Eighth Avenue.
The locals called it Calle Ocho, and it ran right through the heart of Miami's Little Havana district. It was the artery that fed the Cuban community's pulsing heart, alive with color, sound and movement.
The Cadillac rolled slowly down the avenue, the four occupants inspecting sidewalks jammed with cigar-chomping men in their crisp guayaberas— the white cotton shirts of the tropics — and women in bright-colored skirts and blouses. The street was lined with shops and family businesses: boutiques and factories where underpaid employees rolled cigars by hand; sidewalk counters selling aromatic Cuban coffee and churros, long spirals of deep-fried sweet dough.
They passed the Bay of Pigs monument, standing tall and proud in Cuban Memorial Plaza, and one of the men in the back seat crossed himself, muttering a hasty benediction. In the front seat, riding shotgun, his companion merely frowned and looked away.
It was so long ago, so many years and wasted lives, but still the memory was sharp, painful. He wondered if it ever would recede, give up its power to bring a lump into his throat.
Someday, perhaps. When all the debts were canceled out, repaid in full.
Someday.
But not this day.
They turned off Calle Ocho into a residential side street, rolling along past neatly kept houses, many of them with shrines on the lawns, devoted to Saint Lazarus.
Only a parable now to the Catholic church, Lazarus was a living hero to the exiles for his ability to persevere through poverty and pain. They saw themselves in Lazarus — and shared the hope that broken lives might one day be revived in Cuba libre. Saint Lazarus was the living symbol of rebirth, of the human spirit's stubborn refusal to stay down.
A few more blocks, the houses smaller now, devoid of shrines, still neat but no longer picturesque. Beside the driver, Toro scanned the houses, searching for a number, finally picking out the one he sought.
A curt instruction to the driver, and they cruised past the target house, not even slowing. Nothing in their posture would have told a watcher that the men were hunting, and that they had found their prey upon this quiet street.
The driver took a right at the next intersection, parking out of sight and killing the engine. They unloaded, Toro taking time to readjust the pistol in his waistband, waiting for the others to form a tight semicircle at the curb. The four men were alert, trying to watch every direction at once, as if expecting an ambush on this placid residential boulevard.
In recent years the Cuban community had become fragmented, different factions violently at odds. Little Havana had assumed the atmosphere of a city under siege — but from within. There was no enemy outside the gates; the city's people had engaged each other in a silent — sometimes deadly — war of ideologies.
And on the surface everything was unity, a people joined unanimously in their opposition to Castro and his regime in Cuba. But beneath the calm exterior, guerrillas schemed and turned on each other more than on the common enemy. They dealt in secrets, drugs and death, each splinter movement striving to become the voice of a people in exile.
Toro knew the war could reach them there, despite the apparent quiet of the neighborhood. His group might have been seen already, cruising past the target house; armed men might be laying traps to destroy them piecemeal.
With his tiny force, the Cuban warrior could not take a chance on being suckered. He could not afford to sacrifice the slim advantage of surprise. If luck was with them, they could be in and out in moments, their mission accomplished.
He sent one of the gunners, Mano, back around the way that they had come, to discreetly watch the front of the target house. Mano was primed — an Ingram submachine gun underneath his jacket — to cut of the retreat of anyone inside once Toro had penetrated from the rear.
The driver, Rafael, was detailed to stay with the car, making sure that no one tampered with it in their absence. They would need wheels in a hurry, without someone crouching in the back seat or a package wired to explode at the flick of an ignition switch.
Toro recognized the signs of budding paranoia and quickly dismissed them. His fears were not delusions; they were facts of life in the warring camp that was present-day Little Havana.
The final gunner, Emiliano, fell in step with Toro as the leader made his way across a manicured lawn, then down a narrow alley, between the rows of dwellings.
They counted houses, walking along the backside of the residential street they had just traveled, pausing finally before a wooden gate set in a backyard fence. Toro stood on tiptoe to peer over, whistling softly for a dog and getting no response. He finally reached across the gate, feeling for the latch and releasing it, proceeding on inside, his gun probing the way ahead.
Emiliano followed him across the grassy postage-stamp yard, closing rapidly on the back of the house with its covered patio. They brushed past a portable barbecue, and Toro's backup veered away, his pistol drawn now. He paused long enough to check the open door that granted access to a one-car garage connected to the house. When he was satisfied that no one lurked inside, Emiliano nodded, falling into step again at Toro's heel.
They crossed the patio, circling around to the side of the house and up three concrete steps to reach the kitchen door. Standing back against the wall, Toro reached out a hand to test the knob — and found it locked.
He decided there was no way around a violent entry. They had wasted enough time already. Any more delay could spell their deaths.
A glance and nod to Emiliano, and Toro stepped around in front of the kitchen door, his automatic leveled, mentally bracing himself in case bullets started ripping through the flimsy door. He hit the door a flying kick and sent it slamming backward on its hinges, pieces of the cheap pot-metal latching mechanism rattling on the floor inside.
They went in crouching, Toro peeling left, Emiliano right, their weapons cocked and tracking, seeking any sign of hostile life.
The empty kitchen mocked them — but a muffled scuffling from deeper in the house alerted Toro. Moving swiftly through the kitchen down a narrow corridor, he closed on what were obviously bedrooms. Two doors opened off the hallway, one of them ajar, revealing an empty room beyond.
The other door was closed, and in a heartbeat the Cuban identified it as the source of the suspicious sounds.
Toro shouldered the panel, bulled on through into a tiny bedroom. Opposite the door a slender figure was grappling with the window screen, trying to batter it aside and clear a passage.
Toro and Emiliano rushed forward and grabbed him as he threw one leg across the open window's ledge, and finally dragged him back inside the room. The slender man was struggling, kicking out at both of them, a nonstop stream of Spanish curses pouring from his lips. Together they pinned him on the rumpled bed.
Emiliano raised his pistol and whipped it down across the runner's skull. The man went limp. A crimson worm of blood squirmed out from underneath the fallen runner's hairline, crawling down across his face.
The Cuban warrior glanced at his companion and nodded in the direction of the open bedroom doorway.
"La cocina," he snapped, receiving an answering nod from Emiliano.
Each man grabbed an arm of the captive, dragging him off the bed and toward the doorway, through it, back along the dingy corridor.
He was slowly beginning to revive as they reached the small kitchen. Together the Cubans eased him down into a straight-back chair, his head slumped forward, both arms dangling limply at his sides.