Castro's bomb

Chapter One

Che Guevara watched coldly and dispassionately as the six men and two women were led from their cells and out to the courtyard. Guevara was in his thirties, a former medical student, and now a key member of the new Cuban government. He was also considered a skilled and ruthless practitioner of guerrilla warfare, along with being an almost fanatic communist.

The condemned blinked at the bright sun, which they hadn't seen in days. They also had difficulty standing, much less walking. They'd been interrogated all the time they'd been in prison and all suffered broken bones and dislocated limbs as a result.

The women might have been pretty once, but their faces were shapeless and swollen and their bodies covered with burns and knife cuts. They would never attract a man again for the rest of their lives. Guevara chuckled at the thought. That wouldn't be much longer. Fidel had forbidden rape as a method of interrogation, but once they'd confessed to their treason, that rule no longer applied and they'd been abused by a number of guards.

As to the men, they too had been beaten and burned along with having their arms and legs destroyed. Electric probes had been applied to their genitals to make them talk and they had, at least after they stopped screaming.

Dominico Allessandro, hard-eyed and with a reputation for cruelty, was Fidel's special representative. It was he who had been in charge of the arrests and subsequent interrogations. He looked pleased with the results of his efforts.

"Is this all of them?" Che asked.

"Yes, and we are reasonably certain they were unable to give any information about our plans to either the Americans or the Russians."

Guevara nodded. Allessandro's use of the word 'reasonably' disturbed him, but he accepted the fact that nothing was ever certain in war, espionage, and statecraft. Fidel was furious, and both the United States and the Soviet Union would pay for their attempt to dominate and marginalize Cuba. They would have to take the chance that the Americans and Russians were still in the dark regarding their plans.

But first, these eight people had a debt to settle.

Guards tied their hands behind them and then tied them to hooks in a pock-marked stone wall. One of the men began to cry and another of the condemned told him to be brave.

"Be a man," Guevara yelled, and then laughed, but the traitor couldn't or wouldn't respond. The eight had been found guilty of trying to send information about the coming attacks to the United States and, in one case, to the Soviets.

One of the women screamed when she saw the machine gunners set up their weapon in front of them. What did she expect, Guevara snorted. She had to have known that treason was punishable by death. The sergeant in charge of the detail looked up to Guevara and Allessandro. Che gave the signal, a downward chopping motion. A moment later, the machine gun began to chatter loudly, bullets chopping into the eight people and making them writhe and jump like insane puppets. Blood and chunks of flesh flew into the air. In a few seconds, it was over and the eight slumped over as their blood soaked the sand.

"What about the Dutchman?" Che asked.

Allessandro shrugged. "He took off in a small boat that was sunk by one of our patrol craft. His body was not found and the boat may have been empty when our boat shot it to pieces. The captain decided not to stick around because an American warship was approaching."

The news did not totally please Guevara; however, Fidel's agent was doubtless right. The Dutchman, a man named Fullmer, was doubtless dead. He did wonder, however, just who Fullmer represented. Was it the United States or Russia? Or even East Germany as Allessandro suspected? The East Germans did a lot of the Soviet Union’s dirty work, as did Bulgaria. He’d decided that neither the Russians nor the Americans liked to get their hands dirty.

Guevara laughed as the bodies were dragged away. In a very short while, the point would be moot. The war both he and Fidel desperately wanted would either begin with the Soviets and Americans killing each other, or the two superpowers would be humiliated by Cuba, a country they had tried to push aside. Either way, Cuba and communism would win.

Through the haze of pain and the increasing horror of growing delirium and loss of mental and physical control, Charley Kraeger knew he was dying. His lips were cracked and his eyes were caked over from the salt spray caused by the wind and the waves hitting his little craft. His hands were torn and swollen from trying to sail away from Cuba and towards Florida.

Surrounded by water, his thirst was maddening and he was in danger of drowning in the bottom of the small boat that had failed him so miserably. Actually, he thought ruefully, the boat hadn't failed at all, and the several bullet holes that were admitting water from the Gulf of Mexico were not a failure of the boat either. It had been watertight until the Cubans began shooting at it. Nor had the outboard motor failed. It had run out of gas because Kraeger’d had no idea how much its tank held or how far it could run when he grabbed the damn thing from a fisherman's small dock. The owners had screamed and a couple of Cuban militiamen had filled the air with bullets, some of which had struck his little craft.

What he didn't know about boats would fill volumes. Hell, he didn't even know the difference between a ship and a boat, which sometimes made his more nautically inclined friends laugh at him.

Well, they wouldn't laugh at him anymore. He just hoped one or two of his drinking buddies would remember him, at least for a little while, and wonder what ever happened to good old Charley. God, why would anybody remember him? No wife and no kids, his parents dead, and only a handful of cousins scattered around the United States. No, he'd be forgotten in a hurry, and the thought depressed him.

He tried to shift his body, but the pain in his shoulder was too intense and he wound up again face down in the oily filth of the hold and trying to keep the crud out of his mouth. He hadn't actually been shot; instead, a ricochet from a bullet fired by a Cuban soldier had driven a large splinter through the meat of his shoulder like a spear. It had started throbbing sometime the day before and, in a moment of lucidity, he’d come to the conclusion that gangrene might kill him if thirst and exposure didn't. Of course, gangrene took a long time to kill and he didn’t really think he had much time left on this earth.

It was also hard to believe that exposure could be so deadly in the warm and sunny Caribbean, but he'd lost so much strength that he had begun to shiver. His throat ached and burned from where he'd swallowed salty oily water from the bilge.

He decided it really didn't matter what killed him. Soon he would be dead no matter what the cause. He also decided he wanted to take one last look at his world, even though all he'd seen before he'd slid into the bottom of the boat was the endless ocean and large, rolling waves extending on and over the distant horizon.

Who the hell cared what killed him? If thirst and exposure didn't get him, then the Commies would, or maybe he’d provide a feast for the sharks. Did sharks jump into small boats when they smelled death? Or was it barracuda that did that? Or maybe it was piranha? Or maybe somebody at a Havana bar had been pulling his leg and it was none of the above.

His situation reminded him of Hemingway's "Old Man and the Sea." He'd seen the movie starring Spencer Tracy but hadn't read the book. He found Hemingway boring, as if that mattered right now. Nobody was going to write a thing about old man Charley Kraeger and the sea.

He wanted to cry out and perhaps he did in his anger, pain, and frustration. He was becoming more and more delirious. Twenty years as a CIA agent and this was his reward, to die in the bottom of a small boat in the middle of a very large ocean. It wasn't fair. Hell, he'd been an agent long before there had even been a CIA. Kraeger had served in the OSS in World War II and had jumped into occupied France where he'd had the intense satisfaction of killing his first Nazi, a Gestapo officer no less. He'd been wounded, decorated, and called a hero and now this was how he was going to wind up. He was going to die alone and in filth and no one was around to know about it. Forty years of life shot to hell.

Unless, of course, the commies figured out where he was and shot up the boat and dropped his butt into the briny deep for all the little fishes to eat. Back in Washington, they'd probably wonder for a while what happened to good old Charlie Kraeger who nobody liked anyhow because he was a dinosaur. His superiors had broadly hinted that he was a little too old for field work and now he agreed with them. False pride had played a real part in his being in this deadly situation.

He managed to pull himself up to a sitting position. It took almost all his remaining strength. Water, water everywhere and not a damn drop to drink was what he saw — that and a small boat coming toward him. Even through his blurred eyesight, he recognized it as a Cuban patrol boat. It began to fire at him. Bullets splashed around his little boat.

Shit.

The worst part was that he'd failed and that made him want to cry, except that forty-year old CIA agents weren't supposed to cry. He knew a secret, a secret, a secret. But the sun was so bright and so hot and he was so thirsty, he couldn't remember it. But he had a secret, a secret.

But what the hell was it?

Oh yeah.

War.

The Coast Guard Cutter Willow was old, which was normal for the Coast Guard, because the Guard was generally last on the military's budget. The glamorous Air Force was first with all its shiny bombers, sleek, sexy fighters, and neat missiles. It was followed by the Navy with its massive carriers and growing fleet of nuclear submarines, and then came the Army and the Marine Corps and, bringing up the rear, the Coast Guard. Some Guardsmen wondered why they bothered, but not all of them. Most were dedicated and did what they could with what they had.

The Willow's skipper, Lieutenant Commander Paul Watkins was one of the dedicated ones, and he loved his old ship. He was forty-four and the Willow was only a few years younger, having been built in the mid-nineteen thirties. He was never going to be promoted and neither he nor the Willow would ever get a better assignment than this. Nobody on the Willow complained. Cruising the Caribbean in the winter wasn't bad duty at all. It beat the hell out of Lake Superior in December. His friends laughed that Watkins was married to the guard and he admitted it wasn't far from the truth. He'd risen from the ranks, a rarity in itself, and never married. His friends also joked that when he retired he'd take the cutter home with him. That was going a little too far and he told his friends to screw themselves which, depending on how much they'd drunk, generally resulted in laughter. Truth be told, he would love to take the Willow home, but where the hell would he park it?

Ironically, the Willow's hull had recently been strengthened so she could serve on the Great Lakes where there was so much ice. Then came the Cuban Missile Crisis and now she was well away from the Great Lakes and any sign of ice, except in the soft drinks and ice teas served by the mess crew. Neither her captain nor her crew complained about having to spend the onset of winter, 1962, in the warm sun rather than the frigid northern waters. There was even a rumor that the ship had been forgotten by the brains in Washington and would be spending a long time cruising the Caribbean. No such luck. Watkins was in daily contact with his superiors.

Watkins loved his ship. He only wished the Coast Guard had come up with something more dramatic or elegant for her name. Willow was just too gentle for a ship of war. But then, he recalled that the Royal Navy had a whole class of ships named after flowers. Willow, he decided, was better than being captain of something named the Petunia. Or, he shuddered, the Pansy.

Watkins understood why he was never going to get promoted. There were simply too many qualified candidates for too few open slots and, hell, he was getting old. Command and rank would go to the young, eager, and better educated hotshots. The fact that he was short, overweight, and a little slovenly in appearance didn't help either. He was not recruiting poster material.

"Skipper?"

"I'm still here," Watkins said to Lieutenant Harkins, his young and just a little bit up tight executive officer. One good thing about the Coast Guard was that they weren't crazy about the perks of rank, which meant that shipboard life was a lot more casual than on a regular navy ship, and Harkins was finally beginning to understand it. The young man was actually a very nice guy when he loosened up. Watkins thought it might help if he could get him drunk and laid.

"Radar's picking up something. They think it might be a Cuban patrol boat."

Watkins yawned. The Willow was going nowhere slowly, cruising in large circles and making less than ten knots while looking for anything suspicious, which generally meant finding small boats filled to overflowing with refugees from Castro's communist paradise. Why, he wondered, if Cuba was such a worker's paradise, were so many people so damned anxious to flee it that they'd risk their lives sailing the Caribbean in dinky little boat?. They'd already rescued a number of grateful Cubans and, sadly, picked up the bloated corpses of some who'd died in the attempt.

"The Cuban Commie bastards have an inalienable right to be out in the Gulf in international waters just like we do," Watkins said. "How far away is she and what is she doing?"

"Maybe ten miles away, skipper, and she's cruising in a straight line. It almost looks like she's aiming for some specific point in the ocean."

Intrigued, Watkins arose stiffly from his chair on the bridge and walked over to look at the radar screen. As always, the technology meant little to him, except he'd just been told that the blip that kept jumping up and down was likely a Cuban patrol boat. He nodded solemnly, pretending he understood what he was looking at.

"Can you see what he's aiming towards, if anything?"

Petty Officer Wade, the radar operator shook his head. "There may be something a few miles ahead of him, but it's really small. Like flotsam and jetsam, skipper."

"Flotsam and jetsam, Wade? Who the hell are you trying to impress with your knowledge of nautical talk? Flotsam and jetsam are a comedy act, like Martin and Lewis."

Wade laughed and Watkins leaned over the screen, even Harkins grinned. Now he could see the little squiggle that was what Wade was talking about. Curiouser and curiouser, he thought.

"Whatever it is, it's dead in the water," Wade said helpfully.

"Could it really be a small boat?" Watkins asked and Wade nodded. It could.

"Well let's see," Watkins said thoughtfully as he pulled out the stub of his last cigar from his shirt pocket and lit it. "We got a Cuban patrol boat making like a bat out of hell for a place in the ocean where what might be a small boat is dead in the water, and add to that the fact that we're all bored to tears. Oh what the hell, boys and girls, let's have some fun."

He grinned and turned to his executive officer. "Make all speed and let's cut this Cuban son of a bitch off. If he wants that flotsam and jetsam so badly, then we want it worse. Oh yeah, sound general quarters, too."

The Willow was old, but not slow. She could do maybe twenty knots if pushed and it looked like the Cuban boat was only making twelve. Nor was the Willow in any way helpless. At more than two thousand tons, she was a larger cutter than the more recent ones, and a veteran of World War II where she had done some sub-chasing and convoy duties. This meant she carried a pair of three-inch guns, which along with her anti-aircraft batteries, would more than outgun any Cuban patrol craft. The Willow's crew had joked that maybe they outgunned the entire pissant Cuban navy.

The Cuban was now visible off the Willow's starboard, while her target remained invisible. "Cut him off at the pass," Watkins ordered. "If he wants that boat or whatever it is, he's not going to get it. And get some people up here with both still and movie cameras. If this turns shitty, I want documentation that our cause was just. And if it isn't just, the film will go in the ocean along with anyone who took the pictures."

Harkins grabbed his arm. "Skipper, spotters off the port see the target and it does look like a small boat and it also looks like she's sinking."

Flashes of light came from the Cuban. "Jesus," said Harkins, "Machine gun fire. She's shooting at the boat."

Watkins grinned wickedly. "Hell no, she's shooting at us. Now we have every right to defend ourselves."

Harkins was shocked. The Cuban was clearly shooting at the boat and not at them. "Sir, do you want to start World War III? Didn't President Kennedy and Khrushchev just prevent it?"

"Yeah," Watkins said reluctantly. "I guess we can't sink the little commie shit, but we can scare it. That goddamn Cuban definitely doesn't want us to reach that boat, and that really makes me want to get there first."

Harkins looked relieved. "So what are we going to do?"

"We fire a shot across the Cuban's bow. One shell from a three-incher ought to wake their asses up."

One of the guns fired and, seconds later, a large spout of water exploded about two hundred yards in front of the Cuban, which suddenly lost way, wallowing in the swells. Watkins laughed. Whoever was steering the damned thing had just flinched big time. Watkins laughed. The Cuban was probably crapping his shorts. "Can you get closer with the next shell?"

Before he got an answer, the Cuban turned away and began to head back to its homeland. Someone with more courage than sense, turned the machine gun on the Willow, kicking up splashes in her direction. Nothing hit the cutter, but Watkins was enraged.

"Dammit, now we got real proof. Sink the little shit."

Watkin's XO shook his head. "Better not, sir. There's already gonna be hell to pay for shooting first at the Commie."

"Not a chance, Harkins. We got proof on film that the Cuban opened fire on a helpless ship in peril which is against all the laws of the sea." Watkins took a deep breath and gathered himself. "Naw, you're right. Let them go. They'll go home, tell their story about us Yankee bullies, and forget it ever happened. Hell, we never hit them did we? If they do bitch, then we just roll out the films. In the meantime, let's see what the hell was so damned important."

If I'm dead and this is heaven, then it isn't what I expected, Kraeger thought as he slowly regained consciousness. For one thing, since when did heaven roll slightly and since when did heaven have bare light bulbs in the ceiling. And heaven should have clouds and not starkly painted ceilings. And be painless. Christ, he hurt like hell from a number of places. If this was heaven, it was a serious disappointment, and he’d wasted a number of Sundays going to church with his parents.

He concluded that he wasn't dead and checked to see if he was restrained. He wasn't, which meant he wasn't a prisoner, unless the Cubans or the Russians thought he was totally harmless, and that was insulting. He checked his body parts — two arms, two legs, and one pecker and, of course, he could see. All was well. The thinking exhausted him. He would have gone to sleep except for the fact that he hurt all over and his shoulder still throbbed. He closed his eyes again and let the darkness comfort and envelope him.

When he opened them again, a young man in a sailor's uniform stood over him. "Welcome back," the young man said softly and then grinned sheepishly. "I suppose I should first ask if you speak English, Mr. Fullmer?"

Kraeger nodded that he did, but who the hell was Fullmer? Oh yeah. That was the name on his passport. He tried to say something, but his voice wouldn't work. The sailor put his hand on Kraeger's shoulder. "Don't try to speak. Your throat was all crudded up with all the oil and salt water that you swallowed. We cleaned it out as best we could but you probably won't be able to speak coherently for a couple of days."

The sailor fluffed Kraeger's pillow. "Now, my name is Vitale, and I'm the medic here on the Coast Guard Cutter Willow, and when he has a moment, the captain will be here to talk to you. In the meantime, we've gotten that splinter out of your shoulder, bandaged you, and shot you full of penicillin to take care of any infection. Oh yeah, your hands were pretty much a mess, too, so we cleaned them and bandaged them up tight as well. You'll recover but you won't be performing surgery for a while."

Kraeger nodded, even smiled at Vitale’s bad joke. He was safe. The Cubans wouldn't get him. He had so much to say but no strength with which to say it. He closed his eyes and drifted off again.

When he awoke again, Vitale managed to get some water past his swollen lips by getting him to suck on a straw. It was beyond delicious and even comforted his ravaged throat. A moment later, Kraeger was staring up at a disheveled and overweight middle-aged man, a lieutenant commander.

"I'm Lieutenant Commander Watkins, Mr. Fullmer, and I'm the captain of this ship. Obviously I have some questions for you. First, what the hell were you doing out there and, second, why were the Cubans shooting at you?"

Kraeger again tried to speak but nothing happened. "Okay," said Watkins. "Let's do it the basic way. I'll ask and you nod or shake your head, okay? According to your passport, your name is Ulrich Fullmer and you're a Dutch citizen, is that correct?"

Kraeger hesitated then shook his head.

Watkins looked surprised. "Well, well, your name is not Fullmer?"

He nodded.

"Then who the hell are you?" Watkins asked and then realized to his chagrin that the man in the bed couldn't respond.

Vitale anticipated the captain's next question. "Sir, I don't think he can hold a pencil, either. Look at his hands."

Watkins agreed. Fullmer, or whatever the hell his name was, had his hands swathed in heavy bandages.

Vitali shook his head. "Sorry, sir, but his hands were all cut up and swollen. I had to bandage them like that."

"Christ, Vitale, it's not your fault," said Watkins. "You've done a great job. Blame the Cubans or even this guy for the mess he's in, not yourself."

Watkins looked around and found a letter-sized pad of paper. He took a pencil and drew quickly. Then he took the straw from the water and taped it to Kraeger's bandaged right hand.

"Okay, stranger, what I have so cleverly done is written all the letters of the alphabet on this pad along with the numbers zero through nine. I want you to tap a letter and spell out a word which I will write down. When you're through with a word, just point this at empty part of the paper. Understood?"

Kraeger nodded and Watkins smiled.

"Good, now what's your name?"

Kraeger slowly tapped out the letters of his first and last names.

"Excellent. You are now Mr. Charles Kraeger and, for some reason, you were using someone else's passport. This, of course, means you were hiding something. Will you tell me why the bastard commies were shooting at you?"

Kraeger tapped out a series of numbers. Watkins was puzzled for a moment and Vitale piped up. "Skipper, it looks like a telephone number." Kraeger nodded eagerly.

"And you want me to call that number and let whoever answers know you're alive and well, is that right?"

Again, Kraeger nodded.

"Wonderful. Now, why should I do that? Making phone connections like that are expensive and we usually don't make personal calls from a government ship. Especially not from a Coast Guard ship because we barely have enough of a budget to breathe on."

Kraeger tapped three letters on the pad. Watkins looked incredulous. His guest had spelled out CIA. "Oh shit," Watkins said.

"He's a spook," Vitale laughed and said eagerly. "We rescued a spook. Hot diggity-damn. Wait'll I tell the rest of the guys."

Kraeger again tapped three letters on the pad. This time, there was no laughter. Watkins and Vitale stood and looked in shock. The three letters simply said, WAR.

Two hours later, a navy seaplane from Florida had gingerly but skillfully landed on the gently rolling swells and CIA agent Charles Kraeger, snug in a litter, was put in a lifeboat and transferred to her. Moments later the seaplane was airborne and Lieutenant Commander Paul Watkins was told he was going to be commended for his prompt, decisive and discreet action in rescuing CIA agent Charles Kraeger.

Vitale, on the other hand, had been told by Watkins to keep his damned mouth shut and not tell any of his little chums about the CIA spook. So far as anybody was to know, their visitor was a rich guy with Washington connections who'd gotten in trouble with the Cubans while deep sea fishing.