“I know of no such clearance. I am Lieutenant Deltchev, Navy. Let me see your orders.”
“Orders! And where would I keep orders in this monkey suit? Lieutenant, who in the name of the Worker’s Paradise gave you your commission?”
Deltchev stiffened and focused questioningly on the shotgun resting in Dravit’s lap. The lookout at the machine gun pulled his thumbs from the trigger plates and leaned back. A couple of officers bickering, he might as well stand back and enjoy the fun. A second later the lookout was slammed back over the engine box by a shotgun blast, Deltchev and the other lookout slumped to the deck, wounded, as at the same time our rubber boat nearly capsized from the recoil of our discharging shotguns. The helmsman dived into the cabin and in the subsequent silence I could hear the clanking sounds of hatches forward being buttoned up. There had to be a few more crew members aboard. The wounded second lookout lunged for the machine gun and managed to stitch several rounds into our rubber boat before a half dozen shotgun rounds made him disappear in a blood-red mist. Some of our men had been hit, I could not tell how badly.
I vaulted into the patrol boat and put two rounds apiece into the radio antenna, the radar scanner, and the compass. Skeins of smoke swirled into the sea mist. The pungent smell of ozone from the shattered equipment was everywhere.
Let them find port now, let alone bother us again in this fog. I spun the helm over and stepped back down into the F470.
“Bullying fisherman isn’t as easy as it used to be,” I bellowed in Japanese for the benefit of the surviving crewmen.
Then to our own people, “Cast off!”
The .51-caliber rounds had destroyed our tube on the portside, punctured the floor plating, and silenced the outboard. Chunks of the motor had hit everyone, causing minor bleeding. Chamonix’s leg had been gazed by a round and Lutjens had been peppered by pieces of splintered paddle. We jettisoned the outboard and its gas tank. The rubber boat limped back into the fog with some swimming alongside, while others attempted to straddle the starboard thwart and paddle with shotguns. It was 0500.
Fighting the heavy seaweed, we struggled to keep our heading to the rendezvous point. Everyone worked hard, but I knew we were largely at the mercy of the frigid currents of the Nemuro Straits.
At about 1000, a cold rain washed away the fog and we found we were on the safe side of the Nemuro Straits. The fishing boat was southeast of us and we attracted their attention with a small survival mirror.
Wickersham and Matsuma brought the fishing boat alongside. Everyone was numb from exposure and we’d abandoned swimming and paddling hours before. Puckins’s teeth chattered like castanets, and, dazed, Lutjens groaned softly.
Wickersham reached down from the boat and hoisted men aboard like wet kittens. Matsuma reached for Gurung, who was babbling in hypothermic stupor.
“Keep away from me, Japanese devil. I am Amarsing Gurung, whose father killed more Japanese soldiers than you have teeth in your head,” he said absently. “There being a Russian soldier last night who tasted the kiss of the kukri of Rifleman Gurung.”
Matsuma smiled gently and dragged the soon-unconscious Gurung up over the gunwale.
CHAPTER 16
The Norwegian wood stove crackled and sizzled in our hotel suite. After thawing out, I had slept for twenty-four hours straight. Each one of us had experienced some of the cold-induced symptoms of hypothermia—the dopey sense of well-being, headaches, lethargy—for which rest and warmth were the best therapy. My side was tender where a bit of outboard motor housing had broken the skin. My thighs and knees ached as they always did after a patrol. Legs seemed to absorb most of the tension.
Dravit and Chamonix sat across from me. Neither looked very happy.
“…and I didn’t bother to ask Chamonix to develop the film until just a few hours ago. It didn’t seem necessary.”
He tapped his pipe against the stove.
“The film had been overexposed—all of it—not just the six photographs Captain Dravit had taken,” added Chamonix.
“There were several beads of water within the housing of the camera. You know how watertight a Nikonos is. I opened it with dry hands. The film is useless to us now. Merde! All our efforts for nothing.”
The sullen Chamonix was even more laconic than usual. The legionnaire carried some undisclosed bitterness. He rose, stood rigidly erect, then walked to the door and left the room with a sharp salute and a click of heels. The .51-caliber bullet that had grazed his thigh had been a tracer and instantly cauterized the wound. He didn’t permit himself the luxury of a limp. Vinegar may have flowed through his veins, but the old trooper was flawlessly competent.
“There’s no doubt about it, is there?” Dravit stretched his legs, placing his heels on the stove. “Our tight little band has been penetrated.”
“Can you remember any of the information from the quarterly report?”
“I can remember it all,” he said with a smirk. “It was too hard to come by to trust exclusively to a camera.”
He handed me a scrap of paper. It read: “Garrison of Camp R-3; 43 militarized police—15 with radio or electronics specialties; 207 prisoners; Vyshinsky still carried on the camp roster as special prisoner.”
I placed the scrap in my pocket.
“Put all that on the stock of my shotgun with a grease pencil when we were in the administration building. Didn’t think of it then, but on the way back the bleedin’ camera was on the boat, where anyone could get at it.”
Penetrated—it was bad enough to have others working against us. But one of our own?
“Skipper, it’s about time for the first cut.”
Now that we knew the size of the garrison, we could determine the number of men we would need. “Well, it’s a trade-off: the more men we take, the better our chance of success in a firefight, but the greater our chance of detection—and the more cumbersome the logistics. Let’s make it the Kunashiri eight and take Alvarez and that South African, Kruger, as alternates. Send the rest home with the bonuses.”
The turncoat had to be one of the Kunashiri eight, but they were my most valued men. I couldn’t afford to eliminate any one of them.
I jammed a few more logs into the stove, but it didn’t help. I didn’t seem able to get warm.
The new men were part of the two dozen who’d been recruited in Marseilles. These were the next most talented after Chamonix, Gurung, and Lutjens, and they showed promise.
Juan Ortega Alvarez was a Miami Cuban who specialized in heavy weapons. His high cheekbones; broad, straight nose; and heavy beard made it possible—depending on the depth of his tan—to pass for any nationality inhabiting the zone between 15° South and 35° North latitude. Nearly as massive as Wickersham, his bulk was less sculpted and more evenly distributed than the Wisconsinite’s.
Alvarez found growing up in Miami’s Little Havana a painful, stifling experience. There were pressures, always pressures. His uncle and a brother-in-law had died at the Bay of Pigs. Pressure: he must be prepared to do his part when the next revolution came. He was a mediocre student. Pressure: he was a Cuban and must bring credit upon his family and nationality. He had no occupational goal. Pressure: he must enlist in the Army until he arrived at some other trade valuable to his community. The pressure from family and friends was subtle but deadly.
Halfway through his reluctant enlistment, he realized he liked the life and volunteered for Special Forces, where his bilingual background would be an asset. Despite Army regimentation, he felt freer than he’d ever been in Florida, straitjacketed by the rigorous standards set by desperate, disillusioned émigrés. Ironically, with this sense of freedom came a new pressure, the internal pressure of a growing sense of destiny. It was not that unusual. A haunting sense of destiny was something I, too, could understand. After his second hitch, he left the Army to free-lance so that one day he would have the experience, credentials, and contacts to leave a mark on Cuban history. Castro couldn’t live forever; when the time came, Alvarez would be ready to contribute.