Castro's Bomb (26 page)

Ortega forced himself to smile.
 
"If I told you, it wouldn't be a secret would it?
 
What is the saying – three can keep a secret if two are dead?"

But Ortega had heard the speech and picked up other thinly veiled references from Raul and Che, in addition to what was mentioned in Fidel's speech.
 
What the devil were those people in Havana up to this time?

Andrei Sokolov, once honored to be a major in the rocket forces of the army of the Soviet Union, and an officer in the proud Rocket Regiment stationed near Havana, paced and waited for his contact to show himself.

He had flown from Havana to Mexico City in a plane filled with American wounded.
 
He had been horrified by the extent of the damage to their bodies.
 
Some were blind and others were amputees.
 
The ones who were conscious had stared at him curiously but made no attempt at conversation.
 
Why should they?
 
He was dressed as a civilian.
 
Sokolov had been impressed by their inner strength and stoicism.
 

Once in Mexico, he had changed into a different set of civilian clothes, bought a cheap old car and driven north.
 
At the border between Mexico and Brownsville, Texas, he'd seen the increased surveillance brought about by the conflict between the U.S. and Cuba and been momentarily stalled.
 
He couldn't pass himself as an American and didn't want to tell everything to an American border guard who might, after all, be as corrupt and inept as they were in the Soviet empire.
 
He heard the Americans weren't corrupt, but who knew for certain?

But that was the bad news.
 
He drove a few dozen miles west, parked the car, which was rattling and dying, and simply walked across the Rio Grande with his shoes tied together and looped over his neck.
 
He barely got his feet wet.
 
Americans derisively called Mexicans who crossed illegally “wetbacks,” but no one was getting his back wet that day.

He’d put on his shoes and walked into Brownsville trying to exude a sense of confidence he didn't feel.
 
There had to be eyes staring at him.
 
It couldn't be that easy to cross into the United States, could it?
 
And where were the secret police?
 
He’d been trained to spot them, but could see nothing to indicate their presence.
 
Wasn't anybody watching the people?
 
What kind of country was this?
 
He then thought that maybe the Americans were really good at covert surveillance and that did not make him feel better. From Brownsville he took a Greyhound Bus to New Orleans and a plane to Washington National Airport where he'd looked out the window and seen the U.S. Capitol and White House displayed below him as the plane banked to land.
 
He'd again been amazed at just how easy it had been to get into the United States, and how vulnerable that country was to determined invaders.
 
No commercial plane would be allowed anywhere close to the Kremlin.
 
He shuddered.
 
This was now his new country.
 
If they couldn't protect their own borders, just how the devil were they going to protect him from the clutches of the KGB?
 
He wondered if he should have bluffed out General Pliyev and stayed in Cuba, but quickly decided that was not a rational option.
 
For better or worse, he was in the United States and was going to remain there for a very long time, assuming, of course, that he wasn’t killed.

Sokolov looked around, fearfully expecting to see, not his American contact, but Georgi Golikov, the chief of Soviet intelligence in Washington, D.C.
 
He didn't know if Golikov was KGB or not and didn't care.
 
He'd met Golikov once and thought that Golikov would be able to identify him.
 
Sokolov presumed that he was now a very wanted man with a price on his head and that his photo was on display at every Soviet embassy and legation in the world, and most particularly those in the United States.
 

He was alone in a crowd by the Lincoln Memorial and the giant statue seemed to be staring balefully down on him.
 
He slowly realized that several muscular young men in suits had loosely surrounded him.
 
They were observing but making no overt move toward him.
 
Despite the chill in the air, he was sweating.
 
He began to shiver and his hand shook.
 
If they were KGB, would they risk kidnapping him in such a crowd?
 
Why not?
 
They could have a car pull up and push him in it before any of the tourists around him had a chance to even take a picture or even wonder what they'd just seen.

Or would they just take him out right here and now?
 
A casual brush-by and a quick jab with a poison dart and he'd be dead from an apparent heart attack in a few seconds.
 
The KGB was good at those things.
 
He began to whimper and a couple of people turned and looked at him.
 
He wondered just why the hell he'd ever given that information to the Americans, and he hated General Pliyev for playing him like the fool he now knew he was.

Someone was staring at him from across the plaza.
 
Was that Golikov?
 
Mother of God, it was and there were two other Russians with him.
 
Had they recognized him?
 
He was wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap that said Washington Senators, whatever they were.
 
He'd just bought it at a souvenir stand.
 
It was on sale because the team apparently no longer existed.
 
It was a lousy disguise but it was all he could come up with on extremely short notice.
 
Maybe he should have shoved cotton in his cheeks and a pillow under his shirt.
 

"Andrei?"

Sokolov nearly jumped out of his skin.
 
The face was familiar and the smile seemed genuine.
 
"Ulrich," Sokolov said, relief sweeping over him, "my good friend, Ulrich Fullmer.
 
It is so good to see you."

Kraeger smiled and shook the Russian's hand.
 
Sokolov pumped furiously and didn't seem to want to let go.
 
The three other CIA agents moved closer in a protective cluster.
 
Fifty yards away, Golikov shrugged and walked in the other direction.
 

"Good to see you, buddy," Kraeger said to Sokolov.
 
"You're phone call was quite a surprise.
 
Of course," he laughed as they steered the nervous Russian towards waiting cars, "I've been getting a lot of unexpected phone calls lately."
 

"What the hell is that?" Commander Sam Watkins asked.
 
A score of blips had just appeared on the Coast Guard Cutter Willow's radar.
 
The morning mist on the water hadn't quite burned off so the cutter's long range visibility was zilch.
 
So too was the reliability and accuracy of their radar which had been acting up, either going down altogether or a giving false reads.
 
Just once, he thought, it would be nice to have good equipment like the navy did.

"A bunch of small boats," was the answer.
 
"Or at least that's what the radar says, assuming the radar is working okay."

At least it’s finally up at all, Watkins thought and swore again.
 
Small boats headed for Cuba only twenty miles to the north of them meant only one thing: the damned refugees from Miami were going to invade Cuba and that was truly stupid on their part.
 
His orders were simple.
 
He was to try and keep the fools from making it to Cuba and getting killed.
 

A few minutes later and the mist had burned off.
 
The swarm of boats was plainly visible.
 
They were jammed with armed men who waved and cheered at the American warship which they assumed was going to protect them and even escort them to Cuba and revenge.

Watkins tried to raise them on the radio but they either didn't have radios or weren't responding.
 
When he was within hailing distance he slowed the ship to barely a crawl and had one of the Spanish speaking crewmen call out over the loudspeaker and tell the boaters to halt and return to Florida.
 
This was met with silence and the small boats continued.
 
They had, however, stopped waving at the Willow.
 
Several men on the boats gave them the finger.

"I think they understood," Lieutenant Harkins said.

Watkins was very uncomfortable.
 
He didn't like for one minute the fact that he was only a couple of minutes flying time from a country they were fighting.
 
He kept looking over his shoulder as if he could see the shoreline of Cuba.
 
A few miles closer and he could.
 
Still, he'd had his orders.
 
The president wanted every effort made to stop the Miami-based Cuban refugees from invading what they thought of as their homeland.
 
Jesus, he thought, this was as crazy as the Jews and the Arabs fighting over the Holy Land.
 
Then he realized that Cuba was their holy land.

Watkins orders were that the large and well armed Coast Guard vessel was to try and herd the boats and turn them back, like a Border Collie corralling sheep, and all without hitting them or hurting anyone.
 
Bullshit, he swore.
 
Dumbest idea he'd ever heard of.
 
You do not corral boats anymore than you can corral cats.

Nor were the Miami refugees cooperating.
 
The Willow got within a few feet of several before they backed off and even scraped the hulls of several others Cuban boats.
 
Now the swearing and screaming was becoming intense.

He heard shots and the sound of metal pinging against the hull.
 
"Godammit, they're shooting at us," Watkins yelled.
 
Everyone was ducking.

"Do we return fire?" Lieutenant Harkins asked.

"Fucked if I know," Watkins snarled.
 
"I thought these guys were on our side.
 
Tell the admiral that the boys from Miami aren't cooperating.
 
They don't want to play nice."

No one had been hit or hurt from the burst of gunfire and he quickly decided that it had been the equivalent of a shot across the bows from the Miami crews.
 
They were warning him to go away and let them recover their homes.
 
Still, he had his orders and, if he tried to carry them out, people could get hurt if the Miami Cubans shot again and actually hit something.
 
If that happened, he would have to return fire.

There was a sudden screeching sound and someone yelled, "MiGs!"

Two enemy planes passed only a few feet over the Willow.
 
The Cuban planes' machine guns were spitting bullets, hitting the boats, and churning up the water with dead and dying exiles.

The Willow's guns opened up on the MiGs, accomplishing nothing.
 
The Cuban planes were too low, too fast.
 
Watkins quickly realized that they'd flown only a few feet above the waves and below his radar, assuming that their piece of shit radar had been working properly anyhow.

"They're coming back!" someone yelled.
 
The MiGs banked and flew side by side toward them, their machine guns flashing.
 
Each MiG carried a pair of bombs and the crew of the Willow watched in horror as they were dropped.
 
Three bombs crashed into the sea in or near the crowd of mauled small boats, sending debris and torn bodies into the sky, while the fourth bomb headed directly towards the Willow.

One of the MiGs burst into flames as anti-aircraft fire from the Willow hit it.
 
A small cheer went up as it cartwheeled into the sea.
 
A second later, the fourth bomb exploded against the hull of the Willow.
 
Watkins felt himself being hurled in the air, and then he was flung down hard on the metal deck.
 
Flames and smoke enveloped him.
 
Arms grabbed him and dragged him away from the fire.
 
He lost consciousness for a moment.
 
He heard someone ask for a tourniquet and wondered why.
 
He looked down before someone could push him back.
 
His left leg was gone.
 
Bloody strands of meat dangled from where his knee had once been and blood was all over the place.
 
Was it all his?
 
If it was, he was a dead man.

He groaned and turned to say something to Lieutenant Harkins who was lying a few feet from him.
 
Harkins would now have to take over.
 
Watkins could speak, but Harkins couldn't.
 
His executive officer was dead, his eyes were blank, and his chest was ripped open by bomb shards.
 
Watkins watched as Harkins' horribly visible heart stopped beating.

"We gotta report this," he mumbled.
 
Vitale was injecting him with morphine.
 
The morphine, combined with loss of blood, was causing him to fade.

"It's done, skipper," Vitale said.
 
"Planes are on the way and so are some ships.
 
Don't you just wonder where they were a few minutes ago?"