Havana

Chapter 36

For the longest time, nothing happened. A week passed, then another. It seemed Roger and Frenchy were busy each day, coordinating with sources, making plans, contacting Washington, reading reports. That left little for Earl to do, so he just wandered Old Havana most days, enjoying the denseness of it, staying out of bars, sitting on benches, learning the town. It always helped to know the town. He watched the cops too, with their dark green uniforms and their tommy guns carried everywhere, sloppily but meaningfully. He could tell, just by reading bodies: everybody hated the cops.

Then one day it changed. Suddenly, action. Roger and Frenchy acquired a boy's aura of spy mystery in their behavior, telling him what they'd set up Washington absolutely necessary. It turned out to be a trip to the airport, but not the one Earl had imagined. Instead of catching the Air Cubana Connie for New York and then home, he encountered a deep blue Navy Neptune, diverted from sea patrol, its props spinning brightly in the sun. It had landed at one of the lesser strips, far from the big bright commercial jobs that brought the johns to Cuba by the thousands. He climbed aboard without anything by way of ceremony, though with some difficulty, as the pain in his hip was still present and when he wormed up that ladder under the plastic bubble nose, he felt it but good. The flight to Guantanamo lasted two hours, as opposed to the twelve-hour ordeal by car of the original journey. Everyone involved was polite, almost differential, but professionally discreet. He had been stamped with both the mystery and the glamour of the Agency, which meant that the young crewman, even the two young pilots of the Lockheed, regarded him with a certain necessary awe, just a step or two down from trembling in his presence.

This was funny to Earl, who had professionally hated the navy second only to the Japanese for all those years in the Pacific. In fact, his hatred of the navy dated back further than that, to a certain forgotten episode at Norfolk in 1934. But that was nineteen years ago; no need to think of it now.

Instead, he sat back as Cuba rushed by beneath him. It was green and dense, cut by mountains humped up toward the eastern extremes, a kind of endless Guadalcanal.

The plane vectored in through mountains unlike anything he'd seen on the island's jungly flatness, and it came to rest on an airstrip that seemed to be in the middle of America. America was everywhere he looked. Officers awaited him. They were from what he guessed would be called Naval Intelligence, and they took him once again to blank but comfortable officer's quarters in the little America that was the Gitmo. He settled in to a steady barrage of the respect his mystery earned him, had a nice lunch with the two fellows in the Officer's Club, where he was waited on by a marine. Everybody called him Mr. Jones.

One of them, the one called "Dan," seemed especially curious about Roger Evans. How was Roger? Was Roger all right? Did Mr. Jones know Roger at Harvard? Oh, he knew Mr. Jones couldn't answer that, it's just that at Harvard after the war, Roger was such a piece of work, what with his medals, his war record, his ferocious tennis and his mysterious connections. Dan hoped Mr. Jones would say hello to Roger for him. Dan kept meaning to get to Havana to have a drink with Roger, but his duties-the Cold War, you know-kept him pinned here at Guantanamo.

After lunch, he was issued fatigues, and the two fellows drove him over hills and through glades until at last he was at a place where he knew he'd be home: the sign simply read COL. MERLE EDSON RIFLE RANGE, USMC. He knew who Colonel Edson was too, though had never met him: he was called "Red Mike," was a Nicaragua marine like Earl, and had led Edson's Raiders during the war. He was under a marker somewhere on Hawaii with most of the friends Earl ever made.

But what awaited him was only a gunny and a couple of lance corporals at one shooting pit. Far off, three hundred yards distant in the butts, a single target had been raised like a postage stamp on a pool table.

"Mr. Jones, the sergeant here will take care of you. We'll be back in two hours."

"Thank you, Lieutenant Benning," he said.

"Dan, please call me Dan, Mr. Jones."

"Dan, then. Thanks, you've been very helpful."

"We try to do our part."

With that the officer smiled mysteriously, climbed back into the Navy Ford, and drove off.

Earl turned to face the gunny.

"Well, Earl, I won't ask how come that boy is calling you 'Mr. Jones.'"

"Hello, Ray. I thought that was you. Damn, it's good to see you."

They shook hands with the warmth of men who'd shed and lost blood together in hard places.

"You too, Earl."

"Last time I saw you was in the triage station on Saipan, right?"

"That's the one. I heard about you on Iwo. I was still in sick bay."

"You were lucky to miss Iwo, Ray. Wasn't no place for human beings, I'll tell you. So what have you got for me?"

"Well, we were told to get a good rifle ready for a man from Washington."

"Hell, I'm from Arkansas."

"Earl, I just know I got orders and so I follow 'em. This has 'very important' ticketed all over it. They wanted us to mount up a sniper rifle and to take it out of inventory as if it never existed. That ain't no easy thing in the Marine Corps, where we got to watch every last damn penny."

"Sorry for the trouble, Ray. These boys do business their own way. Can't say I like it much, but I signed on to something and I have to ride it out."

"Well, I'm glad it's you getting this here rifle, Earl."

"Ray, I'll get it back to you if I ain't damned dead."

"Believe you, Earl."

By this time they'd reached the cover just ahead of the shooting pits, where hundreds of marines gathered each day to zero or practice with their M1s. All training canceled today, of course.

Earl saw a rifle lying on one of the tables, almost like a religious icon presented during high mass.

"It's a Model 70, Earl, a Winchester."

"Yes, I have one back in the rack at home," he said. "The barrel on mine is narrower."

"The Marine Corps rifle team bought a mess of heavy-barreled target models back in the thirties for team high-power. Did right well with them, too. Major Schultz won the Wimbledon Cup in 1938, some big shooting match, very important. Our armorers bedded and adjusted the rifles and put a Unertl 8x scope on. Somehow we ended up with six of them for our rifle team down here. This here's the most accurate."

Earl looked at the sleek tool, blued steel, wood brightly burnished, the whole dark thing much loved and tended after. It specialized in hitting black paper circles at a thousand yards.

"Well, let's see if it still remembers where the black is," said Ray.

"Hell," said Earl, "let's see if I still remember where the black is."

He got into a good prone, and the two lance corporals, evidently armorers, bent to fit the rifle to him. The sling had to be let out some so that he could get it cinched up tight. They coached him, for the intricacies of shooting cinched were something that, once drilled in him, hadn't stuck around. He'd never shot with a sling in combat, but then all his killing had been done up close.

Then there was the issue of getting the scope properly focused so that the crossed wires of the reticule stood out black and precise, yet what lay beyond them was still clear as well. This took some diddling, and the bad news was that Earl's vision had deteriorated some, so that he had to place his eye in a certain way for maximum efficiency of the system.

"You hunt any, Earl?" Ray asked, as Earl cracked a box of 173-grain brown-box ammo from the Frankford Arsenal and threaded the shells in behind the bolt, down into the magazine well.

"I do, and dearly love it. Took my son after his first whitetail this spring, but he decided not to take it."

"I know he'll be a sure shot like his daddy."

"I hope he don't never have to fire a rifle at a man," said Earl.

He shoved the bolt forward and down where it locked like a vault door closing, then squirmed into position to find the rifle after a time-after his muscles quit ticking and stretching-pointing naturally so that the crosshairs bisected the black dot of the target three hundred yards out.

"Any time, Earl."

Earl settled in, until it was only himself and the rifle, and then the himself part went away and only the rifle existed. He forced all his concentration on the intersection of the two dark lines in the dark of the spot that was the target, waiting for it all to settle. It never would, he knew, but he knew also that you had to read and feel your own breathing, so when the crosshairs fell through absolute center, you were already into your trigger press.

The gun snapped, jerked, rose an inch or two and settled back down. He watched as the target disappeared into the butts and anonymous men put a spindle through the hole. When it popped back into view he saw a white marker, lower left hand quadrant of the circle.

"Good shot. Fire again please, sir," said the lance corporal hunched on the spotting scope.

Earl sent four more downrange, clustering his hits in that lower left area. Then he relaxed as the rifle was taken from him and the other lance corporal clicked the scope the prescribed amount of windage to the right.

Earl received the corrected rifle back and fired another cluster of five, this over to the right, but still under the bull. The lance corporal worked over the rifle again, and when it was returned with the new corrections, it put the cluster into three inches at the center of the bull.

"That's a good three hundred-yard combat zero. You still shoot a bushel, Earl."

"I ain't forgot as much as I'd thought."

For the next hour or so, they diddled. The young men coached Earl through his positions, and he forced reluctant muscles into positions they hadn't assumed in years. He practiced sitting, kneeling and offhand, the latter at a shorter range for snap shots.

"Trigger feel fine, sir?" asked one of the boys.

"Could let off a little more lightly," Earl said, "but not too lightly."

"Yes, sir."

The rifle was taken from him, broken down from its stock, and the tiny twin screws in the mechanism manipulated. Reassembled, a few ounces had vanished from the press. He requested more and it was done and measured to be a two-pound trigger, and was then slopped with shellac to keep the tiny screws from slipping under the pounding of recoil.

"We've made you a sniper, Earl."

"Next thing you know, you'll be painting my old face green like a bush. Wouldn't that be a thing."

"Earl, green. What a sight that would be."

And then at four the Navy Ford returned with its two crisp officers in their tropic khakis, neatly pressed and ironed, a far cry from the sweaty marines who'd been working hard in the sun all afternoon.

The two didn't approach the marines directly. They parked and waited.

Earl waited as the two lance corporals quickly and effectively cleaned and greased the rifle, restoring it to a condition of maximum accuracy. Then after their nod, he placed the rifle and two boxes of the Frankford 173-grain brown-box ammo into a civilian gun case that had been thoughtfully provided, took it, shook hands and turned to go meet his sponsors.

"Earl," said Ray, behind him, "I hope you know what you're doing, getting mixed up with these birds."

"I hope I do too," said Earl.

Earl took a shower, changed into his suit and a fresh shirt, and went with the two officers to the Officer's Club, where as "Mr. Jones" he felt himself the secret celebrity of a dull room full of dull naval officers and their dull wives. He saw the odd marine officer here and there, including an old-breed fellow here and there, and felt a longing to go over and say, "Hey, I'm Earl Swagger, USMC, wonder if you'd mind if I joined you." He knew they'd say, "Hell no, Mr. Swagger, set yourself down and we'll listen to your sea stories and we'll tell you some of our own." But that didn't happen, couldn't happen, wouldn't happen.

He had good steak and salad and passed on the drinks, though the two officers each belted back a couple of martinis apiece, and, loosened up, began to yap idiotically about "it," by which he took it they meant the Agency. They didn't say, but their curiosity was overwhelming. "What's it like," they wanted to know. "How secret is it? How tough to get in?"

He knew the answers to none of their questions and really didn't give a damn about either of them, the kind of dandy, fancy, educated boys who somehow didn't end up in the lines but always wangled intelligence or communications or staff. No, that wasn't true. There were a few who―

But a seaman, clutching his cap, came in and whispered something in Lieutenant Dan's ear, which sobered the young fellow up instantly.

"We heard from Roger," he said. "Finish up. You aren't getting another night on the navy. They want you in town but fast."

"Okay," Earl said. "Havana?"

"No, Santiago. It's only an hour away. We'll get you there by staff car. They say something's about to happen in Santiago."

"What would that be?" Earl wondered.

"Maybe there's a war about to break out," Lieutenant Dan said.

"Hell," said the younger officer, "it's more like an orgy. Hey, Mr. Jones, take me along."

"Jerry, what the hell are you babbling about?"

The answer, from Jerry, was one lascivious word: "Carnival."