Valley of the Templars

23

The flight of six MiL 8 transport helicopters hammered over the jungle and wildwood-covered hills and valleys of the Sierra del Escambray on their way to the town of Aserradero. Lieutenant Colonel Roberto Marquez Orozco sat in the cockpit of the lead helicopter, scanning the ground five hundred feet below them. Nothing to see but treetops, rock crags and the glitter of a meandering mountain stream. Behind him in the rear of the transport, twenty men in full gear sat huddled in jump seats against the bulkheads. Orozco’s helicopter swept over the Habanabilla Reservoir and into the Aserradero Valley. The town and its eight thousand peasant inhabitants lay dead ahead, the single thread of a narrow highway cutting the town in half.

“There,” said Orozco, pointing to a large open meadow just north of the town. It was really the only clear space to land in.

“Sí, Colonel,” said the pilot. He toggled a switch on the radio set into the control panel above him and relayed the information to the other pilots in the flight. All of the big helicopters altered course along with Orozco like giant obedient bumblebees.

Orozco’s helicopter landed first, touching down on the slightly inclined meadow, its tripod gear hitting the dark earth in perfect unison, the huge rotors flattening the tall grass in a perfect circle. The main door opened and the pilot threw the rotors into the off position; it would take some time to unload the men and equipment, and the turbine ate up fuel at a terrible rate.

Behind them the five other helicopters landed in formation, in line with a hundred yards between each machine. When all the rotors had ceased turning, the clamshell rear cargo doors and ramp opened and the men began to file out.

Hidden in the woods two hundred yards to the south, Lieutenant Colonel Frank J. Turturro watched as the helicopters landed and then he quietly gave an order into his headset microphone.

“Lasers on.”

Around the large upland meadow, twelve of Turturro’s men, each with an ordinary green-light laser pointer duct-taped to the telescopic sights of his Vietnam-era M40 rifle, switched the little devices on, aiming at the upper turbine chamber above and just aft of the cockpit. None of the twelve men was a sniper-grade marksman, but none of them needed to be; their only task was to keep the small spot of laser light aimed at the helicopters.

Turturro turned to his radio man and told him to switch frequencies. When the man nodded, Turturro spoke into his microphone again. “This is Bravo. Come in, Flight Leader.”

The response was clear and almost instantaneous. “Flight Leader here, Bravo.”

“What’s your distance from X-Ray please?”

“Four kilometers.”

“Approach southwest, course one eighty. Targets are in line and painted. Fire at will, Flight.”

“Roger that, Bravo.”

From four kilometers away the sound of the three Super Tucanos was no more than the faint, indistinct sound of a swarm of hornets, and it was only at the very last second that Orozco’s pilot saw the glittering of sunlight reflecting from the canopies of the distant turboprops, followed almost instantly by blurred belches of smoke and flames from the turboprops’ underwing pods as each of the aircraft launched four Hellfire air-to-ground missiles at the green patch of meadow two and a half miles away.

“Colonel…?” The pilot pointed out the south-side window of the cockpit.

The Hellfire missiles, traveling at roughly two thousand feet per second, reached their targets—the green light reflecting from the laser pointers—in about the time it took for Orozco to turn and follow the directions of the pilot’s finger. All twelve missiles made contact and the six MiL 8 helicopters and the men remaining inside them were incinerated instantly. Eight seconds after the missiles struck, the three Super Tucanos flew in over the meadow at an altitude of a little over two hundred and fifty feet, raking the meadow with their twin .50-caliber machine guns, obliterating the few dozen men already out of the six helicopters and fleeing toward the woods. Wagging their wings, the three Super Tucanos peeled off and climbed out of sight. Six of the elite Avispas Negras unit managed to evade the missiles and the machine-gun fire before they were fired upon at point-blank range by Colonel Frank Turturro’s men. Within less than a minute, two-thirds of the Cuban air force’s helicopter transport capabilities had been destroyed along with a full one-third of the army’s Special Forces, including their commander.

Turturro stared at the meadow turned killing field. It was an abattoir of torn flesh and bullet-ridden bodies, their lifeblood draining into the tall grass and the dark earth upon which they lay. The air smelled of hot metal, melting plastic and the rich-sour barbecue char of roasting human beings. The sound was a sighing blast furnace’s breath and the snap, crackle, pop of dying machinery. Black greasy clouds blossomed into the sky. Beside him, Turturro heard his radio operator retching. Turturro, a man who had seen several wars and more than enough death to last a lifetime, simply watched. He began to whisper words he hadn’t spoken since childhood.

“Hail Mary, full of grace. Our Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”

“Son of a bitch!” Holliday yelled, ducking as the returning flight of the three jungle-camouflaged aircraft roared overhead just above treetop level. If it hadn’t been for the thunder of the turbine engines, they could have been something straight out of the Battle of Britain; they looked remarkably like old-fashioned Spitfires or Hurricanes or even the American P51 Mustangs. The only thing missing was the shark’s mouth painted on the noses. Holliday recognized them immediately—they were Brazilian-made Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucanos, nominally used to patrol Brazil’s Amazonian borders but probably the best counterinsurgency fighter-bomber on today’s market. Rebels or pesky natives who won’t relocate where you tell them in your jungles? Call Embraer and they’ll fix you right up. He also knew that Kate Sinclair, mother of the late Senator Sinclair, head of the secret society known as Rex Deus, was owner of Blackhawk Security, one of the largest private military contractors and armies-for-hire in the world, which had recently purchased a number of the Brazilian turboprops. She was also insanely power-hungry and a first-rate bitch into the bargain, as Holliday knew from personal experience. The Furies from Roman mythology could have learned a thing or two from Kate Sinclair.

“It would appear that the unhappy soldier we captured on the path to Aserradero was telling the truth,” said Eddie.

“I wonder if he was telling the truth about the prisoners they’re holding at that old airfield.”

“Domingo was cutting off the second finger of his hand with that old machete of his. He was telling the truth, sin duda alguna, mi amigo—there is no question about it.”

“Then we have to save them,” said Holliday. “It’s the only way.”

“I don’t understand,” said Eddie. “I thought our plan was to get to the coast and take a boat to the Bahamas.”

“Maybe that’s still what we’ll do, but if we arrive at the U.S embassy in Nassau with a couple of CIA agents, they might take us a little more seriously when we tell them about a few leftover missiles from October ’sixty-two, don’t you think? Remember, amigo, you and me and embassies aren’t the best of friends.”

“This is true,” said Eddie. Their last interaction with a U.S. embassy had involved crashing through the front gates of the Moscow embassy in a snowplow and running it up the front steps and through the entrance. Total damage: $3.5 million, eventually paid by the Russian government since it was their dead snowplow operator at the controls, but nevertheless a distinct black mark when it came to embassy relations with Holliday and Eddie.

“Those aircraft were heading northeast,” said Holliday, turning to Domingo. “Any idea where they were going?”

“The only airfield close to here is at an old abandoned finca about five miles from here. It belonged to a wealthy Havana doctor who liked to fly his friends in to hunt jabali.”

“Jabali?”

“Wild boar,” explained Eddie.

“How long to get there?”

“There are no roads,” replied Domingo. “Through the jungle, two, three hours maybe.”

“Then we better get moving,” said Holliday. “I want to see this place before it gets dark.”

In the end it took almost four hours to find their way to the ridge across from the airstrip that had once belonged to Dr. Enrique Gomez Martinez, the high-society Havana abortionist in the time of Fulgencio Batista.

Using Domingo’s powerful Soviet-era binoculars, Holliday scanned the covert military installation a few hundred yards away across the steep, narrow valley that lay between them. On the next of the multiple ridges was the burnt-out ruins of a large hacienda, almost invisible in the jungle undergrowth.

On the occupied ridge, he could make out the camouflaged hardstands for the Tucanos, perhaps twenty well-hidden tents and the old crumbling building almost overgrown with vegetation that had probably been used as some sort of control tower. Between the net-covered enclosures for the aircraft, there was a large fly tent, also covered with camouflage net, that was almost certainly the command post for the installation. At the extreme western end of the narrow plateau was the overgrown wreckage of an old DC-3.

Holiday swept the binoculars along the length of the ridge. From end to end it was about half a mile long. There were two-man pickets posted every two hundred feet along the length of the dirt runway and two guards in front of the control tower front door. Everyone was armed with sidearms and MP5s like the men they had intercepted.

“They’re using the old building to keep the prisoners in,” said Holliday, lowering the binoculars.

“What about that hacienda on the ridge beyond?” Eddie asked.

“Burnt out and abandoned,” said Holliday.

“There was a road from the hacienda to the airstrip,” said Domingo. “It is most probably cubierta por la selva, covered by the jungle, but it will still be there. It will lead us up to the camp, I am sure.”

“You seem to know a lot about this Dr. Martinez,” said Holliday.

Domingo shrugged. “We were the lucha contra bandidos; it was our job. Martinez was high on our list.” The white-haired man paused, eyes staring at something a thousand miles away and decades in the past.

Holliday thought for a moment, then gave the camp another scan with the binoculars. The jungle between the two ridges was deep in shadow now and the sun was a fireball in the west.

“All my life I am working for the Revolution,” said Domingo, shaking his head. “And now I go to rescue Americano CIA agents. This I would never have dreamed. Increíble!”

Holliday stared across at the darkening ridge. “We wait until dark and then we go.”