Luke could see no possibility of anything going wrong out there on the water; the thing had been planned too carefully for that. They had captured Ocho Puertos and brought the cutter here, they were moving the sailors into the storage locker and putting their own men aboard, they knew there would be no patrol planes flying after dark. They also knew that the danger of the Navy’s stopping them was practically nonexistent. And even if they were challenged, they had a cover story ready: they were answering a distress call. So they would head for Cuba, and they would fire on the first thing they saw, torpedo boat or jet airplane, or Havana itself. When the counterattack came, they would radio Miami to say they were being fired upon by Cubans without provocation, and then they would radio to say they were being sunk by Cubans. The Cubans, of course, would protest that the cutter had opened fire first — but neither the United States nor the world would believe them.
The only hitch was Ocho Puertos.
In Ocho Puertos there were people who had been held captive since dawn, and who now knew about the plan. In Ocho Puertos there were sailors who had been moved from the cutter, and who knew the ship had been taken by force. In Ocho Puertos there were men and women who could immediately squelch the elaborate lie off the shores of Cuba.
They would have to kill everyone in town before they left.
They would undoubtedly be listening for word on the radio, oh yes, the news would go out at once, the world would know in an instant what had happened out there in the Caribbean. And presuming everything had gone as planned, presuming the cutter and the men who had gone down with her were accepted as genuine, presuming the Cuban attack clearly seemed an overt act of aggression, then the men left behind here in town would have to wipe out all traces of themselves. They would strip their Coast Guard prisoners of clothes and identification, they would kill everyone in town, and then they would leave. Wasn’t that what Clyde had said? “Kill the goddamn people. Kill them now. Why wait?” Yes, and while the police tried to solve a puzzling and senseless mass murder on a tiny key called Ocho Puertos, the government of the United States would either immediately retaliate against Cuba with rockets and bombs, or else go through the more formal process of declaring war first. Either way, Jason Trench would have accomplished his goal.
It’ll never work, Cummings thought.
We’ve had American aircraft shot down before, we’ve had pilots captured, we’ve had truckfuls of men detained at checkpoints, we’ve even had private citizens held prisoner behind the Curtain. None of these had ever led to even a limited war. This was a little different, of course; this was a little closer to American shores. And it did not involve an individual person or a small group of persons; it involved fifty-five men, which was almost a quarter of an Army company, mmmm. But even so, there wasn’t the slightest possibility that America would respond to such an attack by declaring war. We were too sensible for that, we knew the awesome consequences, we would prefer sacrificing the ship and the men if it meant preserving the peace.
We would undoubtedly take it to the United Nations. We would set a pattern for the rest of the world. We would maintain that even in the face of a ruthless, unprovoked act of aggression, we were nonetheless refusing to retaliate with our terrible, swift power. Instead, we were taking the matter to the world organization, where we had every reason to believe it would be settled. We would ask reparation from Cuba, of course, and then we would
Oh yes, the newspapers would have a field day with that. What kind of reparation do you ask for fifty-five men dead or crippled, all or any part of them? How do you explain reparation to wives and mothers and children? Oh yes, that would be a sweet one for the yellow journalists. And there were men on Capitol Hill who would argue, perhaps rightfully, that no amount of reparation could restore our image in the eyes of the world if we let this unprovoked and unwarranted attack go unanswered. These men would leap upon the sinking of the cutter as an excuse for the action they had been demanding all along. They would seize upon the attack as an opportunity to restage the Bay of Pigs blunder, invade Cuba in force this time, eliminate her threat in the Western Hemisphere once and for all.
But of course the cooler heads would insist that the world organization be the arbiter. Let the United Nations try the case; if necessary, let the United Nations send a force in to disarm Cuba and remove any further possibility of wanton
There were still Russians on the island.
He could not remember a single instance where the U.N. had forcibly disarmed a member nation.
If they tried it with Cuba, there would be a global war.
There were men in Washington who would argue that if the possibility of war existed either way, why waste lives? Push the buttons, send the rockets, get rid of the goddamn threat, do it now! They’ve sunk one of our ships! What do we have to do — wait until they wade ashore in Miami?
It could work, Cummings thought. Jason Trench could get the war he wanted.
No, Cummings thought. This is absurd. This entire thing is absurd. There were fanatics in the world, yes, that was true. But authority had an uncanny knack of stopping fanatics before they ever carried out their plans. In a world of extremes, the extremists rarely were permitted to act. There was talk, yes, always talk. Talk on street corners and in assembly halls, heated oratory pouring from the lips of rabble-rousers, hatred shaped to fit the mold of democracy. In a free nation you can speak your mind, that is an inalienable right, stand on your soapbox and advocate the overthrow of a nation — but do not move into action. If you do, if you are foolish enough to translate your hatred, right or left, into movement, you are doomed. The Marines will always arrive just in the nick of time to foil your plot, whatever it may be.
It was difficult to think beyond this room. Beyond this room there was a cutter loading men dressed in the uniforms of Coast Guard sailors, men who would take that ship into Cuban waters and open fire on Cuban property in the hope they would be sunk. Beyond this room there were fanatics who had moved beyond their own rhetoric into sudden and decisive action.
I can stop them, Cummings thought.
I could make one phone call, just one; they would believe me, they would move immediately to
He suddenly remembered that among the other dangers lurking beyond this room was a twenty-year-old girl in a house across the road, and she was his mistress. Even if he could get to a telephone, which was doubtful, he would have to say where he was; he would have to tell them the jumping-off spot for Jason Trench’s plan was a town called Ocho Puertos in the Florida Keys.
For perhaps the first time in his life, Roger Cummings wondered if the Marines would indeed arrive.
The two highway patrolmen watched the car as it came out of the water, choked with grass, dripping, the winch tugging it reluctantly out of the mud. They were both big men, and the day was warm, and they were sweating across the fronts and under the arms of their tan uniform shirts. The first patrolman was named Oscar, and his partner’s name was Frank, and they kept making hand signals to the winch operator in the cab of the truck, until finally the patrol car was on dry ground.
“It’s empty,” Oscar said.
“Yeah,” Frank answered.
Oscar opened the door on the driver’s side, and looked in. A trooper’s hat was resting on the front seat. He picked it up and studied the sweatband. The name R. HOGAN was stamped into the leather.