“Our information bears that out,” Dawes told me. “I’ll be going now,” he added. “I have to set things up for tonight.” He left without shaking hands.
But Carrera had been right. Dawes was good at his job. I appreciated that after nightfall when Pedro and I were finally on our way to Cuba. The trip went fast and the boat made it without lights. We slipped over the side about fifty yards offshore and swam to the beach.
Pedro led the way. We plunged into the jungle. It was pitch-black. But he moved fast like a man who knows exactly where he’s going.
He did. After about twenty minutes, we emerged in a clearing. A tommy-gun was pointed at us and a figure rose from where it had been sitting under a tree. “Mujer de libertad.” It was the password. The voice was female.
“Hombre de libertad.” Pedro answered.
The figure stepped out of the shadows. It was quite a figure. Shorts and a halter with a cartridge belt criss-crossing it. Wild, tawny-gold hair spraying out over a magnificent bosom. Long legs, slender, but sturdy like a peasant girl’s, and hips so pronounced you could have slung a pair of water jugs from them.
“Mr. Victor, meet Dawn.”
“Hello, Mr. Victor.” Her gold-flecked brown eyes were amused at the way I was looking at her.
“Are you Cuban?” I hadn’t meant to burst out with the question, but she didn’t look Latin at all.
“No.” She laughed. “I’m a Svenska from Minneapolis."
“But what are you doing here?”
“You explain it to him, Pedro, while we get moving. I’ll keep about ten paces in front of you, just in case there are any of Castro’s bully-boys around.” She moved off, motioning to us to follow.
“It’s simple,” Pedro explained as we walked. “Before Castro, the Cuban economy under Batista9 was based on three major industries: sugar, gambling and prostitution. Now the first thing Castro did was nationalize the sugar industry. The second thing he did was to throw out the Mafia which had set up the gambling casinos. And the third thing he did was to make prostitution illegal. Now, that threw a lot of girls out of work. Not just Cuban girls, but many foreign beauties who had been imported for the tourist trade. Naturally, these girls didn’t thank him for this. No indeed. What it did was, it made many of them violently anti-Castro. They were in a difficult position. Stuck here. Unable to get back to wherever they happened to come from. Unable to ply their trade so that they might have food and shelter. They did the only thing they could do. They took to the hills and joined the anti-Castro movement. Some of them have developed into expert freedom fighters. For instance, Dawn here proved herself a real heroine during the Bay of Pigs fiasco.”
“You mean they actually fight with the guerillas?”
“Oh, yes. They are most fierce. I have a theory about why this is so. Would you like to hear it?”
“Sure.”
“I think it is because they are used to much sex. Here in the hills, not too much is available. Our men are otherwise occupied. So these girls become frustrated. And they release this in battle. It makes them doubly savage.”
“Pedro, for a jai alai player, you’re quite a philosopher.” I made a mental note to think about his theory when I had the time. It was interesting. Particularly interesting to me because, after all, sex is my field.
“There it is.” Dawn had rejoined us as we climbed over a small rise. She was pointing at a palatial-looking structure not too far in the distance. “That’s our headquarters.”
“Some digs,” I whistled. “I figured you people would be operating out of a jungle hut or something like that.”
“We used to,” Dawn replied. “But then we liberated this place from one of Castro’s commissars. It used to be one of Batista’s summer homes in the old days. Castro keeps sending expeditions to get it back, but we always manage to fight them off.”
She led the way across the plain and we were soon at the gates of the mansion. A sentry greeted Dawn and admitted us. Another guard let us into the house itself.
“I'll go check in with Bregaria,” Pedro said. “He’s the one in charge. Meanwhile, why don’t you show Steve to his room,” he told Dawn. “We’ll get together later.”
“Okay. See you later, then,” I told him. I followed Dawn down the hallway.
We turned a corner, and that’s when it went off. It was a siren and it sounded like a pit filled with a million yowling cats. “What the hell—!” I reacted.
“It’s an air raid,” Dawn said. “We’ve been afraid of this. Castro couldn’t take this place back from us, so now he’s going to destroy it. Quick, follow me.” She led the way to a staircase and I followed her down to a cellar. There were three other girls on the staircase and we were all tripping over each other in our hurry to reach shelter.
When we reached the bottom, Dawn darted across the basement and pulled open a trapdoor hidden in the floor. “This way.” She scrambled down a ladder and I followed her. The other three girls followed me.
It was a wine cellar. There were rows and rows of bins containing champagne bottles. With the girls’ help I managed to pull two of the racks together. We crawled under them and huddled together. Already we could hear the sound of bombs going off. They were getting closer. Closer. And then--
It must have been a direct hit on the mansion. The lights went out and the last thing I saw before they did was the wall falling in on us. There was a crumbling sound, then the sound of champagne bottles shattering and then a roar.
Champagne spilled over me and I tasted it on my lips. The cement floor shifted beneath me and I was at the bottom of a pile of writhing girls -- breasts, behinds, legs overwhelmed me. Everything started going black inside my head. Just before I went completely under, I remember thinking it really wasn’t such a bad way to cash in my chips. Like the old joke. A blonde in one arm and a bottle in the other. Only I had a lot of bottles and a lot of girls. Nope. It wasn’t such a bad way to go.
The only trouble was I didn’t want to go at all!
CHAPTER FOUR
WHEN I CAME TO, I was up to my ears in bosoms -- literally. Four sets of magnificent breastworks had converged to pillow my head. Four lacquered hands were taking turns stroking my aching brow. A fifth hand was holding an open wine bottle and attempting to pour a little champagne down my gullet. My eyes tiptoed up the naked arm attached to this hand, paused to admire the creamy, bare shoulders, and finally focused on the face. The face belonged to Dawn.
“How are you feeling, Mr. Victor?”
“Like the roof fell in on me.”
“It did. You got a nasty whack on the head.”
“It’s sore,” I admitted, touching the top of my skull and wincing. “But it’ll pass. How about the rest of you girls? Anybody else hurt?”
“Just shaken up,” Dawn told me. “Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” she exclaimed as I swayed to a sitting position.
“Looking the situation over,” I replied as I waited for everything to stop spinning.
“You’d better lie back and take it easy,” she told me, and the other girls chimed their agreement.
“I’m all right.” It was true. Sitting up seemed to have restored my equilibrium. The dizziness passed, leaving only the dull ache where my scalp was swollen. The first thing I noticed was a powerful flashlight propped atop one of the overturned wine bins so that it lit up the area where we were. “That’s a piece of luck,” I commented, pointing at it.
“I had that with me,” Dawn explained. “I sometimes use it when I’m out in the woods at night.”
“Well, let’s see where we’re at.” I got to my feet, still a little rocky, crossed over to the flashlight and hefted it. I swung it around slowly and took a good look at our surroundings.