Castro's Bomb (42 page)

"And exactly where are we now?"

"About five miles north and east of the base and about the same amount from the ocean.
 
So, if the Cubans plan on using it, I figure it'll be launched from a point near the coast so they can hit our troops massed on the beach."

Romanski nodded and they returned to the group who pretended they hadn't walked off to talk privately.
 
"Ross, you said you have a radio?"

"Had, sir.
 
It got knocked around pretty badly and Ward hasn't been able to make it work."

Ward looked up sadly.
 
"I guess I'm not that smart, colonel."

Romanski laughed.
 
"I'll be the judge of that.
 
Master Sergeant Morton, while you weren't our eating snakes while you were in the Special Forces, didn't they make you learn something about radios?"

"They did, sir.
 
May I assume you want me to work with PFC Ward and see if we can make the thing work?"

"That would be a marvelous idea, and, in your spare time, why don't you kill us some more protein.
 
I've changed my mind; these C-rations really are for shit."

The prison camp was closed up for the day.
 
At sunset, everyone was supposed to be back in their tents.
 
There the Americans could sleep, read, play cards, or anything they wished so long as they were out of sight.
 
The Cubans knew this also meant plotting and scheming, but considered them harmless activities.
 
After all, where could the prisoners go and what could they do?

Searchlights swept the compound looking for curfew violators.
 
The lights were a nuisance to anyone trying to sleep, but that was it, and the Americans adapted to them and their predictable pattern in very short order.
 
When the guards did spot someone skulking around they yelled in Spanish for the man to go back to his quarters.
 
The men quietly disappeared and nobody got hurt.
 
The guards weren't Nazi-like monsters and wanted nothing to do with gunning down helpless prisoners.
 
It was live and let live.

What the guards didn't realize was that the shadows cast by the searchlights striking the tents in such a predictable manner made it fairly easy for prisoners to duck and dodge their way anywhere they wanted to go.

It also applied to a pair of Cuban intruders who attracted no attention from the guards.
 
Even if the intruders had been seen, the guards had been told to make no notice and draw not attention to them.
 
The two men wore American uniforms and had slipped in during the period when the gates were open to permit food to be delivered.
 
They were armed with AK47s, dynamite and timers, and had been sent to find the clandestine radio that Havana said was broadcasting from the camp.
 
Their job was to destroy it and kill the operators if they could be found.

But first they had to locate it among the hundreds of tents in the camp.
 
Look for the antenna, they'd been told and their eyes had scanned the camp from the guard towers during the daylight.
 
They'd spotted a likely target, a tent with a pole that seemed far too high for its needs.

Even though they'd marked the spot, finding it in the dark had proven difficult.
 
They were about ready to give up and try again tomorrow when they spotted it.
 
They grinned at each other and approached carefully.
 
They moved the last few yards on their hands and knees.

There was no guard.
 
They slipped the specially made silencers over the muzzles of their weapons.
 
Their trip was not suicidal.
 
They were to destroy the radio, kill the operators if they could, and get the hell out.
 
A hero's welcome awaited them in Havana.

They opened the flap of the tent and stepped in.
 
What looked like a radio was on a table.
 
They'd barely taken a step towards the bulky item they presumed was the radio when bullets slammed into their chests, hurling them backward, killing them almost instantly.

Major Sam Hartford looked down on the two dead men.
 
His own AK47 had also been silenced, as had the guns held by the others in the tent.

Despite that, there was commotion from the nearby tents and heads stuck out.
 
"Civil defense exercise," Hartford said, "everybody duck and cover."
 
The American POWs grinned and went back inside.

"Stupid bastards," Hartford said as he leaned over the dead Cubans.
 
"Did they really think we wouldn't notice them?"

Captain Tom Keppel jabbed one of the dead men with his boot.
 
"They wore our uniforms which makes them spies, which entitled us to kill them outright."

"Screw that," Hartford said.
 
"They were the enemy and we killed them.
 
And we’ve added two more weapons to our growing little arsenal."

"What do you propose we do with the bodies? Keppel asked.

Hartford thought for a moment.
 
He couldn't have them dumped outside.
 
That would raise too much of a stink and make it obvious that the prisoners, along with being armed, were able to go in and out of the camp at their leisure.
 
There would have to be an investigation and maybe a search of the camp, which could not be permitted to happen.
 
He smiled.

"We'll bury them under the chapel tent and stamp down the ground so nothing shows.
 
We get started now and I want it all done by reveille."
 

Later that morning, Castro's man from Havana, Dominico Allessandro, sat in General Cordero's office and looked worried. Why not, Cordero thought.
 
His prize plan had collapsed.
 
The two men had been sent into the camp over Cordero's objections, and he found it hard to sympathize with the agent from Havana.
 
He had no doubts as to the fate of the two Cubans who had not returned from their foray.

"What are you going to do now?" Allessandro asked peevishly.
 
"They should have been back by now."

Cordero sighed and farted, which his guest didn't seem to notice.
 
Cordero wondered how many times he would have to do it before getting the man's attention.
 

"Senor Allessandro, I think's painfully obvious what happened.
 
The agents you attempted to infiltrate in were detected and have likely been killed."

Allessandro stiffened.
 
He was a small, dark man with a perpetual scowl.
 
It seemed affected and Cordero wondered if he thought it made him look more sinister.
 
Still, he was one of Castro's secret police, which gave him the power of life and death.
 
Cordero decided he would not fart again.
 

Allessandro leaned forward.
 
"You will raid the camp and recover their bodies, won't you?
 
And then of course you will prosecute the killers."

Cordero laughed harshly.
 
"Do you think there are any bodies left for us to find?
 
Disposing of bodies is something the American gangsters always did quite well."

A bomb went off in the harbor as another American jet flew over the city.
 
Allessandro jumped, his scowl giving way to sudden fear.
 
He wasn't yet used to a steady diet of bombs from enemy planes.
 
Havana was still off limits to them.
 
A chorus of cheers came from the camp only a few hundred yards away.
 
Allessandro was livid with fury and frustration.
 

"They think we won't touch them because the damned Red Cross is squatting here," Allessandro snarled.
 
"They'll behave differently when the real fighting ends and we are victorious."

With that, Allessandro stormed out of Cordero's office.
 
Cordero wiped his sweaty forehead with a handkerchief that had been clean once.
 
Yes, he thought, the Americans will be different when the fighting ends.
 
They'll likely all be home with their families while we are all dead.

"Mr. President, the ships have sailed.
 
The army will be in a position to attack within a day."

Kennedy nodded.
 
It was no secret.
 
The whole world had watched on television as a score of troopships had departed from American ports and headed out to sea to join a host of American cruisers and destroyers, along with submarines to escort them.
 
Only battleships were missing.
 
A shame, Kennedy thought.
 
He'd like to have seen the Missouri and some of her Iowa-class cousins leading the American fleet while blasting the Cuban shore with their sixteen inch guns.
 
He’d always thought it was a mistake to have deactivated them, leaving the navy without a single battleship.
 
Sadly, it was just a little too late to activate one of them.

"Thank you General Taylor."

Taylor continued.
 
"And there have been no major changes to the plans you approved.
 
It will be a two-pronged assault with the army landing first on the north coast and then driving south.
 
It's about sixty miles from the north landing sites to Gitmo.
 
We believe that it will force the Cubans to come out in the open so our planes can hit them while they are on the move."

"And we also hope to flush out their nuke, don't we?"

"Absolutely, sir.
 
We think it's probably closer to Gitmo than the north, so maybe we can kill it while it's on the move."

They had been over this before and the president thought it was a risky move.
 
He'd had to admit that he didn't have a better idea.

Taylor tapped the map of Cuba with his pointer.
 
"No more than a couple of days later, the marines will land on the south of Cuba, on each side of Guantanamo Bay against what we hope will be weakened defenses.
 
The two forces will strike towards each other and link up.
 
Airborne troops will be dropped on and around several small airfields which can be used to ferry in more troops before the linkup between the two landing groups.
 
We hope the Cubans will be confused and disoriented."

We hope, we hope, we hope, Kennedy thought.
 
He seemed to recall something about plans going to hell when the shooting started.
 
"And what more do we know about their nuke?"

"Still nothing," Taylor said grimly.

"Director McCone, have your people turned up anything new?"

"Not a thing, sir.
 
The Russians are looking as well, but nothing from them either.
 
We do believe that Guevera himself is accompanying it."

Kennedy was surprised.
 
"And how do we know that?
 
I thought our intelligence sources had all dried up since the Bay of Pigs."

McCone smiled tightly.
 
"We are getting intelligence because a handful of CIA operatives have been working hard at rebuilding the intelligence apparatus we once had."

"I assume you mean people like Kraeger?"

"Yes sir.
 
That and the fact that a number of people in Havana are horrified that Castro attacked our base and that he had stolen nukes from the Russians.
 
Some of those people are providing us with a lot of information.
 
When we take over and Castro's gone, they hope to get a chance at running a new government.
 
That is, of course, if they don't get a bullet in the back of the head in the first place."

Kennedy digested that last comment.
 
Topple Castro?
 
The Miami exiles were lusting for American help in that regard, but did they want a new Cuban regime to come from inside Castro's communist government?
 
Damn.

"Well at least your people were able to keep that Franklyn fellow from blabbing to the press.
 
About twenty-five years from now you must tell me what you did to shut the man up."

McCone chuckled.
 
"You might want to wait a while longer."

Kennedy turned from the map of Cuba and adjacent waters to a larger map of the Atlantic Ocean.
 
Several red dots showed in international waters off New England.
 
Each one represented a Soviet submarine, riding on the surface as if they were daring the Americans to stop them.
 
What the hell were they up to, he wondered?
 
Hell, they all wondered.
 
Other dots represented a Russian surface squadron, consisting of several cruisers, also headed towards the Caribbean.
 
Would Khrushchev be so arrogant as to use them to force the blockade, or was he just showing the flag to impress the world’s other small nations?

Kraeger and Golikov met across Pennsylvania in front of the White House where large and noisy demonstrations were routinely taking place.
 
Most of the demonstrators were Cuban exiles bearing signs calling for the American invasion and liberation of their homeland, the ouster of Castro, and for Kennedy to be a man.
 
Opposing them were a fair number of civil rights advocates and others against war, any war, and for any reason.
 
Their signs carried the now familiar peace symbol and called for an end to fighting for any reason and in any place.