The range was closing rapidly, but still Jake didn’t see the MiG. He looked at the target dot in the heads-up display, but the sky was huge and the Cuban fighter too far away, although it was almost as large as the F-14.
The MiG was about four miles away when Jake finally saw it, a winged silver glint that shot by just under his right wing. Jake Grafton disconnected the autopilot and slammed the stick over.
He pulled carefully, cleanly, craned his head and braced himself with his left hand as he kept the turning MiG in sight.
The Cuban fighter rolled out of his turn heading north. Jake leveled out on a parallel course. Careful not to point his nose at the Cuban, Jake let the Tomcat drift closer on a converging course.
When the planes were less than a hundred yards apart, he slowed the closure rate but kept moving in.
Finally the two planes were in formation with their wingtips about twenty yards apart.
“Look at that thing, would you?” Toad enthused. “Have you ever seen a more gorgeous airplane?”
“I hear it’s a real dream machine,” Jake agreed.
“Oh, baby, the lines, the curves … The Russians sure know how to design flying machines.”
“If this guy has to jump out of that thing,” Jake asked Toad, “do you think Cuban Air-Sea Rescue is going to come pick him up?”
“I doubt it,” Toad replied. “And I suspect he knows that.”
“He’s got a set of cojones on him,” Jake said. “Bet he can fly the hell out of that thing, too.”
In the Cuban fighter, Major Carlos Corrado took his time looking over the American plane. This was the first time he had ever seen an F-14. Amazing how big they were, with the two men and the missiles under the wings.
Carlos was lucky he had this hunk of hot Russian iron to fly, technical generations ahead of the MiG-19s and 21s that equipped the bulk of Cuba’s tactical squadrons, and he damn well knew it. Cuba owned three dozen MiG-29s and had precisely one operational—mis one—which Corrado kept flying by the simple expedient of cannibalizing parts from the others.
He checked his fuel. He had enough, just enough, to get home. Sure, he had no business being out here over the ocean, but he wanted to fly today and the Cuban ground control intercept (GCI) controller said the American was here. One thing led to another and here he was.
Now Carlos Corrado was on course to return to his base near the city of Cienfuegos, on Cuba’s southern coast. He checked the compass, the engine instruments, then turned back to studying the American plane, which hung there on the end of his wing as if it were painted on the sky.
A minute went by, then the man in the front seat of the American plane raised his hand and waved. Carlos returned the gesture as the big American fighter turned away to the right and immediately began falling behind. Carlos twisted his body in his seat to keep the F-14 in sight for as long as possible. Big as it was, the F-14 disappeared into the eastern sky with startling rapidity.
Carlos Corrado turned in his seat and eased the position of his butt.
The Americans were two or three technical generations beyond the Cubans, so far ahead that most Cuban military men regarded American capabilities as almost superhuman. They had read of the Gulf War, of the satellites and computers and smart weapons. Unlike his colleagues, Corrado was not frightened by the Americans. Impressed by their military capability, but not frightened.
If I were smarter, he thought now, I would be frightened
But the Americans and Cubans would never fight. They had not fought since the Bay of Pigs and doubtless never would. Castro would soon be gone and a new government would take over and Cuba would become a new American suburb, another little beach island baking in the sun south of Miami, Key Cuba. When that happy day came, Carlos Corrado told himself, he was going to America and get a decent flying job that paid real money.
Doña Maria Vieuda de Sedano’s daughters arrived first, in the early afternoon, to tidy up and do the cooking for the guests. They had married local men who worked the sugarcane and saw her every day. In truth, they looked after her, helped her dress, prepared her meals, cleaned and washed the clothes.
It was infuriating to be disabled, to be unable to do! The arthritis that crippled her hands and feet made even simple tasks difficult and complex tasks out of the question.
Doña Maria managed to shuffle to her favorite chair on the tiny porch without help. Her small house sat on the western edge of the village. From the porch she could see several of her neighbors’ houses and a wide sweep of the road. Across the road was a huge field of cane. A cane-cooking factory stood about a half mile farther west. When the harvest began, the stacks belched smoke and the fumes of cooking sugar drifted for miles on the wind.
Beyond all this, almost lost in the distance, was the blue of the ocean, a thin line just below the horizon, bluer than the distant sky. The wind coming in off the sea kept the temperature down and prevented insects from becoming a major nuisance.
The porch was the only thing Dona Maria really liked about the house, though after fifty-two years in residence God knows she had some memories. Small, just four rooms, with a palm-leaf roof, this house had been the center of her adult life. Here she moved as a young bride with her husband, bore her children, raised them, cried and laughed with them, buried two of the ten, watched the others grow up and marry and move away. And here she watched her husband die of cancer.
He had died … sixteen years ago, sixteen years in November.
You never think about outliving your spouse when you are young. Never think about what comes afterward, after happiness, after love. Then, too soon, the never-thought-about future arrives.
She sat on the porch and looked at the clouds floating above the distant ocean, almost like ships, sailing someplace … .
She had lived her whole life upon this island, every day of it, had never been farther from this house than Havana, and that on just two occasions: once when she was a teenage girl, on a marvelous expedition with her older sister, and once when her son Maximo was sworn in as the minister of finance.
She had met Fidel Castro on that visit to the capital, felt the power of his personality, like a fire that warmed everyone within range. Oh, what a man he was, tall, virile, full of life.
No wonder Maximo orbited Fidel’s star. His brother Jorge, her eldest, had been one of Castro’s most dedicated disciples, espousing Marxism and Cuban nationalism, refusing to listen to the slightest criticism of his hero. Jorge, dead of heart failure at the age of forty-two, another dreamer.
All the Sedanos were dreamers, she thought, poverty-stricken dreamers trapped on this sun-washed island in a sun-washed sea, isolated from the rest of humankind, the rest of the species … .
She thought of Jorge when she saw Mercedes, his widow, climb from the car. The men in the car glanced at her seated on the porch, didn’t wave, merely drove on, leaving Mercedes standing in the road.
“Hola, Mima.”
Jorge, cheated of life with this woman, whom he loved more than anything, more than Castro, more than his parents, more than anything, for the Sedanos were also great lovers.
“Hola, my pretty one. Come sit beside me.”
As she stepped on the porch, Dona Maria said, “Thank you for coming.”
“It is nothing. We both loved Jorge … .”
“Jorge …”
Mercedes looked at Maria’s hands, took them in her own, as if they weren’t twisted and crippled. She kissed the older woman, then sat on a bench beside her and looked at the sea.
“It is still there. It never changes.”
“Not like we do.”
The emotions twisted Mercedes’s insides, made her eyes tear. Here in this place she had had so much, then with no warning it was gone, as if a mighty tide had swept away all that she valued, leaving only sand and rock.
Jorge—oh, what a man he was, a dreamer and lover and believer in social justice. A true believer, without a selfish bone in his body … and of course he had d
ied young, before he realized how much reality differed from his dreams.
He lived and died a crusader for justice and Cuba and all of that … and left her to grow old alone … lonely in the night, looking for someone who cared about something besides himself.
She bit her lip and looked down at Dona Maria’s hands, twisted and misshapen. On impulse leaned across and kissed the older woman on the cheek.
“God bless you, dear child,” Dona Maria said.
Ocho came walking along the road, trailed by four of the neighborhood children who were skipping and laughing and trying to make him smile. When he turned in at his mother’s gate, the children scampered away.
Everyone on the porch turned and looked at him, called a greeting as he quickly covered the three or four paces of the path. Ocho was the Greek god, with the dark hair atop a perfect head, a perfect face, a perfect body … tall, with broad shoulders and impossibly narrow hips, he moved like a cat. He dominated a room, radiating masculinity like a beacon, drawing the eyes of every woman there. Even his mother couldn’t take her eyes from him, Mercedes noted, and grinned wryly. This last child—she bore Ocho when she was forty-four—even Dona Maria must wonder about the combination of genes that produced him.
Normally an affable soul, Ocho had little to say this evening. He grunted monosyllables to everyone, kissed his mother and Mercedes and his sisters perfunctorily, then found a corner of the porch in which to sit.
Women threw themselves at Ocho, and he never seemed to notice. It was almost as if he didn’t want the women who wanted him. He was sufficiently different from most of the men Mercedes knew that she found him intriguing. And perhaps, she reflected, that was the essence of his charm.
Maximo Luis Sedano’s sedan braked to a stop in a swirl of dust. He bounded from the car, strode toward the porch, shouting names, a wide grin on his face. He gently gathered his mother in his arms, kissed her on both her cheeks and forehead, kissed each hand, knelt to look into her face.
Mercedes didn’t hear what he said; he spoke only for his mother’s ears. When she looked away from Maximo and his mother she was surprised to see Maximo’s wife climbing the steps to the porch. Maximo’s wife—just what was her name?—condemned forever to be invisible in the glare of the great man’s spotlight.
Another dominant personality—the Sedanos certainly produced their share of those—Maximo was a prisoner of his birth. Cuba was far too small for him. Amazingly, because life rarely works out just right, he had found one of the few occupations in Castro’s Cuba that allowed him to travel, to play on a wider field. As finance minister he routinely visited the major capitals of Europe, Central and South America.
Just now he gave his mother a gift, which he opened for her as his sisters leaned forward expectantly, trying to see.
French chocolates! He opened the box and let his mother select one, then passed the rare delicacy around to all.
The sisters stared at the box, rubbed their fingers across the metallic paper, sniffed the delicious scent, then finally, reluctantly, selected one candy and passed the box on.
One of the sisters’ husbands whispered to the other, just loud enough for Mercedes to overhear: “Would you look at that? We ate potatoes and plantains last month, all month, and were lucky to get them.”
The other brother-in-law whispered back, “For three days last week we had absolutely nothing. My brother brought us a fish.”
“Well, the dons in government are doing all right. That’s the main thing.”
Mercedes sat listening to the babble of voices, idly comparing Maximo’s clean, white hands to those of the sisters’ husbands, rough, callused, work-hardened. If the men were different, the women weren’t. Maximo’s wife wore a chic, fashionable French dress as she sat now with Dona Maria’s daughters, whispering with them, but inside the clothes she was still one of them in a way that Maximo would never be again. He had traveled too far, grown too big … .
Mercedes was thinking these thoughts when Hector arrived, walking along the road. Even Maximo stopped talking to one of his brothers, the doctor, when he saw Hector coming up the path to the porch.
“Happy birthday, Mima.”
Hector, Jesuit priest, politician, revolutionary … he spoke softly to his mother, kissed her cheek, shook Maximo’s hand, looked him in the eye as he ate a chocolate, kissed each of his sisters and touched the arms and hands of their husbands and his brothers, the doctor and the automobile mechanic.
Ocho was watching Hector, waiting for him to reach for his hand, his lips quivering.
Mercedes couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing, Hector hugging Ocho, holding him and rocking back and forth, the young man near tears.
Then the moment passed.
Hector refused to release his grip on his brother, led him to Dona Maria, gently made him sit at her feet and placed her hands in his.
Ah, yes, Hector Sedano. If anyone could, it would be you.
“They do not appreciate you,” Maximo’s wife told him as they rode back to Havana in his car.
“They are so ignorant,” she added, slightly embarrassed that she and her husband should have to spend an evening with peasants in such squalid surroundings.
Of course, they were his family and one had duties, but still … He had worked so hard to earn his standing and position, it was appalling that he should have to make a pilgrimage back to such squalor.
And his relatives! The old woman, the sisters … crippled, ignorant, dirty, uncouth … it was all a bit much.
And Hector, the priest who was a secret politician! A man who used the Church for counterrevolutionary treason.
“Surely he must know that you are aware of his political activities,” she remarked now to her husband, who frowned at the shacks and sugarcane fields they were driving past.
“He knows,” Maximo murmured.
“Europe was so nice,” his wife said softly. “I don’t mean to be uncharitable, but truly it is a shame that we must return to this!”
Maximo wasn’t paying much attention.
“I keep hoping that someday we shall go to Europe and never return,” she whispered. “I do love Madrid so.”
Maximo didn’t hear that comment. He was wondering about Hector and Alejo Vargas. He couldn’t imagine the two of them talking, but what if they had been? What if those two combined to plot against him? What could he do to guard against that possibility, to protect himself?
Later that evening Hector and his sister-in-law, Mercedes, rode a bus into Havana. “It was good of you to stay for Mima’s party,” Hector said.
“I wanted to see her. She makes me think of Jorge.”
“Do you still miss him?”
“I will miss him every day of my life.”
“Me too,” Hector murmured.
“Vargas knows about you,” she said, after glancing around to make sure no one else could hear her words.
“What does he know?”
“That you organize and attend political meetings, that you write to friends, that you speak to students, that most of the priests in Cuba are loyal to you, that many people all over this island look to you for leadership … . He knows that much and probably more.”
“It would be a miracle if none of that had reached the ears of the secret police.”
“He may arrest you.”
“He will do nothing without Fidel’s approval. He is Fidel’s dog.”
“And you think Fidel approves of your activities?”
“I think he tolerates them. The man isn’t immortal. Even he must wonder what will come after him.”
“You are playing with fire. Castro’s hold on Vargas is weakening. Castro’s death will give him a free hand. Do not underestimate him.”
“I do not. Believe me. But Cuba is more important than me, than Vargas, than Castro. If this country is ever going to be anything other than the barnyard of a tyrant, someone must plant seeds that have a chance of growing. Every person I talk to is a seed, an investment
in the future.”
“‘Barnyard of a tyrant.’ What a pretty phrase!” Mercedes said acidly. The last few years, living with Fidel, she had developed a thick skin: people said the most vicious things about him and she had learned to ignore most of it. Still, she deeply admired Hector, so his words wounded her.
“I’m sorry if I—”
She made sure her voice was under control, then said, “Dear Hector, Cuba is also the graveyard of a great many martyrs. There is room here for Vargas to bury us both.”
He was remembering the good days, the days when he had been young, under a bright sun, surrounded by happy, laughing comrades.
All things had been possible back then. Bullets couldn’t touch them, no one would betray them to Batista’s men, they would save Cuba, save her people, make them prosperous and healthy and strong and happy. Oh, yes, when we were young …
As he tossed and turned, fighting the pain, snatches of scenes ran through his mind; student politics at the University of Havana, the assault on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago, guns banging and bullets spanging off steel, off masonry, singing as they whirled away … . He remembered the firefights on the roads, riding the trucks through the countryside, evenings making plans with Che and the others, how they would set things right, kick out the capitalists who had enslaved Cuba for centuries.
Che, he had been a true believer.
And there were plenty more. True believers all. Ignorant as virgins, penniless and hungry, they thought they could fix the world.
In his semiconscious state he could hear his own voice making speeches, explaining, promising to fix things, to heal the people, put them to work, give them jobs and houses and medical care and a future for their children.
Words. All words.
Wind.
He coughed, and the coughing brought him fully awake. The nurse was there in the chair watching him.
“Leave me, woman.”
She left the room.
He pulled himself higher in the bed, used a corner of the sheet to wipe the sweat from his face.
The sheets were thin, worn out. Even el presidente’s sheets were worn out!
Cuba Page 5
