Chopo and Ray Ray were very close, trusted each other and Chopo remembered each time they met that Ray Ray had saved his life, literally dragging him across a field under fire. Chopo had suffered a seizure in the heat of battle and it was Ray Ray who got his belt into his mouth to secure the tongue while firing at the enemy. Then he placed the 165 pound Chopo on his wide shoulder and carried him to safety. By the time the air cover came in, Chopo had fully recovered and was peaceful. The men had bonded as only a war experience will often do and there after both trusted each other implicitly, even though Chopo lovingly referred to Ray Ray as his uptown Gringo.
Both Chopo and his partner Valdez had been with Castro and Che Guevara, actually they called him “Ernesto” who was the heart and brains behind the origination of the guerrilla style warfare to free the Cubans from the dictator Batista.
Che Guevara was a physician, born in 1928 and died in 1967, and in 1952 at the age of 24 he took part in the riots against Juan Peron in his birth place of Argentina. He then joined agitators in Bolivia and used his skill as a physician to work among the Lepers. In 1953 he went to Guatemala joining the pro communist regime of Jacaba Arbenz Guzman and when Guzman was overthrown in 1954, he fled to Mexico where he met Fidel Castro and other Cuban rebels. Che Guevara became Castro’s trusted Lieutenant soon after the rebel invasion of Cuba in 1956. Che proved to be a resourceful guerrilla and was soon one of Castro’s closest and most trusted friends. As President of the Cuban National Bank after the fall of Fulgencio Batista in 1959, he established financial methodology which was instrumental in cutting Cuba’s traditional economic ties to the United States and in the direction of Cuba’s flow of trade to the communist bloc countries. He served as the Minister of Trade and Industry from 1961 to 1965.
At heart a revolutionary rather than an administrator, he left Cuba in 1965 in order to foster revolutionary activity in other countries. In 1967 while directing a guerrilla movement in Bolivia, he was wounded in a clash with government troops, captured, and executed.
He wrote several books while on the field of battle: Guerrilla Warfare (1961), Man and Socialism in Cuba (1967 and Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War (1968). Che was thirty-nine years of age when executed.
In the early days of the Freedom Fighters, men like Chopo formed the heart and soul of the effort to free their loved ones from the oppression, the poverty in which they were moribund by an evil dictator supported by the United States. But along the way Castro lost sight of the main purpose and ultimately became more oppressive than was Batista, especially against those who opposed him.
Even as evil and crushing as Batista was, he had to maintain some semblance of humanistic concern in order to continue the support from the United States who had its own brand of bigotry and abuse. Additionally, the Mafia was instrumental in urging the Batista regimes to moderate its abuse of its people in order to preclude a more close scrutiny of the activity by America...and its liberal elite.
"I knew you had something big to pay our way here from south Florida." Chopo said.
"Yes...and Ricky...the wife (Lucy)" The men laughed, "How is the family?" Ray Ray asked.
"Senor, we are blessed." Vesquez said.
"And Chopo my dear friend has no woman turned you into a family man."
"You mean women, Gringo?"
"Oh yes, I forgot you and the Chimichanga, what is it the women see in you?"
Chopo feigned a fist to the ribs and shot out his tongue while making the shrill call of the Banshee Indian on the warpath."
The three men rocked in laughter as Chopo clowned...and the ritual handshake took place in the mind and the men knew all was well...the necessary foreplay between men. It was expected to loosen the men after the long intervals in which they had not seen o one another. They enjoyed the affection that only comes with time and the perilous nature of their business. In the end they knew the subject wasn't roses, wasn't wine, women and song nor the cheeks of fat babies. In the end the subject was death, and the possibilities of staying alive while invoking remedy.
Ray Ray explained the nature of this action and some of the names behind the scheme. Explaining why this was a two-step process to once again gain the support and the confidence of the congress, and the nation to deal once and for all times with the issue of Castro.
He shared with them a shooting was under design to implicate the Direccion General de Intelligencia as a criminal organization which was directed and sanctioned by Castro and his brother Raul to contain civil disobedience and the lethal action against the political enemies of the state. Ray Ray wanted the two men to be a part of the team of shooters. They would get the high-powered rifles with the super-scopes and would be placed above the traffic on a railroad trestle, an overpass; a roof... taught how to leave a tainted trail to the door of a conspiracy. They would be paid well to begin immediately at the Farm to be trained and there was to be a bonus upon the completion of a successful job.
Ray Ray did not mention any of the other members of the shooting team. Only that they were led by men with deep backgrounds in all forms of clandestine operations, respected for years of dedication and participation in outings and all dedicated to the prospect that Castro had to go and a Free Havana to flourish as in days of old.
He did not tell them Flynt or Wagner by name. He did not tell them who the target was or where the shooting would take place. They accepted that this was a moving target and they would be briefed when the final detail was known. The other thing that Ray Ray did not say was that they were going to be-asked to make certain they missed the target.
Michael Flynt's wife was not your run-of-the-mill puff piece left to run the Georgetown Brownstone, attend coffees and cocktails, smile and play footsies with local congressman, long since beyond their prime but with the potential to direct traffic or contract of a political nature.
On the contrary she was bright, witty and very pretty in an artsy way. She was unique in a crowd of Gucci’s, she designed her own label and most of the women sought the name of the designer. Mick was man enough to give her a wide berth, which often included a thorough denigration of the CIA and the ruthless government it served.
And these politically inflamed conversations carried over into the private conversations of the couple.
"Mick, the dearest man in my life, I wasn't denigrating what you did in Guatemala, and I admired you for your role, if not politically than in other ways. The fact that you left no bloody trail, I admire that." she said.
"Yes I try to be efficient and limit the violence." He said.
"Of course there would have been no need for an operation if Guatemala hadn't taken back all the land belonging to United Fruit Company." She suggested.
"Is that really the provocation?" he asked.
"I love the way you say efficient." She smiled.
Yes Mick was so clever to disguise the CIA's interest in Guatemala (or was it United Fruit) when Mick developed the strategy employed by the North Vietnamese to send propaganda over the radio transmission, broadcasting from Honduras with messages designed to place pressure on the leftist government and disrupt the daily lives of the people.
This was a broadcast from hell; the government of Guatemala could do no right. In the midst of the propaganda, a bomb was dropped from a single engine plane into the middle of a parade ground. The broadcast would have the citizens to believe an eminent invasion of fifty thousand troops with air cover would soon descend upon the cities like locust. The reports on the radio were so descriptive and believable that within two weeks the government fell without a shot.
A decade since and Mick moved on. The CIA put him in charge of developing corporations as advance mechanisms to gather intelligence for the planned operations in places like Yemen and Kurdistan.
During this period he discovered several CIA assets with important holdings in sensitive parts of the hemisphere. One of those involved United Fruit and there were banks, sugar, oil, coffee, cocoa and arms. A montage of holdings designed with