style="font-size:15px;"> “Where?”
“How should I know this? The men I heard talking did not say. Perhaps he was buried, perhaps he sleeps with the fishes. The point is that I hear he’s dead and I believe it. And if I say more, then I’m dead.”
Bolan shook his head. “You’re under our protection now, Melendez. We’re not going to throw you back into circulation again.”
“You? You think you can protect me here?” Melendez scowled and emitted a scoffing laugh. “Don’t be naive. Nobody is safe from Havana Five. My days are numbered, of this I’m sure.”
Bolan leaned forward. “Then why come to us if you don’t think we can protect you? Why not take your chances out there on the streets of your own country?”
“Because maybe in here I have a small chance. Out there, I am dead for certain.”
“Why? What makes you think they even know you have this information?”
“Because the people I know, they know other people. And those people are connected to Havana Five. There is much money to be made in their business, American. And they do not like when others interfere with their profit. They will go to great lengths to keep making money, to keep their society secret.”
“To the point they think they can hide an ELN terrorist training camp inside Cuba without us finding out?” Bolan asked.
Something changed in Melendez’s expression, but the Cuban quickly recovered. Not before Bolan struck a nerve, however. For a long time they shared only silence. Bolan didn’t plan to say anything else. It seemed the better tactic would be to wait for Melendez to speak first, to betray something he thought Bolan didn’t know about. Melendez would hold on to every ace he could in the hope of swinging a better deal down the line if things went sour or the scanty information he provided didn’t pan out.
“How do you know about this?”
Bolan decided to show his own cards. “Come on, Melendez. It’s what Waterston was working on. We both know it. Just like I know it’s pretty unlikely you would overhear talk of Waterston’s murder without mention of why he was killed. So quit pretending and talk.”
And for the next half hour, Basilio Melendez talked of two men—Americans being held in a Cuban jail—who spoke of killing Waterston and how they were betrayed by someone inside Havana Five. He also told how they talked to each other in English because the cops weren’t present and he was the only other one in the jail, and how he’d pretended not to speak a word of it. And they talked and talked, and they revealed how they had made a deal with someone to let them in on the location of the training camp, and instead they were betrayed and barely escaped with their necks intact. And finally they had traveled to a remote suburb of Matanzas and purposely got arrested in the hope of evading their unnamed pursuers. It was a wild story.
And Mack Bolan believed every word.
“But you never heard where this training camp was at?” Bolan asked after Melendez finished his narrative.
The Cuban shook his head. “I do not think they knew.”
Bolan rose then. “I’m going to look into this, Melendez. In the meantime, I’ll see about getting you moved off the base and back to the U.S. I think you’ll be safer there.”
“Please, Stone,” Melendez said with pleading eyes. “I care nothing for myself. Like I said, I’m a dead man. But my little sister…she has been good. Please, you must protect her. I will do anything.”
Bolan would only promise he’d look into it and then left the detention facility. He needed to run this new intelligence by Brognola to see what came of it before he’d know the best way to proceed. Stony Man maintained a technological resources network more advanced than anything available to Bolan in the field, and Aaron “The Bear” Kurtzman—a cybernetics wizard extraordinaire and intelligence sponge—could run through the scenarios and come back with more sound leads in one-tenth the time it would take Bolan to run down the old fashioned way.
Northrop waited outside, just as he’d promised. “Ready to go, sir?”
“Yeah, let’s head to my billet,” Bolan said as he got into the Hummer.
The trip across the base to the VIP billet area took less than ten minutes. Bolan climbed from the vehicle and retrieved his bag. Northrop disembarked and perfunctorily led him to the private quarters due the rank of a colonel. Northrop engaged him in another minute or so of idle chitchat, showed him where to find the basic amenities, but then obviously sensed Bolan’s wish to be alone and left him to his own devices.
Bolan waited until he heard the Hummer pull away and then went to the phone on a nightstand. He picked up the receiver and froze. Hairs stood up on the back of his neck and his combat sense screamed at him to…
Duck!
The world around him became a whirlwind storm of broken glass and wood shards as the window above the nightstand exploded. Bolan catapulted his body across the bed, snatching his canvas travel bag as he landed on the opposite side and behind relative cover. He reached inside and retrieved the .44 Magnum.
Bolan crossed to a window at the corner of his billet and peered around the light gray curtain. Two men toting machine pistols made a beeline for him. Bolan pushed out the flimsy aluminum frame of the metal screen, tracked on the closer of the pair and squeezed the trigger. A 380-grain boattail slug punched through the man’s chest and blew a hole out his back. He spun under the impact while still in forward motion, and his finger jerked against the trigger of the SMG. A battery of rounds hammered the dirt before man and weapon struck the ground and went silent.
The second gunner realized they had acted hastily and rushed for the cover of a large external air recirculation unit protruding from the ground. He triggered a few volleys of 9 mm rounds in Bolan’s direction. The warrior ducked back to avoid perforation and the rounds either slapped the exterior wall or buzzed angrily past his head. He spun and headed out the front door, sprinting from the billet at an angle, intent on flanking his enemy.
It worked. Bolan managed to clear his line of fire and acquire his opposition in the sights of the Desert Eagle before the man could bring his own weapon to bear. Bolan triggered the weapon twice. The first round of his double-tap caught the gunner in the gut, tearing away a good part of his intestine and stopping the man in his tracks. The second .44 Magnum round hit the man at a point just above the bridge of the nose and continued until it blew out the back of his head in a gory spray of blood, bone and gray matter. The gunman toppled to the ground.
Bolan tracked a 360 with the muzzle of his weapon before relaxing somewhat. He’d been in-country less than two hours and somebody had tried to kill him. He’d have a tough one explaining that to the base Provost Marshal, let alone trying to determine how someone could have compromised his cover so quickly.
Before the Executioner could consider his next option, the sound of the phone ringing inside his billet demanded attention. Bolan sprinted back to the building and snatched the receiver from the cradle midway through the fifth ring.
“Yeah, Stone, here.”
“Colonel Stone, this is Lieutenant Trundle, I’m officer of the day here at the base detention center. You were here a while ago questioning one of our prisoners.”
“Right, Basilio Melendez.”
“I’m
