Cathy screamed and ran. One part of her mind said she could not head towards the Bay because that's where Gomez and people like him would be. She ran as fast and as hard as she could, anywhere, but away from Gitmo.
"They're coming again!" someone yelled.
Cuban infantry in company strength and one T34 tank had been sitting in front of the back-up command bunker for several minutes. Major Sam Hartford moved to the firing slit as fast as his sore feet would let him. He estimated nearly a hundred Cuban soldiers running towards his bunker and the trenches that his men had hurriedly dug in front of it. The T34's engine roared to life and the tank moved with the infantry.
"Fire, damn it. What the hell are you waiting for? An invitation?" Sam yelled furiously.
The fifty or so rifles and BARs that covered that area of the front opened up. Cubans were hit and fell, but others still kept coming. One man waved a pistol and urged his men onward. He was obviously their leader
"Get the guy with the pistol," he urged, and a score of weapons converged on the man. The Cuban shuddered, convulsed and dropped to the ground as bullets ripped him apart. The remainder of the attackers faltered on seeing their leader drop, but the tank kept on coming.
"Keep shooting!" Hartford yelled and his men complied, dropping another half dozen before the survivors decided they'd had enough and pulled back.
"Where's my bazooka?" Hartford hollered.
Two men with a bazooka ran from the relative safety of the bunker and managed to get almost alongside the tank. They aimed and fired quickly, striking it in its more vulnerable flank. The tank shuddered and stopped. The hatches opened and smoke billowed out as the crew jumped down. One Cuban was one fire. He rolled on the ground and lay still. The other Cubans ignored him and ran back to their lines. The two Marines with the bazooka started to run back to the bunker, but machine gun fire chopped them down. Heroes, Hartford thought, almost in tears, but dead heroes. He had to get their names. He was reasonably certain that one of them was his fat little prick of a clerk, Fleming. Jesus, how could he have misjudged the kid?
He pounded the bunker's wall in frustration. Why the hell didn't they have some of the new TOW missiles that were wire guided and could be fired from the relative safety of the bunker? No, the best they could do was bazookas that had been old during the Korean War and had to be fired against the side or rear of a Russian made tank in order to be effective, which meant that anyone who took on a tank with a bazooka had to be either very brave or very foolish.
He quickly counted at least twenty-five Cubans dead and wounded on the ground before him. A check of his men revealed one dead and six wounded, along with the two men who'd killed the tank. A white flag showed from the Cuban lines and a voice yelled out in English that they wanted a truce to pick up their wounded. Hartford agreed and a handful of medics from both sides ran out nervously and gathered their dead and wounded onto stretchers. It was incongruous decency in the middle of a killing field.
Hartford turned to his second in command, Captain Tom Keppel. "Always try to keep a tidy battlefield," he said bitterly. "You never know when someone might drop in unexpectedly and run a surprise inspection."
Keppel shook his head. "How long you think we can hold out?"
"As long as we have to, I suppose."
That was a lie and he said it so the others could hear and be encouraged, if only for a moment. There were now at least a couple of hundred Cuban soldiers in front of him with more coming, and not all of them could be as bad as the militia unit he'd just decimated. Worse, half a dozen tanks were rolling across the ruined runway and were making for his position. Yes they'd managed to knock out the one T34, which was burning fiercely a hundred yards in front of them, but they no longer had a bazooka or anything else that would stop armor, and it looked like they were confronting the entire Cuban army.
Keppel laughed bitterly. "Major, surely you're not waiting for divisions of Negro soldiers on white horses to come to our rescue."
"And why not?" Sam asked. At least Keppel knew his history. In the early months of World War II in the Pacific, the situation facing American soldiers on Bataan in the Philippines grew so bad that many of the starving men became delusional and actually believed that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was going to send tens of thousands of colored soldiers on white horses to rescue them. Just how the hell they were going to get across the Pacific to the Bataan Peninsula did not occur to those men whose minds had slipped so far away from reality. No, there would be no Negro soldiers on white horses. He had to confront reality, not fantasy.
His radio operator waved him over and Sam moved slowly through a bunker filled jammed with humanity. "What is it?"
The radioman looked astonished. "Sir, it’s President Kennedy."
Kennedy leaned over the table and spoke into the microphone. "Major Hartford, I want to know just what is going on. Apparently, you are the only person with whom we can communicate right now. What is your situation in Guantanamo and please start from the beginning? All I'm getting here are rumors."
"Okay, sir," Hartford said. His voice came through surprisingly clear. "About an hour and a half ago our radar detected a large number of enemy planes inbound. They arrived and began bombing about the same time Cuban artillery started heavy shelling. Large numbers of Cuban tanks and other armor, along with infantry in trucks, blew past our outposts. To the best of my knowledge, all of our planes were destroyed on the ground and almost all of what little light armor we had was caught in motor pools where the enemy planes and guns destroyed them. Also, the airfields have been cratered by bombs and shells so that take offs and landings are impossible. It was a well designed and well-coordinated attack that has made us almost defenseless."
Kennedy took deep breath. "Where are O'Donnell and Killen?"
"No idea, sir, but I think the main command center has been destroyed."
"Are you in communication with any other American forces?"
"No sir, not a single one."
"Then you're telling me that the base has been overrun and almost totally captured."
There was the crumping sound of an explosion in the background. "What was that?" Kennedy asked.
"Cuban mortars, sir. We just beat off one of their attacks and they're pissed. And to answer your question, to the best of my knowledge we are it." To emphasize his point, a Cuban machine gun opened up, adding to the background noise heard in the White House.
"Just how far from the front lines are you, major?"
Hartford laughed angrily and Kennedy winced. "Maybe three feet, sir. Hell, this is the front line. One command bunker and some trenches we dug around it."
"How many people with you?" the president asked.
"Maybe a hundred still combat ready, but with only light arms, and another twenty wounded. Also, I've got a couple of dozen civilians, and that includes women and children, hunkered down with us."
Jesus, Kennedy thought. American women and children were in harm's way and about to be overrun and possibly killed? It gets worse and worse. "How long can you hold out?"
"If they attack in force, maybe ten minutes. Sir, they're lining up tanks about a quarter mile away and there's nothing we're gonna be able to do to stop them from literally shelling us to pieces and running right over us. We are totally out of anti-tank weapons. They're gonna run right through us like shit through a goose. And, sir, they gotta know that planes from the mainland will be arriving real soon, so they got a limited amount of time to take us out. They'll attack in a very few minutes, so, unless you got some better idea, I'm gonna seriously consider surrendering."