The Company

by Robert Littell

  Bissell’s noon deadline came and went but the DD/O didn’t seem alarmed, and for good reason: he had informed the President that the freighters would cross the line of no return at noon on Sunday, but he had built in a margin of error. The real deadline was four o’clock. Around the war, room people stared at the red phone sitting on a table in the command-and-control well as the clock batted away the seconds. Ebby and Leo poured coffee from one of the Pyrex pots warming on the hot plate and drifted into Leo’s cubbyhole office off the war room. “I was ready to quit over this,” Ebby confided to his friend, sinking into a wooden chair in near-exhaustion. “I actually delivered a letter of resignation to the Director.”

  “What happened?”

  “He pretty much made the case that this wasn’t the moment to abandon ship.”

  Leo shook his head. “I don’t know, Ebby—JMARC could succeed.”

  “It would take a miracle.”

  Leo lowered his voice. “The news Bissell’s waiting for from Havana—it could change the ball game.”

  Ebby sipped his coffee. “Doesn’t it worry you, Leo—the United States of America, the most powerful nation on the face of the earth, trying to assassinate the bellicose leader of a small island-country because he’s thumbing his nose at his Yankee neighbor? It’s a classic case of the elephant swatting a mosquito, for Christ’s sake.”

  Leo sniffed. “At my pay grade we don’t deal in moral niceties.”

  “It doesn’t seem as if moral niceties are the subject of conversation at any pay grade,” Ebby griped.

  Settling onto the edge of the desk, Leo absently poked through some papers with the tips his fingers. “Say that Castro survives,” he said, talking to himself. “The operation could still succeed.”

  “Balls! The landing might succeed if we provide air cover. But then what? Castro and his brother, Raoul, and their buddy Che Guevara aren’t about to opt for early retirement in Soviet Russia. If things turn against them they’ll retreat into the Sierra Maestras and go guerrilla. Tito did the same thing against the Germans in the mountains of Yugoslavia, and he held out for years. With Castro in the mountains and a CIA-supported Provisional Government in Havana, there’ll be a slow simmering civil war. Jesus, it could go on for ten, twenty years.”

  “I hope to hell you’re wrong,” Leo said.

  “I’m terrified I’m right,” Ebby said.

  Outside in the war room the red telephone buzzed. Conversations ended abruptly as every head turned to stare at it. The Sorcerer abandoned the UP ticker and ambled over. Ebby and Leo rushed to the doorway. Controlling himself with an effort, Bissell, his shoulders hunched, walked slowly across the room to stand over the phone. He looked at it, then reached down and picked it up.

  “Bissell,” he said.

  He listened for a long moment. Gradually his features relaxed. “Right, Mr. President,” he said. “You bet,” he said. “Thank you, Mr. President.” Then he hung up and, grinning, turned to flash the thumbs-up sign to the staffers around the room.

  “So what did he have to say?” Torriti asked.

  “Why, he said, ‘Go ahead.’” Bissell laughed. And then he swung into high gear. “All right, let’s put the show on the road. Leo, pass the coded signal on to the Essex and to Jack McAuliffe on the lead freighter. Also get the word down to Swan Island so the propaganda machine starts humming. And get Hunt off his duff in Miami—I want those bulletins from the Provisional Government on the air as soon as the first Cubans hit the beaches. Gentlemen and ladies, we are about to breathe new life into the Monroe Doctrine.”

  And then everyone began talking at once. The war room churned with activity. For the first time in days the dull detonations from the minute hand stumbling across the face of the wall clock were inaudible. At the overlay of the giant map of the Caribbean, two young woman edged the five freighters closer to Cuba. Bissell, riding a second wind, huddled with several photo interpreters, going over the prints from the post-attack U-2 overflight, circling runways and hangars and fuel depots with a red pencil. Two generals from the Pentagon were called in for consultation in midafternoon. By late afternoon a revised target op order had been enciphered and dispatched to the CIA air base at Retalhuleu, where the brigade’s B-26s would be loading up with bombs and ammunition for the crucial D-minus-one raid.

  In the early evening, Bissell took a call from Rusk and the two chatted for several minutes about Adlai Stevenson. Bissell mentioned that they were gearing up for the all-important second strike. The phone line went silent. Then Rusk said, “Let me get back to you on that.”

  Bissell was startled. “What do you mean, get back to me?”

  “I have a call in to the President at Glen Ora, where he’s spending the weekend,” Rusk explained. “There’s been some discussion about whether the second strike is wise.”

  “It’s already been authorized—“

  “I’ll call right back,” Rusk insisted. Minutes later the Secretary of State came on the line again to say that the President had decided, in light of the fiasco at the UN, to cancel the second raid. There would be no more air strikes, he explained, until the brigade captured the Bay of Pigs runway and America could credibly argue that the B-26s were flying from Cuban soil.

  Rusk’s announcement set off a fire storm inside the war room. Ebby led the charge of those who felt the CIA was betraying the brigade. “It would be criminal to go ahead with the landings under these conditions,” he cried, raising his voice, slamming a fist into a wall. “They cut back the first raid from sixteen B-26s to six. Now they’re cancelling the second raid. The brigade won’t have a ghost of a chance if Castro can put planes over the beaches.”

  Tempers flared. Rank was forgotten as junior officers pounded tables to emphasize the points they were making. As the argument raged in the cockpit, staffers dropped what they were doing and gathered around to watch. In the end the agonizing went nowhere: most of those present felt, like Bissell, that the die was cast; it was too late for the ships, by now sneaking into the Bay of Pigs behind two US destroyers, to turn back.

  With Leo in tow, Bissell charged over to State to talk Rusk and Kennedy into changing their minds. The Secretary listened patiently to their arguments and agreed to call the President. Rusk stated Bissell’s case fairly to Kennedy: the CIA was pleading to reinstate the strike because the freighters carrying the brigade, and the brigade itself, would be sitting ducks for any of Castro’s planes that had survived the first raid. Then Rusk added, “In my view, Mr. President, operations of this sort do not depend nearly so heavily on air cover as conventional amphibious operations did in World War II. I am still recommending, in view of the uproar at the United Nations over the first raid, that we cancel.” Rusk listened for a moment, then covered the mouthpiece with a palm. “The President agrees with me.” He held out the telephone. “Would you like to speak to him yourself?”

  Bissell, dog-tired after days of napping on a cot in the bunkroom of Quarters Eye, looked at Leo, then, thoroughly disheartened, shook his head. “If the President’s mind is made up,” he said wearily, “there’s really no point, is there?”

  Back at the war room Bissell tried to put the best face on the situation. There was a good chance that the bulk of Castro’s combat aircraft had been neutralized. Some T-33s may have survived, true. But the T-bird was a relatively tame training plane—the CIA wasn’t even sure they were armed. There was a bottom line, Bissell added: the President wasn’t dumb. He had given the go-ahead for the operation, which meant he would have to relent and allow jets from the Essex to fly air cover if Castro’s planes turned up over the beaches.

  “And if Kennedy doesn’t relent?” Ebby demanded.

  Bissell turned away and, his shoulders sagging, resumed patrolling the corridor between the water cooler and the easel. “Anything on the wire?” he called to the Sorcerer, who was slumped over the UP ticker.

  Torriti kicked at the long reams of paper collecting in the cardboard box at his feet. “Nothing yet,” h
e mumbled.

  “Goddamn it, I can’t hear you.”

  “NOTHING YET!” Torriti shouted at the top of his lungs.

  Shortly before midnight Bissell took another phone call from a very edgy Secretary of State. The President wanted to know where they were at, Rusk said. Bissell checked the coded phrases on the message board against the operational codes posted on the easel. The brigade’s frogmen had gone ashore to mark the way with blinking landing lights. The two LSDs had gone ballast down to flood the well deck; the three LCUs and the four LCVPs inside would have swum out and started picking up the troops on the freighters. The first wave would form up in fifteen minutes and start out for the beaches designated Red and Blue. By first light all 1,453 members of Brigade 2506 would be ashore.

  Rusk mumbled something about the need for the five merchant ships to be out of sight by sunup. Then, almost as an afterthought, the Secretary of State said that Kennedy was concerned about one other detail of the invasion. The President wanted to double-check that there would be no Americans hitting the beaches with the Cubans.

  Bissell provided the necessary assurance. Sending Americans ashore was the last thing he’d do, he promised.

  6

  BLUE BEACH, THE BAY OF PIGS, MONDAY, APRIL 17, 1961

  THE MEN IN THE FIRST WAVE, THEIR FACES BLACKENED WITH SOOT from galley stoves, slung web belts filled with spare ammunition clips across their chests, then bowed their heads and crossed themselves as the brigade priest blessed them and their crusade. “In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritui Sancti, Amen,” he intoned. With that, the Cubans of the Sixth Battalion began clambering down the rope ladders into the LCU bobbing in the water under the Río Escondido. Two LCVPs, loaded down with tanks and trucks, chugged past, groundswells slapping against their blunt bows.

  Jack, dressed in camouflage khakis and paratrooper boots, a .45 strapped to his waist, his Cossack mustache stiff with salt and quivering in the gusts from sea, was the last one down the ladder. He’d been planning the coup for weeks. To come this far with Roberto Escalona and the brigade and then (following explicit orders from Bissell) to remain on the freighter, watching the invasion through night binoculars—it was simply not possible. Not for the descendant of a bare-knuckle fighter, the undefeated McAuliffe whose name was still a legend in County Cork. There was also the little matter of showing the freedom fighters that America was confident enough in the venture to send one of its own ashore with them. The message wouldn’t be lost on Roberto or the rank and file grunts of the brigade.

  In the LCU, a hand gripped Jack’s arm. “Hombre, what do you think you’re doing?” Roberto Escalona demanded.

  “I’m landing with you,” Jack said.

  “No,” Roberto said. “Don’t misunderstand me. I’m grateful for all your help but this part belongs to us now.”

  “Believe me, you’re going to be on your own,” Jack said. “I’m planning to stay on the beach long enough to take a look around so I can report firsthand to Washington. I’m coming right back.”

  “Still rowing for something besides speed?” guessed Roberto.

  “I suppose you could say that,” confessed Jack.

  In the darkness, Roberto grunted. Several of the men who knew Jack murmured greetings in Spanish; it was easy to see they weren’t sorry to see him tag along. Turning, Roberto waved to the sailors. The LCUs’ crewmen pushed off from the tires hanging against the rusting hull of the freighter and the stubby landing craft lurched into the choppy waters, heading for the red lights twinkling on the shoreline.

  Crouching in the midst of the Cuban fighters, Jack listened to them bantering back and forth nervously in Spanish. Looking over his shoulder, he could make out Roberto standing next to the helmsman, his hand raised over his eyes to shield it from the salt spray. Roberto stabbed the air off to the right and the helmsman eased the LCU over toward the blinking red light at the end of the rock jetty. “A hundred yards to go,” Roberto shouted over the splashing waves and the wind.

  Suddenly, there was a terrible grinding under the vessel. Shards of coral sliced through the double hull. The man crouching next to Jack gagged and clutched at his foot as the LCU pitched forward dizzily and then stopped dead in the water. Someone snapped on a flashlight and trained it on the moaning man, sitting on the deck. Anaesthetized with shock, the soldier followed the beam of light down to the stump of his foot. The razor-sharp coral had amputated his leg above the ankle. Blood gushed from the open wound. Nearby, a paratrooper boot with raw meat protruding from it floated in the bilge. A medic whipped off his belt and tightened it around the wounded man’s calf but the blood continued to stream out. Around them, the hull was slowly filling with sea water, which swished gently back and forth as the LCU rolled with the swells. Cursing under his breath, Roberto leaped down into the hold. “Your people swore the smudge on the photos was seaweed, not a reef!” he shouted into Jack’s ear.

  “Jesus H. Christ, cut the goddamned motor,” Jack yelled up to the helmsman. Roberto called to the men, “Quick, over the side. We’re eighty yards off the beach—the water won’t be deep here.”

  “Qué haremos con él?” the medic asked, clinging to the belt around the stump of leg as the soldier slumped to the deck. Sea water stained with syrupy red splotches swirled around the two men. Roberto reached down to the wounded man’s neck and felt for a pulse. Then he shook his head furiously. “Muerto!” he said.

  In twos and threes, the Cubans slipped over the side of the sinking vessel, their weapons raised above the heads. Jack found himself in waist high-water as he and the shadowy figures around him waded toward the shore. They were still some forty yards out when they heard the shriek of brakes from the beach. A truck filled with militiamen had roared up. As the militiamen spilled out, the truck backed and came forward again until its headlights played across the bay, illuminating the brigade fighters. The men in the water, pinned in the headlights, froze. Jack snatched a BAR from the nearest man’s hands and fired off the magazine; every third round was a tracer, so it was easy to see that the truck was being riddled with bullets. Other brigade fighters began shooting. On the shore, there were flashes of fire as the militiamen shot back. Then, dragging the wounded and the dead, they began retreating toward a dense stand of woods on the other side of the gravel road that ran along the waterfront. The truck’s headlights popped out, one after the other. In the darkness, Roberto shouted for the men to cease firing, and they struggled through the water and up onto the beach.

  Another battalion on the right had already seized the rock jetty and was racing inland, the men shooting from the hip as they ran toward the building with the neon sign sizzling on the roof that advertised “Blanco’s.” Off to the left, still another battalion waded ashore from a sinking LCVP and, firing furiously, charged across the sand toward the rows of box-like bungalows at the edge of the beach. One brigade fighter dropped to his knees near Jack, who was crouching behind a stack of wheelbarrows. The Cuban aimed a .75 recoilless rifle at a bungalow with firefly-like sparks in the windows, and pulled the trigger. The shot burst on the roof, setting it aflame. In the saffron glow of the dancing flames, the last of Castro’s militiamen could be seen disappearing across the fields.

  And then the night turned deathly still; crickets could be heard chirping in the woods, a generator murmured somewhere behind the bungalows. At the head of the jetty, Roberto scooped up a fistful of sand and made a brief speech. The members of the brigade who could hear him cheered hoarsely. Then they started inland to secure the road and the town of Girón, and the three causeways over the Zapata swamp. One squad discovered an ancient Chevrolet parked behind a bungalow and, cranking up the motor, set off to capture the airstrip.

  Jack took a turn around the beach area. Several wounded brigade fighters were being carried into the makeshift infirmary set up in one of the concrete bungalows. Roberto Escalona had scratched “G-2” on the door of another bungalow and was using it as his headquarters. Behind the bungalows, Jack found the
bodies of three of Castro’s soldiers with 339th Militia Battalion insignias on their sleeves lying face down in the sand, blood oozing from wounds. He gazed at the dead men for a while, trying to recollect in the heat of the moment what the issues were that had brought the brigade to Cuba; trying to weigh whether the issues vindicated the killers and the killed.

  There were no easy answers. Suddenly the Cold War—the romp of great powers turning around great ideas—was reduced to bodies on a beach, to blood being sponged up by sand.

  Making his way along the beachfront, Jack came across a brigade corporal—more a boy than a man—with a bulky radio strapped to his back. He was cowering behind a wrecked Jeep, cradling the head of a dead brigade officer in his arms. Jack gently pulled the body free and, motioning for the radioman to follow him, headed for Blanco’s Bar. Inside, the jukebox was still feeding 45-rpm records into the playing slot; the grating voice of Chubby Checkers could be heard belting out “Twist again like you did last sum-mer.” Cans of Cuban beer, sets of dominoes, were scattered around the tables, evidence that the bar had been hastily abandoned. The small fogón, a stove that burned the local charcoal, lay on its side, riddled with bullets. Righting a chair, Jack collapsed into it; he hadn’t realized how exhausted he was until he sat down. He motioned for the young corporal to set up his equipment.