"It goes to the fact that news is now a business," Romanski said. "The telecasts cost money and the networks get back their money by renting out commercial space. If nobody's watching then nobody's gonna buy the commercial time. Thus, they have to constantly dig up news and some of them are not above creating news if nothing much happened on that given day. That's what happened to you, Cathy. They had time to fill and they did it with your pretty face."
Cathy flushed. "I'm not pretty."
Romanski leaned forward and grinned. "I beg to differ and I think young Lieutenant Ross would disagree as well."
She was about to reply when Ward yelled and whooped.
"What's happening?" Romanski asked.
Ward grinned. "I think Sergeant Morton has our real radio working again. He's gonna try and contact Washington."
Homero Ruiz lounged against a crumbling cement wall that ran along a busy street, and concentrated on observing his world. Ruiz wore the scruffy uniform of the Cuban militia, and a casual observer would have surmised that he was just another lazy private killing a morning by goofing off in the sun.
He wasn't. Ruiz had been a crewman on the destroyer Wallace. He'd been in the base's clinic with a mildly sprained shoulder and been left behind at Guantanamo when the ship had been bombed. He'd watched in stunned disbelief as she managed to make it to sea, only to be attacked and bombed again, sinking her. He'd lost a lot of good friends when the Cubans sank the Wallace, and he didn't think it ironic that he was able to call Cubans the enemy. He was an American, not a Cuban and especially wasn't a follower of Castro. He really didn't know all the details about the loss of his ship. It didn't matter. He hated Castro even more then he had before the attacks.
Ruiz had been born in Santiago some twenty years earlier, and his parents had immigrated to the United States when he was ten. He’d enlisted right out of high school and, when he finished his tour of duty in the navy he would become a U.S. citizen, and just thinking of that made him very proud. He would then go to college on the GI Bill. He wanted to be a teacher. His parents were among the lucky ones. They had left Cuba before Castro came to power and had managed to take their savings with them. Thus, they were now the prosperous owners of a couple of grocery stores in Miami. Other relatives hadn't been so fortunate. A couple of them were in Cuban prisons and others had escaped with only the shirts on their backs. Those who’d made it out were being helped by his parents, which made him even prouder of them.
Ruiz was not concerned that anyone would recognize him. He'd left as a boy, but returned as a man. He was dark-skinned like most Cubans, betraying Negro heritage, and spoke the local language fluently. Some things are never forgotten, he concluded. Ruiz found it amusing that a few faces in the civilian population did look familiar, even though he couldn't recall their names. Just as well. He wasn't there to make friends.
Santiago had been one of the key pieces of Castro's revolution. It was called the “Heroes City” because of its citizen’s efforts supporting several revolutions, beginning with fighting the Spanish in the last century, and culminating in Castro's rise to power.
Ruiz was amused by the post-revolutionary name changes. Major streets and parks had been renamed in honor of the new order. Ruiz thought it was all cosmetic. Giving a street in a slum a new name did not mean it was no longer a slum, or that Castro wasn't a dictator. He was puzzled as to why the people seemed so happy since they still had next to nothing. There had been no new construction of any significance, yet life under Castro must be better than it had been under Batista. He would have to discuss this with his family when he got home. He laughed to himself. First, of course, he would have to get his young navy ass home.
His goal this day, as with other days, was to find out just where the hell General Cordero went when he left his office, which was in a building adjacent to the camp. The major wanted intelligence and Ruiz would do his best to comply.
The overweight and slow moving Cordero was usually easy to follow, and nobody gave a thought to an innocuous young man in uniform tailing him. Cordero frequently visited friends in the city's dwindling civilian population. Santiago's quarter of a million people was down to less than a third of that because of fear of American bombings. Tent cities had sprung up everywhere outside the city and Ruiz wondered if they were safer there than in the city. At least it meant that the bomb shelters weren't very crowded when the sirens went off.
On most occasions Cordero's trips to Santiago were very basic. He visited a house where a plump woman greeted warmly and the good general got himself royally laid. Nothing wrong with that, Ruiz thought with a laugh. He considered visiting the woman himself and seeing if she took American money. Not a good idea, he'd concluded. One time Ruiz had gotten close enough to an open window to hear their grunting and panting and concluded that no military secrets were being discussed. Although, as he'd facetiously told Lieutenant Skronski, it was clear that something was coming.
This time Ruiz was puzzled. The general had gone to a small house across a field from an abandoned and ruined school. As far as Ruiz could tell, there was nothing in the small building that would interest the general. However, Cordero had been inside for more than an hour, so something important must be going on. He'd already noted the presence of several guards in a loose perimeter around the building and had also seen other people going into that small building and another one across the street.
He got up and walked around. He debated looking inside the small building or walking across to the school, but dismissed the thoughts as foolish and maybe dangerous. There was no way he could explain his interest in the school if guards stopped him, and the guards sure as hell would stop him if he tried to go into that small building.
Then he saw it and couldn't stifle a grin. The sun and shadows brought out the outline of a filled-in trench leading from the building to the school. No, he realized, it wasn't a trench. The earth covered a tunnel. Something very, very important was under that school. Now this was something Lieutenant Skronski would love to hear.
"What are you doing here?"
Ruiz nearly jumped out of his skin. It was General Cordero. He'd come out of the building and Ruiz hadn't noticed. Ruiz managed a quick sloppy salute that seemed to satisfy Cordero's sense of military protocol.
But not his curiosity. "I said, what are you doing here?"
"Sir," Ruiz stammered. "Nothing. Just staying out of trouble." The nervous stammer was real. He was scared to death that Cordero suspected something.
"By avoiding an honest day's work? Get out of here you lazy piece of shit. I see you hanging around doing nothing and I'll have your ass nailed to a wall. Now go."
Ruiz managed another sloppy salute and ran off towards the Mancudo Barracks, the place where many of the militiamen were quartered. After a block or two he turned around. Cordero was heading in the other direction, towards the prison camp. Ruiz would wait until nightfall to sneak back inside. He couldn't run the risk of Cordero recognizing him as one of the camps "guards" and possibly realizing that whatever secret was buried underground at the school was no longer a secret.
It would be a long few hours and he was dying to tell Skronski what he'd seen. Skronski had told him that care and patience were required to be a good observer and he'd surprised himself to find that he was good at it. Ruiz preferred to think of himself as a spy. It was a lot more glamorous and the chicks would love hearing about it when he got himself home.
But first he had to get back to the camp. He squatted down against a wall like several other militiamen were doing and waited. He wanted a cigarette, but he didn't dare carry any American ones, and the ones available in Santiago were wretched. A huge picture of Fidel Castro glared at him from another wall. Ruiz felt like getting up and pissing on Fidel's face. Maybe next time.