"Well, I―"
"Well you nothing. You could not possibly rob a big American casino with five men. There are too many hidden guns. It would be a slaughter. The American gangsters do not yield on such things easily, and they always have their revenge. Their whole culture depends upon revenge. No, El Colorado could not conceive of such a thing."
"I hadn't thought of that."
"'I hadn't thought of that.' Idiot! Fool! Is your brain a raisin?"
He clenched his brow, then hit himself in the head with his fist.
"Think! Think!" he ordered himself. "Five, you say. With machine guns."
"Thompsons. Like the police."
"The same. Hmmm. A bank? But he doesn't need money, he has money? What? What?"
"I don't―"
"Four or five men, machine guns. What else?"
"Negroes. Possibly foreign."
"Foreign?"
"Darker than our negroes. Almost black. You never see that here, especially five times over. A dark one, yes, once in a while, but not five of them in one―"
"Did you speak to them?"
"I saluted them. They didn't respond. I thought it odd."
"They didn't understand you. Of course, now I see. You are right, at last. They are foreigners, and can't stay with the quickness of the Cuban tongue and its lazy ways of working. Foreigners. Poor, desperate, dark men, brought in to…well, to what?"
"Rob?"
"No."
"Kill?"
"Yes, you would use such men to handle killing chores. They would be expendable, courageous, nameless. Perfect. But who? El Presidente? No, don't be absurd. He's too well protected. What about some ambassador? But for what reason―"
It suddenly dawned on him.
"Of course. Of course!"
But if his wisdom illuminated him, it did not animate him. Instead, a terrible weariness set over him. He had so much to do, so little time, so few weapons. Melancholy seeped through him.
"What are you talking about?"
"The American congressman. They'll kill him and his party for violating the inviolate rules of the brothel. Of course; it's pimp's honor at stake. And from his point of view, there's no negative attached. It'll make the government look bad, it'll terrify the American government, but it won't enrage and engage the American crime syndicate."
"Perhaps it will send a message."
"Fool. You have no instincts at all. More likely it'll produce invasion."
"Mother of God," said Castro. "And I―"
"And you have gone all over town affiliating yourself with it. Your mission is now to disaffiliate yourself. These stories you have spread must now be denounced as lies and slander. Go even to the police and tell them that El Colorado is the one."
"I―"
"Meanwhile, I must stop this. Do you have a machine gun?"
"No, of course not."
"Hmmm, I need a machine gun fast. Now where does one get a machine gun?"
Chapter 21
The sergeant laid his ambush well. He was not without experience, having fought in Argentina, Peru, Colombia and the Dominican Republic at different times in his career, in some cases escaping just ahead of the firing squad. But that was another story.
He did not select the first, or even the second, bend in the road that ran down Ciego de Avila province, about five miles inland from the sea, in the sudden burst of mangrove swamps. He knew that if his target had any security, security would be at its highest at that first bend, and again at the second bend. By the third bend, they would have settled down and grown used to the closeness of the trees, the sudden sense of impinging jungle after so long on sparse scrublands where cattle fed randomly.
He also needed two trees, unusually tall for the vegetation.
One tree was not enough.
It was a question of timing. The car had to slow to round the bend, and as it cleared the turn, but before it began to accelerate, the first tree had to be downed. It would take any driver three seconds to respond. By the time he had braked, and begun to turn around, or back up if he were clever, the second tree would come down, trapping the vehicle.
That's when his gunners would fire. He had three Thompsons, each with a fifty-round drum, and it was important that all three fire at once and that they lay down continuous fire. The car had to be still. He did not think these men were well enough trained to efficiently engage a moving target, even with the fast-firing Thompsons. He wanted the guns blazing for a good three to five seconds. He wanted the Cadillac ripped by three machine guns. Then he himself, on the other side of the road where the car would almost certainly stop, would raise up and quickly close the distance from the other side. He would pull his Star 9mm from his holster, advance to the automobile, and quickly fire a head shot into each of the four men, living or dead. Then it was only a matter of pulling their own automobile out and heading toward Cabanas Los Pinos, where a boat awaited them with their money aboard and orders to sail to Florida.
The sergeant was pleased. He had five good men besides himself. The innards of the two chickens he had slain last night had revealed by the sacred laws of Santeria that prospects were excellent. He had prayed hard to Odudua, mistress of the darkness of that blend of Bantu religion and Catholicism, and knew that she favored him, for she favored all killers. Her mission was to harvest their bounty and take it with her across the river to her dark land. The blood of the chickens, their squawking as their guts were pulled living from them, merely excited her.
The sergeant found his two trees without difficulty, an exceedingly good omen. He had examined the cuts his men had made in the trees and saw that the trunks had been expertly brought to the brink of collapse and one or two more ax strokes would deposit them exactly where he wanted them. The men with the Thompson guns knew how to shoot them well enough. He knew his Star intimately, and knew it would not fail him.
He checked his watch. It was nearly six; he knew the time was close but that he had a good hour before sundown.
"Sergeanto," came an excited cry from the man who'd just come sprinting around the bend, "I can see the big black car with the American flags on its fenders."
"Be ready, my boys. It is time and then we will be gone from this godforsaken country."
The men scattered to find their positions.
"My, my, my, my," said the congressman, "at last we git to look at something different. Not better, mind you, but different. Trees, or what they might call trees in some primitive place like Mississippi or Alabama."
"Yes, sir, Harry," agreed Lane Brodgins. "That flat land was damned boring. Like Kansas, only no damned cowboys or Indians to make it interesting."
"Lane, I ever tell you 'bout the time Joe Phillips of Montana's 13th and I got in a hell of a row over a navy typewriter reconditioning installation I had all sewn up for Fort Smith, but he had his heart set on setting up somewhere way the Sam Hill out there?"
"No, sir, don't believe you did," said poor Lane, whose capacity for eating Boss Harry's shit was beyond legendary and near to entering mythical.
"Well, I don't know how that fella got it in his mind the United States Navy needed to fix up its old typewriters way out yonder in the purple west. But I decided…"
Earl tried to close it out and concentrate. He saw the low dark trees suddenly rising up to swallow the Cadillac and nudged his elbow into Pepe's subtly, then with his hand pressing flatly downward signaled the driver to slow down.
"We slowing down, Pepe?" asked Boss Harry.
"Senor, I think is a curve coming up."
"Let's just take it easy through here," said Earl. He knew that nothing would happen on a road so straight and open that you could see a man three-hundred yards ahead and there wasn't a stick of cover anywhere. He supposed a sniper could take a long shot but doubted if anybody down here had that skill. He also worried about a mine or a command-detonated bomb of some sort, but again, nothing in Cuba had communicated the possibility of that kind of sophistication.