Chapter Twenty-One
Twenty-One
Senior operations officer for Gauntlet Group Inc.
Michael Scardino stood on the hot tarmac in western Cuba, looking at a sky speckled with clouds and waiting impatiently for the arrival of the man he’d come all the way from D.C.
to pick up this afternoon. Just behind him, one of his company’s three dozen or so unmarked Piper Meridian aircraft had finished refueling and sat at the ready.
The Meridians were six-seaters that Gauntlet used around the world to ferry small amounts of men or cargo in locations where a jet would not be economical, feasible, or low-profile enough.
The five-bladed propeller on this Meridian spun, and the pilot and copilot remained at their controls. The air stairs, which consisted of only two steps, were in the lowered position, and a man stood next to them wearing a baggy white short-sleeve shirt and cargo pants.
Blanchard was one of Scardino’s security men, a thirty-year-old former Dallas SWAT officer who joined Gauntlet and moved to Miami to support company operations there and in Central America.
He carried a pistol in his waistband, which was absolutely verboten here in Cuba, but this wasn’t the only local law that Gauntlet Group was in violation of today.
Gauntlet had powerful connections down here, and they’d received approval both for the visit and for the sidearms Scardino and Blanchard were carrying.
Across the runway, a pair of old MiG-21s rested inside two open concrete hangars, reminding Scardino that this was, indeed, a military base and not a regular airport.
Not that he’d needed much reminding.
Base Aérea San Julián was in the far west of Cuba, but still only 150 miles or so from Miami, and there wasn’t much here, not even military activity, although Scardino had been promised that would change at two p.m.
He looked at his watch. It was two thirty-six.
Typical, he thought.
Moments later, however, an old white school bus pulled into view around the side of a hangar, coming from the direction of a side entrance of the base. Behind the bus, a Jeep carried four armed soldiers, and Scardino positioned himself to face the approaching entourage.
The bus parked just twenty meters or so from the nose cone of the Piper; Scardino looked back to Blanchard to ensure he was clocking the activity, and the man just gave a little nod, his eyes hidden behind wraparound Oakleys, the afternoon sun shining off them.
Several men in uniforms climbed out of the bus, and then a bearded man in a white prison jumpsuit emerged, his hands cuffed in front of him, chains binding his legs.
As the man neared, Mike Scardino squinted, looked through the thick haze hanging over the tarmac, and positively identified that the man being brought forward by Cuban prison officials was, in fact, the man he’d flown down here to collect.
Scott Kincaid, code-named Lancer.
One of the top dozen or so freelance hit men on planet Earth.
Kincaid had been arrested for homicide in Havana eight months ago, was tried and convicted in weeks, and then he’d been sent down here to the southwest of the nation to serve out a twenty-six-year sentence at the Prision de Sandino, just a few miles from this military base.
When Kincaid and Scardino were just a few feet apart, a Cuban prison guard stopped Kincaid’s forward movement by grabbing him from behind, and then the prisoner was unshackled. Scardino just looked on; no words were spoken, and the American in the white jumpsuit just stared blankly ahead.
Scardino noted the man’s apparent calm. If Kincaid was confused, excited, suspicious…if he felt any emotion whatsoever about being plucked from his dark cell and pulled into the sunlight, driven several miles out into the countryside, and then onto a military base, he did not show it.
And if he was internally bewildered standing face-to-face with another gringo, a man with an aircraft obviously already gassed up and ready to get the hell out of here, Michael Scardino could not detect it.
Kincaid just seemed completely at ease.
When the prisoner’s chains had been pulled away and the guards turned around to leave, Scardino stepped forward and extended a hand. “I’m Big Mike,” Scardino said. “Let’s go.”
Slowly, Kincaid shook the man’s hand. “Yeah,” replied Kincaid. “Let’s.”
The two men climbed into the small single-engine turboprop; Blanchard followed behind the two others into the aircraft, and then he lifted the stairs and sealed the hatch.
Inside the tight confines of the cabin, Scardino chose one of the two forward-facing seats, and Kincaid sat directly in front of him, facing the rear. Blanchard spoke with the flight crew for a moment, then sat next to Kincaid.
Big Mike noted the heavy tattoos on Lancer’s hands, neck, and even behind his ears. Kincaid was a decorated Navy SEAL but had been banished from the Teams for conduct unbecoming: executing a prisoner, shooting unarmed civilians, Scardino couldn’t remember the entire list.
He’d returned to the United States and then almost immediately become a white-power neo-Nazi, and Scardino wondered how that had worked out for him in a Cuban prison.
But the man looked healthy, tan, exceedingly fit. He might have been a little underweight, but not that much, and there was a glint in his eyes that gave Scardino the impression Kincaid thought he was in charge right now.
Scardino, on the other hand, was of the opinion that this son of a bitch wasn’t in charge of shit. His air of superiority was a put-on, just like his faux nonchalance.
The aircraft began to taxi to the runway almost immediately. As it did so, Scardino said, “You’ve got a good poker face, man, but you must really be wondering what the fuck is going on.”
“Actually, I was wondering something else.”
“What’s that?”
“Is there a bar on this bird?”
Scardino was surprised by the comment. After looking around a second, he said, “There’s a tiny fridge. You want a water?”
“Got a beer?”
Mike Scardino laughed a little. “You don’t want to know what the fuck is going on?”
“I’m actually pretty curious. I’m just hoping you’ll tell me over a beer.”
Scardino shrugged, then nodded to Blanchard, and the young man reached behind him, opened a small fridge, pulled out a Corona, popped the top, and handed it over to Kincaid. He took it with a little smile, then looked back to Scardino. “You’re not drinking with me?”
Without speaking, Scardino stuck a hand out to Blanchard, who soon enough passed over a second Corona.
“Got any limes?” Kincaid asked.
Scardino said, “No, but I’ll tell you what. Let’s get the pilot to taxi back to the hangar and you can run to the market in Sandino to pick one up. That work?”
Scott Kincaid did not answer at first. Instead, he kept his eyes locked on the man in front of him as he took an incredibly long swig, draining nearly a third of the bottle.
Finished, he said, “It’s good, just like this.”
Now Big Mike said, “The Cubans have handed you over to my company.”
“You paid a bribe to get me out?”
“We paid with information that we had and that they wanted. That part doesn’t concern you.”
“What’s your company?”
“Gauntlet Group.”
To this, the former Navy SEAL said, “I’ve heard of you guys. You’re taking over up in D.C., aren’t you? The president is firing all the federal employees, replacing them with you guys. Saves the taxpayers money, or that’s the song and dance, anyway.”
“Our footprint and our influence are growing, yes. The current administration appreciates what we’re doing. It is our intent to make ourselves indispensable so that any subsequent administration would find it difficult to dislodge us.”
“Right. And you want me to come work for you?” He took another few gulps of beer.
“Not officially.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning…unofficially.”
“A contractor to the contractors.” Kincaid polished off the bottle of Corona as Scardino took his first sip.
The former prisoner looked to Blanchard, and Blanchard reached for another beer.
Kincaid said, “You guys do security projects for the U.S. government, as well as technical analysis, logistics, HR, et cetera, et cetera, for the U.S. intelligence community.”
“You got it.”
“And you traded me out of prison so I can do…what, exactly?”
“My company has access to classified data. This data we have sold to a client, and the client would like to use this data to further their political and strategic aims, geopolitically speaking, in the U.S.”
Kincaid accepted the beer from Blanchard with a curt nod, then wiped his face with his tattooed hand, and continued regarding Scardino as he did so.
Finally, he said, “You’re stealing files, there are names on the files.
Spies or informants or troublemakers of some sort, and somebody is paying you to what… to eliminate those people?”
Scardino did not deny this. Kincaid was a killer for hire. It would be obvious that he was being hired to kill. “Something like that.”
“But you don’t want to use Gauntlet employees to assassinate people all over the world.”
Now Scardino put up a finger. “We don’t want to use Gauntlet employees to kill people in America. Overseas…we can, and we do these sorts of jobs ourselves.”
“Roger,” Kincaid said. “How does this work?”
“Simple. You will be given names of people you are to eliminate along with dossiers containing their addresses, any relevant training, their patterns of life. That sort of thing. You will then delete your targets. You have any problem with that?”
“Are you paying me?”
Scardino took another sip. “Of course. Your freedom, as well as a bonus of one million U.S. for every target eliminated.”
“Then no…I don’t have any problem with that. How many names on your list in total?”
Mike Scardino laughed a little. “That’s not for you to know. It’s a big list. You are one of several contract assets we will be using for this operation.”
“Send the other assets home. I’ll do them all.”
Scardino sighed now, and the aircraft began racing down the runway on its takeoff roll.
He said, “You’ll just take care of the names we give you.”
Scott Kincaid said, “What’s your plan? What’s your endgame? Who’s getting you guys to do this? Some rogue actors in America? Or is it Russia? China? Iran?”
“That information won’t be given to you, because you don’t need it.”
The former SEAL swigged his cold Corona. Said, “Just curious.”
“Well, be less curious, because you’ll never know. Just do the work. Don’t ask questions that aren’t of a tactical nature.”
As the Piper Meridian climbed into the sky, Scott Kincaid drank his beer and looked out the portal next to him as they flew over hot undeveloped scrubland.
To Scardino, Lancer said, “You’re the boss, boss. Where’s my first job?”
“Miami. We’re on our way there now. You will oversee a team of freelance specialists. You’ll have them do any legwork, surveillance work, computer work, whatever you need, but you are the trigger puller.
“You’ll meet your team and hit your first target in a high-rise condo building in Aventura.
When you’re done with Miami, you’re off to Chicago.
A job at a hotel there. Trust me, these are easy targets, relative to some of the others on the list. I’ll give you a day for each of the first two, plus a day to set up and a day’s travel in between. ”
Kincaid took yet another hit of his second beer. “Four days from now, two targets will be dead, and I’ll be after the third on the list.”
“You aren’t lacking in confidence, are you?” Scardino noted.
“A lifetime of success will do that to you.”
“Success? We just pulled your ass out of a prison in Cuba.”
“Yeah, it sucked to be there, but by the time I left, I ran that place.”
Scardino hid a smile behind his beer bottle. “I’m sure you did.”
Now the assassin said, “There’s something else I want from you.”
“What’s that?”
“You just said you have the ability to obtain classified intel from the CIA.”
“I did.”
“I want you to find someone for me.”
Confused, the Gauntlet man said, “Who?”
“The Gray Man.”
With a chuckle, Scardino said, “You’re kidding, right? That guy’s not real.”
“He’s real to me. He’s the one who put me in that fucking prison. I’ll work for you, I’ll kill for you, but you find out what you can about him.”
Scardino said nothing.
“Deal?”
Now Big Mike looked up to the screen on the bulkhead showing the location of the aircraft. They were heading northeast, towards Miami. He said, “We’re going to overfly Havana in about twenty-five minutes. Want me to drop you off there?”
“I do not,” Lancer said. “Look, I will work for you regardless. But if you really have a lot of targets, you will want me to do them quickly. The longer this takes, the sooner the targets will recognize a pattern, the sooner the targets will realize they might be next. They will go to ground. I know that, and I know that you know that. I will be more motivated to work more quickly if you and I agree on these terms. My terms are my freedom, which you have already secured. Payment, which you promise me for each successful operation. And information. Get me what the U.S. government has on the Gray Man. I get all that…I’ll be the best worker bee you’ve ever seen.
Your enemies list will be full of stacked bodies, flies crawling across their eyeballs, that kind of shit. ”
“What if there’s nothing about the Gray Man?”
“There’s not nothing about the Gray Man. He used to be CIA. There are files on him.”
Scardino looked out the window a moment. “Sure, Lancer. I’ll put in a request. I don’t know what the IC has on this phantom everybody talks about, but if there’s anything out there, you can see it.”
Scott Kincaid, code-named Lancer, wiped a thin sheen of perspiration from his shaved head, looked out the portal, down at the island he had no desire to ever see again, and smiled, thinking about a future that seemed so much brighter now than it had just a couple of hours earlier.