October's Ghost by Ryne Douglas Pearson Read Free Book Online

simply history, Antonio believed, and it was time to write a new chapter for the books. Things changed, societies matured, and people who were once cattle in a pen had come to see the benevolent rancher as little more than a guide to the slaughterhouse. Yes, the past was very different from the present, except in one way that few would ever know. A very ironic and appropriate way. For the same reasons as his father, Antonio had returned to the land of his birth, the land his family had fled more than three-and-a-half decades before, to help bring freedom once again to a simple, beautiful people. And, as Antonio felt was a tribute to the father he never knew, he had come at the behest of the same, secretive American employer as his Papa Tony.
    “Papa, do you wish to watch?”
    Paredes turned toward the voice. It was Colonel Hector Ojeda, executive officer of the Second Mechanized Division, a unit located some twelve miles to the east at Falcon. It was a position he would occupy for fifteen more minutes. At that point he would become Colonel Ojeda, rebel officer and leader of the battle for his nation’s freedom.
    Ojeda held a pair of French-made night-vision binoculars out for the CIA officer, who took them and followed his host to the edge of the vegetation on the hill just four miles north of the Santa Clara airfield. They settled in among a sparse grove of palms that opened into a moonlit clearing where the rise sloped downward. There was no fear of detection. The unthinkable would never happen. All threats were outside the borders, across oceans. Akin to the American maxim of personal freedom and safety, the door was unlocked on this warm autumn evening.
    That was the essence of the plan to free Cuba.
    “Ten minutes,” Ojeda reported. He was a tall man, thin from head to toe, which would make him appear weak if not for the eyes. Bulging, brown on white, they were set in a gaunt face that showed a tired determination known only by those who had traveled a long road to an uncertain future. His frame, never beyond wiry in his fifty-nine years, had obviously suffered from the strain of the previous three months. So much planning, so many things to accomplish in the shadows. And at any time his actions could have been discovered, with only one result imaginable. It was that knowledge that had pushed the already driven Ojeda to secure an opportunity for the future with a ruthless abandon that had silenced many of those who would not join in the fight for freedom. The affair had changed him, and he knew it.
    Paredes had been changed, also. In his one month living among those who were about to inexorably alter their future, he had found an attachment to a place he had no memory of. It contradicted what he had been taught during his education in the United States about nature versus nurture. Where environment had shaped his being, it was this place, this land, that had formed it. And though the part he was to play, an officially deniable role as liaison between the rebel military commanders and Langley, was important, if small, he had come to realize that with success there would be a freedom of sorts for him personally, as well as for his hosts. In essence he was a thirty-eight year-old man who had come home.
    “Watch the line of aircraft,” Ojeda directed.
    Antonio braced himself against the coarse surface of a palm and brought the glasses to eye level, using his arms to form a sturdy triangle and steady the view. His left thumb activated the enhancement function of the binoculars, and a soft green luminescence escaped the viewport to paint the upper portion of his face with a glow that matched closely the color of the surrounding flora as seen in daylight.
    “How long now?” Paredes inquired as he slowly swept the twin rows of Soviet-built fighters.
    “Just a few minutes.”
    All was still on the tarmac. Nearly an hour past midnight nothing else would be expected. But shortly a display of ingenuity, determination, and