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SEAL Team Six Hunt the Falcon(57)



“Interesting place for Unit 5000 to establish a base,” Crocker said, thinking out loud. “They’re in Venezuela, so they’re protected, Barinas is in the middle of nowhere, and there’s an endless supply of cheap cocaine that they can sell overseas to fund their operations.”

He was starting to understand how the Falcon thought.

“I was thinking the same thing, boss,” Davis said. “Instead of having to ship the drugs out of places like Ciudad del Este, they’ll soon be able to fly it to Europe right out of here.”

“Good point.”

They stopped at a farmhouse with a big garden and were greeted by large barking dogs. The proprietor, Señor Tomás, looked like a wizened, white-haired Indiana Jones, complete with safari jacket and straw fedora. Crocker learned that he was a Cuban American cattle rancher and CIA asset. He also had two extra bedrooms, one of which was being used by Mancini, Cal, and Neto. Crocker, Davis, and Sanchez took the other one, which seemed to belong to a huge black dog named Chico, who slept in a large wicker basket under the window.

After washing up and unpacking, Crocker and Davis met the other members of Black Cell and Neto on the rear veranda, where they drank rum punch and beer, and listened to Señor Tomás talk about how the government was ruining the country by driving rich Venezuelans and foreign capital out, and thereby shutting down new business investment.

“You think Maduro will change anything?” Mancini asked.

“Probably not,” Tomás answered. “He’s a fucking communist demagogue, too. Spends a lot of time with the Castro brothers in Cuba looking for ways to screw the U.S. As a matter of fact, he might be worse.”

After dinner of roast lamb and baby potatoes, their host showed them photos of his family’s house in Havana, where he had been born in 1940. His father, he explained, had been arrested and shot by Che Guevara shortly after the Cuban Revolution. He himself had returned to Cuba as a teenager as part of the CIA-trained Brigade 2506 during the Bay of Pigs Invasion on April 17, 1961. He was one of an estimated 1,202 Cuban anti-Castro rebels who were captured a few days later, after the Kennedy administration failed to assist the invading force with much-needed air support. He spent a year and a half rotting in a Cuban prison before he was released and returned to Miami.

He hated the Kennedys for their betrayal but said he despised Fidel Castro even more, which is why he had worked with the CIA to help defeat communists throughout Latin America ever since.

With his blond American wife humming along, Tomás played a guitar and sang plaintive songs in Spanish. One of them, “Guantanamera,” a love song to a woman from a country town in Cuba, caused tears to spill from his eyes. He wiped them away, ran into the yard, and starting lighting something with a torch.

“What’s he doing now?” Crocker whispered to Mancini.

“He’s setting off fireworks. It’s about two minutes shy of the New Year.” With all the excitement, injuries, and activity, Crocker had lost track of time.

They watched rockets explode in the sky, drank champagne, and sang “Auld Lang Syne.”

After midnight, Crocker, Mancini, and Neto piled into the Toyota for a drive past the Unit 5000 base, which was a couple of miles west. All they could see from the narrow road was a high aluminum fence topped with barbed wire. Guarding the gate were Venezuelan soldiers armed with automatic rifles who were passing a bottle of whiskey.

Back at the house, Neto and Crocker examined the latest satellite photos. Neto pointed out that while all that had been built so far were two barracks and an admin building, construction on the airstrip, small control tower, and storage hangars was moving fast.

“How soon before the airstrip is operational?” Crocker asked.

“They’re already landing smaller planes on this dirt strip over here,” Neto answered, pointing to another photo. “But the longer asphalt one probably won’t be ready for another three or four months.”

Bush and field crickets chirped through the screened window and a string of firecrackers went off in the distance as Crocker sat down at a laptop in Señor Tomás’s office and typed out a report on the Brazilian raid for Captain Sutter back at command. He still owed him one about his arrest of the major in Afghanistan, too. He thought, Maybe I’ll get to that tomorrow.

The white stucco walls and tops of the old credenza, desk, and bookcase were covered with framed pictures of Tomás’s life and adventures—smiling in the back of a boat with a large sailfish in one hand and his arm around a beautiful woman; standing with a group of shorter Cuban-looking men; shooting skeet; waterskiing. One of the black dogs snored on the round faded rug near Crocker’s feet.