Killing Castro

NINE

Señora Luchar was talking. They were in the living room, she and Turner and Hines, and they were drinking the inevitable demitasse cups of strong black coffee. Hines couldn’t stand the coffee, or Señora Luchar, or Turner, or anyone else in the world, himself least of all. His fingers gripped the small white cup so tightly he was afraid it would break in his hand. He wished he was a smoker; a cigarette would be good right now, but it seemed a silly time to start.

“Today is the twentieth of July,” Señora Luchar was saying. “Tomorrow Castro makes his trip across the island. Thursday he speaks in Santiago, a speech to workers and peasants. Then he returns here, to Havana, in time for his speech commemorating the anniversary of the Twenty-sixth of July Movement. He’ll be speaking Sunday, in the main square. That’s not far from here. You know where it is?”

Hines nodded.

“So that’s the time,” the Luchar woman said. “There will be a huge crowd, too huge for the police to do much good. You’re using bombs, right? Bombs that you throw?”

“That’s right,” Hines told her.

“So you mingle with the crowd and throw the bombs. Then you get away and return here. We’ll get you back to the mainland.”

“It sounds shaky,” Turner broke in.

“Mr. Turner?”

“Yeah,” Turner went on. “Yeah, it sounds shaky. We’re right in the middle of it. It’s not tough tossing the bombs. It’s tough getting away.”

The woman looked at him.

“We’re taking a chance,” Turner said.

“Of course. And you are being paid how much to take this chance? Twenty thousand dollars? You would not be paid so much if there were no chance, Mr. Turner.”

She turned, left them. Turner shrugged and headed for the stairs to the basement. Hines got up, not particularly anxious to follow Turner. But where the hell else was he supposed to go?

Turner said: “What do you think of the setup?”

“I don’t know.”

“We’ll be sitting ducks. If we play it the way she calls it, we’ll be deader than hell before the bomb goes off. I don’t like it.”

“So?”

Turner hesitated, then stated boldly, “I want out, Jim.”

“You must be kidding.”

“No, I mean it.”

“You?” Hines was on his feet now, his eyes amazed. This was too much, he thought. Big old Turner, tough guy Turner, the desperate desperado. He wanted out.

“Me.”

“Why? Getting cold feet, for God’s sake? Going chicken?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, I don’t get it.”

Turner shrugged. “There’s not a hell of a lot to get. I took this job to beat a stateside murder rap. I was going to run for Brazil. Well, why Brazil? I’m in Cuba. I can stay here.”

“Stay here?”

“Get work, find a place to live. I don’t know. I like it here, Jim. And I’m here already. Why commit another murder so I can start running all over again?”

“Jesus Christ. What would you do here, for God’s sake?”

“Anything. There’s a lot of new construction going up—and I’ve swung construction work before. I know how to handle heavy equipment and they’re short of that kind of labor.”

“So you’ll throw away twenty grand to work a steam shovel? That doesn’t sound like you, Turner.”

“Maybe not. Or maybe it does, I don’t know. And there’s a guy I got friendly with, a grifter type. He wants me to throw in with him. He works some semi-legitimate cons and he makes a living. And it sounds a hell of a lot better to me than tossing bombs around like an imitation anarchist. Castro’s not my enemy. He may be bad, but it doesn’t make a hell of a lot of difference to me. All I want is a nice quiet place to live, food to eat, liquor to drink and a woman when I need one. I can get all those no matter who’s in charge here.”

“So you’re quitting.”

“Maybe.”

Hines went over to his bunk, sat down. He was sweating. First the truth about Joe and now Turner doing a fadeout, gumming up the works by quitting cold on him. It was all falling apart at the seams—his whole little world.

He didn’t know how to tie it together again.

“Jesus,” he said. “What am I supposed to do now?”

“That’s up to you.”

“I can’t go ahead and throw the bomb—”

“Sure you can. I’ll put it together for you. It only takes one person to heave it. If we both go, it only makes it easier for them to spot us.”

“But—”

“You can even take my share of the dough. That makes it forty thou instead of twenty.”

“I don’t care about the money!”

“Hey,” Turner said. “Calm down, kid.”

“You don’t know, damn you. You don’t understand a goddamn thing.”

“What are you talking about?”

“About everything. Joe was my brother, damn it, and Castro killed him. So I have to kill Castro. Can’t you get that into your fat head?”

“So kill him! I don’t care—”

“Goddamn it! You know what I found out, Turner? Castro had a right to kill Joe. Joe was a turncoat, he got power happy and tried a coup of his own. Do you hear what I’m saying? I’m over here getting some kind of cockeyed revenge for my hero of a brother who had it coming all along! Isn’t that one for the goddamned books? Here I am living in a cruddy cellar and scheming like some kind of comic-strip character and it’s all for revenge. And Joe doesn’t deserve being avenged in the first place. How do you like that, Turner? And what the hell am I supposed to do now?”

He sat there, glaring. He was waiting for Turner to say something but the older man was silent, watching him with cool eyes. He felt like a nut now, like some kind of an idiot. He’d been shouting at the top of his lungs like a kid with a tantrum.

“Jim—”

“I’m sorry, Turner. I lost control.”

“Forget it. Jim, get the hell out of here. I didn’t know about Joe. How did you find out?”

“From the Luchar broad.”

“Are you sure she was telling it straight?”

“Yeah. I’ve checked around and… oh, hell, she wouldn’t have any reason to lie to me. If she was going to lie she’d do it the other way, Turner. She’d want me to stay revenge-happy so I wouldn’t blow the assassination. She wasn’t lying. It’s straight. Joe must have gone a little nutty or something. He probably lost his edge the same way Castro did. Power does that to a person. It happens all through history. But it takes a little of the steam out of… out of me, damn it. It’s like shooting the governor because your brother went to the chair for a murder he committed. It makes it silly.”

“Yeah.”

“Turner? What do I do now?”

“What I told you. Get the hell out.”

“Out of Cuba?”

“Uh-huh. Get the first boat back to the States and stay there. You’re not a criminal, kid. You’re young, you can go back to school and start fresh. You’ve got a story to save up and tell your own kids someday. In the meantime you can live instead of dying. Because if you stay in Havana they’re going to kill you, Jim. This game was a last chance for me. I figured there might be a nice easy way to bump Castro and stay alive. But there isn’t, and I can stay alive without it.”

“But—”

“And so can you. Look, you don’t care about the money. Remember? And the revenge seems kind of pointless now. So throw your hand in.”

“I don’t know.”

Turner took out a cigarette, lit it. He took a deep drag, let the smoke out in a thin stream. The air in the cellar was dense and the smoke stayed in a long, snakelike column as it rose slowly to the ceiling.

“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,” he said.

“Go ahead.”

“I’m staying right here until Saturday. There are three other guys in on this, don’t forget. God knows where they are, but they’re supposed to be somewhere around here in Cuba. Ray Garrison, Matt Garth, Earl Fenton. You remember them?”

“I remember.”

“Yeah. Well, there’s no law saying we have to be the ones to hit Castro. They might get him first. If that happens, we have our twenty grand apiece without any risk. So I’m sticking around to see if maybe that’ll happen. It would be nice.”

Hines didn’t say anything.

“Saturday night,” Turner went on, “I clear out. Don’t ask where I’m going because I wouldn’t be able to tell you. I’ll hole up somewhere for the time being so that Lady Luchar and her hired hands can’t decide they don’t like me any more. Then I’ll apply for Cuban citizenship. I’ll go straight to the government and tell them I’m wanted for murder in the States and I like the climate better in Cuba. I’ll have a work permit the same day and a set of citizenship papers within the week. And I’ll be set.”

“And what should I do, Turner?”

“Stick around until Saturday. You don’t want to miss out on twenty grand, do you?”

“I told you—”

“That you don’t care about the money. I got that. But you wouldn’t throw it away if someone dropped it in your lap, would you?”

“No,” Hines admitted.

“Fine. So you hang around until Saturday. Then you grab a boat or a plane, go to the Swiss consulate and tell them you’re an American refugee, something like that. They’ll get you back to Miami and you can go it alone from there.”

“That’s the sensible way, huh?”

“Sure.”

Hines nodded to himself. There was always a sensible way, and there was another way that seemed more honest. He decided it was a hell of a shame that the honest way was never the sensible way.

“Will you put those bombs together? And explain to me how they work?”

“Why—”

“Saturday night,” Hines went on desperately, doggedly. “Saturday night you’ll show me how the bombs work. Sunday you can disappear. I don’t care. Because Sunday I’m going to blow the hell out of Castro.”

“Didn’t you hear a thing I said? Don’t you remember what you said, goddamn it?”

“I remember.”

“Then—”

“I don’t even want to talk about it. I know—I’ll be getting killed, maybe, and all for a brother who had it coming. But I don’t want to think about it, it only makes my head ache. I can’t take it any more. I don’t know what’s right or wrong, Turner. I can’t tell the heroes from the villains. It’s not black and white like a morality play. It’s all kinds of shades of gray.”

Turner dropped his cigarette to the floor. He covered it with his foot and ground it out. He did not say anything.

“All shades of gray,” Hines went on. “And it all boils down to the same thing. He killed my brother and I’m going to kill him. That’s what I keep winding up with. I can’t take the boat back to the States, I can’t run like a rat to the Swiss consulate. I have to wait here and I have to blow that bastard in two with a bomb. That’s all I can do.”

It was Wednesday morning. Maria boiled a huge pot of water over a small fire of brush and twigs. She tossed a cup or two of coffee grounds into the pot and let it boil for ten minutes. Then she ladled out cups of the hot, black coffee. Fenton took one and walked a short distance away with it, sat down and got a cigarette going while the coffee cooled a little.

It was Wednesday morning. Castro would pass along the road late in the afternoon or early in the evening. A young boy had brought the news the night before, a twelve-year-old kid with hollow eyes and beads of perspiration on his brow, who ran through the underbrush like a startled deer. Late in the afternoon or early in the evening—that was the word from the underground, passed from mouth to mouth in whispers, brought this last step of the way by this boy with hollow eyes.

Late in the afternoon, early in the evening. Fenton sucked smoke from his cigarette, took a tentative sip of the steaming coffee. He burned his mouth and cursed quietly. Late in the afternoon, early in the evening. He was as tense as a tightly coiled spring, jumpy as a hand grenade with the pin pulled. Late in the afternoon, early in the evening.

Tomorrow Castro spoke in Santiago. Or, if they were successful, tomorrow Castro spoke to the dead, spoke to other corpses in the language cadavers speak. Castro lived or died, and this would be determined soon—late in the afternoon, early in the evening.

The whole camp was rigid with a mixture of anticipation and brittle fear. The days had been bad ones lately. Tuesday, around noon, a Jeep with two soldiers in it had rolled slowly down the road. A pair of Castristas on patrol. Manuel had ordered everyone to let Jeep and soldiers pass. They could not risk exposing their position, not until the big game was in the sights of the Sten guns. A Jeep with two soldiers was no target at all when Fidel Castro himself was due to come into firing range.

But Taco Sardo forgot the order, or else ignored it. His Sten gun belched bullets over the formation of rock and the Jeep halted, a tire gone. The soldiers came out with automatic rifles in their hands, and they had to be killed at once. They could not be allowed to escape, could not be permitted to pass the word to the garrison that rebels lay in ambush along the road to Santiago.

It had been a short, desperate fight. One of the new recruits had died, a Castrista rifle bullet tearing half his face away. Garth got one of the soldiers with a Sten gun blast but the other was back in the Jeep suddenly, ready to ride to Santiago on the rims if he had to.

Two of the rebels had stopped the Jeep. Manuel shot out another tire and Taco Sardo, who had started all the trouble in the first place, quickly raced into the road to put a pistol bullet into the driver’s throat.

The Jeep would not run. Four of them together managed to push it down the road a short distance. Then, with two others to assist, they lifted the crippled vehicle and carried it from the road, hiding it in the brush. They lifted the two dead soldiers and carried them far into the hills, leaving their bodies to rot. Maria scrubbed blood from the road, Fenton picked up shards of broken glass. When they were done, no evidence of the scramble remained. The road was clear again, empty.

That had been trouble enough. That alone had swelled the tension, had drawn everyone’s nerves back like a bowstring.

There was more Tuesday evening. Fenton was not sure what had happened, but while he sat among the rocks and kept a lonely vigil over the road, there was a sharp scream, curses in Spanish, a roar of pain. And later that evening he saw Garth with deep scratches across his face. And Maria wore a deep frown, and her eyes were pools of bitterness.

Now Fenton drank his coffee and smoked another cigarette. It was a moot point, he thought, whether Castro’s convoy would arrive before the rebels succeeded in killing each other off. Matt Garth obviously didn’t learn from experience; he was going to go on until someone put a bullet in him. Taco, blood-hungry after being wounded in the leg, would shoot at anything that came within range. Manuel sat lost in thought, still the leader but now gripped by his dream of power and glory. Maria burned with fear and anger. And Earl Fenton, the quiet man, the refugee of a teller’s cage in the Metropolitan Bank of Lynbrook, the man with cancer in his lungs, drank bitter coffee and smoked strong cigarettes and waited for Fidel to come and meet his death.

Late in the afternoon.

Or early in the evening.

Matt Garth liked things simple and direct. If you made things too complicated you just loused them up. When you wanted a woman, you took her. When you were killing someone for a price, you went ahead and killed him. And when you had a burn on for some son-of-a-bitch who had been giving you a hard time, well, you belted him one.

Which was what he was going to do.

He had just finished his session as lookout. He had crouched between rocks as mute and massive as Garth himself, his Sten gun perched along a rock ledge with a fresh clip in its breech. And four soldiers came rolling along in a battered Jeep, peering into the brush in a hunt for rebels. One of them, a beardless kid, had focused a pair of binoculars upon the precise spot where Garth was sitting. And Garth’s finger was poised on the trigger. One burst of the Sten gun would have sent the four rat bastards to hell. But the kid with the glasses had seen nothing, and the soldiers were gone now.

So to hell with being lookout. One of the Cubans had taken over, a guy named Jiminez, and Garth didn’t have to play lookout like a goddamn kid playing cops and robbers. He had better things to do.

The first thing to do was find Fenton. Fenton had it coming, all right. There was Maria, flat on her back and ready to take it and there was Garth ready to give it to her. And that buttinsky, Fenton, had to foul things up.

Garth laughed. The bastard wouldn’t know what to do with a woman if she came around and tried to serve it to him on a platter, but he had to louse things up for Garth.

Well, he’d know better next time.

Garth smiled. He was still smiling when he found Fenton by the dead campfire. Fenton didn’t return the smile.

“Say,” he said deceptively, “I wanted to talk to you.”

“What about?”

“Private stuff,” Garth told him. “And listen—I’m sorry I belted you the other day. I lost my head. I got all hot over the broad and I couldn’t think about nothing else.”

“Oh,” Fenton said. “Well, it’s all right.”

“No hard feelings?”

“None.”

“Shake on it?”

Fenton seemed to hesitate, then accepted the huge hand offered to him. They shook hands solemnly.

“Now,” Garth went on innocently, “let’s talk. I got things you oughta know about.”

“Then tell me.”

“It’s private, Earl. C’mon—let’s head over into the brush a ways. These spics are all the time listening.”

Fenton shrugged, stood up. He was holding the Sten gun in one hand. Garth led him away from the camp, into the brush far from the road. Garth wanted to laugh—it was getting cute now. You could take these complicated guys like Fenton and you could twist them up six ways and backwards. The simple things were best, damn it.

“What’s it all about, Garth?”

“Oh, it’s interesting,” Garth said, stalling. “About this Castro bird. The one we hit in the head tomorrow.”

“You mean today. Any minute, as a matter of fact.”

“Yeah,” Garth said. “Well, whenever the hell it is. It’ll be a gas telling them about it on Bleecker Street, you know? Can you see it?”

“Is that all you wanted?”

“Not exactly. Lemme have your gun a minute, Earl.”

Fenton handed him the gun. “Why do you want it?”

“I don’t want it,” Garth said, tossing the Sten gun into a clump of bushes. “I just don’t want you to have it, Earl, honey. Because I’m going to beat the crap out of you, Earl.”

“I don’t—”

That was all he said. Garth drove a fist to the pit of his stomach, doubling him over. Then a right uppercut straightened him out again, and a left cross to the chest put him on the ground. He lay there looking as though he had been hit by a truck.

“You fell for it,” Garth said. “No hard feelings? I got plenty of feelings, you son-of-a-bitch!”

He hauled Fenton up, smashed him full in the face. Fenton’s nose was bleeding now. He hit him, smashed his lips, felt teeth give way. This time he let him fall to the ground. He kicked him hard, felt ribs crack and kicked him again. The man on the ground looked lifeless, inert, but Garth knew he wasn’t dead. Matt Garth was a pro, damnit. He could beat the hell out of a guy and not kill him. He knew his business.

He whirled at a sound. Maria had followed them; she stood in the clearing now, gun in hand, her eyes on Fenton. The eyes moved to Garth and stared with hatred. But Garth ignored the gun. Beating Fenton had excited him; he always got excited after a muscle job, always needed a woman as soon as possible. And here was a woman—to hell with the gun in her hand.

He rushed her. There was a moment when she could have shot him, but she hadn’t expected his move and the chance was lost. His whole body slammed into her, knocking the gun from her grasp, tumbling her to the ground. He fell on her, and although she fought him she didn’t have a chance. He had her where he wanted her.

Fenton wasn’t going to stop him now, not this time. Nobody was going to stumble on them. This time, goddamn it, he was going to lay her silly.

He ripped off her clothes, stripping her naked, and struck her savagely in the face or stomach or naked breasts every time she tried to resist him. Then he fumbled momentarily with his own clothing, struck her again, forced her legs apart, went for her. She had given up, knowing resistance was useless, resigned to the inevitable.

He plunged deep into the soft warmth of her. She struggled anew, briefly.

And then, finally, it was over.

He got slowly to his feet. “You’re hot stuff,” he told Maria. “We’ll have to go another round pretty soon.”

Her eyes were sheer hatred.

Garth laughed. He looked at Fenton—conscious now, on his feet again, and able to function. Fenton had his gun back. And Maria moved to pick up hers.

“C’mon,” he told them. “We gotta go up against this Castro guy. Then we can have some more fun.”

He turned his back to them and started through the brush again, back to the camp site. Either one of them could have shot him. But he knew they would not. In both their minds, Castro came first.

And no one shot him.

Ernesto took a small sip of sour red wine. The heavyset Cuban put his glass on the table and smiled broadly.

“My friend,” he said. “You have decided to stay in Cuba, true?”

“I’ve decided to stay,” Turner said.

“And you will obtain papers? You will become a citizen?”

Turner nodded.

“A thought has come to me,” Ernesto said. “I have a friend, an official in the Department of Immigration. He is not busy these days. More people seek to leave Cuba than to enter here. This friend of mine, he is a fine man. You would like him, amigo.”

“You have many friends, Ernesto.”

“So? Can a man live without friends? Friends are the strength of a man. But to continue. This friend of mine, this official, might make matters simpler. There are complications to becoming a citizen, even in Cuba. What you Americans call pink tape.”

“Red tape.”

“So. My friend could cut this red tape. A preparation of papers, a signature, the application of an official seal, and you are a citizen of Cuba. Is it not simple?”

“Shall we go to this friend?”

“Very simple.”

Turner considered. “I have no money,” he said. “Wouldn’t it cost some money for this friend to expedite things?”

Ernesto sighed, extended his hands with his palms down. “This is a friend,” he said. “Not an acquaintance but a friend, as you are my friend. Once I was able to do a great service for this friend. Once he was in great trouble with the man Torelli of whom I spoke. He was a croupier, and there was the matter of a shortage. I was able to cover for my friend. Thus he would be happy to do a service for me in return. There will be no need for money in this case.”

“Well,” Turner said. “That’s different.”

“So. Let us go, my friend. And in an hour you shall be a free citizen of Cuba. Then we shall go again to the bordello, yes? I am in need of a woman. And we shall celebrate your citizenship.”

Two hours later Turner was a citizen of Cuba. The three of them—he, Ernesto and the Immigration official—had a drink in celebration. Then they taxied to a bordello which Ernesto liked. Turner was happy now. He was safe. He did not have to think of murdering Castro.

Castro’s convoy was sighted at seventeen minutes past six.

One of the new men had the watch. He saw the lead Jeep pull into view, saw it far off down the road. He gave the signal, and the rebel band began drifting into position, stationing themselves in strategic spots along the rock formations on either side of the road. Fenton was ready, gun in hand, heart hammering. He braced himself with his back against a boulder, then shifted and stretched prone in the gap between two huge rocks. He lay down on his belly and pointed his weapon at the road.

Time.

A Jeep with four uniformed soldiers led the procession. Directly behind it was a truck covered with a canvas top. There were men in it, Fenton knew. Soldiers, armed with rifles and machine guns and grenades. And behind the truck was another Jeep, with more soldiers.

So Castro was expecting an ambush. That was obvious—you didn’t travel with the entire militia around you if you thought you were one hundred percent safe. There was a third Jeep, with more soldiers. Then a long Lincoln, a limousine, with the shades drawn.

Castro had to be in the Lincoln. He would be traveling there, behind drawn shades, probably cool and comfortable in an air-conditioned car. And there was a pair of Buicks behind the Lincoln, then a slew of Jeeps with still more soldiers.

Fenton drew a deep breath.

The convoy crawled forward. Fenton began to ache inside for a cigarette, for a cup of coffee, for something. He steadied himself, steadied his gun. It seemed now that everything had to go wrong, that the convoy could not help getting wind of the rebel trap. Fenton looked across the road, saw Manuel aiming his gun through a blind of branches arranged for camouflage. He saw Maria in the shadow of another rock, then looked to his right and listened to the heavy breathing of another rebel. God, they were too easy to see, too easy to spot! They did not stand a chance.

The lead Jeep was approaching. It was already level with Taco Sardo, who had the post furthest to the rear. Fenton listened to the motors of the Jeeps and the truck, heard a bird singing in a nearby shrub, drew in his breath sharply when he heard another rebel shift position and snap a twig. It seemed to Fenton that any sound, however slight, would be heard by Castro’s forces, that any noise at all would give away the rebel position. He knew this was ridiculous but he couldn’t help feeling it. He tried to hold his own breath, tried to keep from making any sound at all.

The convoy kept coming. The plan was a simple one—they were to hold fire until the lead Jeep came abreast of the position held by Garth on one side and a man named Jiminez on the other. Then they would open fire. Garth and Jiminez were to shoot down the lead vehicles, blocking the road at the front. Sardo and a few others would be doing the same to the Jeeps at the rear of the procession. That would keep Castro in the middle, would prevent the big Lincoln limousine from escaping either to the front or to the rear.

The rest was up to the rebels in the center, to Manuel and Maria and Fenton and to one or two more. They would level their guns at the Lincoln, going for Castro, for the big fish in the pond. It would be easier with a few grenades or a bazooka, Fenton thought. Something that would stop a Jeep with a single shot. It was harder when you had to make Sten guns do all the work.

And then he stopped thinking, because the time was coming.

The Lincoln was in range now. Fenton looked directly at it, looked at the gleaming metal, the drawn curtains. He steadied himself and his gun, pointing the barrel at one of the windows in the rear. At any moment Garth and Jiminez would start shooting. That would be his cue.

Damn it all, go on!

His heart stopped beating for those two seconds. He had an awful premonition of disaster and death that refused to leave his mind. His hands gripped the Sten gun shakily.

Then a shot rang out.

Fenton turned into a machine. He sprawled on his belly and held the Sten gun’s trigger down, spraying bullets against the window of the Lincoln. But things happened quickly, too quickly. The government forces reacted with the speed of light, almost as if they had been waiting for the shot with the same rapt attention Fenton himself had displayed. The lead Jeep spun off the road against the rocks and soldiers piled out of it, guns in hand. The second Jeep peeled off after it, and the canvas-topped truck barreled off to the other side with men spilling out of it on the way. The bullets didn’t stop Castro’s limousine and the other vehicles weren’t piled up in front of it. The road was unblocked.

And the Lincoln limousine went like the wind. The driver pressed the gas pedal to the floor and the big car responded magnificently with the coiled grace of a striking cobra. The car surged forward, the road clear ahead of it, and Fenton’s bullets didn’t seem to be having any effect at all. He tried for the tires and missed. And he knew instinctively that Castro was on the floor, that he had hit the floorboards when the first shot rang out, that he had escaped the trap.

The Lincoln didn’t stop. More gunfire chased it and more gunfire failed to stop the big car. But now their fire was being returned. The soldiers in the road were caught in the middle, with rebels in the rocks on either side. But there were too many of them—fifty or more, Fenton saw, as Jeep after Jeep emptied out men with guns.

His gun chattered again and men fell in the road. He broke open the gun, put in a fresh clip, fired. Returning fire splayed the rock to one side of him as he shrank back instinctively, still holding down the Sten gun’s trigger, still raining bullets on the men in the road.

Manuel’s voice was high, shrill, calling for a retreat. Fenton saw Taco Sardo a short distance down the road. The boy got up to run, but this time no rifle bullet hit him in the leg. This time a machine gun chased him and a line of bullets trailed down his back from his neck to the base of his spine. Taco fell dead and the battle raged on.

Fenton scrambled to his feet, backed away into the woods. It was their only chance, he knew. The government troops would crush them in open battle, even with the superior position the rebels held. Sheer weight of numbers was too much to overcome with a positional advantage. They had to retreat, had to get back into the cover of the jungle. They knew the jungle and the Castristas did not. It was the only chance they had.

Bullets dug up the dirt at Fenton’s feet. He was running now. The weeks in the jungle had toughened him, had made him wise in the ways of war and outdoor living. His feet were sure of themselves, quick and easy on the treacherous paths. He ran back in the direction of the camp, away from the road and the battle.

He saw Garth on one side of him, Maria on the other. They, too, were running. Garth charged on ahead, and Fenton saw Maria raise a pistol to shoulder height. He gaped.

The girl, running, fired the pistol. And Garth caught the bullet in the back of his head.

He pitched forward and died.

Fenton ran, found cover, took it. He steadied himself in a clump of thick brush, replaced the Sten gun’s empty clip with still another one, caught his breath. So Garth was dead—Garth lived through the fighting and died because a woman on his own side hated him enough to shoot him in the back. Garth was dead, and other rebels were dead, and the government troops were still unsatisfied. They wouldn’t let go, wouldn’t just drive on, even though the rebel assault had been crippled. Now they were moving on, into the brush. They wanted to kill the rebels to the last man.

It looked as though they were going to.

Fenton saw Jiminez break for cover from the road. He saw a soldier pull the pin from a grenade, saw him hold it, counting quickly in Spanish. Then he watched the lazy flight of the grenade, soft and fat like a plump bird. Jiminez ran and the grenade followed. Then the grenade dropped to the ground at the feet of Jiminez and the man screamed in terror.

The explosion drowned the scream and Jiminez died in pieces.

The government soldiers pushed on. Fenton let his finger freeze on the Sten gun trigger, let it keep spitting lead at the soldiers. Men died from his bullets faster than he could count them. But there were too many of them, more than he could kill.

He saw a scene on his left, saw two of the soldiers with Manuel. Manuel, who was going to kill Castro and rule in his place. Manuel, who would be the fearless leader of the people, the force around which the enemies of Castro could rally.

Manuel, whose ambitions were drowned now.

They had Manuel. His weapon was on the ground, useless. And Manuel, hero, leader of the people, looked at death and saw its face. Manuel screamed like an injured child and tears streaked his brown face. He screamed and the soldiers laughed at him.

There were two of them. One held a gun to Manuel’s temple while the other castrated Manuel with a bolo knife. Manuel passed out, fell to the ground. Then the soldier with the pistol shot him through the forehead.

Fenton cut them both down with his Sten gun.

The battle went on, halfway to forever. It was twilight, and then it was dark, and at some indeterminable time the Jeep engines roared and the Castristas left their dead behind. Fenton was still in his clump of shrubbery, still safe, still alive. No bullets had touched him. He could not believe this at first but it seemed to be true. The battle was over and he, miraculously, was alive.

He remained in position for several minutes, until the last enemy vehicle was out of sight. Then he moved from the clump of brush and looked at the carnage. Over thirty government soldiers lay dead, some in the road, others in the fields. Garth was dead, Manuel dead and mutilated, Jiminez dead, Taco dead—

Maria was alive. He found her, moaning, in a thicket not far from him. She had been wounded twice. There was a bullet in her abdomen; another bullet had shattered her left leg. She moaned and cursed in Spanish.

He put a splint on her leg. He dug out the bullets from her body, bandaged her wounds. He lit the campfire again and made some soup for her but she refused to eat. He tended her, trying to make her comfortable.

She died around midnight. He sat alone by the fire, smoking a cigarette he had taken from one of the corpses. He was alone, the last remnant. He—the doomed man, the man who had to die. He was alive.

It seemed unfair.

It was late when he fell asleep. In the morning he awoke when the sun struck his eyes. He got to his feet, made himself a quick breakfast, and left the area.

The last survivor. Now he had to go on, to kill and kill and kill. The cancer was a strong pain over his heart—it would not let him live long, and soon he could stop killing and fighting and running. Soon the cancer would kill him, or the Castristas would kill him. From one side or another, death would come.

When it did, it would be a release.