Havana

Chapter 43

First came the difficulty of unloading. It seemed that several of the sergeants had not recovered from drunken celebration after the attack on the barracks, and had disappeared, which left the squads in command of corporals. But the men resented the corporals, who had no power to grant leaves or promotions, and who therefore need not be obeyed. So the unloading went slowly and imperfectly. Upon at last exiting the vehicles, the men would not stay formed up in squad units. Instead, this fellow saw a friend from that squad and that fellow saw a friend from this squad, and soon it wasn't a formation at all, it was just a large group of men standing around in a sugarcane field near a village, a crowd actually, with no place to go.

Captain Latavistada screamed himself hoarse trying to get them to obey his orders. But he was not regular army; he was the ranking Servicio Intelligencio Militar officer on the spot, and so he had inherited command by virtue of SIM's predominence over the regular army. Its officers, in protest, had refused to accompany the men in the field. Not even Latavistada's threats of investigations could move the aristocratic officers-one of them, Morales, was after all the hero of the attack! — to cooperate with the differently connected and cultured Latavistada, more of a middle-class striver who had succeeded merely by excellence at torture, which was any fool's path to the top.

But ultimately, Latavistada bullied the men into some kind of rough obedience, primarily by finding the largest of them and beating him severely with a riding crop. Latavistada was many things, most of them horrible, but he was not and never would be a coward.

At last, hammered into some semblance of order, the men began to trudge out in the hot sun, across the sugarcane fields, to the Sierra Maestra that loomed ahead, led by a squad of barking, yapping dogs and their handlers. In a short time they came to the village, where several elders were rounded up and questioned.

No, they had seen no fleeing men.

No, they knew nothing about tracks.

No, they had no food to share.

A sergeant looked to Captain Latavistada in frustration. This was going nowhere and the men were losing interest, beginning to peel off in twos and threes to find a shady spot in which to rest, laying down their rifles, drinking too much from their canteens. The operational edifice of the thing was on the verge of teetering into chaos.

It was at this moment, fortunately, that the dogs picked up a scent. Latavistada could tell by the changed pitch in the barking, and his enthusiasm inspired most of the men to reassemble. In time a corporal came running over.

"Sir, we have a good spoor. The dog man, he says the dogs have the scent of the wild one, Greaseball, and we've found tracks and broken foliage; we can track them."

"Excellent."

He turned, gave a quick burst of orders to his corporals, and the men reassembled sluggishly. But he sensed it was time to get a little respect from all of them.

He gestured and an old man was brought over.

"I thought, old sir, you said no one had been through here."

"No, sir," said the man. "What I said was, I had not seen anyone come through here. I cannot be held responsible for what I have not seen. Such would not be fair at all."

"But then," said the captain, "life itself is not always fair, is it?"

He pulled out his Star automatic and shot the old fellow squarely between the eyes. It was a magnificent shot, and the old man collapsed into a pile in a split second, dead long before he hit the ground.

Captain Latavistada felt the need to further explain the day's lesson to the villagers.

"Do you now understand? When an important official requests your cooperation in the pursuance of his duties, it is the duty of all Cubans to help immediately. We do not have time for cleverness and games. I understand you easterners far out here in the provinces are backwards in your ways, but that is not an excuse. We require immediate obedience. That is what we do in Havana and that is what you owe your country and your president."

The villagers quavered in the fiery presence of such a man, and could not meet his gaze. It occurred to Latavistada to order his men to burn the village, for they would certainly love that, most of them being from villages just like it and therefore hating it passionately, but he elected instead to move out to track the fugitives, believing he had accomplished enough of an educational nature that day.

"What was that?" said Castro.

They were halfway up a hill, thistly and brambly, ten miles east of Santiago; the hill was the only thing that lay between themselves and the sea. But it was not an easy climb; they had a long way yet to go.

"I suspect they have just shot somebody," said the Russian.

"Oh, god. They got here so fast."

"Not actually. In any decent police state, they'd be a lot more efficient. In Red Spain, for example, toward the end, the discipline we had achieved was phenomenal. The Spaniards made excellent secret policemen. They had a gift, though I must say it surprises me to find it so lacking in you or in any of the president's crew."

The closeness of danger increased his loquacity exponentially, while the wild fear in the young man annoyed him. He could not help but notice it. A twitch about the dry lips had started up, really repellent. Ugh, the whole left side of the mouth jerked upward spastically. The eyes were unable to focus, the face had turned gray, the breathing shallow, the sweat clammy on his pale, oval face. For some reason, this brought out the monster in Speshnev.

He felt like sitting the young man down and lecturing him for several hours on all the things he did not know, on the sentimentality of his dreams, the vagueness of his plans, the suicidal nature of his operations. This fellow had so much to learn! He had learned nothing yet! He was unformed, like some sort of retarded child who with his pretty face and incredible luck bobbed this way and that on the tides of history.

They had found a path through the forest, which essentially trended upwards, broken up here and there by knots of rock. The skyline was invisible given the heavy canopy and the only penetrating light came from behind, not above, where it reflected off what could be seen of the sugarcane field where it was still visible between the knitted tree trunks a half mile or so down the slope.

"We had better be going, no?" asked the young man.

"Not quite. Let's see how he's going to run this little drama. Look about for a tree, straight, with good stout branches."

"Do we have―"

"Yes, yes, yes. Find one! Do something helpful for a change!"

The boy found one; Speshnev, of course, found a better one. He commanded the boy to lean against its trunk, his legs splayed for support, his arms wrapped securely about the center shaft. That posture established, Speshnev used him as a kind of stepladder, pulling himself up till at last he stood on the braced shoulders and therefore was able to gain leverage on a thick branch at shoulder level. From there, he scampered like a monkey up the trunk and when he was high enough, locked himself against it, pivoted, drew his binoculars, and fixed on his pursuers.

In time, he came down.

"What did you see?"

"What I expected, mostly. Amateurism. He moved the troops out from the village, but raggedly, at the half-step. He was smart enough to break one team of athletes-fast movers-off to the right, where evidently the foliage is thinner. They're the blockers. They're going to race us to the top and cut us off, and drive us back to the main body."

"Oh, Christ."

"He probably has only one or two good platoon-level leaders. That would be par for this pitiful army. His best man he clearly put in charge of the fast movers, for that's the key to his operation."

"Will we beat them?"

"Well, no. But we don't have to. He didn't send enough. They will reach the crest ahead of us, but they will be hot and angry and sloppy. And, there aren't enough of them to form a line. They'll stagger, lose contact, look for the easiest ways through the thorns. At a certain moment, we'll go to ground. We assume they'll pass us by. They'll run into the main body. There'll be a scene, recriminations, threats of punishment. Under that distraction, we'll make it to the crest at one of its lowest points, but not its lowest, because once they realize they have missed us, they will go immediately for the lowest one. Do you see?"

"How do you know all this for certain?"

"One just knows certain things. Come on, now. We have to get as close to the fast movers as possible, for the further they come down, the more they will recover and the less sloppy they will become. The higher up we encounter them, the better for us."

"I hope you know what you're doing."

"So do I. These are the only eyes I own."

Earl saw the execution. He was in the gap at the crest of the hill and the village was a full mile away. But the 10x Leica binoculars resolved it well enough: he saw the pistol come up and jump, and the old man go instantly limp, and fall hopelessly to the earth. From so far away the sound of the shot only reached him seven seconds later and it was dry crack, not like a shot at all, but wind-blown and hollow.

Something in him recoiled at the ugly nakedness of it. He fixed his binocs on the officer, now busy giving orders, and saw without surprise that it was the fellow with the scalpel who worked on eyes. He spat into the dust, slipped back a little, lit a cigarette.

In time, Frenchy caught up. He was limping badly.

"Goddamn boots," he said. "I have a blister."

Earl looked and saw the young man had the Abercrombie & Fitch luxury items, creamy dark leather.

"You'd think for all I paid for them," Frenchy said, "they wouldn't be bad."

"You didn't break 'em in good. Say, where'd you get that pistol?"

"Earl, it's just like yours. A Colt Super.38. I saw the guys you put down. Man, I had to have one."

"Don't shoot yourself. Or me." Earl pulled his pack around, pulled out the first-aid kit, and got out a bandage.

"Here. Patch it up. You've got a lot of walking left today."

Frenchy set about to repair himself while Earl peered over the crest, watching the officer make his dispositions. He watched as a designated crew stripped off helmets and packs and left rifles behind, taking only canteens and pistols, and began to assault the mountainside in a single line, on the double quick. He broke the remaining troops into three other elements, and each set off to find a different way up the mountain.

Frenchy asked him what happened.

"He shot an old man," Earl said. "Then he split his troop up into four elements. He's sending one, stripped, to block the hill. The others will maneuver and pursue."

"So where do you think they are?" Frenchy said, fiddling with his own binoculars.

"Somewhere about halfway down. Probably less than a thousand yards from where we now sit. Somewhere down in that forest. I'd guess they're in the brush, because they might be visible from the trails. If the officer can spot them, he can bring fire on them and pin them. Then it's over."

"Maybe the officer will do our job for us."

"I don't think so. I think they'll get up close to the crest and try and hide from the boys coming up fast. They think they can evade, get over the crest, and get down before the officer can reassemble his people and get them onto this side in some kind of order."

"So where will our boy go over the crest?"

"He'll go over where it's brush so that nobody can get a fix on him. Then he'll beeline down, but not where it's easiest. I make it halfway down there―" he pointed to a fold in the side of the mountain, "-and that gets him to the beach, not as fast as where it's clearer but under better cover."

"So that's it."

"That's it. And he'll make it, too. This has been figured nicely, I think. Very good job. This guy is a professional."

"You know how it's got to be, Earl," said Frenchy. "Castro, then the other guy. Kill them both, Earl, and send the message we came here to deliver. The Big Noise. Then we can go home heroes."

"Oh, boy," said Earl, "that's just what I want to be."