Casa de la Rosa, Cuba
Erin waited.
It seemed to take forever for the camp to settle down for the night. She lay on her back, listening to the sounds around her.
The other women in the cabin talked about their day. Several were heading back to the States soon, and their chatter revealed both reluctance to leave and eagerness to return home. They exchanged confidences and contact information and reminisced about the time they’d spent in this sultry jungle.
At times like these, Erin acutely felt the distance between herself and these other volunteers. She was a fake, here for reasons these women wouldn’t want to know.
Even without the CIA, though, she wouldn’t fit. She was a temporary fill-in, and she was Emilio Diaz’s daughter. An outsider on both counts. And it saddened her in a way she didn’t fully understand. She’d never been a joiner, so why this sudden need to belong? It was a question she couldn’t answer.
So she turned her attention to the music drifting through the open windows.
Always in Cuba, you heard music. It was a fascinating dichotomy that, despite the country’s extreme poverty, the Cuban people found reasons to celebrate. Tonight, a trio had come in from town, setting up in the mess tent. They’d played a mix of son, salsa, and timba, while the locals showed the volunteers how to dance to the energetic music. The group had quit around ten. After all, mornings came early at the clinic, and patients in the hospital wing needed their sleep. But a lone guitarist still played; soft, melancholy songs that drifted on the night air, soothing and sweet.
Even that ended, though. And finally, the camp slept.
Still, Erin didn’t move, the light snoring of her roommates the only sounds interrupting the chittering of insects and occasional nocturnal animal calls from the woods. Tonight it was critical that no one see her leave. So she waited. Then, after what seemed hours, she used a penlight to check her watch. Nearly 1:00. Just a little longer, in case any stragglers still wandered into the sleeping facility.
Another fifteen minutes. Still silence.
Then she quietly rose, grabbing the small backpack from under her bed and heading for the bathroom. Earlier, she’d filled the bag with things she might need: dark clothing, her camera, a penlight, and a knife. Plus a voltage meter she’d taken from the storage shed after dinner. She thought again about a gun, but only briefly. It was pointless to waste energy wishing for something she couldn’t have.
First off, she sent a short message to her backup team.
Everything good. Visiting Santa Clara tomorrow. Wish you were here.
As she’d done the previous two nights, she waited for their reply. It came quickly. Enjoy Santa Clara. They’d notify the Command Center to watch for something from Padilla, the agent she intended to contact. Wish we were there, too. Again, the phrase that told her they were on standby, ready to pull her out at a moment’s notice.
The nightly message sent, she pulled on the dark clothing, rechecked the contents of her backpack, and then climbed out one of the rear windows. Like all the DFL buildings, the back of the cabin faced the woods. As she’d done earlier in the day, she pressed herself against the wall and listened to the sleeping camp.
She was going back to the cabin to take a look at that cable. It was just possible she could bypass the alarm system with nothing more than a voltage meter and a set of batteries. If she was right, it was old technology, something called a McCullar Loop, and fairly easy to detect and fool.
Ten seconds. Twenty.
Above, a full moon painted the night with shadows. On one hand it helped, because she could avoid using the penlight. Yet a dark night would better hide her movements. She couldn’t pick her night, however, nor afford to wait for the moon to travel its course across the sky. With Helton’s appearance at the camp and his obvious distrust of her, she figured she didn’t have a lot of time.
Thirty seconds. Sixty. It was now or never.
She moved to the edge of the cabin and peeked around the corner. She couldn’t see the guards, though she knew they were around. They were always around. This time, hopefully in front, half asleep on the clinic’s front porch and not patrolling the camp or woods. She darted across the open space to the shadows behind the next cabin.
Then again she waited, listening for approaching feet.
Only silence. So she repeated the process, again working her way around the perimeter of the camp, using the silent buildings as cover. Until she reached the converted barn and the trail leading into the woods.
There she stopped, her senses open to the surrounding night. Now she could hear them. Two male voices, speaking softly across the yard. She edged her way to the corner of the barn, her back flat against its rough wood walls, and peered toward the house.
They sat in the clinic’s shadow, the red glow of cigarettes marking their location. One of them laughed while the other spoke rapidly, though Erin couldn’t make out the words. They were just a couple of guards, entertaining themselves as they worked a late and uneventful night shift.
She moved back from the corner and glanced toward the tree line. It was a quick five seconds across open ground. From where the guards sat, they’d have to really look to see her, and then they’d never recognize her at this distance. It was too dark. Still, she hesitated, her eyes fixed on the blackness of the woods.
Erin had never been afraid of the dark, always fearing the deeds of men more than things that go bump in the night. This darkness, however, was so intense, so absolute. She was a city girl, accustomed to at least faint light on even the blackest nights. And there was the jungle itself, an unknown, foreign element, a world unlike her own. Here, she was the intruder, the interloper.
Then she remembered something Joe had said on their first mission together. She’d been a neophyte officer, and scared. Joe must have seen it. Actually, looking back, she suspected anyone with even half an eye for such things would have seen it, and Joe was very observant.
“Don’t ever be ashamed of your fear,” he’d said. “Without it, you’re dead. Face it. Claim it. Then use it. And you’ll be one of the survivors.”
She smiled at the memory. They’d made it through that mission and two years’ worth of others without mishap, and she never forgot his advice. Nor would she forget him now. With a deep breath, she swiftly crossed the open space to the shelter of trees near the trail.
Darkness instantly enveloped her.
Glancing back, she saw the spill of moonlight in the open yard, but with her back to the camp, she could hardly see the next tree in her path. Bracing herself, she flicked on the penlight and pointed it toward the ground. Then, keeping just off the well-trod surface, she started forward.
It was tough going, nothing like earlier in the day.
The woods were thick with underbrush, which caught at her clothes and hampered her forward progress. Plus, since she couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of her, she had to trust the hard-packed dirt of the path as her guide. Every now and then she stopped and listened, moving on only after determining she was still alone.
Finally, she sensed a lessening of the darkness ahead. She was near the clearing. Shutting off the penlight, she let the natural light guide her forward until she spotted the small wooden structure.
At night it was even less impressive than during the day. It looked long-deserted, a place for vagabonds or mountain men to squat. Erin knew better. According to Emilio, the cabin was used for drug storage, an out-of-the-way place that wouldn’t tempt a thief. Plus she’d seen the road and security in the daylight, including the cable promising technology of some kind. So it was definitely more than it seemed in the moonlight, and more than he’d admitted.
Suddenly she sensed a shift in the night.
A slight sound froze her in place. An animal? Then, after a moment, she realized it was voices, moving toward her.
Had the guards seen her after all?
Quickly, she slipped deeper into the woods. She considered running, but knew she couldn’t get back to her cabin without being seen—even if she could keep her bearings in the woods. So her only option was to use that darkness. Lowering herself to the ground, she hid within the underbrush she’d been cursing only a few moments earlier.
Now she could hear the shuffle of feet on the path and the voices growing closer. She listened intently for tone and timbre, words, if she could make them out, or a recognizable voice. She couldn’t distinguish any of those, but she also heard no urgency, no sense of a search or alarm.
Maybe they had no idea she was here.
She had to take a chance. Inching forward on her belly, she positioned herself at the edge of the trees where she could see the meeting point of trail and clearing. If the guards weren’t in the woods looking for her, they had to be heading toward the cabin.
After a few minutes she saw a light playing along the bushes bordering the path. She sank a little lower, willing herself to become a part of the surrounding greenery.
Then the light spilled into the clearing with two dark shadows: one large, broad-shouldered, moving with the grace of a soldier. Erin couldn’t see his face clearly but knew it was Helton. The second figure was smaller, though still tall and slender. A woman? Then the moonlight caught them.
Jean Taylor.
In truth, Erin had known the woman was somehow mixed up with Helton, but she’d wanted to be wrong. She’d hoped she was just being paranoid and that there was some rational explanation for Jean’s absence from DFL’s records. Now, with Jean and Helton chatting like old friends, Erin had to admit the truth. Jean was not an innocent bystander.
Erin pulled out her camera, careful not to stir the bushes around her. She’d send pictures back to Langley and see what they could come up with. Maybe one or both had some kind of record that would help her figure out what they were doing here.
As the couple crossed the clearing, Erin snapped one picture after another, the nearly-silent whiz and whir following them to the door. A moment later they disappeared into the dark interior, and Erin waited for the lights to come on inside. Even with the windows boarded up, some sliver of brightness should leak through the edges. The cabin remained dark.
She shifted on the damp ground, working through the possibilities.
If the cabin was larger, she’d have guessed there was an internal room of some sort. However, the building was too small. Which left only three possibilities: Jean and Helton didn’t need lights for their purpose here, the windows were blacked out from the inside, or, maybe, there was a basement.
The last option had the most promise, especially since no one would suspect anything under such an insignificant structure. Still, it was only a guess, and no better than the other two. Unless she could get a look inside.
That, however, wasn’t going to happen tonight. Not with Helton around. Her plan had been to take a look at the cable in back to see if she could bypass the alarm. Except now, poking around outside was out of the question. Explaining her presence during the day was one thing. Helton might not believe her, but he couldn’t call her an outright liar, either. If he found her here in the middle of the night, however, the situation would go critical real quick.
So, she’d wait. Maybe they’d leave soon.
Fifteen minutes later there was still no sign of either Helton or Jean. Erin set down the camera and shifted her weight, trying to find a comfortable position. The dampness seeped through her clothes, and she didn’t even want to think about what could be crawling beneath her.
She yawned, rubbing at her tired eyes.
This was her fourth night of little sleep, and it was starting to wear on her. So when the door finally reopened, she almost missed it. No light seeped out for the moments it took Helton to step outside and close the door behind him. He was alone. And a few seconds later, he disappeared back down the path in the direction of the camp.
Where was Jean?
Had Helton harmed her? It was certainly possible. Erin suspected Helton was capable of just about anything. Jean, however, hadn’t seemed frightened. Nor did Erin sense any animosity between them. Instead, they’d looked like they were both here of their own accord.
Erin also had to consider other reasons Jean had remained behind, though she could think of none that were innocent. She wished she could just walk up and knock on the door, or break it down if necessary. Neither was an option, of course, any more than facing off with Helton this afternoon had been a rational idea. At all costs, she must maintain her cover and attempt to find Joe Roarke. All other considerations were secondary.
Eventually, if Jean was unharmed, she’d leave the cabin. Erin wanted to be here when she did. So she settled in to wait.
Hours later, however, as the night crept toward morning, she wondered if she’d made a mistake by not knocking on the door. The hell with the alarm. A woman could be hurt and dying inside. Or already dead. Again, she suppressed the irrational urge that could get her killed. She was cold and wet and tired. Now was not the time to make rash decisions.
Erin glanced at her watch.
She had about thirty more minutes. Then she needed to head back to her cabin whether Jean showed or not. As it was, Erin would be cutting it close. The camp would soon start to wake, and someone would notice Erin wasn’t in her bed. Still, she waited out the time until the darkness eased with the first signs of morning. Then she rose on cramped legs and made her way back toward the clinic.
As she neared the edge of the woods, a light rain began to fall. Chilled and wet, Erin fought off the feeling that she’d just wasted a night. She longed for a hot shower and sleep. The shower she’d get, but the sleep would have to wait. In a few hours she’d be going into Santa Clara with the other volunteers. And if nothing else, she had the pictures. She’d get them back to Jensen via Padilla, the CIA’s foreign agent in Santa Clara. Maybe Langley could make something of them.
Or, more specifically, of Gregory Helton and Jean Taylor.