Castro's Bomb (52 page)

The Cubans were only a hundred yards away.
 
They had already launched one night time attack that the paratroopers from the 101st Airborne Division had beaten off.
 
There had been a lot of the enemy and a number of them had made it to the American lines, resulting in hand to hand fighting, but they hadn't been well led and the attacks had not been well coordinated.
 
As a result the Cubans had taken heavy casualties.
 
Militia and not regulars was the assessment.
 
Like it really mattered, thought Lieutenant Mellor.
 
His unit had suffered heavy casualties as well and they were running out of ammunition.

Colonel Rutherford had gone around their shrinking perimeter and made sure everybody had at least some ammo.
 
Half their number were either dead or wounded or missing from the jump.
 
Along with a shortage of ammo, they lacked medical supplies and food.
 
Food they could do without for a while and there was enough water, but it was demoralizing to be unable to help the wounded.
 
Most of them tried to be stoic despite some terrible wounds, but many were unable to hold back their cries of pain.

Airdrops and re-supply by helicopter had not worked out very well.
 
They'd gotten some of the packages but most of them had fallen outside the perimeter and been gathered up by the Cubans who'd hollered in English, thanking Uncle Sam for his generosity.
 
The helicopter efforts had been even less successful.
 
They'd watched in horror as one was shot down while attempting to get close enough to dump supplies out a hatch.
 
Two badly burned crewmen had been rescued and were in the perimeter with the other wounded.

"Marine, you're gonna die!" came the yell from the disturbingly close by Cuban positions.

"We're airborne, you asshole," an American yelled back.

"Doesn't matter, asshole.
 
Airborne asshole or marine asshole, you're all going to die!"

Mellor shifted over as Rutherford scrunched in beside him.
 
"Speaks really good English, doesn't he, lieutenant?"

"Here they come again!"

A horde of Cuban soldiers emerged from their shallow holes and ran towards the Americans, firing wildly from the hip.
 
Bullets whizzed by, most going wildly into the sky but some smacking into the earth and shrubs that were the paratrooper's cover.
 
The Americans fired back, more slowly and deliberately then the Cubans and with deadly effect.
 
Screams of pain and fear came from all around.
 

"Grenade!"

Mellor saw the grenade land on the ground by a group of Americans who stared in horrified disbelief.
 
A soldier jumped on it and it went off.
 
His body lifted slightly and then settled limply on the ground.
   

The Cubans were dying in droves but still came on.
 
Now only yards away, Mellor and the others could hardly miss.
 
Someone hit him and he tumbled back.
 
A Cuban soldier was on top of him, yelling something, and trying to gouge Mellor's eyes out.

Mellor punched the man in the face, but he wouldn't get off.
 
Mellor kneed the man in the genitals, grabbed them, and squeezed with all his strength.
 
The Cuban writhed and fell aside.
 
Mellor grabbed his bayonet and jammed it into the man's chest.
 
The Cuban's body spasmed and then lay limp.
 

Mellor grabbed his carbine.
 
The Cubans were retreating.
 
Colonel Rutherford was yelling for people to stop firing and conserve their ammo.
 
The cries of ‘medic’ filled the air.
 
More of their small force had fallen.
 
The Cubans were gone, but only for the moment.

A group of soldiers stood over the one who'd sacrificed himself by falling on the grenade.
 
Mellor pushed his way through them and stared at the terrible thing on the ground.
 

"Aw, Christ," he said.
 
It was his buddy, Santini.
 
The exploding grenade had scooped out his chest and intestines like a giant spoon had worked on him.
 
He must have died instantly.
 
At least they all hoped he had.
 

Somebody said he'd get a medal, maybe even the big one, the Medal of Honor.
 
Of course they had to get out of their current fix for that to happen.
 
Dead men couldn't write up citations for other dead men. Mellor wondered how many true heroes had died in wars and battles past, and nobody knew about them?

He stripped some ammo from a wounded man.
 
Now he had two clips for his carbine and one for his .45 automatic.
 
With a little luck he had enough firepower to fight maybe a minute.
 
He checked with the rest of his men and found them all in the same situation.

Rutherford arrived.
 
There was blood from a cut on his head.
 
It had run down his face and was beginning to dry a ghastly black.
 
He had made an inventory of their manpower and firepower, and both were lacking.

"Any idea what's going to happen next, sir?" Mellor asked.
 
"They attack again and we're all screwed."

Rutherford shrugged.
 
He had no idea what was going to happen.
 
The Cubans had launched massive attacks that had been beaten off with heavy losses on both sides.
 
The Cubans had the advantage of numbers, while the small airborne force was being whittled down to nothing.
 

The colonel had the feeling that the average Cuban soldier didn't want to face the men and guns of the 101st, and who could blame them.
 
But the Cubans were now so close to the American positions that any assistance from the many American planes circling the area was too dangerous for the airborne forces to even contemplate.
 
Nobody wanted to run the risk of getting torched by their own napalm.

"Just curious, colonel, have they asked us to surrender?"

"Yeah, and we declined the honor."

Mellor managed a wan smile.
 
"You didn't happen to say ‘nuts’ did you, sir?"

Rutherford chuckled.
 
Nuts had been the legendary response of the 101st's General Tony McAuliffe when called upon to surrender by the Germans during the siege of Bastogne during World War II's Battle of the Bulge.

"I gave it serious thought, lieutenant, but I let the opportunity pass."

However, Rutherford thought, he might have to reconsider the honor unless something happened and soon.
 

General Juan Ortega wanted to be outside in the sunlight or moonlight, whichever was appropriate.
 
He'd lost track of time.
 
Regardless, he wanted to be above ground in the clean air and leading his men.
 
Not necessarily from up front, of course, that would have been foolish.
 
Generals did not take risks that would get them killed and get their plans disrupted.
 
A decapitated army could quickly degenerate into a mob.
 
But he did want to see and be seen.
 
He did not want his men to think he was a kind of troglodyte, hiding in a cave.
 
He chuckled.
 
How many of his men even knew what a troglodyte was?

But the bunker was the nerve center of his operations, and he could not yet leave it.
 
This was where all his communications came and went, through cables and wires buried deep underground and from well hidden antennae located throughout Santiago and wired to the bunker.

Ortega was not displeased with the way the fighting was evolving.
 
Despite the pasting on the coast that his men had taken, he still had six divisions in blocking positions to slow or even halt the American advance.
 
Two additional divisions waited in the south by Guantanamo and two more sat in reserve.
 
They would enter combat if his defensive line was penetrated or if the marines who were on ships off the coast finally landed.
 
Since the Americans could land anywhere, his troops had to maintain a high degree of flexibility.
 
As he had carefully explained to Castro through Allessandro, he could not defend everything, no matter the size of his army.
 
The Americans could and would land at a time and place of their choosing.

There would be no more mobs of women trying to overwhelm unsuspecting Americans.
 
It had worked once, but it was too dangerous a place for Cuban women.
 
The fighting was too intense and shells were too indiscriminate.
 
Still, it had been humorous to see the American government's reaction.

Castro might not be as pleased as his messages said, but Ortega was.
 
He had read so much about the D-Day landings in France in World War II and fully understood the German dilemma that led to the Nazi's defeat in that battle.
 
Hitler's generals had argued over whether it was better to fight the Americans on the beaches, Rommel's idea, or wait for them to land and then attack with overwhelming force from positions inland, von Runstedt's idea.

In Ortega's opinion, both had been proven wrong.
 
Rommel's beach defenses ultimately crumpled under the American onslaught and von Runstedt's inland reinforcements could not make it to the battle because of American overwhelming superiority in the air.

The situation confronting Cuba was almost identical to that confronting the Germans in 1944, a point which the Castro brothers and others in Havana did not seem to understand.
 
Something else had to be done.
 
Castro's personal representative, the oily Dominico Allessandro had virtually threatened Ortega with arrest for not hurling his army at the Americans.
 
Ortega said he’d consider it, but only if Allessandro would lead the attack from the front.
 
That had silenced Castro’s messenger.
 
Ortega had made a mortal enemy, but no longer cared. As Ortega saw it, the only possible solution was to wait inland for the Americans to come to him, to attack Cuban defenses, and suffer heavy casualties for their efforts.
 
It was how the Japanese had fought the Americans in the Pacific, especially at Okinawa in the spring of 1945.
 
If the Castro brothers wanted to defend the beaches, they were welcome to try.
 

Ortega was well aware that the defenders of Okinawa had died to almost the last man and he wanted no part of that.
 
He no longer had any illusions about being able to stop the Americans from re-taking Guantanamo if they truly wanted to, and that saddened him deeply.
 
He really hadn't thought that the Americans would attack in such force.
 
But he and his army would fight and bleed the Americans and maybe, just maybe, the Americans would decide that liberating Guantanamo just wasn't worth the price.
 
A negotiated settlement, not his army’s death in battle, was now his goal.
 
He hoped it was Castro’s as well.

Not for the first time he thanked the United States Army for furthering his military education, and at the expense of the American taxpayer.

Enough.
 
Ortega needed to stretch his legs and suck in some air.
 
The war would take care of itself for a few minutes.
 
He left his desk and went down the tunnel, startling a couple of enlisted men.
 
He greeted them cheerfully.
 
They were goofing off and who could blame them.

Finally.
 
He was outside and the warm sun played upon him, rejuvenating him.
 
Several Cuban soldiers waved to him and he waved back.
 
They were confident in his abilities to stop the Americans, therefore, he must not disappoint them.

Now if only Castro would stop calling with suggestions and Allessandro would go away, and if he could figure just what the hell Guevara and Sergeant Gomez were doing with that damned nuke.

Sergeant Gomez and Che Guevara glared at each other with undisguised contempt.
 
Che had quickly realized that the unkempt sergeant was a slacker and a thief and not the outstanding soldier Ortega had told him.
 
He wondered if Ortega had known that and that assigning Gomez to help him was some kind of a mad joke.
 
Or was Ortega unaware of Gomez's real talents, which consisted of stealing and raping?
 
When he'd arrived at Gomez's camp, Guevara had found several very young girls, some of them barely in their teens, beaten, bound and naked.
 
He'd freed them, thus earning anger from Gomez and his men who obviously thought they were entitled to keep them as playthings.
 
Che felt that Ortega would have some explaining to do when they next met.

Even worse, if that was possible, Gomez had only a dozen men left.
 
The disgusting sergeant had tried to explain that the others had been casualties in valiant attempts to find American guerillas operating behind Cuban lines.
 
Guevara believed none of it.
 
A couple may have become casualties, but comments made by others led him to believe that the vast number of the missing had departed in disgust at what Gomez was attempting to do, which was plunder the entire province for his own benefit.
 
One had hinted that Gomez was planning to leave the country with everything he could steal and carry away.