Castro's Bomb (10 page)

Andrew got on the radio and asked for clarification of his duties.
 
He was told that, in the event of an attack in overwhelming force, he was to try and delay them, and then scoot for the rear.
 
Delay them?
 
With twenty men and a machine gun?
 
Jesus H. Christ.

"Gunny, if the bad guys come down that road in force, we don't stand a snowball's chance in hell of stopping them or even delaying them for more than a very short time, as in a minute or two at most.
 
If they come, I propose that we report the attack, annoy them for a few seconds, and retreat to the fallback position."

Cullen nodded.
 
"Then you agree that they know we're here."

Andrew suddenly felt chilled.
 
The Cubans had the high ground and had to have been observing them.
 
"I believe they've been watching us and know everything about us, right down to how many of us wear jockeys and how many wear boxers."

Andrew tried to smile at the thought of Cuban spies checking out his underwear.
 
He was wearing jockeys.

"Saboteurs, my ass," bellowed Major Sam Hartford.
 
"I knew it!"

The phone call just received from the Pentagon said be alert for a major attack.
 
Several outposts had reported sounds of vehicles and tanks and that could mean only one thing.
 
The commies were coming.
 
Or were they?
 
Nobody would know for certain until they arrived with guns blazing.
 
They could simply be driving around for some reason or because they wished to aggravate Gitmo's garrison and keep them up and alert on Christmas.
 
These doubts meant that the base would have to wait to be hit and could not fire preemptively, even if they did see Cuban vehicles.
 
As long as the Cubans were behind their border they could do whatever they wanted.
 
That irked him.
 
Who the hell decided that war had to be played fair?

He dressed as quickly as he could and again cursed the fact that he had to wear regular shoes and not combat boots.
 
The shoes made the pain in his feet tolerable, while the boots would have killed him.

The jeep picked him up and drove him and a couple of other Marine officers to their assigned defensive position.
 
They aroused no interest from the literal handful of people out extremely early on a Christmas morning.
 

Hartford's duty station was in a bunker that would be used as a backup command center if the real one was knocked out.
 
The site was supposed to be a secret, even from the garrison, but he doubted there were very many secrets regarding Gitmo.
 
The bunker was built into an old maintenance building close by McCalla Field.
 
It had been sandbagged and set up during the previous crisis just two months earlier.
 
He wondered if the Cubans knew it existed and had it zeroed in.
 
What a comforting thought.

A dozen men were in the bunker, a captain, two lieutenants and a bunch of enlisted men.
 
They all looked at him with apprehension on their faces and he wondered if his reflected the same.

Hell, he was supposed to inspire confidence, not fear.
 
They were only lightly armed and the bunker was filled with communications gear.
 
They could talk to anyone on the base.
 
They could talk to the Pentagon if anyone was awake in that monstrous building.
 
Hell, they could talk to the President of the United States if they wanted to.
 
What they couldn't do was stop a major Cuban attack if one came.

Still, no one knew exactly what was going on.
 
Only the marine garrison had been alerted, not the Navy, and that was the right way to do it.
 
If it came to shooting, the marines were the best qualified to defend the base.
 
The sailors, he thought derisively, still slept snug in their bunks and clutched their teddy bears to their chests.
 
He stopped himself.
 
That was unfair.
 
A lot of sailors had been willing to fight the last time Gitmo was threatened two months ago.
 
If the threat was real, they'd show up, draw weapons, and do their best.
 

He looked into the Bay.
 
The destroyer anchored a half mile off shore looked like it too was sound asleep.
 
So what was going on?
 
No planes were taking off from either of the two airfields.
 
Nor were any of the few armored vehicles the Marines owned on the move out of the motor pool and on to defensive positions.
 
This was truly a half-assed alert.

He and his small command waited, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee.
 
After a while, the dark of night began to fade and there was the hint of dawn on the horizon.
 
In a little while they could think about going home.

Sirens began to wail.

Shit.
         

Chapter Five

Cathy Malone awoke with a foul headache and to the piercing wail of sirens.
 
What the heck was it?
 
Was something on fire?
 
She checked the clock on the dresser.
 
Four-fifteen.
 
There was the sound of distant thunder, then thunder that wasn't so distant and caused stuff on shelves to vibrate wildly like there was an earthquake.
 
It must be quite a storm, she thought groggily.

Alice pounded on the door and opened it.
 
Her eyes were wide with excitement.
 
"Something big is happening.
 
There are explosions over at the airfields.
 
I think something must've blown up.
 
Let's go take a look."

Cathy put a robe over her short cotton nightgown and ran outside where many of her neighbors had already begun to congregate.
 
Their apartment building was on a low hill overlooking the bay.
 
Below them was one airfield and across the bay was the other.
 
A destroyer was anchored in the middle.

A jet plane shrieked overhead, flying so low that Cathy and the others actually ducked or fell to the ground.
 
An explosion followed quickly, rocking them with its violence.
 
Behind them, windows shattered.

"That pilot's in a load of trouble," one woman said as she picked herself up.
 
It was Rachel Desmond.
 
She worked for some Marine major.

"I don't think so," her husband said softly.
 
He was another civilian worker, but one who'd retired from the navy and had seen action in World War II.
 
"That plane's Cuban.
 
We're under attack.
 
This is Pearl Harbor all over again."

Cathy was stunned.
 
She looked skyward and made out the silhouettes of other planes circling and diving over the airfields and saw others flying over the destroyer.

She grabbed Alice's arm.
 
"Let's get dressed and see just what the heck is going to happen.
 
I think we may be evacuated again and we'd better be dressed for it."
 

They had just turned to run back to the building when a massive explosion, followed by smoke and fire, erupted from the bay behind her.
 
"That was the destroyer," someone yelled.
 
Cathy turned.
 
Yes, it was the destroyer.
 
Flames were billowing from her rear.
 
Or stern, she thought as she recalled the correct terminology.
 
The destroyer appeared to be under way and moving slowly towards the ocean.
 
As she watched, more planes strafed and bombed the warship, but didn't appear to cause additional serious damage.

Finally, flashing pinpoints of light from the destroyer indicated that her anti-aircraft guns were working.
 
Her main battery opened up, sending larger shells into the sky where they exploded like fireworks.
 
Rachel Desmond's husband cheered.
 
"That's telling them," he exulted.

 
The destroyer was fighting back and that was reassuring.
 
But the flaming ship was clearly heading for open sea.
 
She was leaving them.

Cathy and Alice looked at each other.
 
Evacuation?
 
Maybe not this time.
 
Maybe it was too late?

"I think I see something," Lance Corporal Hollis said.
 
The road was still dark, although rays of light had begun to appear and make confusing shadows.
 
"You want me to go out there again, lieutenant?"

"No point," Ross said.
 
"If they are coming we'll know it soon enough."

"I think I can hear them," Sergeant Cullen said.

Andrew swallowed nervously.
 
Suddenly, there was the rumble of thunder coming from behind him.
 
Before he could say something to Cullen, there was the sound of shrieks in the air followed by sharper, but more savage, explosions.

"Oh Christ," muttered Cullen.
 
"The base is getting bombed and we're about to get hit."

Andrew started to order all men to their positions when he realized that everyone was up and ready and looking to him for leadership.
   

"Tank!" Hollis yelled.
 
"Damn, there's a whole bunch of them."

How many in a bunch, Andrew almost snapped, but thought better of it.
 
One or a hundred, it didn't matter.
 
They couldn't stop a thing with the weapons they had.
 
He ordered his radioman to inform on the situation.
 
He took a deep breath.
 
The tanks were visible.
 
There were three of them and they were followed by armored personnel carriers and trucks, and all were moving slowly but steadily down the road towards them.

And he had twenty men and an old machine gun to stop them.
 
Now he knew how Custer felt when he saw all those damned Indians.
 
He could see that the oncoming tanks were Russian T34s with 85mm guns.
 
They each had a four man crew and two 7.62 machine guns along with the main gun.
 
They weighed in at thirty-four tons and could do more than thirty miles per hour, which was all totally irrelevant considering that he had no way of stopping them.
 
He wondered if he could do thirty-five miles an hour if one of them was chasing him.
 

The T34s were relics of World War II where they were the best in the world and the mainstay of the Red Army.
 
Newer tanks were better, but the T34/85s were still damn good tanks, especially against what he could throw at them.
 
And what were his orders?
 
Try and delay them.
 
Yeah.
 
Wonderful.
 
But he would do as he was told.
 
Perhaps a few shots at them would cause them to think twice and turn back.
 
Yeah, and he was a brain surgeon.
 
Maybe they could throw rocks at the Cuban tanks.

For a crazy moment, Andrew considered asking for volunteers to run and throw grenades at their treads, or try to make some Molotov cocktails, but he decided he wasn't in the business of asking his men to commit suicide.
 
Instead, he made sure all his men were as safe as they could be inside the bunker.

"Sergeant Cullen.
 
We will let them get close, open fire and try to hit those trucks, not the tanks.
 
It would be a waste.
 
The road turns and we might have an angle shot with the .50.
 
We will not use rifles.
 
They would be useless and we will save our ammunition."

He'd already taken inventory and each man had a grand total of six clips for his rifle, while the .50 had only a couple of hundred rounds.
 
They could use it all up in a couple of minutes if they weren't careful.
 
But then, what was the point of saving it?

"I don't think we can stop them," Ross added, stating the obvious, "but we have to at least give it a try.
 
Then we will go to our fallback position and see what else we can do."

Light flickered from the lead tank and, an instant later, machine gun shells splattered against the concrete wall of the bunker.
 
Some made it into the firing slits and one man screamed, hopefully just in fear.
 
The tank's 85mm cannon opened fire.
 
The shell slammed into the ground just in front of the bunker.
 
The concussion staggered Andrew, throwing him across the bunker.

Andrew lurched to his feet.
 
He ordered the machine gun to fire and watched as tracers reached out for a handful of trucks that were visible because of the turning road.
 
He grunted in satisfaction as one of the trucks seemed to stagger and stop.
 
The gunner, Hollis, skillfully guided his weapon and the bullets chewed into the cloth covered back part where Cuban soldiers should have been sitting.
 
Men were tumbling and jumping out of the two trucks behind the stalled one, which had begun to burn.
 
The Hollis' gun raked the men on the ground and the two remaining trucks.