Castro's Bomb (32 page)

Ward's jaw dropped, "Oh, Christ."

When they were about a half mile away from where Ward thought the truck was, they heard the distant pop-pop sounds of gunfire.
 
When they got much closer, they were able to differentiate between the sounds of an M1 Garand and other, different, weapons, but they didn't hear the lethal chatter of AK47s.
 

The two marines crawled to the top of a low hill.
 
The truck was a quarter mile away and more than a dozen Cuban soldiers were between them and the truck and were crawling towards it.
 
The Cubans had divided into two groups.
 
One was advancing on the truck and the other was providing covering fire.
 
The Cubans were militia and carried what appeared to be old bolt-action rifles.
 
Nor did they seem to be firing with any kind of accuracy.
 
Thank God for small favors, Cullen thought.
 
He and Ward slid over the crest and ducked behind a curve in the earth.
 
They were behind the Cubans and he was confident they could not be seen.

"Ward, you a good shot?"

"I'm a marine, gunny."

"Don't be a smartass.
 
Can you start picking off those Cubans?"

"Yes."

"Good.
 
So can I.
 
Now, start killing them from the left and I'll begin from the right."

The Cubans were about two hundred yards away, well within killing range for good shooters using their own weapons and firing from a stable, prone position.

The two marines aimed and fired, slowly, steadily, and accurately.
 
Cubans spun and dropped.
 
Not every shot hit but enough did.
 
Nor did the Cubans immediately realize what was happening.
 
They were fixated on overwhelming whoever was by the truck with numbers and gunfire.
 
Very quickly a half dozen Cubans either lay still or writhed on the ground.

The remaining Cubans now realized their peril, wheeled, and fired on the two marines but without effect.
 
Cullen and Ward were almost invisible.

A Cuban soldier gestured and the survivors began to break off.
 
Ward and Cullen continued to shoot as did whoever was behind the truck and another pair of Cubans fell lifeless, including the one who'd ordered them to pull back.
 
Always knock off the leaders, Cullen thought.
 
When a couple of Cubans picked up wounded comrades, Cullen told Ward to hold off.
 
The fight was over.

A few minutes later, the remaining Cubans sped off in a couple of trucks that they'd hidden off the road.
 

"I told you it was an ambush," Cullen said coldly.
 
"Let's go see about Hollis and Anders."

Hollis was fine.
 
Shaken and scratched, but otherwise okay.
 
Anders was not so fortunate.
 
He had a sucking gunshot wound in his chest and it was going to kill him since it had clearly ripped through a lung.
 
But he's not going to die here, Cullen thought.
 
He ordered Hollis and Ward to carry the wounded marine back to the camp.
 
Even if he'd been killed, he wasn't going to lie by the truck like the dead Cubans were.
 
There were five Cuban bodies and he lifted what weapons and supplies he thought would be useful.
 

Cullen did a quick check of the crates that had been so enticing to Hollis and Anders.
 
Empty.
 
His men had been conned, and one of them was going to die because of it.
 
He felt like strangling both of them, or at least Hollis.
 
He was always the leader of the two.

Of course, he wouldn't strangle anybody.
 
Even if he really wanted to, it wasn't a good idea.
 
They were so few and now they'd lost one of the few.
 
He'd seen the stricken look on Hollis's face.
 
The young man would take a long time getting over his horrible mistake.
 
Maybe never.
 
Hollis and Anders were buddies.

Whoever said War is Hell was absolutely right, he thought.
 
Dammit to hell.

Cathy and the others did what they could for Anders, which was not much at all.
 
A skilled surgical team in a first rate hospital might have been able to save him, but not a handful of people with nothing better than a rough knowledge of first aid and enough morphine to kill the pain.
 
They pumped Anders full of morphine until he stopped moaniing.

Hollis kept sobbing how sorry he was and before he drifted off, Anders seemed to understand.
 
In a moment of lucidity, he smiled and told Hollis that it was okay, that no one had stuck a hook in his ass and dragged him out to that truck.
 
He had gone of his own will because he thought it was a good idea.

"Sometimes the goose lays a golden egg and sometimes she shits all over you," Anders actually managed to say before lapsing into unconsciousness.
 
A few moments later, he died.

Ross shook his head.
 
Anders never swore.
 
"That was the morphine speaking.
 
We will never tell his family those were his last words."
 
Cathy was sobbing and he put his hand on her shoulder.
 
He wondered if she'd ever seen violent death before this tragic Christmas and the days that had followed.
 
Probably not.
 
They'd all had enough since then.
 

"We bury him and we get the hell out of here." Ross added.

There was no disagreement.
 
While their current hideout was well away from the site of the skirmish, the place would be crawling with Cuban soldiers looking for whoever had shot up their ambush.
 
Andrew took Anders' dog tags and put them with the others.
 
At least he knew Anders.
 
It wasn't like the anonymity of the men who'd lost their lives at the bunker in what seemed an eternity ago.

He slowly realized a great truth.
 
It was better not to know the men he would be sending into battle.
 
It hurt too much.

Humberto Cordero was a general and it pleased him.
 
It also pleased him that his earlier feelings of inadequacy were largely under control, although, he admitted to himself, not that far from the surface.

The prison housing the Americans was functioning as well as a prison camp full of hostile enemy soldiers could.
 
The Americans had been docile.
 
There'd been no mutinies, no uprisings, and, while he suspected the inmates in a series of thefts in Santiago, he couldn't prove anything.
 
In particular, how the hell had any prisoners managed to get out of the camp and back?
 
Nor was he going to organize a sweep of the camp, not with the Red Cross contingent encamped almost alongside the prison.
 
The Americans would doubtless resist and there would be bloodshed.
 
It was frustrating.

Nor did Cordero mind that the Yankees called the camp Disneyland, and had tagged him as Donald Duck.
 
In a way, it amused him, and, if it made the prisoners happy and kept them docile, no one was harmed.

A radio was operating in the camp and that bothered Cordero a little, but there wasn't much the prisoners could do besides talk with the mainland and there was little harm in that.
 
They'd doubtless passed on information regarding military units in the area, but he was confident the yanquis didn't know all that much.

Besides, as a general, Cordero had more important things to do than worry about the internal workings of the camp.
 
That was why he had a staff.
 
He was in nominal command of the five thousand man militia division that was scattered throughout and around the city of Santiago.
 
He did not presume to give specific direction to the more senior general in actual command, not that it would have mattered.
 
That worthy had been a union organizer until a few months ago and knew as much about running an infantry division as Cordero knew about brain surgery.

Another niggling problem was with acting sergeant Carlos Gomez who sat nervously in front of him.
 
General Ortega was in overall command of the defenses in Guantanamo and eastern Cuba and had decreed that Gomez should report directly to Cordero.
 

"Tell me, how many men did you lose?"

Gomez was sweating profusely.
 
"Five dead and three wounded."

"And how did that happen, sergeant?"

"We were ambushed and nearly overwhelmed by a much larger American force.
 
There aren't half a dozen marines out there, general, there’s at least a platoon of them.
 
And they are heavily armed.
 
My men and I fought hard and well.
 
It wasn't our fault."

Of course not, Cordero thought.
 
It never is the fault of slime like you.
 
He'd had one of his enlisted men talk casually with the others in Gomez's command and knew the truth.
 
They'd laid an ambush and been ambushed instead.
 
Only it wasn't by a large number of Americans; it was generally agreed that only two or three at most had attacked them from the rear and with such devastating results while Gomez's men had at most two marines pinned down by the truck.
 

Cordero sighed.
 
"Now I suppose you want more men and I suppose you want to command them?"

"Indeed, my general.
 
Give me a hundred soldiers and make me a captain and I guaranty that we will wipe out the nest of American snakes."

Cordero wondered how Gomez would accomplish that without getting anywhere near the action.
 
His informants had told him that Cordero hadn't been with five miles of the skirmish.
 
Instead, he had been with a local whore.
 
Still, something had to be done.

"Two squads," Cordero said.
 
"That will make good your losses and give you more men by half.
 
I think your estimates of the number of Americans might be off.
 
In fact, I think you are a fucking liar.
 
You will make do with what you will get."

Gomez rose and saluted, "Of course, general."
 

The insult rolled right off Gomez's back.
 
He was thrilled that he was going to keep his command and his rank, however temporary.
 
If the Americans would only hold off on their threatened invasion, he would be able to amass a goodly amount of money, jewels, and other items of opportunity that he could use when he got out of Cuba.

Geoffrey Franklyn was most pissed.
 
He was mad as hell and he was going to do something about it.
 
He'd spent thirty years in the State Department and considered it more of an honorable vocation than a career.
 
He was proud to have risen to the position deputy assistant director.
 
He very strongly felt that he was being abused.
 
Accepting a transfer to Albania was totally out of the question as was the tongue lashing he'd received directly from Secretary of State Dean Rusk.

First, Albania was a sewer of a country, and so backward that it made tribal enclaves in deepest Africa seem palatial and sophisticated in comparison.
 
He was not going to Albania.
 
He had more than enough time to retire and qualify for a pension, which he really didn't need since he'd inherited a goodly amount from his mother.
 
What he didn't like was being forced out for doing his job in the best manner possible.

Second, what in God's name had he done?
 
Relations between nations were built on honor and truth, not lies and deceptions, and that was what he had tried to prevent.
 
Canada was a friend and neighbor and deserved to be taken into our trust.
 
Therefore, telling his good friend at the Canadian Embassy that there were no Canadian religious groups lost in Cuba and, instead, that the so-called missionaries were marines wandering around and doubtless causing ill-will among the people of Cuba.
 
He'd been to Cuba and thought the people were warm and gentle.
 
That he'd never left Havana and that several of the warm and gentle people he'd found were very young prostitutes didn't concern him.
 
Franklyn was deeply sympathetic to Fidel Castro and his plans for wealth distribution.
 
He did not see the irony in his being wealthy and possibly a target for wealth distribution in a communist state.

Further, Geoffrey Franklyn did not like marines.
 
Everyone he'd met had been smug and superior, especially those he'd met while on embassy duty in other countries.
 
They were large and obnoxious cretins who deserved to be put in their place.
 
The battle for Guantanamo was over.
 
Therefore, why on earth didn't that lost group just surrender and get it over with?
 
That would be the honorable thing to do, but the marines, he thought, were sadly lacking in honor.
 
The whole Guantanamo Bay situation should be resolved by the United Nations, which he considered the hope of the future.
 
He considered it wrong that the United States had a base in a foreign country when that country didn't want us there in the first place.