Mercedes was not easily intimidated and the pain her stomach overwhelmed her caution, “To protect her from a pig like you.”
Salazar screamed his fury and punched her with all his might in the middle of her frail chest. She staggered backwards and then fell to the floor. She gasped and lay on her back with her arms outstretched. Salazar watched in grim fascination as her eyes rolled back in her head and her arms and legs twitched uncontrollably.
In a few seconds, her twitching stopped and his nose told him that her bowels had released. Damn it, he thought, was the bitch dead? Had he killed her? He bent down and checked her pulse. It fluttered and stopped. He cursed silently. He hadn’t planned to kill the old whore, but she had provoked him beyond reason. He looked around. None of the servants was present. Good. He straightened up and walked out with as much dignity as he could manage. He wanted to leave before Rojas returned. Salazar was armed, but Rojas was a killer.
As he stepped outside and into the sunlight, he realized that he might escape any scrutiny or suspicion if there was to be an investigation into the death of Mercedes de la Pena. He had hit her where no one would easily discover a mark. With only a little luck, the servants and Rojas would think the evil old woman had suffered a fatal heart attack.
* * *
Rojas was led into Mercedes’ bedroom only a few minutes later. Ironically, he had seen Salazar walking down the street without a care in the world and had thought nothing of it. They’d even nodded greetings. Between sobs, the servants told him that Salazar had been alone with their mistress and that he had punched her in the chest and killed her. When Salazar had struck the fatal blow, they’d been watching through a hole in the wall designed by Mercedes just for such surveillance. Terrified, they’d kept quiet and Salazar had left thinking his assault was a secret.
Rojas shifted Mercedes clothing so he could see the dark blotch on her chest. Yes, he thought, such a blow could be fatal, especially to a frail old woman. He’d inflicted such blows himself with his heavy hammer and seen his younger, healthier victims die gasping for breaths that would never come. Such a blow would even stop a person’s heart. Perhaps that was what happened to Mercedes.
Rojas decided that he had to leave. Even though he was innocent, he couldn’t take a chance that the authorities might want a scapegoat. He went to Mercedes’ room and took all the money she had in her purse and in the wall safe hidden behind an ugly painting of a bunch of flowers. He had memorized the combination after watching his mistress open it several times. He had never opened it himself until now and had no idea what he might find. To his delight he found almost twenty thousand dollars in American money and several hundred British pound notes.
Excellent, he thought. He did not want to have to take and sell jewelry which would go for a fraction of its worth and likely be identified as having belonged to his deceased mistress. He turned to the servants and told them that they could have whatever they wished and they began a mad scramble to grab anything of value including the jewelry he didn’t want.
He smiled to himself. If anyone became suspicious and the servants were caught with the precious items, they would be suspected of stealing from a dead woman and not him.
But now he had a problem and it was called justice. Mercedes de la Pena had been very good to Hector Rojas. She had not deserved to be killed like Salazar had done. She should still be alive and teasing him and perhaps inviting him into her bed where he would convince her that she was still young. He would have to think what to do about Diego Salazar. Whatever he decided would be painful and permanent. Salazar would suffer.
* * *
Martin had to yell to make himself heard by the five hundred men in the battalion. They were all standing casually and looking at him curiously. Nothing ever good came from being addressed en mass by a senior officer and even less so by a general.
“Congratulations, men. You all look like hell. Back home you would be arrested on sight and thrown into jail as vagrants.”
The men were all wearing what a Cuban peasant revolutionary soldier would wear-ragged pants, torn shirt, sandals, and big, floppy hats.
The soldiers roared with laughter and one asked just when they would be going home so this happy event could happen. He ignored the comment. A soldier he knew was a sergeant under his rags waved his hand. “General, I know you’ve got us wearing this stinking shit for a good reason and I know you ain’t gonna tell us that reason today, but will we be able to take our real uniforms with us when we go out and do whatever you want us to do?”
“Sergeant Kelly, that is a real good and real long question,” he answered. “And are all the sergeants in this man’s army from Ireland?
Kelly was a small, wiry man and he grinned impudently. “Only the good ones,” he responded and was greeted with a chorus of good-natured jeers and boos.” The sergeant’s brogue was thick enough to cut with a knife. It told Martin that Kelly, along with so many Irishmen had arrived fairly recently in the U.S.
Ryder held up his hands for silence and quickly got it. “Despite my rank I can say with confidence that I don’t know all that is going to happen. When I do and can tell you, I will. In the meantime, don’t lose the rags you’ve been issued today. They could wind up being very important. Oh yes, don’t advertise the fact that you have them.”
* * *
As the men disbursed to go back to their quarters and change into their regular uniforms, Sergeant Kelly turned to his companion and cousin from County Cork, Corporal Ryan. “Does his generalship actually expect five hundred men to keep this nonsense a secret?”
Ryan shook his head. “Not a chance,” he said thoughtfully. “All this does is tell us that whatever is going to happen is going to occur real, real soon.”
“Can’t argue with that reasoning,” Kelly said. “And it also points out that we’re going to be in disguise and try to fool the goddamn Spanish into thinking we’re a bunch of raggedy-ass Cuban rebels.”
“And that means we’re going to be really close to the front where there is likely to be a lot of shooting. Shit.”
“Ryan, do you have any of your Bushmills left? I think we’re going to be in need of a drink.”
“Sergeant, we finished it a long time ago. Don’t you remember?”
“Of course I do. I was just hoping I was wrong. I guess we’ll have to make do with that shit they call rum.”
The comments about Bushmills were a joke. It and other Irish brands like Jameson were too pricy for them. They’d talked about pooling their money and buying a bottle when they got back to Baltimore. The two men had arrived from Ireland a dozen years earlier as kids and were poorer than dirt. They had been trying to work their way to respectability since then. Joining the Maryland militia a few years earlier had seemed like a good idea and volunteering to fight in Cuba an even better one. Hell, they were even able to shoot at people. Too bad their targets were Spanish and not English.
In the distance, the American artillery again began to fire. Ryan shook his head. “Either we attack soon or we’re gonna run out of ammunition. My money’s on soon. I suggest we concentrate on just how the hell we’re going to drag our Gatling guns through the streets of Havana.”
* * *
Lieutenant Hugo Torres watched with dismay and horror as the black fingers of smoke on the horizon separated and became warships, many warships. Soon they could see the white water at the ships’ bows as they bulled their way through the sea.
As a result of surviving the sinking of the Vitorio, he was now second in command of the cruiser Aragon. It was a dubious honor at best. The ship was rusty and totally ill-maintained. Her engines sounded like they were gasping for life and he wondered if they would have to try and rig sails. There was little coal left in her bunkers and what they had was of poor quality. She was rated at fourteen knots, but she barely made ten during the flight from Havana. The Aragon was supposed to have a crew of nearly four hundred, but fewer than half that had left Havana with them. Had the others deserted? Only if they were wise, Torres thought.