Operation Fireball

by Marlowe, Dan J.

  “What about the National Museum, Melia?” Erikson asked her.

  “You are hardly in a position to be turistas,“ she said, smiling. “Besides, the regime opens it now only from one to three P.M. They don’t wish to encourage time lost from the cane fields.”

  “Make arrangements with our landlords for you and Drake to go out for a couple of hours,” Erikson directed Wilson when Melia departed with the dirty dishes.

  I was ready when Wilson returned. We negotiated the two sets of steel-plated doors and stepped out onto the street. Wilson set a brisk pace. His mood seemed a sullen one. The few automobiles in sight looked like a U.S. antique car rally. The majority of the militarized vehicles seemed only slightly better preserved. Soldiers were everywhere, strolling idly. Most wore sidearms.

  “There you are,” Wilson said at the end of a twenty-minute walk. I looked across the street. We had moved out of the area of jammed-together apartments. The five- or six-story sandstone building covered a whole block. The lawn had been allowed to turn brown.

  We circled the block. The ground-floor windows had heavy grills and window bars. On the back side, on the street with the least traffic, a row of tamarind trees that reached almost to the second floor ran the length of the building.

  We continued around the building to the front entrance. We met no one on the broad entrance walk, which had a marble mosaic of the Cuban seal in its center. Inside the front door there was a heavy grill in a track that enabled it to be moved in front of the entrance after closing hours. There were only two guards visible, both elderly men. It figured when I thought about it. Castro would have the young ones in the fields working as macheteros.

  Only a middle-aged man and woman were looking at the pictures on the ground floor. I sent Wilson to talk to the guards while I looked at the entrance more closely. I cheered up a little when I saw that the alarm system was of U.S. make. I cheered up a lot when I noticed the badly peeling window foil and corroded elements, which had obviously made the alarm system inoperative. Lack of maintenance had had no effect on the grills, unfortunately.

  “The basement is off limits,” Wilson reported when he left the guards. “There’s only two of ‘em on duty nights, too.”

  That was accommodating of the People’s Republic. I moved in for a closer look at the locks on the inside of the barred windows, then backed away. “I’ve seen enough,” I said.

  Wilson looked surprised. Out on the street we made another circuit of the building while I took a second look at the rear of it. Evidences of neglect were everywhere. Two cornices looked ready to crumble. “All right,” I said at last, and Wilson set our course for the whorehouse. The only military thing I saw en route, aside from the ever-present uniforms, was an array of dull-gray tanks in a parklike area behind high-strung barbed wire.

  Portal to portal, the round trip took us seventy minutes. Once again we were passed through the reinforced doors. When we emerged into the second-floor hallway, the noise surprised me. There was the babbling sound of many high-pitched conversations. “This is the businessman’s shift, their real moneymaker here,” Wilson explained. Passing the doorless rooms, I had opportunity to observe that the Cuban businessman was an uninhibited type.

  I heard a man’s and a woman’s laughter blended in our room. Erikson and Melia were sitting together on one of the cots. Empty coffee cups rested on a nearby hassock. I had never heard Erikson laugh before. Wilson, behind me, pushed forward when he saw the pair. His face was scarlet. “You can goddamm well leave her alone!” he snapped at Erikson. He reached for the girl’s wrist and jerked her to her feet. His expression softened as he stared at her. “Come on,” he said in an abrupt change of mood. “I’ll buy you that dinner I promised you.”

  “It is too dangerous for me on the street,” Melia said.

  The opposition refueled Wilson’s anger. “Don’t say no to me, you whore!” He dragged the girl toward the door.

  “Stay off the street unless it’s necessary, Wilson!” Erikson called after them.

  Only an unintelligible growl answered him. “What did you find out?” Erikson asked. He had already dismissed the incident.

  “The museum is a piece of cake.”

  “It can’t be,” Erikson said flatly.

  I explained about the inoperative alarm system. “Besides my own kit, all we need is a sign painter’s ladder.”

  “That might not be too easy,” Erikson frowned. “Although a little money—what’s the exact setup?”

  I told him about the shielding tamarind trees at the rear of the building. “The second-floor windows have no grills, and I’ve had a good look at their locks. We’ll go up the ladder, get inside, intercept the guards, slip down to the basement, retrieve the cash, and take off.”

  Erikson sat in silence. “We’re going at this too fast,” he said finally. “If we had time to study the guards’ movements—but we can’t take the time.”

  “We should have cords and gags for the guards.”

  Erikson nodded. “Now give it to me again step by step how it will go.”

  Slater wandered in, yawning sleepily. He stretched out on a cot. Erikson and I were still at it twenty minutes later when Melia rushed into the room. She had on a street dress and her features were pale. “Wilson is in trouble on the street!” she said with her words running together. “At the corner!”

  I hurried to the window. “Easy!” Erikson said as I started to pull the shade to one side.

  “He insisted that I go out with him,” Melia continued in a dull tone. “And I—I am not allowed to refuse. We passed a squad of soldiers—there were remarks—then an argument—he told me to run—”

  Erikson was crowded in beside me as we stared out through the slitted shade. Slater had left his cot and his chin was pressing on my shoulder on the other side. There was no difficulty in seeing Wilson. He was half a block away, trying to walk toward us at the same time he argued nose-to-nose with a chunky man in uniform. There was much gesticulating. Half a dozen more uniformed men partly encircled Wilson.

  Slater drew in his breath in a quick sucking sound as Wilson suddenly punched the chunky man, broke through the group, and ran for the doorway below us. The pack took up the chase. Two outdistanced the others. Wilson actually had his hand on the outside door when they collared him. They spun him back up the sidewalk, where he was engulfed by the second wave.

  A knife appeared in Wilson’s hand. He slashed left, then right, and arcs of blood sprang up on the faces of the men closest to him. A soldier jumped on his back, bearing him to the sidewalk, and the rest piled on. For ninety seconds the sidewalk beneath us was a seething, writhing mass of humanity before movement ceased.

  “He’s brought ‘em right to the door!” Slater said hoarsely.

  It was like watching a silent movie. Wilson was hauled to his feet. Half his uniform was gone and one side of his face was streaming blood. Two men held his arms. His knife was on the sidewalk. One of the slashed men picked it up and tried to get at Wilson with it. The chunky man who seemed to be the leader of the squad stopped him. “They want him alive,” Erikson said softly. “If they suspect he’s American—”

  The leader turned to look suspiciously at the door Wilson almost reached. He said something to Chico, who glared at him defiantly. The leader took two quick steps and struck him heavily in the face. Wilson bridged himself in the grasp of those who held him and tried to kick the leader in the throat. He was at once clubbed to the sidewalk. The leader made an encircling gesture to indicate the squad, then pointed to the doorway.

  “That does it,” Erikson said calmly. “Melia, how do we get out of here except by the front entrance?” He picked up the backpack radio and slipped his arms through the straps.

  “The doors will stop them for a little while,” she said. “But if Wilson admits he is American, the Elite Guard will appear.”

  “What will our money buy us then?”

  “Nothing. They are fanatics. These animals here will se
ll you to protect themselves.”

  Slater cursed.

  “So we’ll move first.” Erikson’s voice had a hard edge. “Slater, check the street.”

  He went to the window again. “There’s two of ‘em posted in front of the door,” he reported gloomily.

  “There is a door on this floor that leads into the next building, which is empty,” Melia said quietly. “That beast Ramirez has the key.”

  Erikson studied her. “What about you if we make it out of here?”

  “I would not like to be found here.” Her high-cheek-boned features spoke eloquently of how much she would not like to be found there. “No one has lived in my aunt’s apartment since she was taken away. I can hide you there if you take me with you.”

  “You’ve got a deal.” Erikson started toward the door. “Get me close to Ramirez,” he told Melia.

  She moved into the corridor ahead of him. I jerked my arms into my haversack straps and followed Erikson. I could hear Slater’s footsteps right behind me. I had my .38 under my shirt with the shirt button above my belt unbuttoned. “Ramirez,” I heard Melia say in a honeyed tone at the reinforced door.

  The pockmarked guard turned from peering down the stairway through the small window in the door. A puzzled expression on his dark features gave way to anger when he saw Erikson with the radio on his back. He shook his head and pointed back up the corridor. Erikson closed with him, but the fireplug build of the guard made him a formidable adversary. They wrestled in a tight circle for a moment, then lunged in unison against the steel door.

  There was a crunching sound as Erikson’s back collided with the door. He rebounded from it and hit Ramirez so hard that the pockmarked man did a full half-turn before he collapsed upon the carpeting. Slater dropped to his knees and began going through his pockets rapidly. “It is a flat silver key,” Melia directed him.

  I was watching Erikson. He had slipped out of the straps supporting the backpack radio and was looking at the unit. The combined weight of the two men had smashed the radio like a two-dollar watch. Erikson started to drop the mangled remains on the floor, then changed his mind.

  The sound of Ramirez’ body hitting the floor had brought a wave of big-eyed, transparent-shirted girls into their open doorways. I raised an arm threateningly and the girls scattered like crows at sight of a shotgun. Slater rose to his feet and handed Erikson a key. Erikson gave it to Melia. The girl moved around him, placed her high-heeled shoe upon Ramirez’ upturned face, put her considerable weight on the shoe and face, and made a 180-degree turn. Slater grunted as blood spurted from under the shoe.

  Melia moved along the corridor without a backward glance at the man whose face she had destroyed. She inserted the key into an almost invisible lock in a wallpapered panel that gave no sign of being a door. She motioned us through it and, when we were inside, threw over a barred arm, which would block pursuit for a time.

  We were standing in a rough-framed passageway that had obviously been built for the sole purpose of providing a bridge to the next building. Melia again took the lead. Despite the semidarkness between the walls, I could see tiny dots of red left by her heel on the planking.

  She used the key again on a door at the end of the bridge. We entered an apartment damp with the humidity of disuse. “Down these stairs to the alley,” Melia said. “But carefully. They may have posted a guard behind the other building, and he would hear us.”

  Ahead of me, Erikson quietly lowered the shortwave radio into a corner and went on without it. It confirmed my worst fears. Slater didn’t notice. “Listen!” the girl said. A dull pounding echoed from the bridge behind us. “We must go. They will not follow us out onto the street.”

  “Go ahead, Melia,” Erikson ordered.

  At the bottom of the stairs the girl paused with her hand on another door. “There is thirty feet of alley, then an open space to cross,” she whispered. “That is the danger. Beyond the open space we will be safe from those in the house.”

  Erikson moved her to one side and opened the door an inch at a time. He stepped down onto a cobblestoned alley whose bricks were damp with moisture. We followed him as he crept along the side of the building until he came to the open space. “I’ll go first,” he breathed when we joined him. “Melia next, then Slater, then you, Drake.”

  He crouched low and was gone into the shadows. No sunlight ever penetrated the dankness of the alley. Melia slipped out of her shoes, picked up her skirt, and flitted across the cobblestones like a long-legged ghost. Slater hesitated before he started. Halfway across he skidded on a wet spot and almost went down. His boots sounded noisily as he righted himself and finished the crossing at a dead run. “¿Que pasa?” a voice inquired to my left.

  There was the sound of more running feet. A soldier dashed into the open space, between me and safety. His rifle was held out in front of him, poised to swing in any direction. “¿Que pasa?” he repeated, trying to penetrate the shadows. I lined up the .38 on his throat to quench his scream when the bullet hit him. A pistol shot in the dark is directionless. A scream is not.

  Before I could pull the trigger, there was a thunking sound. The soldier’s knees sagged, and he started to pitch forward. Karl Erikson’s big hand shot out and captured the falling rifle before it could clatter to the cobblestones. Erikson had come back from the safe area to take out the soldier. I knew damned well that Slater wouldn’t have done it.

  We pulled the body out of the open area before abandoning it. We left the rifle farther up the alley. Slater and Melia were a hundred feet away when we emerged onto a sidewalk a block away from the whorehouse. “Please,” the girl was pleading as we caught up to them. “More slowly. A patrol jeep might investigate on suspicion anyone in too much of a hurry.”

  Erikson grabbed the back of Slater’s belt, bringing him to a sudden halt. Slater snarled and spun around. Erikson froze him with an icy stare. “Do it right, Slater,” Erikson said in a coarse, sandpaper tone. “Or I’ll leave you here in the gutter.”

  Slater’s eyes fell before the big man’s glare. He began to walk at a slower pace. “Only eight blocks,” Melia said. She was still carrying her shoes in her hand. She walked inside us, so that we shielded her somewhat from passing traffic. “But I have just remembered that my aunt’s apartment is locked and I have no key.”

  “No problem,” I said.

  “Drake will open it,” Erikson explained to her. He was staring across the street at an open space in the ranks of buildings fronting the sidewalks in each block. “What’s that place?”

  “That is where they keep the Russian tanks,” Melia replied. “No one goes near it.”

  “Wilson and I passed it on the way back from the museum,” I said.

  “A tank park,” Erikson said thoughtfully.

  “In two blocks we come to the old city prison,” Melia said. “Then we turn left and the apartment is in the next block.”

  “Is that where Wilson is now?” Slater demanded.

  “Probably.” The way she said it indicated she didn’t think he would be in any prison for very long. We made a left turn as the dark bulk of what looked like a fortress loomed up across the street from us. Before I expected it, the girl turned into a doorway.

  The building had seen better days. The floor had been polished tile but was now cracked and chipped. The walls had been scribbled on by generations of toddlers. “Fifth floor,” Melia said. “There is no elevator.”

  I pulled out my shirt as we climbed and removed a thin steel pick from my money belt. Slater was puffing when we reached the fifth-floor landing. Melia silently indicated a door with a red star pasted on it. I settled the pick into the lock and opened the door in ten seconds.

  “Why the red star?” Erikson asked as we entered.

  “To show it is proscribed,” Melia said soberly. “No one can live here now. We cannot risk lights, and we cannot stay long.”

  “A day will do it,” Erikson said.

  The musty odor in the place was over
powering as I lowered my haversack to the dusty floor.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “GET THE FLASHLIGHT from your pack,” Erikson said to me.

  I took out the square-faced battery lantern and handed it to him. He set it on the floor, beamed away from the windows, and turned it on. Its pale light disclosed that the apartment had two rooms, a bedroom and a sitting room with a curtained alcove beneath which could be seen the enameled legs of a stove. Drawers stood open with household belongings tumbled out of cabinets and closets as they had remained since the aunt was taken away.

  “I will go to a friend’s and bring back food,” Melia said.

  “Is it safe?” Slater asked.

  “When is it ever safe?” she returned. “But they will give me food. Shelter is another matter.”

  I gave her money. Slater walked into the bedroom and flopped on his back in the bed. Even in the poor light I could see dust fly in all directions.

  “We need a truck and a driver for tomorrow night,” Erikson said to Melia. I unzipped my money belt again, separated half the bills in it by guess, and gave them to Erikson. He handed them to the girl. “A house painter’s truck, if possible. One with a ladder. And a driver who speaks a little English.”

  “I will try,” the girl said. “If I do not return in an hour, you had better not remain here.”

  “I’m glad to see you’re not curling up after losing the radio, but how are we going to signal Hazel?” I asked Erikson after Melia had left and he had bolted the apartment door again.

  “We’ll slip into that tank park we saw. There’s bound to be a command tank with a liaison radio I can set on the frequency that Hazel’s monitoring.”

  He said it as though he were talking about a walk to the corner drugstore. “With guards all around? And if we had to pack a special radio with us, why will a tank radio reach Key West?”

  “It will. If you have a better suggestion, I’m listening.”