“If we are assaulted, sir, how much warning would you expect us to have?”
“I don’t know. Maybe days, maybe hours, maybe no warning at all.”
“The more warning. I have, sir, the fewer lives I am likely to lose.”
“I will pass that on to Washington, Colonel. When I know something is up, you’ll hear about it seconds later. That’s the best I can do.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Just so we’re on the same sheet of music, Colonel, I want that warehouse defended until you are relieved or the very last marine is dead.”
Eckhardt said nothing this time. Toad Tarkington’s grim expression softened. Eckhardt could have said something like, “Marines don’t surrender,” or some other bullshit, but he didn’t. Toad was taking a liking to the lieutenant colonel.
“Anything you need from me,” Jake Grafton continued, “just ask. The battle group and the base commander will supply you to the extent of our resources. The cruiser will provide artillery support — I want you to interface with the cruiser people in the next hour or two, make sure you’re ready to communicate and shoot.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Which brings up a point: I see that your people are building bunkers from sandbags.”
“Yes, sir. We’re trying to fortify some positions, create some strongpoints.”
“Get a couple of backhoes from the base people, get someone to locate the utilities, and dig fortifications. Jackhammer the concrete. By dawn I want your people dug in to the eyes.” This order might be stretching the phrase “business as usual,” but Jake wasn’t worried. Freighters carrying weapons don’t normally turn up missing.
“Yessir.”
“What are you going to do if the Cubans send tanks through the fence?”
“Their tanks are old Soviet T-54s, I believe,” Lieutenant Colonel Eckhardt said. “We’ll channel them into these two avenues,” he pointed at the aerial photo, “then kill them — cremate the crews inside the tanks.”
“Okay. When your people are dug in, dig any tank traps that you want. You have carte blanche, Colonel.”
“Nobody is going into that warehouse, sir.”
“Fine. We’ll keep the Cuban Navy off your back and give you air support. The cruisers will provide artillery. Call us if you see or hear anything suspicious.”
Toad passed the colonel a list of radio frequencies and they discussed communications for several minutes.
Jake took that opportunity to wander off, to look at the warehouse from all angles.
He was standing beside six large forklifts that were parked near the main loading dock when Toad and Eckhardt walked over to him. “Don’t isolate these forklifts from the pier when you’re digging up concrete,” Jake advised.
“Of course not.”
“One other thing,” Jake said. “You’d better break out the MOPP suits and have them beside every man.” MOPP stood for mission-oriented protective posture, a term designed by career bureaucrats to obfuscate the true nature of chemical and biological warfare protection suits.
The colonel was going to say something about the suits, then he decided to pass on it.
They talked for several minutes about the battalion’s problems, how the colonel was deploying it. The colonel told Jake he was putting people on the roofs of all the warehouses.
As Jake and Toad walked back to the Osprey, Lieutenant Colonel Eckhardt turned toward warehouse nine and scratched his head. He didn’t for a minute believe that building contained chemical and biological weapons.
He frowned. A hijacked freighter? He had been in the Corps long enough to know how the navy operated: this was just another readiness exercise but the admiral didn’t have the courtesy or decency to say so. “Let’s keep the grunts’ assholes twanging tight.” MOPP suits, in the heat of the Cuban summer!
Yeah.
“Cuba must learn to live with the elephant,” Hector Sedano told the crowd of schoolteachers and administrators. “Our relations with the United States have been the determining factor in our history and will be the key to our future. Any Cuban government that hopes to make life better for the people of Cuba must come to grips with the reality of the colossus ninety miles north.”
That was the nub of his message, pure and simple. He was careful never to criticize Fidel Castro or the government, knowing full well that to do so would be the height of folly, an invitation to a prison cell. Most of the people in this room were teachers, a few were agents for the secret police. Cuba was a dictatorship, a fact as unremarkable as the island status of the nation.
Still, he was talking about the future, about a day still to come when all things might change, a day that Cuba would have to face someday, sometime. Everyone in the room understood that too, including the secret police, so no one objected to his remarks. Hector Sedano talked on, talking about education, jobs, investment, opportunities, the building blocks of the life sagas of human beings.
When he finished he sat down as the thunder of applause rolled over him. He thought that his audience’s reaction was not to his message, which in truth was not that new or fresh or interesting, but to the fact that he was a private citizen speaking aloud on sensitive political subjects. This his audience found most remarkable. They stood on their feet, applauded, pressed forward to touch him, to give him a greeting or blessing, reached between people to touch his clothes, his hands, his hair.
Afterward he sat and spoke privately to a knot of people who wanted to be with him when that someday came. He was more open, spoke about specifics but still spoke guardedly, careful not to speak openly against the government or to criticize Fidel.
In his heart of hearts Hector Sedano knew that Fidel Castro must know what he had to say, must know his message almost as well as he himself did. Everything that the government knew, Fidel knew, for he was the government.
And still Fidel let him speak. That was the remarkable thing, and Hector had a theory about why this might be so. When he was a young revolutionary in jail, Fidel had written a political tract in defense of the Cuban revolution that became its manifesto. He entitled it, “History Will Absolve Me.” In it he defined “the people” as “the vast unredeemed masses, those to whom everyone makes promises and who are deceived by all.”
Maybe, Hector thought, Fidel Castro was still looking for absolution from those who would come after. Maybe he was thinking about “the people” even now, thinking of the promises he had made and the reality that had come to pass.
When he was leaving the school, on the way to the borrowed car with two friends who accompanied him, Hector found himself surrounded by well-dressed men, obviously not local laborers.
“Hector Sedano,” said one, “you are under arrest. You must come with us.”
He was stunned. “What am I charged with?” he demanded.
“That is not for us to discuss,” the man said, and took his elbow. He pushed him toward a government van.
“They are arresting Sedano,” someone shouted. The shout was taken up by others. As a crowd gathered, shoved closer, shouting threats and obscenities, the men around the van pushed Hector into it and jumped in themselves. In seconds it was in motion.
Hector protested. He had done nothing wrong, he was not wanted for any crime.
The man showed him a badge. “You are under arrest,” he said. “We have our orders. Now be silent.”
The van raced through the streets of the city, then took the highway toward Havana.
Maximo Sedano was too excited to sleep. The adrenaline aftershock of stabbing an ice pick into Vargas’s thug should have floored him, but the thought of $53 million, plus interest, kept him wide awake. That and the possibility of sirens.