LITMIR.BIZ

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letting someone else be their front man as long as it served their ultimate goals.

      When Nguyen discovered the activities of the Matador Section and reported it to his Beijing handlers, he was ordered to try to get accepted into the secret organization and, given local Chinese assets, to offer the Cubans as an enticement. The Cubans fell for it, and Nguyen soon became Diego Garcia’s second in command. As such, he was personally supervising the takeover of the Carib Princess as it was a critical element of Garcia’s overall Matador plan.

      If Garcia’s operation was successful, it would advance China’s long-range objectives without their having to expose any of their own operations. Best of all, if it failed, China wouldn’t be caught up in the inevitable backlash. The Americans had been looking for an excuse to obliterate Cuba for many years now, and the Chinese didn’t want Beijing to end up on the same nuclear cruise missile target list as Havana.

      When Nguyen heard the code word over his radio, he motioned to his replacement crew that would sail the ship on to Cancun. As per his instructions, the assault team had executed the ship’s captain and most of the bridge crew. The Carib Princess’s first officer, purser, engineering officer and the Black Gang had been kept alive, though. The Matador replacement crew was experienced with large vessels, but in case something came up, he wanted men on hand who knew the intimate details of operating this particular ship.

      As soon as the substitute crewmen had climbed the ladder into the ship, Nguyen started up after them. His first act on board would be to notify Garcia that the ship was theirs.

      RICHARD SPELLMAN grandly slathered butter on the last slice of thick-crust bread. “I swear this is the last bite,” he said. “I’m going to have to call the ship’s doctor and order a gurney to roll me back to my cabin.”

      Mary Hamilton smiled. “Coming here has to have been one of your better ideas, Richard. But wait on calling for the gurney, my cabin’s right down the hallway.”

      “That’s an even better idea,” he said. “But on a ship, I think they call it a passageway.”

      “It still leads to my cabin.”

      Spellman signed his dinner check with his room number and stood. He was pulling Mary’s chair back when he spotted a man in black heading down the passageway. He was carrying a submachine gun. A second later another gunman appeared. The ship had a small security force, but he’d not seen them wearing black combat suits nor packing automatic weapons. And the way these two men were moving told him that these guys weren’t friendly.

      “Come on,” he told her quietly. “We’ve got to get out of here fast.”

      “What is it?” She frowned and turned toward the door.

      He took her chin and turned her head back toward him. “Don’t look,” he said, “but something odd’s going on. I just saw a couple of armed men in black SWAT suits in the hallway. Let’s look for a back door out of this place until we can figure out what the hell’s going on.”

      Hamilton was a decisive woman, but she was out of her element here and didn’t mind him taking the lead.

      The cook staff looked up from their chores when the two Americans walked into the kitchen. “Is there a back way out of here?” Spellman asked in English, nodding toward his companion. “Her husband is coming.”

      Keeping a straight face, Hamilton translated his question into flawless Spanish.

      One of the cooks left his soup pot and showed them to a passageway behind the kitchen.

      “I didn’t know you spoke Spanish,” Spellman said.

      “You never asked.”

      “What else do you know that might come in handy right about now?”

      She shook her head. “I can’t think of anything.”

      “Keep thinking.”

      When the cook stopped in front of a door and said something in Spanish, Hamilton translated. “He says that if we need to hide from my husband, we can stay in here. There’s a lock on the inside of the door.”

      “Gracias,” Spellman said.

      The cook grinned.

      The storeroom behind the door was quite large and the door had been fitted with a pair of sliding bolts on the inside. A thick pile of blankets on the floor showed that this was a common trysting place for the staff seeking an afternoon delight.

      “Just what we need.” Mary chuckled.

      “Complete with enough food and drink to last us for a couple of weeks.” Spellman’s eyes made a quick inventory of the shelves.

      “Do you think someone’s trying to hijack the ship?”

      “I don’t know, but we should be okay if we stay in here.”

      There was a porthole at the end of the compartment, but he couldn’t see anything through it beyond the jungle lining the canal.

      “How long do you think we’ll have to stay here?”

      “I’ll be damned if I know,” he replied. “But if we hear any shooting we’ll be safe, at least until we reach a port somewhere.”

      She glanced down at the pile of blankets. “I’m sure we can stay busy till then.”

      Seeing the look in her eyes, so was he.

      “This would’ve been better in my cabin.” She smiled. “More comfortable.”

      He grinned. “I think we’ll be able to manage okay here.”

      THE SPRAWLING PEMEX facility at Vera Cruz Llave was one of the Western Hemisphere’s largest oil refinery complexes. Crude oil from dozens of Caribbean and South Atlantic offshore, deep-sea oil platforms was pumped in to be processed into everything from bunker fuel to Avgas. Because of the never-ending court battles being waged to terminate such industrial activities as refining in the United States, more and more American oil companies were sending their crude to Mexico for processing. This arrangement was a boon to the Mexican economy and got the environmentalists and their vulture lawyers off the backs of American “big oil.”

      Pemex wasn’t unaware that their refineries were prime potential terrorist targets. Even with the successes of the ongoing war on terrorism in the Middle and Far East, Latin American terrorism was still a common fact of life. Here, though, it wasn’t Islamic radicals causing trouble, but the home-grown whackos. There were still a few Marxists who still dreamed of dusty socialist glories to be won by the gun. But Native Indian separatists and would-be socialist land-grabbers were more likely to use terror tactics as were some of the drug cartels and out-of-office opposition parties.

      As was common in all of Latin America, Mexico had more private security forces than it did police, and Pemex had the largest single security force establishment in the country. Sharp uniforms and modern weapons made the company cops look good, but the relatively low pay and almost complete lack of training made them little more than paper tigers. They would be no match for the forces Paco Domingo was moving into place against them.

      Domingo was publicly known as the fiery leader of a militant oil field workers’ union. To Diego Garcia, though, he was one of a number of deep-cover Cuban Matador agents who had been placed in Mexico years earlier. Some of these men had been undercover for more than ten years, but all of that waiting was over now. One of the main Matador targets this night was Mexico’s petroleum industry, but other critical infrastructure systems would be taken over, as well. The electrical power generation facilities were high on that list as were the ports and the air traffic control system. And, of course, the presidential palace in Mexico City.

      Come morning, Mexico would finally belong to the people. The rule of the powerful old families and corrupt business elites would be ended, and the people would be presided over by their “chosen” representatives—Paco Domingo and his deep-cover associates.

      That thought sustained him when he drove up to the main

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