Tolliver pushed himself up onto his elbows, squinting at Rubenstein. "Who the hell are you, boy?"
"I told you," Rubenstein said, his voice low. "My name is Paul Rubenstein. I'm just a guy who needs your help. I know Captain Reed of U.S. II. He gave me your name when I told him I was coming down here. Now you're bigger than I am, probably stronger, but believe me, I can be meaner— I learned since the Night of the War. Now," Rubenstein shouted, "I need your help!"
"Doin' what?"
"You ever go down by the camp— the big one?"
"Maybe."
"I'm going to break everybody out of there— and you're going to help me."
"You're full of shit, boy."
Rubenstein glanced over his shoulder, saw no one by the sandy cove where he'd found Tolliver working on his beached boat. Then Rubenstein reached under his leather jacket and pulled out the Browning High Power, shoving the muzzle less than two inches from Tolliver's nose. The hammer went back with an audible double click. "If you can sleep nights seeing those people in there, then whatever I could do to you would be a favor. You either help me round up some people in the Resistance to get those folks out of there, or I'm killing you where you stand."
"You're the one caused all that fracas there this morning, ain't you?"
Rubenstein nodded, then said, "Yeah— I am."
"Put the gun away. Why the hell didn't you say so in the first place. I'll help, then we can all get ourselves killed together. Never fancied much dying alone, if you get my drift."
Rubenstein raised the safety on the Browning and started to shift it down when there was a blur in front of his eyes. Tolliver's right fist moved and Rubenstein fell back into the sand, starting to grab for his gun.
"Now take it easy, fella. That was just to make us even. You shoot me, and you'll never find the Resistance people."
And Tolliver's big florid face creased into a smile, and he stuck out his right hand.
Rubbing his jaw with his left hand, Rubenstein looked at the bigger man— then they both started to laugh.
Chapter 38
Rourke opened the hatch on the DC-7 and looked out across the airfield. He could tell General Santiago by the ensignia on the collars of his G.I.-style fatigues; but the only face Rourke recognized was that of Natalia. He looked at her eyes, saw the recognition there and then threw down the ladder.
"Come on, Sissy," he said to the girl standing a little behind him.
Rourke started down the ladder to the runway, helping the girl. As Rourke turned to start across the field toward Santiago and Natalia, he stopped, his hands frozen away from his body, frozen in the movement of sweeping up toward the twin Detonics pistols under his coat. There was a semicircle of men, Cuban soldiers, with AK-47s in their hands, their muzzles pointed at him.
Rourke looked beyond the emotionless faces of the soldiers and across the airfield. Santiago seemed to be poorly disguising a smile— but Rourke couldn't read Natalia's eyes. There was a command shouted by Santiago, the words something Rourke recognized. "Arrest that man. Seize that woman and the airplane and its pilot— immediately!"
Rourke cocked his head slightly toward Natalia as she took Santiago's arm, hugging it to her it seemed. Her eyes just stared ahead. Coldly, Rourke thought.
"What's happening?" Sissy Wiznewski asked, her voice low, trembling.
Rourke reached out— watching the soldiers watching him— and took her hand, saying to her, "I'll let you know as soon as I find out myself. It wasn't Natalia's way, Rourke thought— not to go against her uncle's wishes, not to use the Communist Cubans as an instrument for her own revenge.
He tried to read the woman's face from the distance separating them. He'd been told there was a Colonel Miklov there with Natalia. But he saw no Russian officer, not even someone in civilian clothes.
A man Rourke judged as a squad leader stepped toward him, saying in bad English, "I will take your guns."
Rourke again glanced toward Natalia— nothing. He decided to gamble, reaching slowly under his coat with first his left, then his right hand, taking the Detonics pistols and handing them butt first to the squad leader. Since the man hadn't asked for his knife, Rourke didn't volunteer it.
"You will come with me," the man said. Rourke started to walk ahead, still holding Sissy's hand. "The woman— she will see the general."
Rourke eyed the soldier, then looked over the man's shoulder toward Natalia. He thought he caught an almost imperceptible nod. But it could have been his imagination, or wishful thinking he thought. He gambled again. "Sissy, it'll be all right, I think. Just do a good job convincing the general that the quakes are real. Don't worry," he added. Then Rourke let go of her hand and started ahead, the soldiers falling in ranks around him. He saw the squad leader from the corner of his eye, handing the twin Detonics pistols to Santiago. Rourke saw Natalia looking down at the guns in Santiago's hands, saw her lips move, saying something. Then Santiago— with almost ridiculous formality, Rourke thought— bowed and offered the pistols to Natalia. She took them, smiling, and for the first time he could hear her.
Natalia was laughing.
Chapter 39
Paul Rubenstein looked across the hood of the jeep, then at the florid-faced Tolliver beside him behind the wheel. "That's a death camp," Rubenstein said slowly, staring now past the hood of the jeep and to the lower ground and the road and the camp beyond it.
"The commandant has a reputation for being anti-Jewish."
"They put an anti-Semite in charge of a detention camp in an area with a large Jewish population," Rubenstein interrupted. "Then they know what's going on, the Communist Cuban government."
"Some say the commandant down there, Captain Guttierez, dislikes the Jews almost as much as the anti-Castro Cubans. He's been exterminating every one of them he can find."
"Why have you waited to do something?" Rubenstein asked him.
"Simple— you'll see in a minute— look." And Tolliver pointed over his shoulder.
Rubenstein, his palms sweating, turned around and looked behind the jeep. Tolliver's number-one man, Peddro Garcia, a free Cuban, had gone to get the rest of the Resistance force. Rubenstein's heart sank. Two men approximately his own age, a woman of about twenty and a boy of maybe sixteen.
Tolliver, his voice lower than Rubenstein had heard it before, sighed hard. "That's why, Rubenstein. Two men, a woman, a boy, me, and Pedro— that's it. Now you. You still want to do this thing?"
Rubenstein turned around in the jeep's front passenger seat, started down over the hood toward the camp. "Hell yes," he rasped, the steadiness of his own voice surprising him. "Yes I do."
Rubenstein felt the ground shaking, then looked at Tolliver. The man said, "Some little quakes like that have been coming the last week or so. Don't know why. This ain't earthquake country."
The trembling in the ground stopped and Rubenstein simply said, "Let's work out the details, then get started."