"If that is so, the attack has begun."
Remo got the stubborn engine going. "Let's follow them."
They shot out of the brush and fell in behind the column. Fortunately the roads were of hard-packed dirt, and the long tunnel of dust the convoy was generating was more than enough to conceal them.
At a major fork in the road the convoy encountered another and, after some argument over who would get to lead the march, formed one long olive-green line. A few miles along, the long convoy absorbed another.
Overhead, a lone observation helicopter sputtered along, heading north. It seemed to be running on empty.
"We may be too late," Remo said darkly.
By the time the swamp-stink had begun to tickle their sensitive noses, they could hear the sound of automatic weapons fire, punctuated by the relentless boom-boom-boom of artillery pieces and 125-mm tank cannon.
"We're too late!" Remo snapped. He was standing up in his seat, trying to make out the scene through the haze of gunsmoke and roiling oil smoke.
"What do you see?" asked Chiun, straining unsuccessfully on tippytoe.
"I see barges out in the water. They're taking a pounding."
"Is this good or is this bad?" Chiun wanted to know.
Remo had to think about that a minute.
"It's good for our mission, I think," he said slowly. "But it's bad for Cuba."
"Is it good for the bearded tyrant, the preempter of beauty and joy?" asked Chiun. Remo's brow puckered. "Yeah. Dammit, it is."
Chiun's face darkened. "There is no justice."
"Let's see if we can't scare up our own," Remo said, dropping into the seat and sending the Gazik bumping and jouncing along the rough terrain.
As they drove, their tires popped the swarms of fleeing red crabs, with a sound like a symphony of flat tires.
When they had reached the edge of a vast swamp, they jumped out and climbed a hillock.
They had a panoramic view of the Bay of Pigs. The barges were as thick as ice cakes in an Arctic sea. As they watched, men in old-fashioned pirate costumes shouted in Spanish and swept the defenders strung along the swamp with concentrated fire. Remo recognized a few choice curses.
A number of barges had run aground and been blown up in the mangrove tangle. They were littered with heads and limbs and other body parts. There was no visible blood on the wrecked amphibious barges.
But they did notice the radar dishes shaped like Mongo Mouse heads.
"Why do they need radar?" Remo wondered.
"Because they are blind," said Chiun.
Remo looked down at the Master of Sinanju blankly. "Try me again, Little Father?"
Chiun beckoned for Remo to follow. Remo complied.
They came down the hillock, as the bullets and shells whistled all around them. They slipped down to the moonlit water and waded through the mangroves, which resembled multi-legged trees attempting to rise up out of the water.
They worked their way to one of the half-sunken barges.
"Behold!" cried Chiun, dragging a corsair off the rail where he had been slumped. His body ended at the waist, tapering into a male electronic connection the size of a fireplug.
Remo grunted. "Hey, this guy's animatronic!"
"All are," said Chiun. "This is why they need mouse heads to tell them where to point their boomsticks. "
Remo looked out across the darkling Bay of Pigs. The pirates in the barges, some standing, some sitting, were firing in precise controlled bursts, stopping to reload with the same jerky economy of motion as a factory robot designed to fill empty cans with sliced peaches.
"I don't see any live guys," Remo said.
"There are none," Chiun said.
As they watched, a barge passed more or less unscathed through the murderous fire and coasted toward them. They slipped down until the rank water lapped at their lower eyelashes.
The barge nudged a mangrove clump, splintering it. The pirates, seated, continued to fire mechanically, while the mouse-head radar-with one ear blown off-continued its back-and-forth rotation.
"They're not getting out," Remo whispered, lifting his mouth free of the water to speak. He was not fired on.
"They are not created to perform that task," Chiun agreed. "For they have no legs."
"So what's the point? They can't take the beach-I mean, swamp. And the first rule of invasion is: grab a piece of land and hold it."
Chiun frowned.
"This is not the invasion," he said.
"Well, they're doing a bang-up imitation."
"This is a diversion," said Chiun.
"Maybe it's just to soften up the Cubans until the main force arrives," Remo suggested. "Remember Ultima Hora?"
"There is one way to find out. And that is to end this charade now."
With that, the Master of Sinanju porpoised into the water and swam toward the grounded barge.
Remo, ducking, followed.
Chiun floated under the barge and scored a circular hole in the flat-bottomed hull with one long fingernail. He tapped the circle with a knuckle. It popped in like a soup can lid.
The barge quickly filled, and they watched it as it sank. The pirates-and a ragtag crew they were-continued to fire as they sank. They gave off bluish-green sparks as water found their electronic components, and their guns sputtered into silence.
The last one vented a squawky "Tu Madre!" before it sank.
"Looks like a breeze," Remo said. "Let's do the job."
They swam out into the bay. The high-powered bullets were a nuisance, but they hit the water and immediately deflected at crazy shallow angles, to drop harmlessly to the ocean floor. The water was unnaturally warm.
Remo and Chiun split up and attacked the barges from below. Chiun scored holes with his nails. Remo, who had always resisted Chiun's insistence that he grow killing nails of proper length, used the blunt tip of his forefinger as a punch press instead. The stiff digit made thirsty drill-bit holes.
To the hunkered-down Cuban detachments along the beach at Playa Giron and stuck in the muck of Zapata Swamp, it looked as if their return fire was finally winning the day. One by one the barges had listed, capsized, or simply taken on water.
The order to cease firing came, and they watched in muted awe as the pirates continued to fire even as they went down with their ungainly ships. The water swallowed their muzzles and their still functioning mouths. Some of them were swearing in mechanical voices even afterward.
Silence settled over the Bay of Pigs.
And the crabs scuttled out of their places of concealment, and the long-necked buzzards floated over broken human carrion.
Remo and Chiun returned to a sheltered portion of the shore in the silence. They looked out over the bay. A huge full moon rose higher, seeming to shrink as it climbed.
"Guess there's no main task force," Remo muttered. "So where's the invasion?"
Then, from behind them, they heard excited cries in Spanish.
"What are they saying?" Remo asked Chiun. The Master of Sinanju listened with grim mien.
At length he said, "They are saying Habana does not answer their radio calls. They fear it is under attack."
Remo dug out his map and looked at it.
"I don't see any 'Habana,' " he said.
"It is called 'Havana' on the map."
"Then why doesn't it say that?" Remo demanded, ripping the map to shreds and scattering it away.
The convoys started to back up. Between the damaged vehicles and the ones that had used their yearly allotment of gas to reach the combat zone, they managed only to create a logjam that trapped the rest. Spanish curses flew. Fights broke out over ownership of bicycles.
"So much for the Cuban cavalry," Remo grunted. "I'd say Fidel has been suckered good."
"So have we. For we must reach Havana immediately."
Remo looked around. He spotted the FAR helicopter, sitting like a droopy-winged dragonfly on a low hill.