Havana

Chapter 21

The sergeant laid his ambush well. He was not without experience, having fought in Argentina, Peru, Colombia and the Dominican Republic at different times in his career, in some cases escaping just ahead of the firing squad. But that was another story.

He did not select the first, or even the second, bend in the road that ran down Ciego de Avila province, about five miles inland from the sea, in the sudden burst of mangrove swamps. He knew that if his target had any security, security would be at its highest at that first bend, and again at the second bend. By the third bend, they would have settled down and grown used to the closeness of the trees, the sudden sense of impinging jungle after so long on sparse scrublands where cattle fed randomly.

He also needed two trees, unusually tall for the vegetation.

One tree was not enough.

It was a question of timing. The car had to slow to round the bend, and as it cleared the turn, but before it began to accelerate, the first tree had to be downed. It would take any driver three seconds to respond. By the time he had braked, and begun to turn around, or back up if he were clever, the second tree would come down, trapping the vehicle.

That's when his gunners would fire. He had three Thompsons, each with a fifty-round drum, and it was important that all three fire at once and that they lay down continuous fire. The car had to be still. He did not think these men were well enough trained to efficiently engage a moving target, even with the fast-firing Thompsons. He wanted the guns blazing for a good three to five seconds. He wanted the Cadillac ripped by three machine guns. Then he himself, on the other side of the road where the car would almost certainly stop, would raise up and quickly close the distance from the other side. He would pull his Star 9mm from his holster, advance to the automobile, and quickly fire a head shot into each of the four men, living or dead. Then it was only a matter of pulling their own automobile out and heading toward Cabanas Los Pinos, where a boat awaited them with their money aboard and orders to sail to Florida.

The sergeant was pleased. He had five good men besides himself. The innards of the two chickens he had slain last night had revealed by the sacred laws of Santeria that prospects were excellent. He had prayed hard to Odudua, mistress of the darkness of that blend of Bantu religion and Catholicism, and knew that she favored him, for she favored all killers. Her mission was to harvest their bounty and take it with her across the river to her dark land. The blood of the chickens, their squawking as their guts were pulled living from them, merely excited her.

The sergeant found his two trees without difficulty, an exceedingly good omen. He had examined the cuts his men had made in the trees and saw that the trunks had been expertly brought to the brink of collapse and one or two more ax strokes would deposit them exactly where he wanted them. The men with the Thompson guns knew how to shoot them well enough. He knew his Star intimately, and knew it would not fail him.

He checked his watch. It was nearly six; he knew the time was close but that he had a good hour before sundown.

"Sergeanto," came an excited cry from the man who'd just come sprinting around the bend, "I can see the big black car with the American flags on its fenders."

"Be ready, my boys. It is time and then we will be gone from this godforsaken country."

The men scattered to find their positions.

"My, my, my, my," said the congressman, "at last we git to look at something different. Not better, mind you, but different. Trees, or what they might call trees in some primitive place like Mississippi or Alabama."

"Yes, sir, Harry," agreed Lane Brodgins. "That flat land was damned boring. Like Kansas, only no damned cowboys or Indians to make it interesting."

"Lane, I ever tell you 'bout the time Joe Phillips of Montana's 13th and I got in a hell of a row over a navy typewriter reconditioning installation I had all sewn up for Fort Smith, but he had his heart set on setting up somewhere way the Sam Hill out there?"

"No, sir, don't believe you did," said poor Lane, whose capacity for eating Boss Harry's shit was beyond legendary and near to entering mythical.

"Well, I don't know how that fella got it in his mind the United States Navy needed to fix up its old typewriters way out yonder in the purple west. But I decided…"

Earl tried to close it out and concentrate. He saw the low dark trees suddenly rising up to swallow the Cadillac and nudged his elbow into Pepe's subtly, then with his hand pressing flatly downward signaled the driver to slow down.

"We slowing down, Pepe?" asked Boss Harry.

"Senor, I think is a curve coming up."

"Let's just take it easy through here," said Earl. He knew that nothing would happen on a road so straight and open that you could see a man three-hundred yards ahead and there wasn't a stick of cover anywhere. He supposed a sniper could take a long shot but doubted if anybody down here had that skill. He also worried about a mine or a command-detonated bomb of some sort, but again, nothing in Cuba had communicated the possibility of that kind of sophistication.

Darkness didn't swallow them, but it did grip them, as suddenly the trees, though rarely higher than a man, clustered close to the road, and through them, he could see pools of standing water, knotty clusters of tropical vegetation, the occasional bright flare of jungle blossom, the flutter and slither of pink shapes indicating the presence, here as elsewhere close to the sea, of pelicans.

The car slowed as Pepe negotiated the first bend, got around it, and saw a mile of straight road ahead before the road disappeared in blackness.

"You can speed up now, Pepe," said Lane. "We want to git there before dark. This here has been a long damned sit."

"Didn't know your goddamned island was so big," said Boss Harry. "I had the idea it was a little old place, and there wouldn't be so many miles between bars and women."

"In Guantanamo City, senor, is plenty bars and women, I tell you that."

"Now that's the kind of spirit I like!" said Harry. "I'm going to need a refresher pretty damned soon, and I don't mean no Coca-Cola!"

Speshnev had a car and a machine gun. The former he stole, the latter he rented. It took the last of his casino earnings, but he managed, rather quickly, to bribe an NKVD security goon assigned to a Russian freighter moored in the harbor to sneak into the strong room and remove one PPsH submachine gun, and one drum-seventy-one rounds-of 7.63mm ammunition. It was to be returned within twenty-four hours or the goon would come looking for Speshnev. The goon was a former Black Sea Marine, reportedly the toughest of the tough, so Speshnev had no desire to disappoint him. Now the gun lay across the seat awkwardly, its drum precluding easy stowage and causing it to roll about as he accelerated through the gears. Speshnev also had a direction and a route. A source in the American embassy had told the unctuous Pashin that the schedule had the congressman heading north to Guantanamo today, leaving at 9 A.M. With stops for lunch, they should pull in by eight in the evening, time enough for a night of carousing in the low dives of Guantanamo City.

He drove madly, following the big road through Matanzas, Cienfuegos and Villa Clara provinces, honking rudely at lorries, careening around buses, fighting the traffic desperately. Around Sancti Spiritus, the traffic lessened, with the majority of it siphoning off toward the south, toward Santiago. But he knew the Americans would cling to the upper road along the Caribbean coast, through Ciego de Avila and Camaguey, then on to Las Tunas and Holguin, that way avoiding the mess around Santiago. Effectively bypassing it-a faster way, though longer-they would then head south, and veer directly toward Guantanamo. He hoped that the Americans would stop for a nice lunch, would poke about here and there, and wouldn't press on.

Americans are lazy, he told himself. They are addicted to comfort. They're stupid. They're―

But he realized that Swagger wouldn't be stupid. He roared ahead.

The damned gun rolled to the left as the car accelerated, down empty roads, surrounded by arid meadows where here and there a cow grazed.

"Why are we slowing down?"

"I need to check some things," said Earl.

"What, Earl," said Brodgins. "We've still got a far piece to travel. The congressman is hot and tired."

Earl didn't say a word. He had commanded Pepe to stop and ahead he saw that the road took an aggressive left-hand crank, which mandated another slowdown, almost to a crawl. Something about it bothered him. So now he climbed from the front seat, hung himself over the open door, and just looked. What he was looking for was-well, he couldn't put a name to it. They had eased through two natural ambush sites without a problem, and according to the map would soon enough be beyond the swamps, and then could take their southern turn and head down to Gitmo.

But he was looking for something: some anomaly, some clue that things weren't as they should be. His eyes scanned, and what he saw was only dusty road disappearing as it bent to the left, low trees on each side, no movement, no wind, nothing at all. It was ungodly hot, and mosquitoes hummed around him, as the sweat crested to his skin and broke free.

"Aren't you being a little melodramatic here, Earl," Brodgins called from inside the car, where the air conditioning still pumped out cold, stale air. "Sir, can't you just tell him to get us there? This ain't easy on any of us."

"Earl, do you see something?" the congressman called. "Is that it? Lane, old Earl, he does have pretty good instincts for this sort of thing, I think you'd agree."

"Yes, sir, but sometimes these folks get an exaggerated sense of their importance."

Earl ducked back inside the car.

"All right," he said, bending forward. "Let's go. But Pepe, when you git around that corner, I want you to punch it. I don't like the fact that we'll be slowing down."

"Earl," said Brodgins, "we are stopped now. So what is the big deal about slowing down a hundred yards ahead? You have to be consistent in this. It has to make some sense."

"Well, Mr. Brodgins," said Earl, "we are stopped of our own volition. No one could anticipate us stopping here. But when we reach that curve, any idiot could see that's a place where we have to slow down. That's the difference."

"Think Earl scored a point on you there, Lane," said Harry, merrily. "Earl, you take your time. Just let's get us through this, so we can head on."

"Yes, sir," said Earl. He turned to Pepe. "You have to slow down, as I say, but once you're clear and you have open road, you punch it, do you understand?"

"Yes, sir," said the driver.

Speshnev saw before he heard. What he saw was dust, hanging above the trees, like a squall of smoke. Immediately as that perception dawned on him, he jammed his brakes on, stopping fast, skewing to one side.

Then the gunfire broke out.

He heard automatic weapons, a group of them, all ripping away simultaneously. They fired and they struck automobile, for in each percussion came the reverberant whang! of a high-speed missile hitting metal hard.

Speshnev knew the action was all taking place just a few hundred yards ahead, right beyond the bend in the road.

He prayed he wasn't too late. He leaned over, seized the PPsH machine gun with its absurdly swollen drum, pulled it out.

They were still shooting as he began to move through the trees, toward the site of the ambush.

The car slowly picked its way around the bend. Ahead lay nothing but straight road.

"Is okay, senor," said Pepe.

"Is fine, Pepe," said Lane Brodgins. "Let's get the hell out of here."

Pepe's foot went to caress the gas pedal but exactly in that moment Earl jabbed his foot over and crushed the brake to the floor.

"BACK!" he commanded and possibly there was a moment, even two, of ridiculous silence, as a sense of unreal confusion filled the automobile, the bodyguard ripping at the gear shift to find reverse, the driver stunned by his sudden action, trying to respond, the two men in back themselves stunned, aware that something unplanned and unwanted was happening, unsure entirely about the bodyguard's sudden speed of movement. Then the windshield shattered into a quicksilver smear of webbing and punctures as glass bits spewed at painful velocity into the car, and the interior was suddenly full of the presence of alien things among them, hard and cruel and without interest in them except as targets. The car shuddered as gunfire thudded against it, and the sound of metal banging loud arrived in the same second, to overload all senses and drive them toward stupefaction. A bullet struck Pepe in the head, like a fastball, and the sound of that-missile striking and tearing into bone-filled the car with horror, accompanied by the pink steam that blew outward from the horrible wound and the instant sense of destruction as the ruined head slid forward.

But Earl had the car finally in reverse, and moved his foot to the gas, pushing Pepe's dead one-the man was by this time a sack of sloppy weight, his broken head pitched forward-aside. He hammered the pedal and the car shot backwards perhaps twenty-five yards, even as more gunfire came after it, tearing up hood, punching out more glass, ripping tires and engine to shreds. Riding the last gasp of engine power, Earl jacked the car's wheel left, depositing it at an angle in a gully. He slithered out, came up over the hood, pulled his Super.38 from the shoulder holster, thumbed the hammer back from half cock as he did so, and punched out six fast two-handed shots, at a line of gully across the road and fifty yards or so down, where the accumulation of gunsmoke and suspended dust announced the presence of the shooters. The pistol recovered fast with its lessened kick and when he was done shooting he knew he had four rounds left. But still, while he had the chance, he yanked a magazine from his pocket and reloaded another nine. With the round in the chamber, he had ten.

Even as he did this, a tree fell lazily across the road. It was a tree meant to trap them, but it hadn't. They were behind the kill-zone.

Earl swung around and saw the woodchopper bound forward from the tree for cover, but Earl got a shot off fast at the deflection, finding an instinctive lead, knowing to pin the trigger on the stroke, and heard the sound that can only be bullet on meat, knew that he had hit the man.

He slid along the body of the twisted automobile, pulled open the back door. Inside, on the floor, Lane and the congressman lay in a terrified embrace.

"Oh, Jesus, what is―"

"God, why are they―"

Earl grabbed the nearest, Boss Harry, and yanked him brutally out of the car, dumping him hard in the gully. He paused as another fusillade of fire tore into the car, but by the weird physics of the situation, the car was tilted up in such a way that most of it blocked the men from the shooters.

Earl next reached in and pulled out the gibbering assistant.

"You crouch here, goddammit. Behind the wheel well. That is where it is safer."

"How many are there?" Harry was finally cogent enough to ask.

"I have no fucking idea, but they do mean business, that I guarantee you."

The sergeant cursed. No language has more pathways for blasphemy than Spanish and this was a construction of such horror it would have made even Odudua ashamed, and perhaps disappointed in him, even if he was one of her most favored facilitators, having seen and done so many terrible, evil things.

Why had the car stopped short? What on earth impelled whoever was inside to make such a decision? Had the killers been betrayed?

But now he watched in helpless rage as the car roared backwards. He prayed to Odudua that the car would not swing around the bend and disappear. And Odudua helped out her humble servant. In her magnificence, she guided the shots of his three machine-gunners and they did a great damage to the automobile, so that finally it jerked off the road and like a broken-backed bull wedged itself at a hideous angle, tilted, one ruined tire uplifted, in the gully.

Its occupants could still be killed.

He watched as fire lashed against it, tearing it, puncturing it, spewing liquids and shards of metal from it, turning what had been such a shiny emblem of power into shabby wreckage in just a few seconds. As theater it was fabulous; as action, it lacked finality, for from his position on this side of the road, he could see the guard emerge, bring fast fire on his shooters, pull the two very important norteamericanos from the vehicle and squish them down where it was safest, and then reload and fire again, with almost astonishing speed.

What an hombre! Oh, this was somebody who knew a thing or two.

For a daffy moment, the sergeant brought up his Star, took a good supported position, and considered firing as he saw the front sight cross the American's solid body. But then he thought better of it, as he was still seventy yards distant from his targets, such a long shot for a man with a pistol, and if he fired, he simply told them where he was.

Instead he saw that he had some advantage still. If the gunners kept their heads, continued to bring fire, didn't lose their nerve, he himself could slither and close the distance and, suddenly, jump out from the rear and kill the guard. The two mewling men, who now crouched behind the wheel well, gripping each other like women, would be easy. He could even kill them with his knife and truly enjoy it, but then that might take too long.

Gripping the pistol, he began to slither ahead through the gully.

Earl dropped back to the rear of the car, behind the tail fin. It was the smart move, for in that second, two of the tommy-gunners opened up, trying to pin him where he wasn't, which was at the front wheel well. Meanwhile, their third member dashed heroically from cover, firing from the hip like a movie marine, and, feeling himself well protected by the oblique raking fire his friends brought to bear on the car, began to advance.

He moved fast yet with courageous purpose, closing steadily, eyes on the move hunting for targets. Earl thought he was a brave man, even as he rose from behind the tail fin, put the front sight of the Super.38 on his throat, figuring the flat-shooting, fast-as-hell little bullet would drop only an inch or two at fifty yards, and p-r-e-s-s-e-d off a shot. The gun smacked crisply against his hand as it operated in super-time, flinging a spent shell off to the right, though in the rage of blood chemicals and dust and total sensory overload he did not notice it. What he saw in the split second before he dove for cover as the fire steered toward him was eminently satisfying: the man, stricken, stumbling drunkenly as the big weapon fell pitifully from his once strong hands. One hand flew to his mouth, which now drooled lakes of blood-that's what a lung shot does-and possibly he sealed some in, but by that time he was on his knees and a second later had toppled sacklike, devoid of dignity, forward into the dust. His tommy gun lay atilt in the road.

Speshnev, at the end of his run, saw almost nothing. These things are never clear. It was all dust and confusion, the noise was terrifying, and no one unifying vision made any sense of it. A man lay ragamuffin-pitiful in the road, in a pool of blood, so bright in a world drained of color. The car, which had come to rest half in, half out of the gully, looked like the Titanic settling into the sea. It was badly torn up, and a puddle of gasoline collected under it from a gas tank so many times punctured. The slightest spark could send a flaming cloud high into the sky.

But he could see no living men. One of those odd moments of gunfight silence prevailed. No one quite knew what to do, all parties were out of communication, blood had been spilled in copious amounts and the terrible thought occluded all minds: When will this be over? This followed close upon: Will I die here? Prayers and curses were mixed in, but the gist is always the same, and the results the same. Luck comes for or avoids bold and meek the same, but still a smart guy, if he's just a little bit lucky, has all the better chance of surviving.

Therefore, Speshnev assumed that somewhere behind the tilted car, the American still breathed. Clearly that was his kill out there in the sun, with that splayed look of beyond-caring the dead always find a way to assume. Possibly men closed in upon him; possibly they were even now about to kill him. Speshnev didn't know; he only knew that he had to get closer still, and do what could be done.

Someone had beshat himself, but Earl didn't know or particularly care which one.

He crouched beside them.

"When I rise up and fire, y'all break into the jungle. But don't lose sight of the road. Don't get lost back there and drown in the swamp or something. I think they're all on the other side of the road. I will hold them here long as I have ammo."

"I can't do it," said Lane Brodgins.

"Yes you can, Mr. Brodgins. You are younger and stronger than Boss Harry and he needs you like he never needed you before. Ain't that right, sir?"

"Actually, no, Earl. In fact, you're completely wrong. I really don't care if Lane comes or goes. I just don't want him holding me back. Plus, he smells. His pants are full of shit. That's how I see it and I always call it the way I see it."

"Well, in cases like this, teamwork is the best thing."

"Teaming up with Lane ain't going to do me no good whatsoever. Earl, you hold them here. I will run as you say. As for Lane, I have no idea. Lane, you're fired. You're on your own now."

"Goddamn you, Harry Etheridge. If I get out of here, I will tell all that I know about your filthy doings and it will―"

"Boys, boys, shut up, I can't think. I am low on ammo, and they're creeping around out there, possibly changing positions. I have killed two but there are at least two more and possibly a goddamned third I don't yet know about."

"Well, can you kill them all, Earl?"

"I don't think so, sir."

"Well, what goddamned good are you then, boy? You were hired to do a job and now's a fine time to see you ain't up to it."

"Sir, there's a goddamned bunch of them. Just shut up, old man. I will try and get your precious Arkansas ass out of here."

"Did you hear how he talked to me, Lane? The nerve."

"You fired me, Harry, so I don't give no two shits. Earl, shoot him. They came for him. If he's dead, they'll let us go."

"Lane, you are showing me no loyalty at all, and I want you to know that I have noticed it."

The two gunners opened up again, obviously having changed drums. Their fire ripped into the car, raising hell's own worst racket, and the vehicle shuddered as it took so many more hits.

And then-poof! — something somehow lit, and a sudden feathery fountain of flame leaped upward, accompanied by a smeary fog of smoke, black and thick.

" Go, go!" screamed Earl, rising not behind front fender or rear tail fin as before, but more or less in the center of the car, where he had not been, to shoot through the shattered windows. He pumped his nine rounds out fast, and saw a man with a heavy gun sit back and set his gun down. But immediately more bullets came speeding after Earl, and they kicked slivers of metal and glass into his face. He sat back, wincing, and saw that the two old friends had skedaddled, though in which direction he did not know.

He dumped his mag, slammed in his last one-only nine left! — and drew back, to cover the retreat of his charges.

The sergeant was very close now. He had seen the two fat ones depart, and thought to shoot at them. But they were not a problem. The problem was this hero here. If he wasn't killed and killed soon, the whole thing went down in defeat.

But still he wasn't quite close enough. He wanted to be close enough to make sure. He wanted to be at muzzle distance and watch the blackness of cloth where the flash burned the clothes of the man he was killing, and burned his flesh, even as it sent bullets into him.

So he paused. Across the way, he saw his last machine-gunner, crouching, moving ever so slowly, trying in his own way to get close to the American.

The sergeant stared hard at him, commanding him mentally to turn and make eye contact for signals.

Of course, not being a wizard, the sergeant was unable to influence his colleague in any way; no such thing happened. But then it did. The man looked directly to him.

The sergeant raised a finger, to halt the man. Their eyes met passionately. The sergeant gave pantomime signals, pointing to the man, then to himself, then raising one, two and three fingers, hoping to communicate the following: on the count of three, we both rise and fire. He cannot cover two points and will retreat and that is when we will have him.

The man nodded.

The sergeant gave the signal.

He nodded at the man, who steeled himself for the final rush.

The sergeant rose, the man rose. The man rushed the car screaming and firing.

The sergeant did not. He was no one's fool. He simply dropped down, and began to slither forward.

The man ran at the car, and the American shooter dropped him with one shot to the head.

The sergeant, creeping around, got close enough. He fired at the man, hitting him. He saw blood spurt, and the gun fly away.

Ha! Amigo, I have you now!

Earl saw a man come at him, wildly, and put an easy shot into him, thinking for just a second that this wasn't―

Then he was hit.

He felt the whack of something crashing into his hip, another buzz as something flew by his face as he went down, and then by the crazy laws of these things, his gun hand went numb. He couldn't have pulled a trigger, even if there'd been a trigger to pull, for the simple reason that a wild shot smashed hard into the Colt right above the trigger guard, mashing the gun terribly and blowing it out of his hand in the same instant.

Earl slid to earth, coming to rest next to the tilted Cadillac. Even now he was working. His hand flew to his hip and felt a black, hot welling of blood. But he didn't panic. He would fight to the end, and in a fast second or two, he spied the gun lying a few feet beyond him. He scuttled toward it, picked it up and saw that it had been ruined. The bullet had savaged the slide, bending it so grotesquely it could not operate on its rails. It was totally dead.

He spun around, hunting another weapon, but saw his own slayer standing above him. So this is what the guy would look like. A black, wild negro in khakis, with dusty boots and a lined face that had seen several hundred battles. Dead eyes, no curiosity, no light. Gray shot through the wool of tightly knitted hair. Sweat circles under the arm. A uniform of no army on earth save the universal one of desperate men good with guns, for hire cheap for any work at all.

"Choo fucked, man," the fellow said to him.

"Fuck you, Jack," said Earl.

"Yah, fuck choo, man, that's who eez fucked, no? I kill you then chase down those fat pigs and kill them. Ha! You so brave, but it comes to this, poor fucker."

The man was too experienced to come close enough for Earl to kick him in the nuts. He had the gun, the advantage and all the time in the world. He would make no foolish mistakes. It wouldn't be like a bad movie, where the hero kicks dust in the bad guy's eyes. He'd just shoot Earl, reload, finish the job and move on. By tomorrow the memory would be vague and by Friday gone forever.

He raised the pistol.

Then he lowered it to study a curious phenomenon.

His chest was spurting blood. Wasn't this an odd development? He couldn't believe it. Where had such a terrible atrocity come from?

He went to his knees, finding the Star pistol immensely heavy, letting it drop to the ground. His ears were filled with pounding, so much so that he did not hear the second burst that cut into him either. A presence loomed suddenly before him. He reached out and touched the face of Odudua, who gathered him to her dark bosom, a former servant and now, alas, just another john.

Earl watched him die. He lay babylike in the mud. His eyes were blank, his shirt red with new blood, lots of it. The smell of gunpowder hung in the air.

Earl thought he'd heard the shots, especially the second burst. He thought they came from the right. He pulled himself up and looked over the car's trunk, then scanned left and right, hoping to spot the shooter. But there was no shooter. Dust hung in the air and a quiet breeze stirred the leaves of the low trees.

"Hey!" Earl called, and there was no answer, no sound, no indication of another human being on the face of the earth.