The Company_ A Novel Of The CIA Part 41

"Uh little bird whispered in my ear. Listen up, Jack, I don't give uh s.h.i.t what he does to Hoffa, long as he sticks to duh deal your father an' me worked out. Your brother can f.u.c.k with Detroit till he's blue in duh b.a.l.l.s. Chicago is off-limits."

"Don't lose sleep over Bobby, Sal."

"I'm glad to hear I don't need to lose sleep over your kid brother. I'm relieved, Jack. No s.h.i.t."

Jack laughed pleasantly. "Say h.e.l.lo to Frank for me when you see him."

"Sure I will. You want to talk to Judy some more?"

"No. I'm pretty busy. Take it easy, Sal."

"Yeah, I will. I always take it easy. Dat's what I do best. You take it easy, too, Jack."

"So long, Sal."

"Yeah. Sure thing. So long."

Arturo Padron pedaled his heavy Chinese "Flying Pigeon" through the seedy back streets of downtown Havana, then turned onto the road behind the Libre Hotel where rich Cubans used to live before Castro hit town. Nowadays the houses, set back from the street and looking like wrecked hulks that had washed up on a sh.o.r.e, were filled with squatters who simply moved on when the roofs collapsed. The wraparound porches sagged into the tangled worts and bindweeds of the cat-infested gardens. At the rear of the once-fashionable hotel, Padron, a middle-aged man who wore his thinning hair long over his oversized ears, double-chained his bicycle to a rusty iron fence, then walked through the employees' entrance and down a long flight of steps to the locker room. He opened the locker and quickly changed into the tan uniform and black shoes with "Made in China" stamped in English on the inside of the tongues. The shoes were too tight and squeaked when he walked, and he had been promised a new pair when the next shipment arrived. He tied his black bow tie as he made his way upstairs to the sprawling kitchen off the hotel's cafeteria. Pushing through the double swinging door into the kitchen, he called a greeting to the four short-order cooks who were sweating over the bank of gas stoves. One of them, an old man who had worked at the Libre when it was called the Havana Hilton, looked hard at Padron as if he were trying to convey a message. Then the old man gestured with his chin toward the door of the manager's office. Padron thrust out both of his palms, as if to ask, What are you trying to tell me? just as the door to the office opened and two policemen wearing green Interior Ministry uniforms motioned for him to come in. For an instant Padron thought of running for it. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw two more Interior Ministry police push through the double door into the kitchen behind him; both had opened holster flaps and rested their palms on the b.u.t.ts of revolvers. Padron forced a smirk of utter innocence onto his long mournful face and sauntered past the two policemen into the office. He heard the door close behind him. An elegantly dressed man with a neatly trimmed reddish beard stood behind the manager s desk.

"Padron, Arturo?" he asked.

Padron blotted a bead of perspiration on his forehead with the back of his wrist. "It's me, Padron, Arturo."

"You have a cousin named Jesus who owns a thirty-two foot Chris Craft cabin cruiser with twin gas engines, which he keeps tied up in the port of Miramar. For a price he has been known to run Cubans to Miami."

Padron experienced a sharp pain in the chest, a sudden shortness of breath. He had seen photographs of the man behind the desk in the newspapers. It was none other than Manuel Pineiro, the head of the regime's secret police. "My cousin, he has a boat, senor," he said. "What he does with it is not known to me."

Pineiro crooked a forefinger and Padron, prodded forward by one of the policemen, his shoes squeaking with each step, approached the desk. "Your cousin Jesus has admitted that he was instructed to keep the gas tank of his boat and spare jerry cans filled; that he was to remain next to his telephone every evening this week waiting for a signal. When a caller quoted a certain sentence from Corinthians-'For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound. I who shall prepare to the battle.'-he was to immediately put to sea and pick you up on the beach of Miramar, minutes from here by bicycle. He was then instructed to run you across to Miami. For this he was to be paid twelve thousand five hundred American dollars." By now the blood had literally drained from Padron's face.

"I am not a religious man," Pineiro continued, his head tilted to the side and back, his tone rea.s.suringly amiable, "though in my youth, to gratify my grandparents, I was obliged to attend church services. I recall another sentence from the Holy Book, this one from the Gospel According to Saint Matthew: 'Woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! It had been good for that man if he had not been born."' His tone turned hard. "Empty your pockets on the desk."

With shaky hands, Padron did as he was told. Pineiro separated the items with the tips of his fingers: a pocketknife, some loose change, several sticks of chewing gum, a crumpled handkerchief, some toothpicks, a depleted roll of dental floss, two lumps of sugar wrapped in the cafeteria's distinctive brown paper, an unopened pack of Russian cigarettes, a book of matches, a wrist.w.a.tch without a strap, a lottery ticket, two small keys fitting the locks securing the "Flying Pigeon" to the iron fence behind the hotel, a half-empty bottle of Bayer aspirins, a frayed photograph of a child in a crib and another of a woman with listless eyes attempting to find a smile for the camera, an internal ident.i.ty card with a photograph of a younger and thinner Padron peeling away from the pasteboard. "I will now pose several questions, Pineiro informed the waiter, who was gnawing on his lower lip. "One: How much were you to be paid for the a.s.sa.s.sination of Fidel Castro?"

"I know nothing of this," the waiter breathed. "I swear it on the tomb of my mother. I swear it on the head of my son."

"Two: Who gave you your orders?"

"I received no orders-"

"Three: Who else in Havana is in on the plot?"

"As G.o.d is my witness there is no plot."

Pineiro greeted the denials with a bemused smile. Using the back of a finger, the chief of the secret police separated the bottle of aspirin from the rest of the pile. Then he unscrewed the lid and spilled the tablets onto the desk. Bending over the pills, he opened Padron's pocketknife and used the blade to sort through them. At first he was unable to detect any difference between them. He glanced up and saw the terror that had installed itself in the waiter's eyes and began again, examining the pills one by one. Suddenly Pineiro's mouth opened and the words "So that's it!" escaped his lips. He pushed one of the pills off to the side, then a second, then a third. Then he straightened and, looking the waiter in the eye, said, "It will be good for you if you had not been born."

Padron understood that it was a sentence worse than death. Pineiro signalled for the two policemen to advance. As they started forward, Padron's hand shot out and he s.n.a.t.c.hed one of the aspirins and turning and crouching, shoved it into his mouth and with a sob bit down hard on it. The two policemen lunged for him, seizing his arms as his body went limp. They held him up for a moment, then lowered the dead weight to the floor and looked at their chief, fearful that he would blame them.

Pineiro cleared his throat. "It saves us the trouble of executing him," he remarked.

His garish silk tie askew and stained with Scotch, his shirt unchanged in days and gray under the collar, his reading gla.s.ses almost opaque with grime and sliding down his nose, the Sorcerer leaned over the United Press ticker installed in a corner of the war room, monitoring the bulletins slipping through his fingers. "Anything coming out of Havana?" d.i.c.k Bissell called from the c.o.c.kpit, the command-and-control well facing the plastic overlays filled with up-to-date tactical information. On the giant map, the five freighters carrying Brigade 2506 had inched to within spitting distance of the Cuban coast. The two American destroyers that would guide the invasion force into the Bay of Pigs that night, a.s.suming the President didn't call off the operation, were just over the horizon. Two CIA Landing Ship Docks-filled with the smaller LCUs and LCVPs that would swim out of the LSDs and ferry the invaders to the beaches-were closing in on the rendezvous point off the coast.

The usual weekend bulls.h.i.t," Torriti called back. Stooping, he retrieved the bottle of mineral water filled with vodka and poured another shot onto the coffee grounds in his plastic cup. "There's one about the joys of deep sea fishing off Havana, another about a Cuban family that's been making cigars for five generations."

Bissell resumed his obsessive pacing, prowling back and forth between the water cooler against one wall and the easel on which all the operational codes had been posted for fast reference. Other members of the war room team came and went as the morning dragged on. Topsiders appeared with last-minute glitches to be ironed out and cables to be initialed. Leo Kritzky brought over the press clippings on Cuba for the past twenty-four hours; Castro had delivered another of his marathon speeches, this one to the air raid wardens a.s.sociation in Havana, extolling the virtues of Socialism. Leo's secretary, Rosemary Hanks turned up with a hamper of fresh sandwiches and a supply of toothbrushes and toothpaste for staffers who were sleeping over and had forgotten theirs. Allen Dulles checked in on a secure phone from time to time to see if Jack Kennedy had come through with the final go-ahead. The big clock on the wall ticked off the seconds with a maddening clatter; the minute hand seemed to emit a series of dull detonations as it climbed the rungs toward high noon, the deadline Bissell had given the President for calling off the invasion of Cuba.

JMARC had gotten off to a rotten start the day before when post-strike reports from the initial D-minus-two raids against Castro's three princ.i.p.al air bases started to filter through. The damage a.s.sessment photos, rushed over from the Pentagon after a U-2 overflight, confirmed that only five of Castro's aircraft had been destroyed on the ground; several Sea Furies and T-33 jet trainers appeared to have been hit, but the photo interpreters were unable to say whether they were still operational. And they could only guess at how many planes had been parked inside hangers or nearby barns and escaped altogether. To make matters worse, Adiai Stevenson, the American amba.s.sador to the United Nations, was hinting to Rusk that he, Stevenson, had been made to seem a horse's a.s.s; when the Russians raised a storm at the UN over the attack on Cuba, Stevenson had held aloft a wire service photograph of the two B-26s that had landed in Miami and had sworn that pilots defecting from Castro's air force, and not American-backed anti-Castro Cubans, had been responsible for the air strike. The cover story, which Stevenson (thanks to a vague CIA briefing) really believed, had quickly fallen apart when journalists noticed the tell-tale metal nose cones on the two B-26s in Miami and concluded the planes hadn't defected from Cuba after all; Castro's B-26s were known to have plastic noses. Stevenson, livid at being "deliberately tricked" by his own government, had vented his rage on Rusk. By Sunday morning shock waves from the affair were still reverberating through the administration.

Bissell's noon deadline came and went but the DD/0 didn't seem alarmed, and for good reason: he had informed the President that the freighters would cross the line of no return at noon on Sunday, but he had built in a margin of error. The real deadline was four o'clock. Around the war room people stared at the red phone sitting on a table in the command-and-control well as the clock batted away the seconds. Ebby and Leo poured coffee from one of the Pyrex pots warming on the hot plate and drifted into Leo's cubbyhole office off the war room. "I was ready to quit over this," Ebby confided to his friend, sinking into a wooden chair in near-exhaustion. "I actually delivered a letter of resignation to the Director."

"What happened?"

"He pretty much made the case that this wasn't the moment to abandon ship."

Leo shook his head. "I don't know, Ebby-JMARC could succeed."

"It would take a miracle."

Leo lowered his voice. "The news Bissell's waiting for from Havana-it could change the ball game."

Ebby sipped his coffee. "Doesn't it worry you, Leo-the United States of America, the most powerful nation on the face of the earth, trying to a.s.sa.s.sinate the bellicose leader of a small island-country because he's thumbing his nose at his Yankee neighbor? It's a cla.s.sic case of the elephant swatting a mosquito, for Christ's sake."

Leo sniffed. "At my pay grade we don't deal in moral niceties."

"It doesn't seem as if moral niceties are the subject of conversation at any pay grade," Ebby griped.

Settling onto the edge of the desk, Leo absently poked through some papers with the tips his fingers. "Say that Castro survives," he said, talking to himself. "The operation could still succeed."

"b.a.l.l.s! The landing might succeed if we provide air cover. But then what? Castro and his brother, Raoul, and their buddy Che Guevara aren't about to opt for early retirement in Soviet Russia. If things turn against them they'll retreat into the Sierra Maestras and go guerrilla. t.i.to did the same thing against the Germans in the mountains of Yugoslavia, and he held out for years. With Castro in the mountains and a CIA-supported Provisional Government in Havana, there'll be a slow simmering civil war. Jesus, it could go on for ten, twenty years."

"I hope to h.e.l.l you're wrong," Leo said.

"I'm terrified I'm right," Ebby said.

Outside, in the war room, the red telephone buzzed. Conversations ended abruptly as every head turned to stare at it. The Sorcerer abandoned the UP ticker and ambled over. Ebby and Leo rushed to the doorway. Controlling himself with an effort, Bissell, his shoulders hunched, walked slowly across the room to stand over the phone. He looked at it, then reached down and picked it up.

"Bissell," he said.

He listened for a long moment. Gradually his features relaxed. "Right Mr. President," he said. "You bet," he said. "Thank you, Mr. President." Then he hung up and, grinning, turned to flash the thumbs-up sign to the staffers around the room.

"So what did he have to say?" Torriti asked.

"Why, he said, 'Go ahead.'" Bissell laughed. And then he swung into high gear. "All right, let's put the show on the road. Leo, pa.s.s the coded signal on to the Ess.e.x and to Jack McAuliffe on the lead freighter. Also get the word down to Swan Island so the propaganda machine starts humming. And set Hunt off his duff in Miami-I want those bulletins from the Provisional Government on the air as soon as the first Cubans. .h.i.t the beaches. Gentlemen and ladies, we are about to breathe new life into the Monroe Doctrine."

And then everyone began talking at once. The war room churned with activity. For the first time in days the dull detonations from the minute hand stumbling across the face of the wall clock were inaudible. At the overlay of the giant map of the Caribbean, two young woman edged the five freighters closer to Cuba. Bissell, riding a second wind, huddled with several photo interpreters, going over the prints from the post-attack U-2 overflight, circling runways and hangars and fuel depots with a red pencil. Two generals from the Pentagon were called in for consultation in mid-afternoon. By late afternoon a revised target op order had been enciphered and dispatched to the CIA air base at Retalhuleu, where the brigade's B-26s would be loading up with bombs and ammunition for the crucial D-minus-one raid.

In the early evening, Bissell took a call from Rusk and the two chatted for several minutes about Adiai Stevenson. Bissell mentioned that they were gearing up for the all-important second strike. The phone line went silent. Then Rusk said, "Let me get back to you on that."

Bissell was startled. "What do you mean, get back to me?"

"I have a call in to the President at Glen Ora, where he's spending the weekend," Rusk explained. "There's been some discussion about whether the second strike is wise."

"It's already been authorized-"

"I'll call right back," Rusk insisted. Minutes later the Secretary of State came on the line again to say that the President had decided, in light of the fiasco at the UN, to cancel the second raid. There would be no more air strikes, he explained, until the brigade captured the Bay of Pigs runway and America could credibly argue that the B-26s were flying from Cuban soil. Rusk's announcement set off a fire storm inside the war room. Ebby led the charge of those who felt the CIA was betraying the brigade. "It would be criminal to go ahead with the landings under these conditions," he cried, raising his voice, slamming a fist into a wall. "They cut back the first raid from sixteen B-26s to six. Now they're cancelling the second raid. The brigade won't have a ghost of a chance if Castro can put planes over the beaches."

Tempers flared. Rank was forgotten as junior officers pounded tables to emphasize the points they were making. As the argument raged in the c.o.c.kpit, staffers dropped what they were doing and gathered around to watch. In the end the agonizing went nowhere: most of those present felt, like Bissell, that the die was cast; it was too late for the ships, by now sneaking into the Bay of Pigs behind two US destroyers, to turn back.

With Leo in tow, Bissell charged over to State to talk Rusk and Kennedy into changing their minds. The Secretary listened patiently to their arguments and agreed to call the President. Rusk stated Bissell's case fairly to Kennedy: the CIA was pleading to reinstate the strike because the freighters carrying the brigade, and the brigade itself, would be sitting ducks for any of Castro's planes that had survived the first raid. Then Rusk added, "In my view, Mr. President, operations of this sort do not depend nearly so heavily on air cover as conventional amphibious operations did in World War II. I am still recommending, in view of the uproar at the United Nations over the first raid, that we cancel." Rusk listened for a moment, then covered the mouthpiece with a palm. "The President agrees with me." He held out the telephone. "Would you like to speak to him yourself?"

Bissell, dog-tired after days of napping on a cot in the bunkroom of Quarters Eye, looked at Leo, then, thoroughly disheartened, shook his head. If the President's mind is made up," he said wearily, "there's really no point, is there?"

Back at the war room, Bissell tried to put the best face on the situation. There was a good chance that the bulk of Castro's combat aircraft had been neutralized. Some T-33s may have survived, true. But the T-bird was a relatively tame training plane-the CIA wasn't even sure they were armed. There was a bottom line, Bissell added: the President wasn't dumb. He had given the go-ahead for the operation, which meant he would have to relent and allow jets from the Ess.e.x to fly air cover if Castro's planes turned up over the beaches.

"And if Kennedy doesn't relent?" Ebby demanded.

Bissell turned away and, his shoulders sagging, resumed patrolling the corridor between the water cooler and the easel. "Anything on the wire?" he called to the Sorcerer, who was slumped over the UP ticker.

Torriti kicked at the long reams of paper collecting in the cardboard box at his feet. "Nothing yet," he mumbled.

"G.o.dd.a.m.n it, I can't hear you."

"NOTHING YET!" Torriti shouted at the top of his lungs.

Shortly before midnight Bissell took another phone call from a very edgy Secretary of State. The President wanted to know where they were at, Rusk said. Bissell checked the coded phrases on the message board against the operational codes posted on the easel. The brigade's frogmen had gone ash.o.r.e to mark the way with blinking landing lights. The two LSDs had gone ballast down to flood the well deck; the three LCUs and the four LCVPs inside would have swum out and started picking up the troops on the freighters. The first wave would form up in fifteen minutes and start out for the beaches designated Red and Blue. By first light all 1,453 members of Brigade 2506 would be ash.o.r.e.

Rusk mumbled something about the need for the five merchant ships to be out of sight by sunup. Then, almost as an afterthought, the Secretary of State said that Kennedy was concerned about one other detail of the invasion. The President wanted to double-check that there would be no Americans. .h.i.tting the beaches with the Cubans.

Bissell provided the necessary a.s.surance. Sending Americans ash.o.r.e was the last thing he'd do, he promised.

6.

BLUE BEACH, THE BAY OF PIGS, MONDAY, APRIL 17, 1961.

THE MEN IN THE FIRST WAVE, THEIR FACES BLACKENED WITH SOOT from galley stoves, slung web belts filled with spare ammunition clips across their chests, then bowed their heads and crossed themselves as the brigade priest blessed them and their crusade. "In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritui Sancti, Amen," he intoned. With that, the Cubans of the Sixth Battalion began clambering down the rope ladders into the LCU bobbing in the water under the Rio Escondido. Two LCVPs, loaded down with tanks and trucks, chugged past groundswells slapping against their blunt bows. Jack, dressed in camouflage khakis and paratrooper boots, a .45 strapped to his waist, his Cossack mustache stiff with salt and quivering in the gusts from sea, was the last one down the ladder. He'd been planning the coup for weeks. To come this far with Roberto Escalona and the brigade and then (following explicit orders from Bissell) to remain on the freighter, watching the invasion through night binoculars-it was simply not possible. Not for the descendant of a bare-knuckle fighter, the undefeated McAuliffe whose name was still a legend in County Cork. There was also the little matter of showing the freedom fighters that America was confident enough in the venture to send one of its own ash.o.r.e with them. The message wouldn't be lost on Roberto or the rank and file grunts of the brigade.

In the LCU, a hand gripped Jack's arm. "Hombre, what do you think you're doing?" Roberto Escalona demanded.

"I'm landing with you," Jack said.

"No," Roberto said. "Don't misunderstand me. I'm grateful for all your help, but this part belongs to us now."

"Believe me, you're going to be on your own," Jack said. "I'm planning to stay on the beach long enough to take a look around so I can report firsthand to Washington. I'm coming right back."

"Still rowing for something besides speed?" guessed Roberto.

"I suppose you could say that," confessed Jack.

In the darkness, Roberto grunted. Several of the men who knew Jack murmured greetings in Spanish; it was easy to see they weren't sorry to see him tag along. Turning, Roberto waved to the sailors. The LCUs' crewmen pushed off from the tires hanging against the rusting hull of the freighter and the stubby landing craft lurched into the choppy waters, heading for the red lights twinkling on the sh.o.r.eline.

Crouching in the midst of the Cuban fighters. Jack listened to them bantering back and forth nervously in Spanish. Looking over his shoulder, he could make out Roberto standing next to the helmsman, his hand raised over his eyes to shield it from the salt spray. Roberto stabbed the air off to the right and the helmsman eased the LCU over toward the blinking red light at the end of the rock jetty. "A hundred yards to go," Roberto shouted over the splashing waves and the wind.

Suddenly, there was a terrible grinding under the vessel. Shards of coral sliced through the double hull. The man crouching next to Jack gagged and clutched at his foot as the LCU pitched forward dizzily and then stopped dead in the water. Someone snapped on a flashlight and trained it on the moaning man, sitting on the deck. Anaesthetized with shock, the soldier followed the beam of light down to the stump of his foot. The razor-sharp coral had amputated his leg above the ankle. Blood gushed from the open wound. Nearby, a paratrooper boot with raw meat protruding from it floated in the bilge. A medic whipped off his belt and tightened it around the wounded man's calf, but the blood continued to stream out. Around them, the hull was slowly filling with sea water, which swished gently back and forth as the LCU rolled with the swells. Cursing under his breath, Roberto leaped down into the hold. "Your people swore the smudge on the photos was seaweed, not a reef!" he shouted into Jack's ear.

"Jesus H. Christ, cut the G.o.dd.a.m.ned motor," Jack yelled up to the helmsman. Roberto called to the men, "Quick, over the side. We're eighty yards off the beach-the water won't be deep here."

"Que haremos con?" the medic asked, clinging to the belt around the stump of leg as the soldier slumped to the deck. Sea water stained with syrupy red splotches swirled around the two men. Roberto reached down to the wounded mans neck and felt for a pulse. Then he shook his head furiously. "Muerto!" he said.

In twos and threes, the Cubans slipped over the side of the sinking vessel, their weapons raised above the heads. Jack found himself in waist high-water as he and the shadowy figures around him waded toward the sh.o.r.e. They were still some forty yards out when they heard the shriek of brakes from the beach. A truck filled with militiamen had roared up. As the militiamen spilled out, the truck backed and came forward again until its headlights played across the bay, illuminating the brigade fighters. The men in the water, pinned in the headlights, froze. Jack s.n.a.t.c.hed a BAR from the nearest man's hands and fired off the magazine; every third round was a tracer, so it was easy to see that the truck was being riddled with bullets. Other brigade fighters began shooting. On the sh.o.r.e, there were flashes of fire as the militiamen shot back. Then, dragging the wounded and the dead, they began retreating toward a dense stand of woods on the other side of the gravel road that ran along the waterfront. The truck's headlights popped out, one after the other. In the darkness, Roberto shouted for the men to cease firing, and they struggled through the water and up onto the beach.

Another battalion on the right had already seized the rock jetty and was racing inland, the men shooting from the hip as they ran toward the building with the neon sign sizzling on the roof that advertised "Blancos." Off to the left, still another battalion waded ash.o.r.e from a sinking LCW and, firing furiously, charged across the sand toward the rows of box-like bungalows at the edge of the beach. One brigade fighter dropped to his knees near Jack, who was crouching behind a stack of wheelbarrows. The Cuban aimed a .75 recoilless rifle at a bungalow with firefly-like sparks in the windows, and pulled the trigger. The shot burst on the roof, setting it aflame. In the saffron glow of the dancing flames, the last of Castro's militiamen could be seen disappearing across the fields.

And then the night turned deathly still; crickets could be heard chirping in the woods, a generator murmured somewhere behind the bungalows. At the head of the jetty, Roberto scooped up a fistful of sand and made a brief speech. The members of the brigade who could hear him cheered hoa.r.s.ely. Then they started inland to secure the road and the town of Giron, and the three causeways over the Zapata swamp. One squad discovered an ancient Chevrolet parked behind a bungalow and, cranking up the motor, set off to capture the airstrip.

Jack took a turn around the beach area. Several wounded brigade fighters were being carried into the makeshift infirmary set up in one of the concrete bungalows. Roberto Escalona had scratched "G-2" on the door of another bungalow and was using it as his headquarters. Behind the bungalows, Jack found the bodies of three of Castro's soldiers with 339th Militia Battalion insignias on their sleeves lying face down in the sand, blood oozing from wounds. He gazed at the dead men for a while, trying to recollect in the heat of the moment what the issues were that had brought the brigade to Cuba; trying to weigh whether the issues vindicated the killers and the killed.

There were no easy answers. Suddenly the Cold War-the romp of great powers turning around great ideas-was reduced to bodies on a beach, to blood being sponged up by sand.

Making his way along the beachfront. Jack came across a brigade corporal-more a boy than a man-with a bulky radio strapped to his back. He was cowering behind a wrecked Jeep, cradling the head of a dead brigade officer in his arms. Jack gently pulled the body free and, motioning for the radioman to follow him, headed for Blanco's Bar. Inside, the jukebox was still feeding 45-rpm records into the playing slot; the grating voice of Chubby Checkers could be heard belting out "Twist again like you did last summer." Cans of Cuban beer, sets of dominoes, were scattered around the tables, evidence that the bar had been hastily abandoned. The small fogon, a stove that burned the local charcoal, lay on its side, riddled with bullets. Righting a chair, Jack collapsed into it; he hadn't realized how exhausted he was until he sat down. He motioned for the young corporal to set up his equipment.