And he had twenty men and an old machine gun to stop them. Now he knew how Custer felt when he saw all those damned Indians. He could see that the oncoming tanks were Russian T34s with 85mm guns. They each had a four man crew and two 7.62 machine guns along with the main gun. They weighed in at thirty-four tons and could do more than thirty miles per hour, which was all totally irrelevant considering that he had no way of stopping them. He wondered if he could do thirty-five miles an hour if one of them was chasing him.
The T34s were relics of World War II where they were the best in the world and the mainstay of the Red Army. Newer tanks were better, but the T34/85s were still damn good tanks, especially against what he could throw at them. And what were his orders? Try and delay them. Yeah. Wonderful. But he would do as he was told. Perhaps a few shots at them would cause them to think twice and turn back. Yeah, and he was a brain surgeon. Maybe they could throw rocks at the Cuban tanks.
For a crazy moment, Andrew considered asking for volunteers to run and throw grenades at their treads, or try to make some Molotov cocktails, but he decided he wasn't in the business of asking his men to commit suicide. Instead, he made sure all his men were as safe as they could be inside the bunker.
"Sergeant Cullen. We will let them get close, open fire and try to hit those trucks, not the tanks. It would be a waste. The road turns and we might have an angle shot with the.50. We will not use rifles. They would be useless and we will save our ammunition."
He'd already taken inventory and each man had a grand total of six clips for his rifle, while the.50 had only a couple of hundred rounds. They could use it all up in a couple of minutes if they weren't careful. But then, what was the point of saving it?
"I don't think we can stop them," Ross added, stating the obvious, "but we have to at least give it a try. Then we will go to our fallback position and see what else we can do."
Light flickered from the lead tank and, an instant later, machine gun shells splattered against the concrete wall of the bunker. Some made it into the firing slits and one man screamed, hopefully just in fear. The tank's 85mm cannon opened fire. The shell slammed into the ground just in front of the bunker. The concussion staggered Andrew, throwing him across the bunker.
Andrew lurched to his feet. He ordered the machine gun to fire and watched as tracers reached out for a handful of trucks that were visible because of the turning road. He grunted in satisfaction as one of the trucks seemed to stagger and stop. The gunner, Hollis, skillfully guided his weapon and the bullets chewed into the cloth covered back part where Cuban soldiers should have been sitting. Men were tumbling and jumping out of the two trucks behind the stalled one, which had begun to burn. The Hollis' gun raked the men on the ground and the two remaining trucks.
A second shell slammed into the bunker. The tank was firing at almost point blank range. The inadequate roof collapsed and Andrew could see unwelcome daylight. They'd been opened up like a can of sardines. Men were down, killed and wounded.
"Out of here!" Andrew yelled, and Sergeant Cullen joined in. They grabbed the wounded and spilled out into the area behind the tents. "Down to fallback," Andrew ordered. He would be the last man out. He looked about and saw that anyone left inside was dead. He ran.
For a few precious moments, the ruined bunker was between them and the advancing tanks, but then they were exposed. Machine gun bullets flayed the air and Andrew ran as hard as he could. Bullets chewed up the ground by his feet and he threw himself onto the ground and began to crawl furiously.
Finally, he made it to the dubious safety of the gully. Others tumbled in with him. Cullen was one of them. Andrew caught his breath and counted noses. Seven including himself. That's it? He looked over the edge of the gully and back to the bunker. A number of crumpled forms lay on the ground.
He counted again. Still seven. He had started with twenty-one men, counting himself, and now he had seven.
Worse, the Cuban column was grinding past the bunker and the fallback position. The tank that had destroyed their bunker opened fire with its main gun and chewed up both the remains of the bunker and the men lying dead or wounded on the ground.
"You want us to shoot up another truck?" Cullen asked.
Andrew thought quickly. If they did that, they'd come under attack from either a tank or a personnel carrier and they had damned little to fight back with. Still, he didn't feel like giving up just yet.
"Everybody. Get ready to fire one full clip at the last truck in the column. Then scoot like hell for the hill behind us, and don't even think of wasting time reloading. When we've done that we'll try and make it back to the base."
He paused and gave the signal. It took only a few seconds for the seven of them to fire off eight rounds and the people in the truck gave no indication they'd even noticed. Maybe it didn't carry people, only supplies.
Andrew wanted to cry but he was too angry. He'd lost all those men and they hadn't done a damn thing to slow down the Cuban advance.
John F. Kennedy had dressed hurriedly. He was unshaven and unkempt. And angry. He glared at the young Air Force captain who stood before the table with all the phones. He shook his head. It wasn't this poor guy's fault.
"You drew the short straw, didn't you, captain?"
"Sir?"
"Duty in the White House on Christmas." He looked at the man's name tag. Dudley. He wondered if his buddies called him Dudley the Dud. Right now he felt like Kennedy the Dud. He wondered if this was how history would remember him for being in charge during what appeared to be yet another monumental debacle and disgrace for the U.S. At least much of the blame for the Bay of Pigs had fallen on his predecessor, Eisenhower. In history he'd read of an Old Saxon king called Ethelred the Unready. Would that be his legacy? Kennedy the Unready? Or maybe John the Easily Fooled? Damn it to hell.
"So what can you tell me, Captain Dudley?"
"Sir, it appears that the base at Guantanamo Bay is under attack by large elements of both Cuban air and ground forces."
"Appears? Dudley, are they being attacked or not?"
Dudley flinched. He'd been hanging around politicians too long and had almost forgotten how to give a straight answer. "They are, sir. Reports are scattered and confused, but the base is definitely under attack and it does appear that both air fields at Gitmo have been bombed and shelled and put out of commission, and that Cuban armor is moving to overwhelm the base. Attacks are moving quickly and coming from several directions."
So the report from the CIA was true after all, Kennedy thought, sickened by that fact. And I will be blamed for this and rightfully so. "Are we responding, or are the generals all waiting for my authority to do something."
Now Dudley was a little more assured. "The men at the base are defending it as best they can, and there are Air Force and Navy planes headed to Cuba. Unfortunately, it will not be a coordinated response, but they will shoot down whatever the Cubans have up there."
"Did the base itself have any planes up?"
"Don't know, sir."
"Two," said a voice from one of the phones. It was Admiral Anderson. "One was shot down and the other has ditched at sea after running out of fuel. Before he ditched, the pilot claimed the two of them had shot down three Cuban MiG 17s."
"Was the pilot rescued?" Kennedy asked.
"A Coast Guard cutter is closing in on him now. As to the other pilot, the one who crashed, he's presumed dead."
Along with a lot of others who are presumed dead, Kennedy thought. He couldn't allow himself to be preoccupied by one or two men. He had to focus on the grand scheme of things.
Like how to inform the American public that they were at war.