Active Measures

Book 8: Jericho Quinn Thriller

by Marc Cameron

Genres: Thrillers; Spy Thrillers

Synopsis

Old enemies never die

Cuba and the United States are in talks to normalize relations, something the old guard on the Communist-controlled island has vowed to stop — by any means necessary. Zayda de la Guardia, a rogue general in the Cuban security services, has gotten his hands on a nuclear weapon left over from the Cold War. He plans to launch it on Miami, an attack that could kill millions. There’s just one thing standing in his way: Special agent Jericho Quinn and his team have traveled undercover to Cuba to unravel de la Guardia’s plot before it ignites a nuclear holocaust.

Thrown into a secret prison, pursued by assassins, and trapped on the tiny island during one of the worst hurricanes of the century, Quinn and his crew must survive a trial by fire to prevent an international confrontation that would make the Cuban Missile Crisis look like a fist fight.

Release date: November 26, 2019

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 294

Sample

Virginia

Jericho Quinn knew the sound of fear when he heard it. His back against the door of the Cracker Barrel restaurant north of Dulles International Airport, he took a scant moment to survey the parking lot, homing in on the direction of the scream. It was early, a few minutes after six in the morning. The breakfast rush was just starting, the lot less than half full.

Beside Quinn, Marine Master Sergeant Jacques Thibodaux froze as well, his tremendous bulk eclipsing the rising sun over Washington, D.C., to the east. The big marine tugged down his tan baseball cap—a recent addition to his wardrobe—and rubbed a freshly shaven jaw that was sharp enough to cut glass. He turned his head slightly to search the lot with his good eye. The other, covered with a black patch, had been injured at Quinn’s side in a firefight in Bolivia.

One Marine and one special agent for Air Force OSI, the two men were accustomed to moving toward the sound of danger, but not blindly or without any strategy.

“What do you reckon, Chair Force?” The big Marine said, rarely missing an opportunity to chide Quinn for his chosen branch of service. Jacques Thibodaux was originally from Louisiana, and his Cajun accent and playful attitude came through loud and clear. “I count three goons standing by that red Mustang.”

“Yep,” Quinn said. He moved his head along with his eyes as he scanned so he wouldn’t miss any details. He’d shaved after his 0500 workout, but his cheeks were already beginning to show a dark stubble. This, combined with his scruffy hair, gave him an unkempt, predatory look that was intensified by its contrast with the recruiting-poster-sharp Marine. “There are two more coming up from behind,” he added, moving again.

Fifty meters away, a young couple stood facing the three men in forest green T-shirts on a small grass island in the middle of the restaurant parking lot. Quinn couldn’t be sure, but it looked as though the couple had just gotten out of the Mustang. The tallest of the three men had squared off, shoulders flared like a cobra and fists doubled at his sides, spoiling for a fight. The sandy-haired kid from the Mustang raised both hands. His spitfire girlfriend wasn’t helping matters, peeking around from behind him and giving an earful to the three aggressors. Two others, also in green T-shirts, made their way toward the little group from between the parked cars.

“Get a load of their matching clothes,” Thibodaux muttered. “Looks like a bunch of Batman villains. You reckon that one with the blond dreadlocks could be a girl?”

“Yep,” Quinn said again. He zipped up his armored, black leather motorcycle jacket as he stepped around a row of rocking chairs so he could hop off the end of the restaurant’s long covered porch. Conventional wisdom dictated he leave the jacket unzipped to provide easier access to the Kimber 10mm pistol in the holster over his right kidney, but Quinn didn’t want to introduce a gun into what was likely just a fistfight. The leather jacket was heavy enough to provide an extra level of protection and supple enough to lift out of the way with his nondominant hand should the pistol become necessary. The weather was warm, but he’d worn the jacket and Kevlar-lined Tobacco Jeans anyway.

“Dammit,” Thibodaux spat as they neared the altercation. “I don’t wanna hit a girl if there’s any way around it. Do me a favor, Chair Force. You hit her if she needs hittin’ .”

Quinn shot his friend a look, but didn’t say anything. Jacques had a tendency to philosophize up to and even during a fight. Luckily, he never seemed to require an answer, just a listening ear. Quinn had trained and fought alongside the big Marine countless times over the last half decade—enough times to know he would get down to business when the time came, no matter who he had to hit.

The hard truths of real-world conflict had taught both men to employ the same basic strategy—surprise, speed, and overwhelming force. The Cajun relied on his size and tremendous strength, where Quinn’s boxing and jujitsu background gave him more finesse.

Quinn noted a University of Maryland Terrapin sticker beside a decal of a Union Jack on the Mustang’s bumper. None of the group looked much older than twenty, and he thought maybe this was some beef over school rivalry. Once he was close enough to hear the invective spewing from the green-shirt crowd, though, it was clear this was something different than a fight over football.

“Here now!” Thibodaux barked, adopting the disciplinary tone he used on his seven sons. “Looks like we got ourselves a misunderstanding.” He sidestepped to the right, while Quinn moved left, flanking the group.

The green-shirts didn’t have enough sense to care.

The tallest of the five, their apparent leader, continued to focus intently on the Mustang driver. He addressed Thibodaux without looking up.

“Haul ass, Grandpa,” he said. “We got this.”

Quinn took a step closer, less than ten feet away now, a hair nearer to the leader than Jacques. “You got what? Five against two? Looks like assault to me.”

The leader’s apparent aide-de-camp took an aggressive step toward Quinn, met his eye, and then froze, trying to build up his nerve. He was smart enough to stop, but couldn’t keep from yapping like a dog.

“You’re not cops,” the kid sneered, “or you would have told us already. And anyway, like you said, there are five of us . . . so you should go.”

The Mustang driver kept his hands raised. He spoke with a decidedly educated British accent. “I’ve never spoken with these people in my life. Apparently, they think I’m some kind of fascist.”

The green-shirt leader opened his mouth to respond, but the girl behind the Mustang driver began to scream at him again, defending the honor of her boyfriend in language strong enough to make even Thibodaux grimace.

The leader glanced sideways at Thibodaux, his face screwed into a dismissive sneer. “I thought I told you to get your ass outta here, old man.”

Thibodaux shrugged, letting the comment about his age slide. Neither he nor Quinn had reached forty yet. He maneuvered so the nearest thug was between him and the hood of the Mustang.

“How about you explain to me what’s goin’ on here, boss?” Thibodaux said.

The chubby girl in dreadlocks pointed a finger at Thibodaux. “You’re either with us, or you’re pro-fascist.”

“Just anti-dumbass,” Thibodaux said.

“You talk like you’re from the South,” the girl said. “Pretty sure you’re a fascist, too.”

“Nope,” Thibodaux said, heaving a long sigh.

“Well, shithead here sure is,” she said.

The Brit raised his hands even higher. “Why do you all keep saying that?”

The leader began to breathe through his nose, a sure sign that he’d worked himself up to attack. The entire group looked and acted like amateurs, but Quinn had learned a long time ago that amateur elbows to the nose hurt just as bad as elbows belonging to trained professionals.

Quinn’s hands came up to his chest, palms out—a purely tactical move, not one of contrition. There was no signal between Quinn and Thibodaux, but he knew that Thibodaux would spring into action, too. They’d decided early on what they would, and would not, tolerate from these people—or anyone else, for that matter.

Quinn drove forward, straight through the leader’s startled aide-de-camp, taking just enough time to throw a lightning-fast one-two-three combination of left jab, right cross, and left uppercut. The last punch was overkill, but Quinn was already committed. He yanked the Brit out of the way with his right hand, throwing him to the ground in the process. The green-shirt leader threw a single, glancing blow to the Brit’s chest, but quickly reverted into the posturing phase. Quinn slapped him on the ear, driving him sideways into another right cross as the third green-shirt in line stepped up. This one fancied himself an actual fighter. He squared off in a fists-up, Sherlock Holmes–style bare-knuckle boxing stance.

Quinn was vaguely aware of Thibodaux, bouncing someone’s head off the hood of the Mustang while he wore the screaming, dreadlocked girl like a banshee-backpack. Jacques yowled, probably bitten. He was always getting bitten—he had a tendency to pull his punches when he fought females, even when they were trying to kill him. He let loose a string of Cajun curses and reached over his shoulders in an attempt to peel the screeching woman off his back. Finally succeeding, he raised her high above his head. It looked like something out of a WWE SmackDown match.

Quinn wanted to watch what happened next, but his opponent turned out to be slightly more skilled than his stance suggested. Quinn loved boxing, and he rarely stood toe to toe in a real-world fight. But an explosive attack might kill this hapless kid, so Quinn circled instead of crashing in. He put the kid’s back to Jacques, just in time to watch the big Cajun toss the woman, a little too gently, to the ground. It did the trick, though, and she gave up—for the moment.

The door to a nearby Mazda creaked open, and a sixth green-shirt climbed out. This one was at least six four, and almost as thick as Thibodaux.

Jacques chuckled. “Oh good,” he said. “I’ve leveled up in this game.”

Quinn’s green-shirt feinted with a left jab, a little too deeply, presenting the point of his chin on a silver platter. Quinn rewarded the mistake with a cross elbow to the nose, dispensing with Marquess of Queensberry rules now that Thibodaux might need some help.

He needn’t have worried. Jacques drove a knee into the big guy’s groin, and then, when the guy doubled over, used the fender of the Mustang to great effect once again.

Quinn took a step back, scanning for other attackers. That which didn’t kill you often had friends waiting in the wings to kill you when you thought the fight was finished.

All the idiots appeared to have shown themselves.

With all six green-shirts out cold or pretending to be, Thibodaux stooped to pick up the ball cap that the girl had knocked off his head.

Quinn smiled. “You should think about losing the hat. It’s just not you.”

“That’s the whole point of it, Chair Force,” Jacques said. “I wear the cover to make me look less like a Marine.”

Quinn’s smile broadened. “Let me know how that works out for you. And don’t keep calling it a ‘cover’ if you want to sound like a civilian.” He reached down to help the Brit to his feet. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” the kid said, his jaw hanging open. “That was nothing short of amazing.” He looked up. “I must tell you, there is not a racist bone in my body. Why did these people think I was a fascist?”

“Let’s ask ’em.” Thibodaux goaded the initial instigator with the toe of his motorcycle boot. “What’s your beef with Mr. Mustang here?”

“He’s got a Confederate flag,” the green-shirt leader said.

The Brit looked confused. “No, I don’t.”

On a hunch, Quinn stepped around to look at the Mustang’s bumper, whistling Jacques over at what he saw.

Thibodaux rolled his good eye at the green-shirt. “Not that a Stars and Bars bumper sticker is worth gettin’ your ass kicked over, but that’s a British Union Jack, genius.”

Soon after, after they’d made sure the British student and his girlfriend were back in the Mustang and safely on their way, Quinn and Thibodaux stood beside their BMW GS Adventure motorcycles at the other end of the parking lot. They’d need to leave quickly if they didn’t want to become embroiled in a quagmire of statements and interviews with law enforcement.

Quinn slipped a beaked Arai dual sport helmet over his head. The helmet was gunmetal gray to match his bike, with Death Dealer war axes airbrushed on each side to match his personality.

Thibodaux threw a leg over his own bike, which was a more vibrant red and black. “I don’t mean to put too fine a point on it, mon ami,” he said, helmet poised above his head. “But I didn’t exactly hit that gal back there. She hit the pavement.”

“Tomato, to-mah-to,” Quinn said, pushing the Beemer’s ignition switch with his right thumb. Two minutes later, he rolled on the throttle and made a left turn onto Old Ox Road toward Reston. As usual, Thibodaux’s philosophical meanderings began to pour through the Cardo Bluetooth speaker inside Quinn’s helmet almost as soon as they were on the road.

“. . . you ask me, marry Ronnie, have a passel of kids, and channel your inner grandpa—”

“You mean my inner dad,” Quinn said, taking the bait.

“Nah,” Thibodaux said. “Skip the dad part and just be a grandpa. I’ve decided not to sweat the normal stuff dads are supposed to worry about. Camille hates it.”

Quinn chuckled, chewing on that. “I never figured you for an inner grandpa,” he said. “An inner child, maybe.”

“Well, I’ll tell you, Chair Force,” the big Cajun drawled, passing Quinn’s motorcycle on the left. “Turns out, my inner grandpa is pretty cool, but my inner child is a mean little bastard.”

Quinn couldn’t help but smile. “Mine too,” he said.

His cell chirped in the headset, rescuing him from further discussion. He tapped the controls on the outside of his helmet, then rode forward to make a telephone gesture to Jacques, letting him know he was handling a call. A familiar voice spilled through the speakers.

Quinn smiled, recognizing an old Air Force Academy squadron mate from the Tough Twenty Trolls. Teddy Schoonover had gone the pilot route, while Quinn pursued a career as a Combat Rescue Officer and led a team of PJs, the Air Force’s elite pararescue personnel. By the time Quinn had made the switch from Special Ops to the Office of Special Investigations, Schoonover was teaching a new cadre of pilots to fly F-22s at Tyndall AFB in Florida. The two men saw each other at periodic reunions, and they still kept in touch via the close association of men and women who’d endured the same Beast Summer during their freshman year in the thin air of Jacks Valley above Colorado Springs.

“Well hey, Ted,” Quinn said. He kept his voice low and even, despite how happy he was to hear from a former classmate. The Academy had a way of cementing friendships, and Schoonover was one of the best. They exchanged quick pleasantries, skipping the usual banter about the food at Arnold Hall and any number of things neither of them missed about USAFA. Schoonover was rattled and jittery—no small thing for a man accustomed to strapping himself into a hunk of metal flying faster than the speed of sound. Quinn listened without interrupting.

“I’ll do what I can,” he said when Schoonover finished. “I’ll check with a friend at Customs and Border Protection.”

“I’d appreciate that, Jericho,” Schoonover said. “This guy acts like somebody had the proverbial red dot on his forehead. Know what I’m saying? He’s scared shitless, and I don’t mind telling you, that’s got me spooked. According to him, Cuban Intelligence has Metro-Dade wired from the inside, if you know what I mean. I’ve got a lot of friends in local law enforcement, and I’ve heard the same thing from them.”

“That’s a strong possibility,” Quinn said, thinking of what he knew of Cuba’s Intelligence Directorate. He glanced at his left mirror, shoulder checked to made doubly sure his lane was clear, and accelerated around a poky Ford Fiesta as he continued to speak. “This Placensia guy, he seems legitimate?”

“I think so, yeah,” Schoonover said. There was noise in the background and muffled conversation as Schoonover spoke with someone else, presumably the Cuban refugee. He came back on the line a moment later. “He keeps saying he has information vital to the United States. Listen, Jericho, Customs and Border Protection is all well and good. But don’t you know anyone in . . .” He lowered his voice. “I don’t know, the intelligence community?”

Quinn smiled in spite of his friend’s anxiety. “I might know someone,” he said. “Let me make a couple of calls, and I’ll get back to you.”

“Right away,” Schoonover said. “I’m serious, Jericho. There’s something about this guy. I mean, he was scared enough to swim in from a mile offshore carrying a little kid . . .”

“I’ll get back to you in a flash.” Quinn hit the Cardo control on the left side of his helmet to disconnect. He voice dialed the next call.

Five minutes later, Veronica “Ronnie” Garcia repeated Quinn’s words back to him from her cubicle on the Russia desk at CIA Headquarters, just fifteen miles away. “Cubans, you say?”

Ronnie, the product of a Russian father and a Cuban mother—and Jericho Quinn’s girlfriend—had a special affinity for refugees who were attempting to escape the thumb of the Castro regime, since she’d done it herself as a teenager. Now, her voice was rough with nostalgia. “Of course we’ll help this guy. I’ve got a friend who’s a case officer in Miami. He’ll let ICE know the Agency will run point on this one, for the time being at least. He can arrange a neutral pickup and get the family to a safe house.” Her tone grew softer, less businesslike. “Jericho, tell your Academy buddy to be careful. Miami stinks with Cuban DI operatives. Most of the time, my outfit underestimates how sharp they are. If this refugee knows something important to the regime, and they know he’s run off, they’ll be on his tail muy pronto. You got me, mango?”

“I’ll pass that along,” Quinn said, then relayed the address to the condo where Ted Schoonover was waiting.

“Good deal,” Ronnie said, the richness of her accent coming across through the phone. “All this talk of the old country has me jonesing for some crema de plátano. How about you take me to Cubano’s in Silver Spring tonight?”

Quinn smiled at the memory of their first quasi-date. He was very nearly banned from the place for a hellacious fight where he’d demolished the restaurant’s men’s room while defending himself from an attack. In the end, Ronnie had smoothed things over with some rowdy—and highly suggestive—Cuban jokes with the management. There seemed no end to what she could accomplish with a smile and few bats of her dark lashes.

“Who could say no to plantain soup?” Quinn said. “Okay, I promised Ted I’d call him right back. I’ll let him know you’re setting something up through your people and he can rest easy.”

“Copy that,” Garcia said. “Who loves ya, mango?”

Quinn shot a glance at Thibodaux, who rode just ahead and to the left in the same lane, glad he couldn’t hear, then whispered into the helmet mic, “Voodoo.”

“Damn right, me do,” Garcia said.

“Me, too,” Quinn said.

Quinn redialed Ted Schoonover as soon as he ended the call with Garcia. It rang once, then went immediately to voice mail. He tried again with the same result.

He’d expected Schoonover to pick up on the first ring. The fact that he’d let two calls go unanswered gnawed at Quinn’s gut. And if he’d learned anything over the course of his violent career, it was that his gut never lied.

Six minutes earlier

Most operatives of Dirección de Inteligencia focused their efforts on recruiting agents from among the youth of Miami. Younger Cuban Americans tended to lean much further left than their parents. DI’s chief recruitment weapons were a healthy capacity for salesmanship and, in the case of the female operatives, an oozingly stereotypical Latina sexuality. All of these provocateurs had been trained in defensive and offensive combat at the spy school known as Camp Matanzas, but few bothered with firearms, preferring social engineering to gunplay.

Joaquin Mirabal was not a recruiter. He was a hunter. The white scar that crossed diagonally from forehead to chin like a jagged white lightning bolt on his angular face was a testament to that.

Heavily influenced by his KGB trainers, Colonel Mirabal armed each of the other three members of his team with suppressed Pistolets Besshumnyy. The silenced handgun was based on the tried and true Makarov 9x18mm. It had come into service in the late 1960s, a decade before Mirabal was born, but was still issued to Russian Spetsnaz and FSB operatives who needed to kill quietly. While not completely silent, the small handguns were effective, and a little gunfire rarely raised much suspicion in southern Florida so long as the shots were kept to a minimum.

An avid hunter of big game since his early postings in Africa, Colonel Mirabal was by far the best shot in his four-person squad. As such, he gave himself a little more latitude with his choice of sidearm. Instead of the PB, he carried a tiny Beretta Bobcat in .22 caliber, outfitted with a small suppressor not much larger than his thumb. The “can,” as the Americans called it, was just under eight centimeters long. Subsonic ammunition and a locked slide rendered the weapon as quiet as any he had ever used. Of course, he had to get close to employ it, but that was rarely a problem for a true hunter. He left the slide unlocked to allow for follow-up shots, but the gun was still no louder than a vigorous slap.

Each member of his team carried a blade for close work, or if they were making a statement. Mirabal’s own knife was a simple hunting affair he’d been given by a tracker and friend in Angola. It was a homely thing, with a weathered acacia handle and a carbon steel blade that rusted easily if he didn’t keep it oiled. But it held an edge, and he got it bloody often enough that remembering to oil it was not an issue.

The muscular Mateo Duran and voluptuous Serafina Lopez both carried heavy Soviet FSB daggers called Karatels, or Punishers. Guns and knives were easy to conceal inside heavy nylon fanny packs, conveniently popular with the older set in Florida who didn’t want to fish items out of their pockets.

Estrada, the youngest of the four at twenty-two, carried a geologists’ rock pick instead of a blade. It was roughly the same dimensions as a hammer, too big for the fanny pack. Estrada hung it from his nylon belt, where it blended easily with the blue and gray of his board shorts. The heavy pick was brutally lethal and had the added benefit of sending a clear message to any defectors who watched the news: They might assume a dead body containing the roundnose bullets from a Makarov pistol were from a Cuban assassin, but the spike of a rock pick through the teeth was a definite reminder to everyone to keep their own mouths shut. It was a practice that even Mirabal, who had seen much blood and bone over the course of his forty-six years, found disgusting. But Estrada did not seem to mind, so the duty fell to him.

As soon as he’d received the call from General de la Guardia, Mirabal brought up a weather report on his mobile phone while Duran drove. He needed something more specific than the basic weather report, so he used a website called Windy.com that displayed forecasts for wind speed, direction, wave height, and ocean currents. More important, it gave Mirabal the measurements for right now, not just the forecast, allowing him to make the necessary minute-by-minute computations. Once de la Guardia had relayed the last known radar location of the traitor’s boat, it had been a straightforward process to deduce where the man would likely come ashore. Even the mightiest swimmers were subject to the wind and tide.

The traitor had jumped off the boat somewhere off Marathon Key, but the currents would sweep him northward toward Miami. If he was any kind of swimmer at all—and only a good swimmer would brave these dark, shark-infested waters with his wife and child—Alejandro Placensia would make landfall on Key Largo. Mirabal worked time and distance calculations for drift as if he were charting a sailing course rather than trying to determine where the victim of his next bullet would founder on the sandy shores of the United States.

Duran parked their rented black Silverado pickup on a small side road, just beyond a tennis court in the neighborhood up the beach from where Mirabal guessed Placensia would make landfall. The sun was coming up, and people were beginning to stir. Few took the paper anymore, streaming what little news they read over the Internet, but some of the older ones—mostly women with brightly dyed hair and big Hollywood sunglasses—would be out soon to take their morning walks.

Mirabal made sure his team dressed to blend in. All the men wore pastel board shorts and polo shirts. Serafina’s tennis dress would show off toned legs and distract any would-be witnesses from the specifics of her face. The Silverado was classy enough to fit in with the rest of the bourgeois Yanqui cars and trucks.

“I see him, Joaquin,” Serafina whispered from the shadows. Her voice buzzed against her left fist as she held the portable infrared scope to her eye. She meant no disrespect by addressing her superior officer by his given name—too many people in the United States spoke Spanish, and it would arouse suspicion if anyone overheard her calling him “Comrade Colonel.” She passed him the scope, then gestured with the blade in her right hand. “There, perhaps a hundred meters away beyond that row of palmettos, in the shadows beneath the shaded lanai.”

Mirabal scanned the shoreline through the scope, locating the glowing forms of a tall man, a smaller woman, and a much smaller child. Even at eighty degrees, the ocean had sent most of their blood inward to keep their cores warm, leaving their skin to show the ghostly blue of a natural gas flame. A fourth form, this one bright red, stood some twenty feet distant from the others, arm up as if talking on his phone.

“Excellent work,” Mirabal said. “Their recent swim has made them difficult to detect.”

The Cuban woman smiled. Like the rest of the team, she’d worked all night on the earlier, unresolved assignment. She’d dampened her short black hair, making it look as though she’d just stepped from a morning shower. It was not a flattering look, Mirabal thought. It gave her the flint-hard visage of a woman who’d been wronged by too many men, adding a decade to her twenty-five years.

She spoke without looking away from their prey. “The far wall of the lanai should provide cover from neighbors to the west,” she said. “The row of palms will shield our approach.”

Mirabal gave a slow nod. “Placensia is bound to be watchful,” the colonel said. “He knows someone is after him.”

Estrada scoffed. “Do you think he expects us so soon?”

Mirabal nodded. Once they engaged the target, he would expect immediate obedience and nothing less, but he encouraged open discussion at the beginning of an operation. “What you say is true,” he said. “But you must always put yourself in the skin of your quarry. This man Placensia is an engineer, which means he is accustomed to thinking in a linear manner. He is also a traitor. Traitors are burdened with an oppressive guilt, even when they feel their cause is just. You must always remember: men who run naturally assume they are being chased.”

Estrada gazed down the beach and chewed on the thought. He was an able student who absorbed things quickly. Were it not so, he wouldn’t have been included in the colonel’s squad. Anyone could master the gross motor skill of hitting someone in the mouth with a hammer, but getting close enough to do so, and then escaping without getting caught . . . that took skill. And practice.

Colonel Mirabal shot a quick glance at Serafina. “Muss your ha. . .