Cuban Death-Lift (20 page)

I didn't even see them coming. I was doing one of my little stunts. Cute little stunt, MacMorgan. Let your concentration sag for a moment, and watch your new friend die. . . .

The bus for Havana came and left. Big Spanish-made bus, all chrome and steel, looking totally out of place alongside the wooden-wheeled cart that followed it in, bored donkey and bored driver
clip-cloppa-clipping
along the dirt road, hauling a fresh load of beer for the
tiendas.
The donkey was gray with a white blaze on chest and forehead. Sweat lathered around its harness, and it wore a straw cane cutter's hat, holes for pointed ears, implying some affection on the part of the somnolent old man who was driving. The donkey pulled to a rolling stop in front of the beer trough without a word from its owner.

Sitting on my crate seat, I watched the bus make its hydraulic
pee-e-esh
as doors opened and Cuban-Americans began to unload after their trip to the Triton Hotel in Havana. A guard stood at the door of the bus checking their packages as they exited. The Cuban-Americans accepted the indignity of being searched with a remote indifference that sent a strange surge of pride through me. Here they were in their native land, seeking only to help their loved ones, and yet the Castro regime was treating them like criminals. But they were Americans, an immigrant people who had fought before for their selfrespect, and they weren't about to give the guard the satisfaction of reacting to his slights. One by one they filed off, somber-faced, but filled with the strength of their own dignity.

Once the bus was empty, the driver came off, lit a cigarette, and sat on the bottom step while a ludicrous pipe-organ version of “On Top of Old Smoky” came tinnily through the speakers of the bus.

People began to line up outside the door of the bus, waiting patiently to pay their fifteen dollars for the return trip to Havana.

I felt my shallow breaths and my heart pounded heavily in my ears as I waited for the door of the little guard shack to open. A light was on inside, and a silhouette moved before the window: a hugely fat man, cheeks hanging as slack as empty balloons.

No doubt about the man's identity: one general Halcón, code name Hawk.

The driver threw his cigarette onto the ground without snuffing it and called for the people to board. “On Top of Old Smoky” had changed to pipe-organ calypso. The new group filed on, heads held high, and I waited for the guard-shack door to open; waited for them to shove Androsa out and onto the bus so I could follow along and, with luck, mark the room at the Triton Hotel which would become her final prison.

But the door never opened. Halcón's mass passed once more before the window, then was gone. The doors of the bus
pee-e-eshed
closed, and then it powered back through the exit gates in a cloud of dust and invisible diesel exhaust.

“So it's not ta Havana they're takin' her, eh, Yank?”

O'Davis stood before me, two beers in hand, watching the bus disappear.

“Nothing to do but wait,” I said.

He read the quality in my voice. “Cheer up, brother MacMorgan. Cheer up, lad. All across America there are folks a-rottin' their brains before the television tubes on this fine night, waitin' ta die, while we're down here, fine men with the courage of a plan, jest waitin' to take life by the throat.”

I looked at him and couldn't help but smile. “Do you realize, O'Davis, that you are eye deep in bull-shit?”

“Not only realize it, Yank—but am very proud to admit it meself. Ah am, ah am.”

So we drank the cold beer, talked and waited.

Westy O'Davis was not only an entertaining talker, he was a fine listener as well; one of those rare people you meet and immediately feel as if you have known a lifetime. He was one of those unusual people who follows conversation down branches, exploring veins of thought with the delight of a discoverer, mixing little truths with dark Irish humor. He told me how he had followed Castro's takeover of Cuba, fascinated with a man so dedicated to a cause that he would spend his youth hiding out in mainland mountains and on offshore islands just waiting until the time was ripe for revolution.

“True, I admired him fer a time—jest as them newspaper an' broadcast folk in yer own country are still naive enough ta admire him. But then I came to realize he was jest one more dictator insane with the want of power, as brutal as he was charmin'. And for the likes o' us ta fight it, Yank, will do no more good than pissin' inta a stout wind.” He laughed and slapped his leg. “But ain't that what men like you and meself are built fer? A life battlin' the evil wind. An' what more could a real man want, Yank?”

They came for us when he was on his second trip to the canvas
tienda:
a copper-haired, red-bearded sea rover but always the dark son of Ireland, ambling broad shoulder, hands in pockets, head bowed slightly, wanting more beer because it was a fine soft night with a hint of wind.

I hadn't noticed them pulling up in the twin-engine patrol boat: Captain Lobo, feral-faced Zapata, three heavily armed sailors in baggy blue uniforms, and the soldier O'Davis had cold-cocked, back on the
Pinares,
bandage around his head.

O'Davis saw them before I did. I watched in vague surprise as the soldier with the bandage scanned the crowd at Pier Two, then locked in on me. He pointed, dark eyes fierce.

He yelled something in Spanish. Lobo nodded as if not surprised, then barked orders to his complement of assassins. They came at me, violence on their faces, AK-47 assault rifles beaded on my head.

And that's when O'Davis made his move. He stumbled out into the three of them as if hopelessly drunk, secure for a time in the knowledge that the soldier with the bandage had never seen the man who had hit him. They shoved him roughly away, but back he came, playing the role of the sloppy drunk, trying to give me time to run, to escape, to get the hell away from Pier Two and Mariel Harbor before it was too late. And then one of the sailors cracked him in the face with the butt of his rifle, a glancing blow to the chin. And the Irishman went down hard on his rump. I saw his face blanch and the blue eyes narrow, and for an instant it was like looking in some long-gone reflection of my own face.

Westy O'Davis was not a man to be sent to the ground without a fight—a fight to the death.

The soldiers were maybe twenty-five yards from me when the Irishman got back on his feet. They were concentrating on me, not the drunk they had left bleeding behind. He hit the guard who had clubbed him at full stride, head down, shoulder bulling into the sailor's spine like an NFL linebacker hell-bent on destruction. The sailor's neck jerked back with a loud
ker-RACK
like a tree limb bursting, and O'Davis came up rolling, AK-47 in his hands. In two explosive bursts, he cut the other two sailors into wilting heaps.

I was on my feet now. The soldiers from the guardhouse were running, vectoring in on the Irishman, opening fire. I hit the first one thigh-high, feeling his knee crumple beneath the impact. But he refused to give up the rifle. I wrestled with him desperately, watching in the slow-motion horror of the moment as the Irishman died.

Zapata, a rattish leer on his face, had an automatic weapon in his thin hands. He didn't know how to use the rifle. It swung wildly in his arms, throwing flames. The old man stood by the cart holding the reins of the sleepy donkey with the straw hat. As the old man watched, shocked, his face suddenly splintered and disappeared into a sludge of crimson. The donkey went down braying, bullet-sprayed, legs kicking like a dreaming dog on the run. O'Davis didn't have a chance. He had made the good fight; battled the evil wind to the end. And as I watched Zapata level the AK-47 at him, I knew that it was over for the two of us; knew that the vultures had finally taken their pound of flesh, and then there was a bright light erupting in my brain and then there was darkness. . . .

I awoke to a dull cranial ache as if my brain had been vinylized and stuffed with cotton. Bright corona around the white light over my face. Numbness of face and hands.

A voice: “Can you hear me, Capitán MacMorgan?”

Heavy Spanish accent. Voice I remembered . . . from where?

I sat bolt upright, head swiveling. I wasn't dead, and I wasn't in a prison. Surprised, I put odors of bottom paint, diesel, and familiar surrounds together: I was back aboard
Sniper.

Captain Lobo, his heavy face perspiring, stood over me. He said, “So you are awake, Capitán MacMorgan. Good.”

He seemed somehow relieved.

I got shakily to a sitting position, wiping face with hands. I expected to see blood, but there was none. Lobo stood at the entranceway of
Sniper
's master berth. Behind him were three soldiers, cramping the narrow quarters of my boat, filling it with an odor of tobacco smoke and sweat.

“Where's O'Davis?” I tried to stand, but Lobo pushed me back.

“Dead, I assume.” No trace of emotion when he said it. He paused for a moment, looking at me. And then: “You and your friend put us in a very awkward position, MacMorgan. If I had my way, gringo, you would have been dead an hour ago. But . . . I have my orders.” He turned and said something to the soldiers. Obediently, they left the cabin, closing the door behind them. He paused, took out a cigarette, and lit it with great deliberation. “Before one of my men clubbed you,” he said, “three Americans—Cuban-Americans—were killed in the firing your friend so stupidly caused.”

“He didn't—”

“No, your friend did not kill them,” Lobo interrupted. “Unfortunately, one of our officers did—but it doesn't matter who killed them. They're dead. As you know, my country holds your country in something less than contempt. Capitalism—hah! The rich get richer, no?”

“I'll pass on the political lectures, if you don't mind, Lobo.”

The smile he always wore became evident, edged with a sneer.

“As I was about to say,
Capitán
: My country holds yours in contempt, but it is still a force to be reckoned with. And the fact that three Americans have been shot to death here . . . well, the possible political repercussions are obvious. Because of that, at this moment, Radio Havana is preparing to broadcast a statement blaming the killings on a few poorly organized anti-Castro Cubans—revolutionaries who attacked and killed randomly until our forces were able to turn them back. Of course, you and the other Americans who witnessed what happened will claim otherwise. But it will be just your word against ours—”

“And you can hardly get away with killing everyone who was there, right?” I finished.

“Exactly.” It was a hard, thin smile now. He reached into his shirt pocket and extracted a sheet of paper. He unfolded it and glanced over it briefly.

“Capitán MacMorgan, how well did you know the woman you brought to Mariel—Androsa Santarun?”

I tried to keep my face empty and my voice neutral. “Not too well, really. Her lawyer contacted me. Paid me fifteen thousand dollars to bring her over here so she could try to take her father back to America.” I tried an extra bit of truth to keep the story believable. “I, ah . . . we became lovers while we were here.”

He didn't take his eyes from the paper. “Then that explains it,
Capitán.
”

“Explains what?”

“Why she insisted that you not be killed.” He lifted his dark dead eyes from the paper for the first time. “Capitán MacMorgan, Androsa Santarun is a spy. Please, no look of surprise. It makes no difference if you knew it or not. As far as we know, she has no family living in Cuba. There was a half brother”—he shrugged—“but he is dead. Señorita Santarun is the fourth American spy to come to Mariel Harbor. The first three came foolishly believing they could find and then assassinate Presidente Fidel Castrol. Luckily, the same agent who informed us of their intentions also assured us that they were renegades, and not sent by your country—”

“You mean you people have agents in Washington—”

He silenced me with a threatening look. “You are not here to ask questions,
Capitán.
You are alive only so that you can listen and carry a message back to your people. I was about to tell you that those three agents are dead—all killed, unfortunately, before they could be . . .
interrogar
. . . interrogated.”