Rutherford arrived. There was blood from a cut on his head. It had run down his face and was beginning to dry a ghastly black. He had made an inventory of their manpower and firepower, and both were lacking.
"Any idea what's going to happen next, sir?" Mellor asked. "They attack again and we're all screwed."
Rutherford shrugged. He had no idea what was going to happen. The Cubans had launched massive attacks that had been beaten off with heavy losses on both sides. The Cubans had the advantage of numbers, while the small airborne force was being whittled down to nothing.
The colonel had the feeling that the average Cuban soldier didn't want to face the men and guns of the 101st, and who could blame them. But the Cubans were now so close to the American positions that any assistance from the many American planes circling the area was too dangerous for the airborne forces to even contemplate. Nobody wanted to run the risk of getting torched by their own napalm.
"Just curious, colonel, have they asked us to surrender?"
"Yeah, and we declined the honor."
Mellor managed a wan smile. "You didn't happen to say ‘nuts’ did you, sir?"
Rutherford chuckled. Nuts had been the legendary response of the 101st's General Tony McAuliffe when called upon to surrender by the Germans during the siege of Bastogne during World War II's Battle of the Bulge.
"I gave it serious thought, lieutenant, but I let the opportunity pass."
However, Rutherford thought, he might have to reconsider the honor unless something happened and soon.
General Juan Ortega wanted to be outside in the sunlight or moonlight, whichever was appropriate. He'd lost track of time. Regardless, he wanted to be above ground in the clean air and leading his men. Not necessarily from up front, of course, that would have been foolish. Generals did not take risks that would get them killed and get their plans disrupted. A decapitated army could quickly degenerate into a mob. But he did want to see and be seen. He did not want his men to think he was a kind of troglodyte, hiding in a cave. He chuckled. How many of his men even knew what a troglodyte was?
But the bunker was the nerve center of his operations, and he could not yet leave it. This was where all his communications came and went, through cables and wires buried deep underground and from well hidden antennae located throughout Santiago and wired to the bunker.
Ortega was not displeased with the way the fighting was evolving. Despite the pasting on the coast that his men had taken, he still had six divisions in blocking positions to slow or even halt the American advance. Two additional divisions waited in the south by Guantanamo and two more sat in reserve. They would enter combat if his defensive line was penetrated or if the marines who were on ships off the coast finally landed. Since the Americans could land anywhere, his troops had to maintain a high degree of flexibility. As he had carefully explained to Castro through Allessandro, he could not defend everything, no matter the size of his army. The Americans could and would land at a time and place of their choosing.
There would be no more mobs of women trying to overwhelm unsuspecting Americans. It had worked once, but it was too dangerous a place for Cuban women. The fighting was too intense and shells were too indiscriminate. Still, it had been humorous to see the American government's reaction.
Castro might not be as pleased as his messages said, but Ortega was. He had read so much about the D-Day landings in France in World War II and fully understood the German dilemma that led to the Nazi's defeat in that battle. Hitler's generals had argued over whether it was better to fight the Americans on the beaches, Rommel's idea, or wait for them to land and then attack with overwhelming force from positions inland, von Runstedt's idea.
In Ortega's opinion, both had been proven wrong. Rommel's beach defenses ultimately crumpled under the American onslaught and von Runstedt's inland reinforcements could not make it to the battle because of American overwhelming superiority in the air.
The situation confronting Cuba was almost identical to that confronting the Germans in 1944, a point which the Castro brothers and others in Havana did not seem to understand. Something else had to be done. Castro's personal representative, the oily Dominico Allessandro had virtually threatened Ortega with arrest for not hurling his army at the Americans. Ortega said he’d consider it, but only if Allessandro would lead the attack from the front. That had silenced Castro’s messenger. Ortega had made a mortal enemy, but no longer cared. As Ortega saw it, the only possible solution was to wait inland for the Americans to come to him, to attack Cuban defenses, and suffer heavy casualties for their efforts. It was how the Japanese had fought the Americans in the Pacific, especially at Okinawa in the spring of 1945. If the Castro brothers wanted to defend the beaches, they were welcome to try.
Ortega was well aware that the defenders of Okinawa had died to almost the last man and he wanted no part of that. He no longer had any illusions about being able to stop the Americans from re-taking Guantanamo if they truly wanted to, and that saddened him deeply. He really hadn't thought that the Americans would attack in such force. But he and his army would fight and bleed the Americans and maybe, just maybe, the Americans would decide that liberating Guantanamo just wasn't worth the price. A negotiated settlement, not his army’s death in battle, was now his goal. He hoped it was Castro’s as well.
Not for the first time he thanked the United States Army for furthering his military education, and at the expense of the American taxpayer.
Enough. Ortega needed to stretch his legs and suck in some air. The war would take care of itself for a few minutes. He left his desk and went down the tunnel, startling a couple of enlisted men. He greeted them cheerfully. They were goofing off and who could blame them.
Finally. He was outside and the warm sun played upon him, rejuvenating him. Several Cuban soldiers waved to him and he waved back. They were confident in his abilities to stop the Americans, therefore, he must not disappoint them.
Now if only Castro would stop calling with suggestions and Allessandro would go away, and if he could figure just what the hell Guevara and Sergeant Gomez were doing with that damned nuke.
Sergeant Gomez and Che Guevara glared at each other with undisguised contempt. Che had quickly realized that the unkempt sergeant was a slacker and a thief and not the outstanding soldier Ortega had told him. He wondered if Ortega had known that and that assigning Gomez to help him was some kind of a mad joke. Or was Ortega unaware of Gomez's real talents, which consisted of stealing and raping? When he'd arrived at Gomez's camp, Guevara had found several very young girls, some of them barely in their teens, beaten, bound and naked. He'd freed them, thus earning anger from Gomez and his men who obviously thought they were entitled to keep them as playthings. Che felt that Ortega would have some explaining to do when they next met.
Even worse, if that was possible, Gomez had only a dozen men left. The disgusting sergeant had tried to explain that the others had been casualties in valiant attempts to find American guerillas operating behind Cuban lines. Guevara believed none of it. A couple may have become casualties, but comments made by others led him to believe that the vast number of the missing had departed in disgust at what Gomez was attempting to do, which was plunder the entire province for his own benefit. One had hinted that Gomez was planning to leave the country with everything he could steal and carry away.
Therefore, the six man crew of the Luna rocket and the drivers of the remaining vehicles were the only men he could count on. So be it. He would use Gomez and his donkey-fucking thieves as perimeter security to ensure that no one attacked his group again. At least he hoped Gomez and his men would be at least somewhat reliable. He wouldn’t put it past them to disappear in the night.