But now, with the army landing less than a hundred miles away and the marines just offshore, they felt a screaming urge to help out. Messages from the Pentagon, or wherever the signals were coming from, told Hartford that he and his men should sit tight and wait to be liberated.
Bullshit. Marines don't sit tight. Nor, for that matter, do the sailors who made up the bulk of his command. They all wanted to strike back.
But how was the question. At least it was the question until navy lieutenant Bill Skronski brought Hartford the information that Ruiz had provided. Now Hartford had the germ of a thought and had called the others together in his tent.
"If Skronski's man is correct, and there's no doubting him, something important is going on under that abandoned school building and we might just have it in our power to disrupt it, maybe even destroy it. Tuttle, one more time; just how many weapons do we have?"
Tuttle cleared his throat. "Not anywhere near as many as we'd like. Last count was a dozen working AK47s, thirty bolt-action rifles, mainly of the Springfield variety, and a dozen handguns of various sizes, along with two dozen ancient hand grenades that may or may not go off. Each AK has two full clips, enough for maybe a minute's worth of fighting. The other rifles and handguns have maybe a full clip each. The Cubans have cracked down on carelessness with weapons so they are now very hard to get our hands on, and getting ammunition is even more difficult. All of the men have been taking their arts and crafts lessons very seriously, and have made a ton of spears and knives, but I sincerely hope you're not planning on using them."
"Don't worry about it," Hartford said. "I'm thinking of something much smaller, like a raid on that headquarters building when we're certain either someone important is there or something important is going on."
"What's your man think?" Tuttle asked Skronski.
"Ruiz thinks it's Ortega's headquarters, or at least one of them. At the very least, it's a major communications center."
"Which means we should very seriously consider putting it out of action when the time is ripe," Hartford said. "I do not mean doing it now or even anytime real soon. We hit it and the Cubans take it back a little while later, we could wind up in bad shape."
"There is something else," Skronski said and Hartford signaled for him to continue. "My people are picking up rumors that the Cubans want to ship us by rail to Havana."
"I thought the lines had all been bombed?" Tuttle said.
"They have," Skronski replied, "but the sneaky little Cubans have been working every night to repair them."
Tuttle nodded. "If that's the case, then those spears and knives might come in handy to stop that from happening. The Red Cross people will have a kitten if armed soldiers try to take on virtually unarmed prisoners."
"The Red Cross will not be a factor," Hartford said. "If the going gets hot, the Red Cross people will get going to where it's safe and I don't blame them. They're not paid to get in the way of fighting."
"So what do you want us to do, major?" Tuttle asked.
Hartford smiled, "Two things. First, let's plan for a raid on that headquarters place. Second, we contact our people in the states and get them to keep hitting the rail lines in and around Santiago. Maybe they can use SEALS and Special Forces to make sure the train lines stay broken. Contacting the Pentagon will mean broadcasting our concerns in the clear, but fuck it. I'd almost guess that the Cubans are too busy with the landings up north and the possibility of marines landing down here to give a damn about our conversations with home."
Romanski had to be certain it was Che Guevara they'd seen and there was no way he could do that. None of them had ever actually seen the man and the few photos they'd seen were grainy, blurred, and unreliable. Even if he stared the man in the face all he would be able to say was that it was a scrawny little Cuban with a scraggly beard and who wore a beret.
But ignoring the possibility that Guevara was only a few miles away was a chance they could not take. Where Guevara went, there they would likely find the nuke. Romanski's decision was simple, they would locate the Cuban group they'd attacked, and trail them until they knew one way or the other.
Cathy Malone represented a dilemma. As Ross had realized just after the first attacks, the young woman could not simply be abandoned. She was an American and deserved their protection even if, ironically, it meant putting her in greater danger. There was just no safe place to stash her and he couldn't afford to leave her with one or two of his small command. If it came down to a fire-fight over a nuclear rocket, he would need every man and gun he could muster.
Cathy understood and agreed. She also convinced him that she knew how to use the AK47 she now carried. He had his doubts, but she showed she at least knew how to load, aim, and, oh yes, release the safety before pulling the trigger. Ward said he'd let her fire a couple of rounds a few a weeks earlier. Romanski wondered if she'd hit anything other than the earth. Ward grinned and declined to answer.
They moved out slowly. Romanski's leg still wasn't up to par and he wondered if they wouldn't be better off if they left him behind. Another reason they moved out at a slow pace was because they didn't want to blunder into the Cuban camp. The trail was fairly easy to follow and it appeared that the Cubans were making no effort at disguising it from the ground. They were doubtless far more concerned about threats from the air.
Nor were they so foolish as to follow straight up the trail. They moved from side to side and kept an eye out for obvious ambush sites.
They all cursed the necessity to be so careful, especially since the vehicle carrying the nuke could easily move much faster than they could. Romanski countered by reminding them that the launcher likely wasn't going to go far, and the tracks indicated it was heading towards Guantanamo Bay where it would have to halt.
Finally, they breasted a hill and looked down on where the tracks ended at a ruined barn, the exterior of which was partly covered by a tarp and tree branches. At least a dozen men were hiding under other tarps and in trenches.
They couldn't see it, but it was now very likely that the nuclear rocket was hidden less than a mile away from them.
"Now what, colonel?" Ross asked.
Now what, indeed. Romanski rubbed his jaw and tried to ignore the throbbing hurt in his leg. They were about two miles north of the coastline and maybe a mile from the boundary of the ruined American base. The Soviet built rocket could hit anywhere on the base or along the near shore line. Guevara, if that really was Guevara, had reached his destination. He would launch from where he was.
Romanski turned to the others. "First, we'll try to pinpoint this place and get an air strike or two. If that doesn't work, we'll have to do it the old fashioned way and just kill it ourselves."
Or get ourselves killed, he thought.
Chapter Nineteen
Midge Romanski was not uncomfortable having a three-star general in her living room, mainly because she still wanted Josiah Bunting's head on a platter. Heidi Morton, on the other hand, was very nervous. Even the wives of senior NCOs did not ordinarily visit with brass except on formal and structured occasions. This situation was very unstructured. Bunting was in civilian clothes and it was he who looked truly nervous.
Midge glanced out the window. It was cold and rainy with the temperature in the low forties. It was a reminder of why she hated Fort Benning in particular and the south in general. It was too hot in the summer and clammy cold in the winter.