Castro's Bomb (18 page)

"Then what, Morton?"

"Then maybe we should move slowly towards Gitmo.
 
If our guys are going to come back, then that's a place where they'll likely go real early."

Romanski took a deep breath.
 
He was exhausted, which pissed him off since he hadn't done much except lie there while Morton patched him up.
 
"Sounds like you're reading my mind, Master Sergeant Morton.
 
Let me get some rest and we'll begin."

"And then I said, what the hell are you doing here, Miss Malone? And damned if she didn't scream and drop everything she had in her arms including that little commie rifle she was carrying.
 
Then I had to remind her who I was and then she came running like she was a little kid who'd just found her daddy and jumped into my arms.
 
Been a long time since a good-looking white girl hugged me,” Ward said solemnly.

"Been a long time since anybody hugged you," Groth retorted.

Andrew Ross turned to Cathy Malone and winked.
 
Cathy smiled weakly.
 
She was exhausted and emotionally drained.
 
She was safe and just wanted to go to sleep.
 

Ward had been one of her better pupils in the government sponsored education program.
 
She had heard the story of her rescue or deliverance by PFC Ward a dozen times already and it had only been a couple of hours since he'd found her by her apartment.
 
Ward had scared the poor girl out of her wits, although Ward cheerfully admitted he'd been just as surprised as she was. But he had never been scared, no sir.
 
Marines are never scared.

She was so disheveled and dirty that Andrew hadn't recognized her at first, and her face was badly bruised, almost like someone had punched her, and there was a nasty cut on her cheek that Sergeant Cullen had cleaned and bandaged.
 
It took a while before Ross realized he'd not only seen her several times on base, but that she was the young woman he'd been trying to find someone who could introduce him to.
 
Now they'd met, but under some very trying circumstances.
 
She seemed like she might be the kind of person he thought she was, but his original idea of asking her out to dinner and a movie was clearly down the crapper.
 
So much for making a good first impression, he thought.
 
At least she was as big a mess as he was, although she sure looked a lot cuter, bruises and bandages notwithstanding.

She was a welcome if not puzzling addition.
 
Andrew didn't know quite what to do with her.
 
Even if he wanted to, and he definitely didn’t, he couldn't abandon her.
 
First, she wasn't likely to leave.
 
The men he'd sent into the base to scavenge had returned with the information that POWs were being kept at the airbase at Guantanamo, while civilians were already being sent by train to Santiago where they would be moved by boat to Mexico and then to the United States.
 
Even if he wanted to, he couldn't send her through Cuban lines to find a civilian train that might no longer exist.
 
And, she was clearly terrified of the Cubans and he wondered why.
 
She would stay with them for as long as she wanted, but it represented another burden for him.

On the bright side, his scavengers had found the base strewn with useful goodies, the inevitable debris of battle.
 
Along with the heartily despised C and K ration packs, they'd picked up additional weapons and a quantity of ammunition.
 
They'd also found several of what Cathy had also brought with her - Russian built AK47 assault rifles and ammunition.
 
Andrew insisted that the men carry the AKs along with their own M1 Garands.
 
His marines might be few in number but now they could pack a lot of firepower.
 
Sergeant Cullen approved heartily, which shut up any complaints.
 
After all, if things got really scary, they could lighten their load by dumping the additional stuff.

Sergeant Cullen suggested caching supplies at various spots in case they had to abandon their base camp which was now in a grove a couple of miles north of the base.
 
Andrew thought it was an outstanding idea.
 

Andrew's scavengers, they preferred to be called looters, reported that the battle had not all been one-sided.
 
They found several burned out Russian made T34 tanks and BTR60 armored personnel carriers.
 
One BTR60 contained the corpses of a dozen Cubans who'd burned to death.
 
Andrew wondered what happened to that truck they'd sprayed with gunfire.
 
Had the driver reached his destination only to find a cargo of dead bodies?
 
What a lovely thought.

Cullen was playing with an AK.
 
He said it was named for some guy named Kalashnikov.
 
"Not a bad weapon, lieutenant, you can fire it either semi or full automatic.
 
Someday we'll have something like this.
 
For whatever it's worth, I read in Mechanics Illustrated that Armalite has offered the government an automatic weapon somewhat like this, and we're considering it."

Andrew yawned.
 
Both the M1 Garand and the M1 carbine, which was what he carried, were semi-automatic only.
 
This meant one shot fired for each trigger pull.
 
A full automatic was a nice option, especially for close range shooting.
 
"The Pentagon'll reject it.
 
If they didn't invent it, they'll decide it can't be worth anything."

Cullen laughed.
 
"Ain't that the truth?"

Andrew was tired, but suddenly realized what he should be doing.
 
Damn it to hell, had he shut down his brain when the shooting started?
 
"Anybody here got a transistor radio, preferably one that has batteries and actually works?"

Three hands went up.
 
Of course people took creature comforts with them on guard duty and they grinned sheepishly.
 
All three radios ran on batteries.
 
PFC Anders had one that included an electric cord if they could find a plug.
 
Eagerly, they turned one on.
 
At first, they couldn't pick up anything other than static and a small local station which was, of course, broadcasting in Spanish.

"Anybody understand this crap?" Cullen asked.
 
Hollis said that he did a little, but the guy was speaking too fast to really understand.
 
"I'll bet it's just propaganda anyhow, sergeant."

Anders climbed a tree with a wire that extended the antenna.
 
After a bit of fiddling, a clear voice came over the air.
 
All of them grinned at each other like idiots.

It was a radio station in Miami and the voice was speaking English.

General Taylor handed the president a manila folder.
 
His expression was grim.
 
"These are the latest casualty reports, sir."

Kennedy took the folder hesitantly and with a sense of dread.
 
He was exhausted.
 
It was almost midnight.
 
In a few minutes it would be the day after Christmas, traditionally the day when people went in droves to the stores to return unwanted presents.
 
He opened it and began to read.
 
Among the military, three hundred and forty-eight known dead, six hundred and seventy-four wounded, about a third of them seriously.
 
Thirty six known civilian dead and another twenty wounded, and all at Gitmo.
 

Seventy-five of the dead had been on the Wallace, along with twenty-four wounded, many of them badly burned.
 
Twenty others were missing and presumed dead, including the destroyer's skipper.
 
Approximately a hundred other military personnel were missing, many of them considered killed in the shooting down of three C47s during Roman Force's abortive attack.

And lastly, more than twenty-two hundred sailors and marines had been taken prisoner.
 
According to representatives of the Swiss Embassy who had finally cancelled their holiday and gone to work, the prisoners would soon be taken to a compound rapidly being thrown together outside Santiago, on the southeastern coast of Cuba.
 
Nobody missed the irony that Santiago was the sight of most of the fighting during the Spanish-American War of 1898.
 
The conclusion of that short war had resulted in the U.S. getting and keeping the controversial base at Guantanamo Bay.

Six hundred civilians had either escaped by boat or had been interned by the Cubans.
 
The civilian internees were on their way from Santiago to Havana where they would be flown to Mexico on neutral planes.
 
The number of civilians missing was unknown at this time.

Kennedy shook his head.
 
"Explain the civilian casualties, please."

"Nothing much to explain, sir," responded Taylor.
 
"The Cubans were good with the accuracy of their guns, but a long ways from perfect.
 
Several artillery rounds, perhaps even entire barrages, landed in civilian residential areas by mistake.
 
I rather don't think it was intentional, it's just that war is hell."

"So I've heard," Kennedy said drily.
 
Earlier he'd been recalling his own time as a PT commander in World War II.
 
"And how good are these figures?"

Taylor shrugged.
 
"They’re definitely not final, sir.
 
And the figures from Guantanamo come from Major Hartford through the Cubans.
 
The missing from Roman Force come from the commanding general at Fort Benning, and the civilian numbers are just an estimate.
 
We simply don't know how many people were on the base at the time of the attack.
 
Unlike military personnel, the civilians were free to come and go, and we hope to God most of them show up on the mainland during the next few days."

"And just what the devil is this ‘Roman Force,’ general?"

Taylor was confused.
 
"This was the airborne relief assault that you authorized on, uh, the twenty-fourth."

Kennedy shook his head.
 
He had no such recollection.
 
"General Taylor, I dimly recall telling this General Bunning to look into it, but I did not think I gave him the signal to go ahead."
 
      

"It's Bunting, sir, and I have spoken with him and he feels that he was given explicit direction to go ahead.
 
In all candor, sir, General Bunting is, shall we say, extremely aggressive, and might have presumed more from your words then you intended."

Kennedy sighed.
 
Hadn't someone written about the ‘fog of war’ and how it led to confusion and well-intended mistakes?
 

"Let it go," he said.
 
Maybe later he would investigate it further and crucify the son of a bitch, but not now. "Any chance any of our paratroops are alive?"

"It's possible, even likely," Taylor said.
 
"Other planes reported seeing some chutes open."

"Good new, I guess.
 
Now, what about the other missing military personnel from the base?"

"Again, we simply don't know.
 
Some of them could be killed, while others could be out there unhurt and in a position to help us, which is why I was going to suggest that we don't list the names or even the numbers of missing right now.
 
If the Cubans realize there might be American military personnel wandering around outside the base, they'll start to look for them and that could be dangerous for our boys."

Kennedy agreed.
 
"We'll hold off on that.
 
In fact, we'll tell the press there aren't any missing.
 
That should confuse the hell out of everyone."
 
He put the folder on his desk.
 
"Now, general, please tell me our military responses are being successful."

Taylor winced.
 
"I wish I could, Mr. President, but I can't.
 
The Cubans have scattered and disbursed their men and equipment with astonishing speed and skill.
 
The only sizeable numbers of Cuban soldiers our pilots can see are those guarding our POWs, and we're certainly not going to fire on them.
 
We have shot down a couple of their MiGs and we think we destroyed a handful of their armored vehicles along with a number of trucks, but certainly nothing like what we'd hoped.
 
We've lost three more planes to ground fire and their SAM-2 surface to air missiles and that has been an unpleasant surprise.
 
Maybe things will be better when we get more planes in the area, as well as when our reconnaissance planes get their photos developed but likely not. This General Ortega of theirs did a helluva job of planning this thing."

Kennedy stood and Taylor started to as well. The president waved him and the others back to their seats.
 
He just wanted to stand, to walk, to think as well as straighten out the kink in his back.
 

"All right," he said. "How about plans for attacking Cuba?
 
How are they progressing?"

"We will have several options for you tomorrow afternoon and I would suggest we discuss them in light of what our goals might be."

Yes, Kennedy thought, our goals.
 
What the hell are our goals?
 
"Are any of the options, good ones, General Taylor?"