Still, it was going to be a hard sell with the Kennedys because, quite frankly, McCone wasn't certain he believed it in the first place.
It was the devil's choice. He could bury the report and wait until it was confirmed or proven false. However; should the report prove correct, any attack would have already occurred and likely with catastrophic consequences for American interests. He glanced at his calendar. It was December 24, 1962, and Christmas was obviously the next day. If the attack took place and he had done nothing, he would be worse than a pariah. He would be guilty of criminal inaction. At best, he'd lose his job.
But if he warned President Kennedy and nothing happened, he'd be guilty of being an alarmist fool who cried wolf. It could easily also cost him his reputation and his job, as well as making the Central Intelligence Agency again look like a pack of idiots in the eyes of the President and his young brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy.
Damn it all to hell. Why hadn’t he stayed on as an executive at Consolidated Steel, or even remained as Chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. He knew the answer. He loved being around the seat of power and hated the thought that one foolish miss-step could cause him to lose that privilege.
He took a deep breath and made his decision. It was surprisingly easy. He could live with being considered a fool for being over cautious, but never a criminal. People would not die on his watch if he could help it. He called for his car.
Charley Kraeger was thankful that he was recovering quickly from his injuries. Perhaps he wasn't as old as he felt. His still bandaged hands could now hold a pencil and his voice could now be heard as a whisper. His arm was in a sling as a result of the shoulder infection, but, as one of his friends said, it was better than having his ass in a sling, which was the case while he'd been out in a small boat in the Caribbean. He agreed. He had lost some meat and muscle from his shoulder and would have an ugly scar, but he was alive.
Charley had been quickly and thoroughly interrogated by several senior agents and he'd repeated what he'd learned from his contacts in Cuba. He'd told them that Castro's Cubans, with or without any assistance from the Soviets, were planning to attack the base at Guantanamo Bay and were going to do it very, very soon. Perhaps even sooner if they knew he'd carried the secret with him.
And why would they know that, his CIA interrogators asked? Why else would they have tried so hard to kill him, he answered, and they couldn't respond. Unless, one said smugly, the Cubans were trying to get President Kennedy to react to a phantom threat. Kraeger had no response to that comment. Perhaps it was a trap that the Cubans were laying for the Kennedy’s?
People escaped by boat from Cuba to Florida almost daily and the Fidel's commies generally just let them pass. Good riddance. After all, weren't they Fidel's enemies? So why to shoot him up if his information was false? Nobody had a real answer to anything.
He'd told his questioners almost everything he knew. He'd only held back the name of his major source. They hadn't been happy, but they'd understood. If they didn't know, they couldn't leak the information and threaten the existence of an asset they might want to use again. After the disaster of the Bay of Pigs, American agents and contacts in Cuba were few and far between.
Kraeger swung his legs over the edge of the hospital bed. He tried not to disturb the IV contraption that was pumping his body with fluids and medicine. He was hungry as hell, but still couldn't swallow or chew and the mush he was allowed to eat nauseated him. Another day or two, the nurse had told him, and his throat could handle scramble eggs. Screw that, he thought. He wanted a steak, a big fat thick and rare steak.
He also wanted to wear real clothes and not the ridiculous backwards facing shirt that bared his ass to the world when he stood. Patience, the head nurse had said. He was in excellent shape and recovering quickly and thoroughly. She joked that maybe he shouldn't smoke for a few months until the oil cleared his body lest he set himself on fire. He didn't think it was all that funny, but the nurse did. He wanted a cigarette.
Patience, hell, he wanted to know what was happening to the information he'd brought home. It had almost cost him his life and he thought that others had died as well, and he wanted to know that his efforts had been worth it.
The door to his room opened and Jock Soriano, one of his fellow agents and a longtime good buddy walked in and sat down on the edge of the bed. The name Jock came from the fact that he was powerfully built, like the six-foot, two hundred-thirty pound linebacker he'd once been at Notre Dame. He liked to pretend he had nothing between his ears in order to get people to underestimate him. Kraeger often wished he had a trick like that up his sleeve.
Instead of the usual cheerful grin, Soriano looked grim. "Shit's hitting the fan, Charley. You feel up to a trip?"
"Where to?" Kraeger rasped. "Somewhere nice or oblivion?"
Soriano finally smiled. "More than you deserve, jerk-off. How about up north in that truly weird city on the Potomac named after our first president. McCone wants to talk to you in person."
"I'm overwhelmed," Kraeger said and he was. Someone was listening to him. "Am I well enough to travel?"
"Not really, according to the doctors. So we're putting you on a private plane along with a medic to hold your bandaged hand. It'll be a guy, so don't let him hold anything else. And that's a lot of money being spent for a worthless, middle-aged, agent like you. And yeah, you do get to wear real clothes, although I'd give a month's pay to see you running across a runway in Washington with your ass hanging out of that shirt."
Chapter Three
Second Lieutenant Andrew Ross was not impressed with his new command, and had the feeling they weren't all that impressed with him. But what the hell, it wasn't like they were going to be together for a long time. A day or two at the most out in the boonies would be about it.
The twenty men were fine, of course, but the site they were to guard or protect was anything but inspiring.
His defensive position was a small concrete bunker just off a road facing north to Castro’s Cuba. The bunker was one of a number built during the past couple of months and could hold a dozen men and came complete with a World War II vintage Browning.50 caliber machine gun that was aimed straight down the curving road and couldn't traverse very far at all. He had no anti-tank weapons and no mortars, only a score of guys armed with M1 Garand rifles that also were old when the Korean War had ended a decade earlier. The Garand had been replaced by the M14, which hadn’t made it to Guantanamo yet. This was fine with the troops because many of those who’d tried it didn’t like it.
The ammo was as old as the rifles and he wondered if it would work it they ever had to fire their weapons. Fortunately, all the experts and brass said there was only the slightest chance that they would have to shoot anything except targets on the range.
The rutted dirt road in front of the bunker led to nowhere. Once, before Castro took over, it had led to a small Cuban town and day laborers were allowed to come in and work on the base, returning each night to their squalid homes. Now it was sealed off with barbed wire, and according to Andrew's map, there were minefields flanking the road. These too had been added recently and he wondered if the Cubans knew about them. Probably. All the high ground was in Cuban territory. He had the nagging feeling that many pairs of communist eyes were watching their every move.