Frenchy and Earl sat in their station wagon on the street near Guardhouse 3, waiting as a major spoke on the radio headset to a headquarters somewhere, checking their credentials before allowing them to pass.
The Cuban soldiers were full of themselves, their juices all aflow, their eyes bulging with drama, self-importance, pride of victory and machismo. Every one of them swaggered, carried or wore his weapon at a rakish angle, smoked cigars or cigarettes or drank from an extra rum ration released by Major Morales, the hero of the day, who had rallied the men inside, killed the first invaders, then poured fusillade after fusillade down on the rebels crouching behind their automobiles. The major was almost certainly drunk himself by this time-on victory and praise, but also on rum, a shield again his pain: his younger brother, a lieutenant, was officer of the day and had been shot down by Guitart in the first seconds of the fight.
Earl could read the battle from what he saw, as he and Frenchy waited. He saw how it really hadn't been a battle at all, which meant there'd been no real victory either. The attackers never got inside and the defenders just blasted them from the relative safety of the barracks windows or the wall along the parade ground. Worse still, the attackers had no support, no artillery or mortars, not even grenades or much in the way of automatic weapons. It was more a gesture than anything, and it had produced nothing but failure.
"Whoever dreamed this one up ought to be busted back to recruit," he said bitterly to Frenchy, for it offended him to see something done so stupidly, and to see so much blood spread across the pavement because of it.
"It wasn't exactly von Clausewitz, was it?" said Frenchy.
"Well, I don't know who von Klauzerwittz is, or was, but it wasn't even Dugout Doug, that's how bad it was."
"Roger wilco," said Frenchy, then turned to a major who had just hung up the radio headset, "Are we clear now? Have you called your headquarters?"
The major turned, instantly transformed by whatever message he had gotten at the other end, and began to backpedal pathetically.
"I am so sorry, Senor Short, I did not know, I have only this minute learned, and I have been ordered to assist in any way possible."
"No problem, mac," said Frenchy. "Just let us inside so we can see what's what and get a message off to my headquarters as soon as possible."
"Yes, sir, yes, sir," and with that he turned, made signals of urgency and importance to all the soldiers lounging arrogantly about and pretending to be war heroes, and they parted, pushed back the crowd and opened a path. Frenchy drove the black Ford forward, through the checkpoint, and into the courtyard of the barracks, where only a few rebels had penetrated.
"Are you ready for this?" Frenchy said to Earl. "You thought you saw it all in the Pacific, Earl. But just like the man says, you ain't seen nothing yet. This'll clear your sinuses."
They pulled over, and got out.
The screaming was general.
By this time, the military had captured at least sixty men in various places around Santiago, some just blocks away, some in the military hospital where they'd gone for medical assistance, some in the Hotel Rex down the street, some a far distance gone. They were in the process of running the interrogations there in the yard.
Most had been beaten in the capture, and some now were being beaten even more savagely. Yet this was not torture. This was simply how things happened and as Earl looked about he saw a dozen or so brutal dramas playing out. In one corner, two soldiers held a rebel down or against a wall while two others beat him with rifle butts-not so hard as to knock him out, but just hard enough to deliver maximum pain. All over the yard it was the same: rifle butts smashing the nose or shattering the teeth, or breaking the knee, the ankle, the instep. The prisoners didn't scream much, as most were beyond it. One man's face was lost in a mass of blood, and was so seriously injured, by Earl's reckoning, that he could not possibly survive.
"See, these guys don't mess around, do they?" said Frenchy.
"That's just the warm-up," said Earl, and nodded toward a tent erected a little farther down the Avenue Moncada, in front of the central entrance to the barracks. That was the source of the screams. That was where security guards formed a cordon around machine gun positions, the whole area already marked off from the general traffic by a wall of barbed wire.
"They do the hard work in there, I'm betting."
"You're right," said Frenchy.
"Let's mosey over and take a lookie-see," Earl said. "I want to get a good sense of whose side I'm on."
"Yeah, sure. We can get a header on where he is."
"If he's the guy at all."
"Oh, he's the guy."
They moseyed over, and of course a lieutenant warned them away, but Frenchy whispered the magic three letters of the outfit, flashed a credential, and the lieutenant looked nervously about to the major from outside, who nodded, and the man let them pass.
No one interfered. They walked forward but stopped as a man was led outside. Bandages covered both eyes, but they had been sloppily applied, and from underneath each a river of blood flowed jaggedly down his face. The man could hardly walk. He was babbling pathetically, and then he went down to his knees, sobbing.
"Watch yourself," said an officer. He pulled a Star automatic from a holster, thumbed back the hammer and leaned over and quickly shot the man in the back of his neck. The victim pitched forward, his skull hitting the asphalt with a thud. He was still, yet more blood coursed from the head wound, to mingle with the blood from his eyes.
The officer holstered his pistol, yelled and two men came over and dragged the corpse away.
"That was," the officer said to the two Americans, "the traitor bastard Santamaria. Oh, he thought he was so clever, but look how he ended up. That is the way we handle treason in Cuba."
"We could learn a lesson from you," said Frenchy.
"You could indeed."
"What are you finding out?"
"See the intelligence officer inside. Latavistada. He is in charge. He has all the answers. He does the cutting."
"It's the man we think it is? This is what I have heard."
"That is the name given up from the lips of the condemned."
"Does anybody know where he has gone?"
"They had no plan. There are no escape routes. He fled, that is all, the coward. We will catch him, and then Ojos Bellos will have a conversation with him and then he will be shot, like that dog Santamaria."
"Thanks," said Frenchy.
"Of course. We are partners in this, your country and mine."
Through this exchange, Earl stood mute, as if paralyzed. His face had gone dull and it showed nothing, not horror, not repugnance, not judgment. He had seen so many bodies in his time and so much killing that nothing here was worth reacting to; it was only to be remembered.
He and Frenchy ducked inside.
There Ojos Bellos, Captain Ramon Latavistada, his uniform smeared with blood like a butcher's, worked his magic. The screams were intense, the pain horrific, and the man chained before him writhed and shivered and begged. For his part, the captain was not frenzied or excited in the least. He worked slowly and precisely, with a doctor's delicate touch. He cut, he whispered a question, he listened gravely, he consulted with staff, he checked this information against other information, he cross-checked, he indexed, he made certain good notes were being taken, and then he went back to work. He affected the anguish of a country doctor telling a longtime patient the news was bad. He pretended that what he had to do was hurting him as much as them, and he begged them to cooperate, and then he cut them, cut them some more and cut them yet again.