Kraeger guffawed. "Yep, the leader of the free world is a piece of work."
"Ward, what do you call a column of five Cuban Army trucks traveling down a road in broad daylight?" asked Gunnery Sergeant Cullen.
"Stupid?"
Cullen rolled over on his side and gave the other man his binoculars. "Close enough. I was actually thinking targets." Ward chuckled and looked at the trucks. They were maybe a mile away and moving like they didn't have a care in the world. Cullen and Ward had left the camp and were doing some scouting, and this time they were checking out a road that ran near where they had their new base. With the exception of Cathy, everyone patrolled, and at least either Gunnery Sergeant Cullen or Lieutenant Ross stayed at their new base camp in the woods. Cullen didn't think that either Ross or Cathy minded being together.
"I guess they forgot we have airplanes, gunny."
"Yeah, maybe. On the other hand they may think the war is over because they now hold Gitmo."
Ward returned the binoculars. "Gee," he said sarcastically, "I hope nothing happens to spoil their day, like bombs raining on their parade."
As if on cue, a pair of American jets dived on the column, their engines screaming and shrieking. Rockets and machine gun bullets churned up the road and the lead trucks. A couple of them tried to dodge, but the first vehicle had quickly become a mass of flaming wreckage, and getting around it fatally slowed the column's survivors.
The jets returned for a second pass and three of the four remaining trucks were destroyed. Men were falling out of them, most didn't move. The driver of the fifth put his truck in reverse and tried to back out as fast as he could. It wasn't fast enough and a third pass by the American fighters destroyed him.
A couple of men staggered out and ran away across a field. "I'm glad they're not heading for us," said Cullen. "I'd hate to have to kill them."
"Why?"
Cullen smiled coldly. "Because now they can return to their little communist compadres and remind them that we rule the sky and the roads and anybody moving down a road is going to catch hell."
"I like that, gunny."
"Yeah, and just think how much shit we could cause if we could only contact our friends offshore."
They waited fifteen minutes to make sure the planes didn't return and moved cautiously towards the wreckage of the column. Only a couple of Cubans were still alive and they were in terrible shape, missing limbs and otherwise horribly mangled. They would die soon and there was nothing the two marines could do, so they steeled themselves and checked the debris for anything useful. Another dozen or so were dead. An actual count would have been difficult considering the fact that many of the bodies had been destroyed. Besides, who cared?
"Got me an AK47," Ward said happily, "and a couple of clips of ammo."
Cullen had found another one for himself along with a Russian made pistol. It was a 9mm Markov automatic pistol and a welcome addition to their arsenal, even though it came with only the bullets in the clip.
"Belated Merry Christmas, Ward. Too bad the other Cubans were carrying old weapons. Christ, some of these guys had old American Springfields from 1898."
They completed their search by taking some Cuban rations and blankets. "Okay, Ward, time to go back to base and tell Ross what happened."
Chapter Ten
Finding a way to plug into the phone lines had proven to be an unexpectedly difficult problem. The lines generally ran parallel to the roads which meant anyone climbing the poles during the day would be visible, while climbing them at night meant they might meet up with Cuban soldiers who were marching south.
Finally, they found a line that ran from the road and down a long driveway to a large farm compound and which wasn't all that high off the ground. Ward climbed a low pole, clamped on, and scooted down as quickly as he could as they all held their breath, praying that no one would see him. The others quickly buried the line in a shallow trench that ran about a hundred yards into some covering bushes. Cullen had once again gone back onto the base and cannibalized some telephone wires that were lying all over Guantanamo.
"I sincerely hope this is the last time any one of us has to go into that place," Cullen said of their forays into Gitmo. "It's just too damn dangerous."
Andrew Ross couldn't argue. But they needed the wire and that made the risk necessary.
It had been agreed that Cathy would be the one to make the phone call on the logical assumption that she, as a woman, wouldn't be taken for a soldier by anyone who happened to be listening in. They had no idea to what extent the Cubans monitored the phone calls of ordinary people. She only hoped her Spanish was adequate enough and that she wouldn't be connected to Finland by a confused operator. They all wondered if phone connections to the U.S. still existed. It was time to find out. If this didn't work they were going to call the Canadian Embassy in Havana and ask them to relay a message to the fictitious “mother house” of the poor confused Canadian missionaries. Cathy took a deep breath and, in halting Spanish, contacted the operator.
A few minutes later and hundreds of miles to the north, Charley Kraeger was jolted out of his reveries by the sound of the phone ringing. His thoughts had largely revolved around Elena and what she might look like without any clothes.
"Hello," he said, and then, realizing it was on the special line, quickly added in a cheerful voice, "Canadian Evangelical Missions."
A woman with a heavy Spanish accent inquired if he would accept a collect call from a Sister Catherine from the Canadian Evangelical Missions in Cuba.
Charley thought quickly. Who the hell was Sister Catherine? Was it another jokester? He'd had a couple of them since the line had been set up and wanted to strangle them all. But the operator sounded like she was Cuban.
He didn't have a choice. "I will accept the call."
What the hell, he thought. It was the government's money. As he waited the moment it took for the call to be connected, he scanned the short list of missing civilians for anyone named Catherine. He grinned as he found a young teacher named Catherine Malone.
"Hello?" It was a young woman's hesitant voice. The line was surprisingly clear considering they were in contact with an enemy country. "This is Sister Catherine. To whom am I speaking?"
"This is the Reverend Malone," he said, in a sudden burst of genius using her last name to indicate he knew who she was.
He heard her sob and then laugh on the phone and immediately decided he liked her. "Reverend Malone, it is so good to hear your voice after all that has happened."
"Are you safe?"
"For the moment yes. There is no fighting near us, although that could change at any moment if the capitalist American aggressors should attack. We would like your help in either getting us out or getting us to safety."
"How many are you?" Charley asked.
"Along with the Reverend Ross and Reverend Cullen, there are five others," and she rattled off their names. Kraeger and one of his assistants quickly checked them off a list of the missing and exulted at the find.
"Are there any other members of our flock in the area?" Kraeger inquired.
"None that I know of, your eminence."
Your eminence? He nearly choked to keep from laughing. He wanted to hug her. "How can we reach you?"
"Reverend, the telephone is very uncertain under the circumstances," she said and added a couple of addresses where mail could be dropped off. The addresses were coordinates on a map for a large field nearby.
"Sister," Charley said soothingly, "we will make every effort to contact you, perhaps even drop in on you. Be comforted. No one has forgotten you. It may take a couple of days, even nights, but be assured that you are uppermost in our thoughts and prayers."