Raoul Ornelas listened to the ringing of the telephone on the other end, his anger and frustration mounting by the moment.

Seven.

Eight.

Nine.

On the tenth ring he slammed down the receiver, cursing under his breath. It was a gesture out of place with the man's normal sense of control, but he could feel the cool slipping, giving way to the bottled emotions that he felt inside.

He had been trying to reach Julio Rivera, his second-in-command, all morning, ever since the news reports had started coming in, and so far there had been no answer.

Frustration gave way to puzzlement and Ornelas frowned. It was not like Julio to be away from home throughout the morning hours; even when he spent the evening with a woman, Julio never slept over, preferring the security of home.

Healthy paranoia kept his second-in-command alive. And that same paranoia, multiplied by the tempo of current events, told Ornelas again that something must be wrong.

Beneath his anger now there was something else — an uneasiness that bordered on fear. It was uncustomary for the Cuban to feel anything but self-assurance, but on the other hand, he had a lot to worry about these days.

Too many strange and unexpected things were going on around Miami for a man to feel secure. Within the past twelve hours ominous bits and pieces of a grim mosaic had been casually revealed to him, and now he felt the very fabric of his world beginning to unravel around him.

Ornelas stopped himself, cutting off the train of thought before it could progress to its logical conclusion. The soldado knew that he would need his wits about him if he was to cope with the several riddles that the past half day had handed to him.

And a quick solution to those riddles might be vital. To completion of the plan he had been nurturing along for months... to his very survival, if it came down to that.

He needed answers in a hurry — but the worst part of it was that, so far, he was still uncertain of the questions.

First things first. There was the death — no, the assassination of Tommy Drake the previous night. Someone had entered Drake's estancia and murdered him, along with several of his hardmen, making off again without disturbing anything around the place, from all reports. No robbery, no vandalism — nothing.

That made it an assassination, by professionals. It also cut off Ornelas's supply of cocaine for the moment and placed him in the uncomfortable position of having to seek out new contacts. He could handle it, but it was just another inconvenience, something else to occupy his mind at the very moment when concentration was so vital.

He wondered if the hit on Drake could be related to the near miss on John Hannon. Somehow, Drake's best men had failed to take the nosy private eye, and they had gotten themselves killed in the bargain. Ornelas had no faith in mere coincidence. He realized that the events were probably related, but beyond that realization he could not proceed. Without some leads, at least a clue to the identity of Drake's assassins...

No matter how it read, the failure to eliminate Hannon left some dangerous loose ends. He would have to try and snip them off before they had a chance to multiply like roaches in the woodwork.

Toro's jailbreak, naturally, had been the worst news of the day — hell, of the year. The timing, on the eve of Ornelas's bold scheme, could not be automatically dismissed as chance. If there was some dark, guiding hand behind it...

Briefly he reflected on the string of violent incidents around Miami through the morning hours and early afternoon, all seemingly directed at the operations Drake and Phillip Sacco had their fingers in: drugs, gambling, women.

Raoul Ornelas had not survived so long on the fringes of the underground by trusting chance or letting others do his thinking for him. He was worried now, and with good reason. Something was afoot around Miami and right now he did not have a clue as to what might be going on.

Ignorance was no way to survive in war. And it was war that had taught him to survive. He stared at the phone as he recalled the past.

As a teenager he had fought for Castro against the animal Batista, battling to release his native Cuba from a tyranny that had oppressed her people for a generation. He had lost a brother in the fight and counted it a small price to be part of history.

He had survived to see the people's revolution twisted and transformed into something else, with the appearance of the Soviet "advisors" and Fidel's admission that he was, indeed, a secret Communist.

When exiles started fleeing from their homeland to the coast of Florida, Ornelas went with them, vowing that someday he would return and finish what he had started as a young guerrilla in the mountains.

He had joined the anti-Castro movement in Miami at a time when it was smiled on by the U.S. government. He felt betrayed by the movement he had risked his life for, and he sought a way to win revenge against his traitors. The CIA had helped him hone his martial skills, and at the same time they had taught him all the grim realities of power politics, of working with the Mafia to gain your end results, of using anyone and anything that might aid the cause.

Then tragedy struck the Ornelas family again. Raoul had lost another brother at the Bay of Pigs, cut down by Castro's gunners on the beach when American air support failed to arrive on schedule. He had seen the exile movement betrayed by so-called friends, the U.S. pulling back support and closing down the training camps in Florida and Louisiana, harassing the movement's leaders, opening relations, finally, with Fidel.

To Raoul Ornelas, the missile crisis, all the rest of it since 1961, was window dressing. He was learning quickly that the end result was all that mattered. Never mind the changing cloak of ideology that could be donned and then discarded in an instant, for convenience.

Power and wealth were the keys, and he was determined to secure them at any cost.

Ornelas served himself now, working free-lance for anyone who paid his price. Today, the price was brought by drugs and terrorism in the proper cause.

But it was tomorrow that worried him. A violent storm was clearly brewing in Miami and he could not tell which direction the wind was coming from. And now, somehow, Toro was on the loose again, perhaps already looking for him.

They had been friends once, Ornelas and Toro, back when both of them were young, idealistic soldados in the cause of Cuba libre. Somehow, Toro never quite outgrew naive idealism. He still believed in capitalismjustice for the people. He resisted all attempts to see the light. That made him an obstruction; one that had to be removed in order for Raoul Ornelas to advance himself.

Removal had been surprisingly easy. Toro's trust, his sense of honor and loyalty, worked against him in the end. He refused to see that there were those around him who would betray him if the price was right.

Ornelas had balked at killing Toro. It was a tactical mistake that Ornelas now believed he would soon regret. At the time it had seemed enough to frame Toro, pack him off to prison. By the time he won release, Ornelas would have Toro's soldiers safely locked into Raoul's own private army. They would be seeing more action, making more money. And when — if — Toro won parole, he would be a forgotten man.

Except he was out right now, and suddenly, things were starting to go sour for Raoul Ornelas.

He felt himself becoming more and more agitated by the moment, trying desperately to keep control of his emotions, of his men. His very life, he knew, depended on his ability to lead, to fill his men with confidence and make them do his bidding gladly.