Havana

Chapter 22

They would not stop screaming. It wasn't that you could blame them. The secret police worked first on the fingernails, with a specialized device, then on the toes, with knives. But it wasn't until the specialist arrived that progress was made.

His name was Captain Ramon Latavistada. He was called Ojos Bellos, "Beautiful Eyes." Not that his were beautiful, but that, as a high officer in SIM, the Sevicio de Inteligencia Militar, at the Moncada Barracks in Santiago, he worked on the eyes. He knew that eyes were the key to a man's soul. His reputation was mighty. He worked quickly, with passion and skill; it was never pretty but it was always effective.

The prisoners screamed and screamed and screamed. There were three: the man Earl had shot immediately at the tree; another tommy-gunner he'd wounded across the road; and a third, unwounded, who'd been positioned at the far tree, had never brought fire to bear in the fight, and had escaped only to be tracked down by a dog team.

It was well after dark. A U.S. Navy generator had been unlimbered and lights strung to allow the crime scene to be examined and the dead to be toe-tagged and body-bagged. Pepe, with his queer, deflated head, rested with several of the men who'd killed him and were now in bags themselves.

First the navy had shown up, then a detachment of security police from Guantanamo and some Cuban soldiers from Santiago, who brought the dogs that had tracked the one escapee. Now, a few hours later, the scene bustled with dark purpose and energy, as soldiers guarded, investigators investigated, detectives detected, Americans worked on their earnest looks, and the Cubans smoked and joked and tortured.

Earl still lay on a gurney next to the ambulance, a bottle of plasma hung on a prong above his head. A corpsman had cut his pants away, and now a U.S. Navy doctor worked on him, and told him that he would not die.

"You were lucky, sir," the young man said. "He hit you flush in the hipbone with a pistol bullet, but you must have bones like concrete. Or maybe it was the angle. The bullet didn't shatter the bone, it glanced off. It tore up some gluteus maximus but no arteries were hit, and you got the wound stanched right away, so you're going to be okay. I take it you've been shot before?"

"Once or twice," was all Earl said.

"Well, you are a tough old coot. You get to walk away from another one."

"I am going to run out of luck sooner or later, though."

They tried to load him into the navy ambulance, but Earl would not leave until finally the last of his charges was found. This was Lane Brodgins, who had taken off on a tangent from the congressman as they fled through the jungle and gotten himself completely lost, until a squad of marines uncovered him in a bog. Now he was back, wrapped in a blanket, drinking coffee, unseeing and uncaring, trying to fight the shock that warped his brain.

As for Boss Harry, he didn't miss a beat. He'd already shaken hands with each of his rescuers, American naval or Cuban security personnel, glad-handed, backslapped, hee-hawed, guffawed, and managed to find the one PFC-there's one in every squad-with a pint of hooch aboard, and he'd had a few hard swallows and was mellow again. His hair wasn't even mussed.

"Well, Earl," he said, "you done fought 'em off and saved my worthless old hide again, this time from killers."

One of the prisoners screamed.

"Woo," said the congressman, "bet he don't like that a bit."

"No, sir, I don't expect he does."

"You let them take you to Gitmo, son. You relax and the United States Congress will take care of this one, this one's on us. And I will call Governor Becker myself and demand that the State of Arkansas confer on you the highest damn medal it can. I know you've got every damned medal there is and it's pointless, but still I insist, son. You'da made a lot of Republicans happy if you hadn't gotten us through this."

"I was just―"

A shot rang out.

"God, what was that?" Harry said, wincing and ducking. "Are they attacking again?"

"I'd bet the Cuban interrogator made a point for prisoners A and B by shooting prisoner C in the head."

"Earl!"

It was Roger, rushing over, having just arrived on the long haul from the Havana embassy. "Good god, are you all right? Lord, we came as soon as we heard. We have been driving like fools. Congressman, you're safe. I heard about the driver. Oh, lord, you're so lucky there's only one dead."

"It ain't luck, it's old Earl," said Congressman Etheridge.

Roger closed with Earl, who smoked a cigarette and lay on the gurney.

The congressman drifted away, and Roger leaned close.

"Earl, again-fabulous work. You have any idea what would have happened if they'd managed to kill an American congressman? Jesus, I hate to think. It would scuttle the Cuban economy for months to come, it would get us militarily involved in a way we cannot afford to be, it would have unsettled the whole Caribbean, it would have pissed off the president, and it would have cost a lot of us our careers!"

"Well, thank god nobody's career got wrecked," Earl said, taking a draw on his Lucky.

"Okay, poke fun at me. That's all right."

"Mr. Evans―"

"Earl, please, Roger, dammit, you saved my career tonight, you should at least call me Roger."

"Roger. I just want to knit up and git out of here. Every time I end up on an island, I almost get clipped."

"Well, now, let's not―"

"Sir, I have had it with your damn island. I am too old by far for this kind of thing."

"Of course, of course. But have you―"

"No. No, don't say a thing. Just send me home, for Christ's sake!"

Roger's eyes clicked through disappointment to hurt to numbness. Then he turned to the corpsmen.

"Okay," he said, "load him up, get him to the hospital."

"Wait," Earl said, "is Frenchy here?"

"Yes, I sent him to talk with the Cuban Secret Police. His Spanish is actually pretty good, and he gets on better with―"

A fusillade of shots rang out, and men flinched and ducked, and turned toward the source.

"Well," said Earl, "I think that's it for them boys they caught."

"You can't tell them how to do things," Roger said.

"I want to talk to Frenchy. I got a job for him. You boys"-he addressed the corpsmen―"y'all give me another few minutes, okay?"

"Sir, you need bed rest, a dressing change, a more substantial examination, a…"

But undirected, Frenchy stepped out of the dark.

"Well, there he is, the man himself," he said.

"What did you find out?" Roger asked.

"Uh, the Cuban 'specialist' broke the last one. Scalpels, eyes, you don't want to know more. I never saw anything like that. Anyway, before they shot him, he told them who's behind all this. He gave them a name. They wouldn't share it with me. Goddammit, I handed out smokes and everything. They just seemed exceedingly happy and somebody got on the radio to El Presidente. Somebody's going to get roasted tomorrow!"

"Lord," said Roger, wincing at the prospect of yet more distasteful violence. He turned and left to go tend to the congressman.

Earl gestured, and Frenchy bent close.

"What is it?"

"I ain't said nothing yet, but somebody else was here. Someone with a burp gun nailed that bastard who was about to finish me."

"What are you saying, Earl?"

"Listen here. Not tonight, when all these bastards are around, but tomorrow you stop off. Mark a tree or something so you can stay oriented. About forty yards up the road, maybe ten yards in, that's where whoever was shooting set up. I want you to get your Princeton trousers all muddy by getting down on them hands and knees, and don't you get up till you find a cartridge casing. I have to know who this guy is, and why he done what he done."