that was almost obscene to witness.
Jon took a pull on his cold Cuban beer, purchased — in true tourist fashion — from three boys in a red-painted plywood boat with an outboard motor built from odds and ends. Even after haggling, the price had probably been about four times the already-inflated rate for Yumas. Still, the beer was good and the delivery had been convenient, so Jon was prepared to accept a touch of friendly price gouging. Besides, the United States Marine Corps was picking up the tab for this trip, so it wasn’t his money anyway.
He had no idea how the Marines at GITMO had gotten their hands on the despacho de navegacion-costera (coastwise cruising permit) or the licencia de excepción (license of exception) that allowed the Foxy Roxy to make landfall outside the usual ports of entry. For that matter, he wasn’t sure how they’d managed to get the proper passport stamps either. Possibly the U.S. State Department had pulled a few strings, or else someone had dropped a fat bribe on the desk of an official in the Cuban government.
However it had been arranged, the travel documents had been perfectly acceptable to the Guarda Frontera officer who had motored out to meet the sailboat. The man had smiled, examined the papers, scribbled initials in three or four places, and accepted a small gift of cash for his trouble.
This was a rare opportunity, and Jon was sorry that he and Cassy couldn’t take advantage of it. They could have gone ashore in the dinghy, browsed the neighborhood shops, and sampled food from street vendors and outdoor restaurants.
But the Marines had taken the dinghy in to the beach, and they were the ones playing tourist. Now, they were out among the people of the tiny town, roaming the streets, laughing, snapping selfies, and looking nothing at all like the military scouting detachment they were. Giving no hint that their brightly colored nylon backpacks contained anything more sinister than sunscreen, spare socks, and bottled water.
The plan called for the Marines to split up into pairs after landfall, with each “couple” going its own way to explore the local sights. This division of forces was supposed to make their movements more difficult to track. Both couples would follow arbitrary routes, occasionally bumping into each other when their random wanderings happened to converge at one place or another. Each unscheduled meeting would be marked by feigned surprise, overloud jokes, and high-fives or fist bumps — the typical social rituals of vacationing gringos.
They’d been gone about two and a half hours; playing the part of noisy sightseers the entire time. When Webb decided that they had adequately satisfied the curiosity of the locals, he and Liv would take a leisurely stroll out of town on one of the dirt roads that wound into the countryside. Specifically, the road at the western edge of town, which just happened to lead past a certain wooded area. After they were far enough out of sight to be unobserved, they’d slip quietly off the road and enter the woods.
Elf and Fris would remain in town, moving around and continuing to establish the presence of boisterous wandering tourists.
Jon pushed his Ray-Bans farther up the bridge of his nose and watched a squadron of seagulls ride the updrafts from the narrow strip of shingle beach. He never took the sunglasses off during daylight hours, not even in the cabin or under the shade canvas. His vision was getting better by the hour and the afterimages of the blast were nearly gone, but the Hospital Corpsman in Cassy was never very far from the surface. She’d be all over him in a second if he showed any slackening in his eye care routine.
“You want to be out there with them,” she said.
Jon was watching the gulls and only half listening. “Huh?”
“That’s where your head is at right now,” Cassy said. “Out in the field with the Four Horsemen.”
“They’re on foot,” Jon said.
Cassy scissored a leg sideways and lightly kicked him in the ankle. “Fine, asshole. The Four Pedestrians of the Apocalypse. And you know what I mean. You want to be out there with them.”