Medical personnel helped him out of the aircraft as CAG pushed through them. “We missed you, Flip!” he shouted over the noise as he extended his hand. Wilson took it and smiled back. Behind him were Stretch and Olive. Grateful to see him, they all helped him to El 2 so he could bypass the multiple ladders leading down to sick bay. Once the alarm rang, the elevator descended to the hangar bay as warm Caribbean salt air cascaded down the hull.
They put him on a stretcher and carried him to an ammo elevator while dozens of sailors observed. As the hangar bay crew rigged the safety lines, Olive and Stretch stood back and watched. Wilson turned his head and caught their attention. “Where’s Annie? Flying?” he asked.
Wilson saw their faces fall just as the elevator lowered him down. He knew. He was still trying to process the blow when the elevator door opened next to him, and the medical response team lifted him out to the florescent world of the forward mess decks. Numb, Wilson stared up at the overhead as they carried him down the port passageway to sick bay.
The 1MC sounded: “T-weeeet… Now stand by for the evening prayer.”
Daniel recoiled from a shower of salt spray as the boat bucked on the swells between Paria and Trinidad. Lights out, they passed the darkened shape of Isla de Patos to the south, the halfway point on their thirty-minute transit to Trinidad, and safety. A G5 awaited him at the airport, but the timing was going to be close. Everything depended on Daniel’s men paying off key men at critical points. Right now, they had to get past the Coast Guard station in order to dock at the coastal village of La Retraite where a car awaited to take them to the airport.
Once in the car, it took, even in the wee hours, over an hour to get through Port of Spain. Needing a shave, Daniel wore a Washington Nationals baseball cap and sat in the passenger seat of a used Honda Civic, hiding in plain sight. His three other loyal thugs followed in a beat-up Opel. Stay calm and look bored…. He had done this before.
Daniel knew that Ramos would soon grab Annibel and the kids, raping his wife and terrorizing the girls to exact his revenge. Daniel felt bad and tried to blot it from his mind. They wouldn’t have to suffer long — Ramos would kill them.
The group made it to the airport and stepped aboard the G5 without any luggage, and, as the door was closed, the pilots started the engines. Greasing the palms of linesmen and two air traffic controllers was easy, and the aircraft taxied for takeoff within minutes. In the cabin, two female flight attendants, dressed appropriately, served as the in-flight entertainment for Daniel and his men.
Daniel was dozing as they made their final approach to Madeira. Then, after spreading more cash, they were airborne again, this time for Minorca. He thought of the traitor Edgar, and thought about the wife and family he had left behind for Daniel to brutalize. He wouldn’t mind raping his daughter, Daniel thought, but it was too late for that now. One day, he vowed, he would have Edgar’s son killed.
It was late afternoon when the Gulfstream landed at the quiet 8,500-foot strip, and another car took them to a safe house at Cap d’en Font. They ate a quick meal before scrambling down to the beach to a waiting launch that allowed them to clear the jagged coastline as the sun sank into the Mediterranean. The fifty-mile crossing to Mallorca required three hours of pounding across moderate seas. Although Daniel was able to avoid the spray and stay dry in the cabin, he became seasick. His mood improved as he saw Mallorca draw near, and he hoped he could rally for a little nightlife, banking that what little Catalan Spanish he knew would suffice. And he planned to buy everyone a round of drinks before retiring to his room. The whole bar! The whole town! His boys had done well. They would own this little town tonight, and tomorrow they would begin building his empire anew, this time in southern Europe. This, too, he had done before. Daniel noted the clouds above were backlit by a waxing moon, and they reminded him of the puffy clouds about Paria. He could get to like this place.
The engine stopped, and a puzzled Daniel turned to the coxswain. His second, Alphonse, who had been loyal to him for twelve years — since Colombia days — drew a pistol and pointed it at him. “Esta la hora, mí amigo.”
Hurt, Daniel looked at him in shock as the boat rocked on the waves. Why? he thought.
The others watched, unconcerned. Daniel then surprised himself with a slight grin and nodded his acceptance. I let my guard down. Familiar with the routine, Daniel did not resist as the men grabbed him, tied his hands behind his back, and attached dive weights to his ankles. They took his valuables, including the switchblade he had used to save Alphonse’s life that night in Medellin so long ago, and led him to the stern. Daniel had a final request.
“I was good to you, Alphonse. May I go with a bullet? Like a man?”
In the shadows Daniel saw Alphonse acquiesce with a gentleman’s nod. “Certainly, my friend.”
Daniel looked in turn at the others, what passed for his friends, as he accepted his fate. He knelt on the transom, surprised he had the urge to pray. He had not said a prayer in years, not since his boyhood in Buenaventura.
“Padre Nuestro—” he whispered.
The bullet tore off the top of Daniel’s head, and his limp body fell overboard. The weights caught up in the gunwale and left Daniel hanging upside down until one of the men freed the weights so they could lead Daniel’s dead body 200 feet below the channel.
The torch had been passed, and Alphonse motioned to the coxswain to continue toward the city. He saw blood on the transom and motioned to another to hose it off as he turned to look west at the lights of Mallorca, their new home — where he would begin the first day of his new empire.
CHAPTER 81
The following day, Coral Sea turned her bow north.
Venezuela’s military had suffered days of crippling blows from the Americans. Its message delivered, the United States withdrew to maintain strategic stability in the region, hoping for a revolution of moderate reformers who would return the country to a liberal free-market democracy. With NATO alerted and surface and air units arrayed from the Denmark Strait to the North Cape, the Russians stood down, having watched with amusement as NATO, and especially the United States, had spun up for nothing. Knowing the Americans would exhaust themselves for years to come, the Russians prepared for a too brief summer on the Kola Peninsula and husbanded their resources for the next time they could make Washington jump.
Likewise, the Cubans withdrew most — but not all — of their forces from along the fence line at Guantanamo. In smug satisfaction they believed that, true to form, the Americans would concentrate their forces in and around the southeastern tip of Cuba, which would open the rest of the Caribbean to cartel traffic as before. The waters off Venezuela and the West Indies would continue to be a future deployment theater for carrier strike groups as a sign of Washington’s interest, despite the fact it pulled needed resources from the Middle East and the Mediterranean, which was becoming a rough neighborhood again, the likes of which the U.S. Navy had not seen since the long-ago days of the Barbary Pirates.
Indeed, the Venezuelans had been taught a lesson — with the AMV half destroyed and its Army aviation losing significant frontline capability. The Bolivarian Republic had kept their Navy in port to spare it, and the Army remained all but intact, calming nerves in Foggy Bottom where stability was sought above all else. To Washington, all of Latin America had been taught a lesson about American power and resolve — a lesson that was lost on Latin America. Countries in the region saw that Venezuela, which enjoyed poking Uncle Sam in the eye, had paid a relatively small price for doing so, and they knew, after a while, the United States would lose interest. The Bolivarian Republic could then resume their previous activities, whether aboveboard or underground, confident that the Yankees would not soon return. Venezuela had not been defeated, which itself was a win, and plans went ahead to erect a statue of the Mayor General Edgar Hernandez. The gallant hero had led the AMV into battle against superior American forces and had given his life while saving South American soil from invasion and humiliating subjugation.