CHAPTER ONE
Homestead, FL
Victor
Alvarez stood alone in the grass parking lot.
It was still dark out, but the horizon glowed orange in the distance as
the sun began its upward trek. He hated
morning, especially South Florida mornings.
The air was almost completely saturated with moisture, and although it
was officially fall, it was still eighty degrees.
The parking
lot was relatively isolated. It had
taken him twenty minutes of driving down a dirt road to reach it. It had previously served as a parking lot for
field workers to drop off their vehicles, but with the recent recession and the
foreclosure of the landowner, it was now just a vacant lot. He was in an area known as the Redlands of
Homestead. Only minutes from the
Everglades, it was mostly open farmland with a few houses scattered here and
there. It was the perfect place to
escape the congestion of Miami, or the eyes of an unwelcome third party
observer.
Alvarez
leaned against his car as a lone pair of headlights approached from the
distance. It was almost six a.m.. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket
and wiped the sweat away from his brow.
Despite having spent his whole life in this climate, he had still never
fully embraced it.
The car
pulled to a stop next to his. The silver Honda Civic was much louder than he
expected. It must have had a broken
muffler or something, he reasoned. Not
quite what he was expecting from a man like the one he was about to meet, but
in this business, he had learned not to assume anything, especially not when
dealing with Americans.
Alvarez ran
his fingers through his jet black hair and casually approached the car. He was holding a small envelope in his left
hand and resting his hand on his holstered gun with his right. The man in the battered Civic was right on
time and at the right place, but that didn’t make him trust the stranger just
yet.
“Are you Victor?”
the man in the car asked. It was too
dark in the car to make out his face.
“Yes, do
you have the documents?” he replied with a thick Spanish accent.
“Here’s
everything you asked for, flying schedules, personnel files..everything,” the
man responded nervously, handing Alvarez a thick manila envelope through the
car’s window.
Alvarez
leaned on the roof of the car. He was a
tall man, and the low ride height of the car brought the window only up to
waist level. He took the envelope from
the man and put it on the roof of the car.
He handed the man the small envelope that he had been holding.
“These are
your instructions. The first of the
funds has already been transferred. The
rest will be delivered upon completion of this operation.“
“Oh…ok..
uh.. But no one knows my name right?
There’s nothing pointing to me when this is over, right? “ The man was
fidgeting in his seat. He was obviously
a first timer.
“Your
government will never find out,” Alvarez reassured him. “Don’t worry.”
Alvarez had
seen it many times before. He had been
an agent with the Cuban Directrio General de Inteligencia for ten years. He had spent most of them in South
Miami. It was easy to blend in
there. The majority of the population
was Cuban or Hispanic, and almost everyone spoke Spanish fluently. No one even raised an eyebrow. He had used Americans many times before. Occasionally it was for intel, but often it
was for assistance. They always tried to
justify what they were doing, whether it was for their families or some
political reason. Alvarez didn’t care,
but he didn’t respect them. He needed
them for his operations, but they were traitors to their country, plain and
simple.
Alvarez
watched as the man opened the envelope and read the instructions. He looked for any signs of hesitation or
weakness. He had been assured that his
new contact would follow through, but he was more than ready to terminate their
arrangement with a 9MM round to the man’s temple at the first sign of weakness.
“Do you
have any questions?” he asked with a toothy grin.
“No, I can
do it. “
“Good. Go. You’ll
be just fine.” Alvarez grabbed the files
off the roof of the car and pulled out his cell phone as he walked back toward
his car. The little Civic sounded like a
bumblebee as it sped off into the now rising sun. He dialed the number. It was time to check in.
“How did it
go?” the voice asked.
“It is
done. We have everything we need to
proceed.” Alvarez knew his cell phone
was probably being monitored. The
Dirección General de Inteligencia was the main state intelligence agency of
Cuba. Since opening for business in late
1961, the DGI had been involved in intelligence and espionage operations across
the globe. They had been involved in
aiding leftist revolutionary movements in Africa, the Middle East, and mostly
Latin America. In the United States, the
DGI had been heavily involved with international drug trade, assisting
homegrown terrorist cells, and intelligence gathering operations for third
party countries. The CIA, NSA, and FBI
all had them on their watch lists.
“Excellent. Select the target and do what is necessary.“
“Yes, jefe.
I will not fail.” He hung up the
phone and tossed the documents on the passenger seat of his car. This was the first operation he had
undertaken without the knowledge of his government. It was going to make him a hero, and wildly
rich. He had a lot of work ahead of him,
and a very short timeline.
