“Mama always said, don’t leave your keys in the car,” said Doc, joining me inside. “You think anybody heard those dogs?”
“Sure. But dogs bark all the time. Even in Cuba.”
The pump had two separate locks, one on a chain that hooked through the nozzle and secured it to the pump frame, and the other on the pump itself. Doc picked the first one without too much trouble; it was a Yale model similar to one of the locks he practices on to keep himself sharp. But the second was an older brand he’d never seen. He dropped the narrow spring tool he was using twice before he managed to get things lined up.
“Always the easiest things that give us problems,” he said, finally popping it open.
We topped off the tanks and saddled up. Trace and Shotgun rode with me; Red, Doc, and Mongoose took the second van. Even though we had our radios, we stayed close together, practically driving the 150 miles bumper to bumper.
Northeastern Cuba is a beautiful place. It’s far enough away from Havana to make it almost possible to ignore the repression, especially at night when even the most observant visitor can’t see its effects in front of him. And if you’re just visiting, the poverty doesn’t register either. Broken-down shacks by the side of the road are picturesque. The lack of things like gas stations and convenient marts seems positively bucolic, rather than an indication of a crapped-out economy.
The countryside feels raw without being threatening, almost as if you’re moving through a Disney landscape. The jungle is real enough—the trees lean over the roads, and the shells of thatch-covered huts sit amid thick clumps of quick-growing vegetation. But the glow of the moon hits the sand on the shoulders with a silvery glow that bleaches everything else away. And in the light of the first dawn, the sun seems to pull white and blue sparkles of electricity from the ocean’s edge.
We reached the town where Fidel’s bunker was located just as those early rays were starting to hit. The house had been dug into a hill rising over the sea, right in the middle of an army outpost. A set of heavy guns were dug into man-made caves along the rocks; as formidable as these looked, they wouldn’t be a problem for us unless we tried re-creating the Bay of Pigs invasion. More problematic were the guard posts and triple fence line, which was sure to be studded with the latest Chinese electronic gizmos. The beach area was fenced off as well, with a barbed wire-topped fence that ran well into the water.
The bunker had been sited so well that finding a good place to look over the entire installation was difficult. The closest I could get to the gate area was a rocky crag nearly a mile away. Even from the top, the only way I could see anything was by leaning half my body out over a sheer cliff. The other half attached itself to a big boulder and prayed.
Hoping that Mr. Murphy wouldn’t send a sudden gust my way, I surveyed the place with my binoculars. There were at least a dozen soldiers standing in knots of twos and threes near the gate to the base. Other groups were scattered just inside the fence. A half-dozen members of Fidel’s elite bodyguard unit manned the gate between the base and the bunker. Every few minutes, at irregular intervals, a jeep-type vehicle drove inside the fenced perimeter circling the bunker. A fifty-caliber machine gun was mounted desert-rat style on the back. Signs warned that the strip in front of the fence had been mined.
Since sneaking onto the base area looked difficult, I decided we’d take the lazy man’s approach—we’d go through the front door.
But not with the telephone company vans.
It wasn’t just because I was worried that their theft would be reported across the island. Junior, with the CIA’s help, was monitoring the Cuban police alert system, and would tell me when the alert went out, if it did, but the warning would be of little value if we were sitting at the gate when the bulletin went out.
The problem was that the guards seemed to be trained to carefully examine vans. As I stretched myself out for my view, two pulled up. The men inside were ordered out, and the trucks thoroughly searched.
I don’t mean thoroughly searched the way the police back home or even MPs at a base entrance search a vehicle. They didn’t ask pretty please may we have a look in the bomb-shaped package on the rear seat?
Hell no. They hustled the men out, put them on the side of the vehicle, and patted them down with enough vigor to make them candidates for the choir. Then, while the men were forced to lie on their bellies, hands in the air, each box in the van was removed and opened. The rug over the floor in the back was torn and lifted up. Two soldiers hopped inside and dismantled more of the vehicle, carting out the rear seat so they could have a close-up look at it.
When the van was declared clean, the two men who’d been in the cab were told to get up, show their papers, and answer questions. From the distance, I couldn’t tell what they were saying—for all I knew, they were debating Cuba’s chances in the World Cup. But it sure looked like they were being asked something more than whether they’d ever left their lunch boxes unattended.
Not every truck got that treatment, however. Two troop trucks passed right through with little more than a perfunctory nod and wave. They looked like they belonged. Hence the difference.
That’s always the difference, isn’t it? If you walk down the hall with the right swagger, you can stroll right through the Kremlin or White House with an MP5 in your left hand and a grenade in your right.
What we needed was a truck that looked as if it belonged on the base. My first choice was a fire engine, which can go pretty much anywhere it wants to the world over, as long as the siren is wailing. The problem would have been locating one outside the base, though I’m sure with Junior’s help we could have figured something out. But as I clambered down the ridge, I noticed something just as effective.
“A cement truck?” asked Trace when I told her and the others what I had in mind. “I’m not hiding in a goddamn cement truck.”
“Cool. A cement truck,” said Shotgun. “Can we dump the cement out, Dick?”
A semiregular stream of the trucks was heading in and out of the facility, working on a dock complex on the southwestern side. The cement factory was about three miles south, part of a massive gravel pit carved out of the foothills. Between them was a stretch of road that looked like a pair of backward Zs on the satellite map, perfect for an ambush.
Almost perfect, at any rate. The road had been cut down the side of a hill. There was no cover for almost fifty yards on either side of the road as it cut back across the steep incline. Our first thought was to take the vans up the road, block it, and then take the trucks over. But we found a pair of soldiers stationed at the intersection of the road and the nearby highway as we approached. They presented arms—and guns—when we tried to turn up the road.
I rolled down my window.
“They’re saying it’s a restricted area,” whispered Red under her breath from the passenger seat.
I told them there was a downed wire, repeating a phrase I’d practiced all the way up the road for this very contingency. My pronunciation was perfect, but the soldiers weren’t impressed. They shouted that they were under orders not to let anyone pass, and made a show of readying their weapons to fire.
Red opened the door and walked toward them, saying that she was the shift supervisor and that it was very important that the wires be fixed. She threw a little swerve into her walk, putting her hips to their best use. But the men must’ve been eunuchs. They shouted at her and waved her back to the truck.
“Time to try Plan B,” she whispered as she climbed back into the truck.
Red hasn’t been with us all that long, but she knows me well enough that she braced herself as she pulled the door closed, sure I was going to run down the guards. But while that would have been temporarily satisfying, it would not have helped us toward our ultimate goal. So I backed up slowly, and with Doc following, made a U-turn on the highway.
“What are we doing?” Trace asked over the radio.
“We’re going to take the long way around.”
“
Story of my life.”
The double-backward-Z had been cut through the hillside for a very good reason—the long way around was really long. More than thirty kilometers clicked around the odometer before we arrived at the front gate of the cement plant. We stopped just down the road from the plant building and cut the telephone wire. Then we hopped back in the trucks and headed toward the plant.
There were no guards at the front gate, because after all, who steals cement? Red and I peeled left toward the administration building; we got out of the truck harrumphing and shaking our heads at the horrible situation we were confronted with, no doubt a Yankee plot designed to isolate Cuba even further. We strolled inside the building and immediately began looking for the problem with the phones—something that naturally involved checking every unit in the place, no matter where it was located.
Doc and the others, meanwhile, drove their van to the plant area behind the building where a cloud of dust showed that the cement operation was in full swing. Empty cement trucks would pull up in front of a large loading area, then back in one at a time to get filled. Unlike in America, where most cement trucks have only a driver, two people worked each truck here. When the truck pulled up, the assistant would hop out and with a few hand signals wave the driver toward the rig at the rear. He’d wait while the truck was being filled—generally kibitzing with anyone else who happened to be around.
Especially if the people who were just hanging around happened to be doling out cigars.
I’m not sure where Mongoose had gotten the cigars—undoubtedly back in Victoria de las Tunas on his way to dinner, but as soon as he hopped out of the van with a fist full of puros, the assistant who was standing nearby made a beeline for him.
Mongoose’s Spanish was excellent, but it had a Filipino flavor to it, which immediately roused the man’s curiosity. Lighting his newfound friend’s cigar, Mongoose began a long explanation of his background and the tortured path his parents had taken after arriving on the sandy beaches of the workers’ paradise; he was about halfway to Havana when Shotgun lowered the boom on the Cuban.
It wasn’t a boom; it was a blackjack, but you get the general idea.
Mongoose dragged the assistant into the telephone truck, pulled off his coveralls, and put them on. He was still rolling up the pants legs—they were about six sizes too big—when the now-loaded cement truck rolled up, ready to go. He hopped up and jumped into the cab. Before the driver could ask what had happened to his coworker, the door behind him flew open and Shotgun slapped him on the side of the head. Mongoose slid behind the wheel and pulled away.
Trace had an even easier time with the second truck; the driver’s assistant was so smitten by her offer of a counterfeit Coke—held in front of her loosely buttoned blouse—that he surely never felt Shotgun’s blackjack when it knocked him into the dirt. She took care of the driver herself, snapping her fist into the side of his head after he made the mistake of asking why a slut was getting into his vehicle.
Shotgun carried the Cuban to the van, where Doc administered a healthy dose of phenobarbital to keep him and the other assistant sleeping for a while. While Shotgun finished trussing them, Doc climbed into the driver’s seat of the van and followed Trace to the work gate at the rear of the plant that the cement trucks used to exit.
Up until now, the plan had worked like the proverbial Swiss watch. But it’s always what you don’t know that comes back to bite you in the butt, and that’s what happened here. The military base was only one of several large jobs that were being supplied with cement that day, and a different procedure had been set up for the trucks that were working there. The trucks heading for the post had special clipboards attached to the doors containing their orders and some paperwork. Neither of the trucks we had snatched had the clipboards.
I’m not positive the guards at the base would have noticed; the trucks I’d seen moved in and out at a pretty good clip. But the supervisor who was funneling the vehicles out of the plant noticed right away. He waved his arms and ran after Mongoose as he started to the right, the direction of the base. Mongoose saw him and did what anyone would do—he tried ignoring him and stepped on the gas. But the truck had a standard transmission, and Mongoose’s difficulty with the clutch once again resulted in a stall.
“Where’s your board?” the supervisor demanded, jumping on the running board. “And where the hell is your assistant?”
Mongoose gave him a what-the-hell-are-you-talking-about look. The Cuban pointed at the side of the truck and asked again.
“Musta fell off,” mumbled Mongoose, trying to use as few words as possible.
Mongoose’s accent may have aroused suspicion. Or maybe it was the lack of his assistant. Then again, the supervisor might just have naturally been a prick. He demanded to know who Mongoose thought he was, and what he thought he was doing.
“What do you mean, who am I?” answered Mongoose indignantly.
“You are a screwup, losing your paperwork and trying to get out of trouble.”
“Someone took it.”
“Who? Your assistant?”
Mongoose bristled—exactly the right thing to do under the circumstances, since it made it look like it was his assistant who was the screwup.
But that still didn’t get him off the hook.
“Who are you?” demanded the supervisor, no longer speaking rhetorically. “What’s your name?”
Red and I could hear the exchange through Mongoose’s mike, which was clipped below his shirt. I knew that if he gave a false name, the supervisor was likely to realize it and there’d be an immediate problem. On the other hand, it was obvious that he wasn’t going to bluff his way out.
“Trace—hit your horn. Distract them,” I said over the radio. “We need a driver’s name. Doc—can you get something from the two guys we took out? An ID, anything.”
“I’m working on it,” said Doc. Shotgun was in the back of the van, rifling the pockets of the men he’d knocked out. But they didn’t carry IDs or money in their coveralls, apparently leaving everything in their work locker room.
Fortunately, Red was already a couple of steps ahead of me—literally. She sprinted to the time clock we’d passed on the way in and pulled out some cards.
“Horatio Garcia,” she said, decoding the notations and guessing at the abbreviation for driver. “Use Horatio Garcia.”
Mongoose had tucked his earphone down under his shirt collar so it wouldn’t be seen. Unfortunately, that also meant he couldn’t hear us telling him what to do.
“Now look at the problem you’ve caused,” said the supervisor as the horn sounded behind them. “Everyone’s getting off schedule. This is going against you.”
Mongoose answered with a curse. The supervisor once again demanded to know who he was.
There was now a line of three dump trucks behind them. Doc and the van were wedged in the middle.
“Hey, Red, you better find a woman driver to cover Trace,” said Doc, pulling the telephone van out of line. He leaned on the horn, jammed the gas pedal, and made a beeline for the supervisor. He hit his brakes at the last minute, fishtailing to a stop as the supervisor jumped out of the way.
Shotgun, meanwhile, had jumped from the van and sprinted up the other side of the line of traffic.
“Your name is Garcia,” he hissed at Mongoose through the open window on the other side of the truck. “Horatio Garcia.”
“I need one of those clipboards.”
“From where?”
“On the side of the truck. Then get in here like you’re my assistant.”
“Where do I get it?”
“Steal one, asshole.”
“Asshole yourself, dickface.”
Shotgun trotted back toward the end of the line, looking for a truck that had one of the clipboards. He finally spotted one behind the spot where the telephone truck had been; he walked past as nonchalantly as possible, grabbed it from the side, then circled around and ran back to Mongoose.
The
supervisor meanwhile had jumped to his feet and was denouncing the idiot telephone worker, accusing him of having learned to drive in “Yankee land,” apparently the most devastating slur he could think of. Doc had gotten out of the truck, and while he occasionally yelled a curse word, mostly he pounded the hood of his vehicle, implying that the supervisor was lucky that he was hitting the metal and not his flesh.
Shotgun rushed up and made a show of pulling himself back into the truck. The supervisor was still mumbling to himself when he returned to Mongoose’s truck.
“Here,” said Mongoose, holding out the clipboard. “It fell.”
“Humph.”
The supervisor gave Shotgun a scowl, and waved Mongoose through.
Trace had stolen her own placard during the commotion, grabbing one off an in-bound truck. She slowed but didn’t stop as she came through the gate. The supervisor started to stop her, but then realized that was futile, and instead stopped the next vehicle and began haranguing its crew instead.
A good thing, since according to Red there were no female drivers, or at least she couldn’t find a time card with a woman’s name in the proper section.
Shotgun had doubled back to play Robin to Trace’s Batman. She nearly ran him over before stopping to let him in.
“Thought you needed an assistant,” he said, pulling himself into the cab.
“That’ll be the day,” she told him.
Shotgun laughed and pushed back in the seat.
“Think there’s a place to stop for something to eat on the way?” he asked. “Pretending to be Cuban kind of works up my appetite.”
And what had I been doing while the others were having all this fun, you ask?
Repairing the telephones, of course.
Repairing, making it worse—all a matter of semantics.
Killing the power to the facility was a little harder than killing the phones, since it turned out that the closet holding the telephone gear was not where the circuit breakers were. In fact, I never found the circuit breakers per se. What I did find was a fenced-in area behind the back of the administration building that contained several large transformers, all conveniently marked with DANGER. HIGH VOLTAGE signs.
RW15 - Seize the Day Page 10
