Ross stuck out his hand, and Ambrose grasped it, pulling himself to his feet.
“Hold on,” Ross said to him, shouldering himself into the Street-sweeper’s strap and getting his other arm under him. “We’re going right out the front door!” They were going down the stairs fast. Then they were outside. Somehow, the sun had come up.
The front steps of the finca were slick with bodies and blood. Stepping over somebody’s blown-off foot, Ambrose somehow managed to tell Ross what he’d seen on the way in. That there were keys in both Humvees. Blood was pumping out of Stokely, even with the handkerchief stuffed inside the wound.
Ambrose dredged up a strength he’d never known and jammed his gun into the back of the prisoner. The chap had been about to run for it.
“I’m all right,” he told Ross. “Let’s just get this bloody bastard the hell out of here!”
Then Ross was behind the wheel of the Humvee, the prisoner next to him up front. Ambrose climbed into the backseat and pressed his pistol against the back of the Cuban’s head. He felt dizzy, and the sight of their prisoner still wearing black and pink silk pajamas, with the matching mask on his head, made him doubt his own mind.
Suddenly a new wave of chaps started coming out on the steps and seemed to be shooting at them. Then they started dropping to the ground, left and right. He thought he saw the sharpshooter Tom Quick in an upstairs window, picking them off with his sniper rifle, putting neat little black holes in people’s foreheads.
“Hold on, Inspector,” Ross said, and he mashed on the accelerator, the Humvee screaming around the fountain, heading for the wooden gates, and taking both of the gates off their hinges as they went crashing through.
“Okay, we have the suspect,” Ambrose heard Ross say in his phones. “We have two casualties needing immediate medical attention. Get your guys the hell out of there! There are keys in the second Humvee at the front door. Use it!”
Two casualties? Ambrose thought. That meant he must be one of them.
That’s when he felt a sharp pain in his chest and all the lights went out.
44
Vicky had nicknames for most of her Cuban guards.
There was Ace, of the small black plastic comb, who was continually running it through his long black oily locks, swooping it up into an endlessly collapsing pompadour. And X-Ray, who was at least six-five and weighed maybe one hundred thirty pounds. Then there was Big Pimpin’, so called neither because of his enormous size nor his scarlet pimples, which he had in pustulant abundance, but because he was constantly bragging about all the girls he was running in and out of the compound.
And, finally, the one she called Eyes Wide Shut. He was the putative leader of the four, and by far the worst of all. He had never hurt her, thank God, but he never took his eyes off her either. They had taken her bathing suit and jewelry away in exchange for a cotton shift she washed each day.
Eyes made her strip two or three times a day so he could search her. He would poke and prod, smiling all the while. He always found an excuse to get rid of the other three first. Sent them on errands, told them to take a break. Vicky was sure they knew what was going on. But they never said anything.
Eyes was the only one with a key to the manacles that shackled her to the bed. She had to ask his permission whenever she needed to use the bathroom. He always made her leave the door open. Once, when she’d stepped out of the shower, he was standing there in his trademark grungy sweatshirt with his pants down, erect.
“Aw, you think I’m supposed to get upset over a little thing like that?” she’d said.
Maybe he didn’t understand what she’d said, but he understood what she meant. He never did it again. Then, of course, there were the Russians. The fat one. And the weird little one she vaguely remembered as having bought her a drink at the junkanoo.
So far, Eyes had kept the two Russians away from her. She’d learned from X-Ray that they were constantly offering the guards huge sums of U.S. dollars for an hour alone with her. Eyes, so far, had told them to stay away from her or he’d kill them. But you never knew just how long or how far his jealousy would stretch. She reassured herself daily that an ounce of flirtation equaled a pound of protection.
She was going to survive this. No matter what it took. No matter how long it took. At night, she thought of Alex. Worried about how what had happened added to the pain he was already suffering. And she thought of her father. She was all he had. If only there were some way to get word out. Bribe one of the guards? With what?
Eyes. If she could gain his trust, make him intimate promises she’d maybe never have to keep, he could get word out for her. He was both her principal tormentor and her only hope.
Little boys, big guns.
There were eight guards in all, working consecutive twelve-hour shifts. The night shift, she hardly dealt with. She’d talked the doctor who’d examined her that first night into giving her some heavy-duty sleeping pills. So, she either slept, or feigned sleep, from eight at night until eight in the morning when the night guards left. It made the time more bearable.
The guards were all killers and proud of it. She’d heard them bragging about kidnapping and torturing high-ranking journalists and politicians believed to be still loyal to Castro. Some spoke English, and she had three years of college Spanish, and when they got careless, they sat around saying things in front of her.
She listened to every word, and picked up a lot she wasn’t supposed to know; Castro was a guest here. So was his son. So were the former officers of Fidel’s secret police, army, and navy. It was a busy place. “The Hostage Hilton” was how she came to think of it.
Bit by bit, Vicky learned that there was a price on the heads of many people in Cuba. Millions of pesos for a long list of disloyal generals and journalists. Hundreds of thousands for certain “friends of Fidel” who were unfriendly to the new regime. Organized murder was about to become a booming business in Cuba.
Naturally, she didn’t recognize the names, but some of the targets were apparently pro-Castro left-wing bigshots in Miami and New York, too. Meanwhile, an army of boys, just like the ones who guarded her, were roaming the island, murdering whoever got in their way. Cuba was now on the verge of becoming the new Colombia. Lawless. Murderous. Lost.
One afternoon, after Eyes had made her strip, he pointed his gun at her and said in good English, “If there is trouble, any kind of trouble, our orders are to shoot you first. You understand that, chica?”
She nodded. Since everyone thought she was dead, she wasn’t too optimistic about a rescue attempt. Escape, yes, she was worried about how to do that. Very worried. Especially since the nightly screaming had started.
The guards called him Scissorhands.
He worked in a warren of basement rooms where all the interrogations took place. Late at night, she could hear the piercing screams. They said that when he looked at you, he had no eyes.
She’d overheard enough to know Scissorhands was not one of the top two or three generals who had overthrown the old regime. Apparently, his real name was Rodrigo, and she overheard someone say he was some rich nightclub owner from Havana. Scary-looking, because his eyes had no color. Another time, someone said he worked directly for the new military chief, General Manso something or other. This guy they all called Scissorhands, Rodrigo, was apparently the new head of State Security.
Scissorhands liked to attend interrogations just for fun. He wore a blood-soaked smock and carried a large pair of gleaming silver scissors in his pocket as he scurried from room to room during interrogations. “Snip, snip, snip,” the guards would laugh whenever the screaming started.