Operation Fireball (11 page)

It seemed to me that we’d gone more than five miles before he spoke again. “This is the perimeter road,” he said. I noticed that he spent almost as much time looking at the floodlighted chain link fence topped with four strands of barbed wire as he did watching the rain-swept road. We proceeded along the fence for what seemed to me a long time.

At one point Erikson’s split attention almost cost us. Headlights loomed up ahead, tracking down the center of the road. Erikson jammed the heel of his hand on the horn ring and swerved hard right. The oncoming vehicle darted sideways at the last instant, and we passed with barely a foot separating the front fenders.

“There they are,” Erikson breathed. He glanced at his watch again as I completed a breath that had stuck halfway. “That’s the motorized patrol that guards this section of fence. They’ll backtrack this way in twelve minutes, and that’s when we start moving out.” He swung the pickup off the road, doused the headlights, and scrambled from the cab.

I joined him at the rear of the pickup. We climbed into the body of the truck with Slater and Wilson, who looked as though they’d just emerged from a plunge into the bay. In the first few minutes I was out of the truck cab, I became completely soaked.

Erikson ripped off the top of the smaller wooden crate and handed me a lantern-type flashlight. “Hold it so I can see what I’m doing,” he directed. I beamed the light into the interior of the crate. It was amazing the amount of equipment that Erikson had neatly packed. Half of it I couldn’t identify, but there was enough that I was familiar with to judge we’d be in good shape for an assault upon a bank vault.

I noticed two pairs of short-handled wire cutters. I picked one up and hefted it, then looked again at the formidable-appearing chain link fence. “You’ve got the wrong kind of cutters, Karl. These will only take care of barbed wire.”

“That’s all they’re supposed to do.” Erikson was dragging material out of the crate hand over hand. “If any of us touched any part of that lower fence, the show would be over. It’s equipped with an antiintrusion device, electronically activated, so it sends an alarm to the defense center and to the guard posts if there’s any tampering with the fence.”

He lifted out a curved piece of metal that looked like a cut-out section of a steel oil drum. Wires hung down from the back of it. When he turned it over, I could see that it was layered with a substance sandwiched between the metal back plate and the inch-thick serrated steel on the front. Chico Wilson whistled. “A Claymore mine!” he exclaimed.

“Correct,” Erikson said.

I don’t know much about mines, but I do about fences. “If you think that we’re going to blow a hole in that fence with this mine, we might as well go at it with the wire cutters.”

“No sweat,” Erikson replied. He dashed a handful of rain from his face and picked up a package of what looked like flat, metal noodles. He began taping the bundle of narrow foil strips to the face of the mine. “This is called chaff or window. It gives off thousands of radar echoes, blinding alarm systems like we’re up against here.”

Wilson caught the significance before I did. “So this is a diversion? We go over the fence somewhere else?”

“Correct,” Erikson said again. He held up the end of what looked like a length of small-diameter garden hose and began hooking it into the mine. “This is a pressure-activated trigger. We’ll stretch it across the road, and when the perimeter patrol truck runs over it, off goes the mine. A two-minute timing device prevents it from being triggered earlier by unexpected traffic.”

He started toward the tail gate of the truck, carrying the mine. “The charge will be directed at the fence, and the explosion will shower it with metal strips like a tinseled Christmas tree. That will set off the alarm and keep it going until they cut off the power. Then the antiintrusion apparatus will be out for at least a couple of hours. It’ll take them at least that long to remove all these strips by hand.”

“An’ where will we be while all this is goin’ on?” Slater demanded. It was the first time I’d heard him speak since Erikson retrieved him. His voice was hoarse.

“Going over the fence a half mile down the road,” Erikson said coolly. He climbed out of the truck carefully, hugging the mine. He ran back and forth across the road for three minutes, making his dispositions. I ran with him, carrying hand tools, coils of wire, and friction tape. He employed them all with expert ease. “The Claymore is an antipersonnel mine that explodes lethal pellets in a low arc over a wide area,” he said when we were back at the mine. “It will do the same thing with the chaff.”

He stood up from his kneeling position and looked around. “Drop the tools here,” he said. He kicked them closer to the mine when I complied. “We’re going to have to travel lighter from here on. Get your seabag.”

I removed it from the truck cab and handed it to him. In turn he swung it into the back of the truck where Slater and Wilson were huddled. “Get into the Cuban uniforms and put your ponchos back on over them,” he ordered. We got into the pickup again and Erikson drove it down the road.

In four minutes he parked it ten yards off the asphalt ribbon behind a clump of jacaranda trees. I was amazed that Wilson and Slater didn’t look much different in their Cuban field uniforms. The ponchos covered most of the coarse khaki, of course. Only the peaked cloth caps with the buttonlike insignia of Castro’s guerrilla army gave outward evidence of the change.

Erikson and I changed into the Cuban uniforms while standing at the back of the pickup. Erikson passed out hand guns to Slater and Wilson, then gave each a bulging, prepacked haversack. There was a haversack for me, too. Wilson and Slater then hooked themselves into web belts with ammunition pouches, first aid kits, and canteens. Erikson laid the backpack radio and its power pack aside for himself. Against it he leaned an M-16 rifle. I knew his load totaled much more than any of ours.

Satisfied that we were outfitted properly, he handed me one pair of wire cutters and kept the other himself. He reached into the truck again and pulled a tarp away from the area near the now-empty crates. Beneath it was a two-section aluminum ladder. He handed a section each to Slater and Wilson. “When we get to the fence, join the sections together and settle it firmly,” he instructed them. “Try it. You won’t have much time.”

They practiced. Wilson looked more cheerful than at any time since the night Hazel put him on his back. The episode had done something to his
machismo
that only the adrenalin-paced action of the moment had restored. Slater still looked tired. Evidently he hadn’t slept much either in the destroyer’s food locker or at the Gitmo brig.

Erikson kept looking at his watch and then down the road. Suddenly he raised his hand in caution. The headlights of the truck patrolling the perimeter, diffused and yellow-glaring in the rain, passed our position in its swing around the fence. “Three minutes now,” Erikson said calmly. He gathered together his equipment.

I expected to hear the mine go off despite the distance. When the floodlights illuminating the fence went off suddenly, I was caught flatfooted. The contrasting darkness seemed overwhelming. “Run to the fence!” Erikson ordered. There was a ring in his voice. He took off like a sprinter.

I couldn’t run while juggling the load on my back and the equipment in my hands, but I kept up with Slater and Wilson, who had the same problem. Erikson was waiting for us at the foot of the fence. My eyes were beginning to adjust to the blackness. Wilson and Slater slapped the two sections of the aluminum ladder together and jammed it against the fence as though in some previous incarnation they had been foot soldiers scaling the walls of Constantinople.

“You first, Drake,” Erikson said. “Cut the barbed wire right next to an anchor point, then drop down to the other side. The other two will be right behind you. I’ll move the ladder to the other end of this fence section and cut the barbed wire again at that point as I go over so it will fall on the Cuban side of the fence. In this weather it might be a while before the missing section is noticed. Over you go!”

The top rung of the ladder reached to the lowest of the four ugly-looking barbed wire strands. I started up the ladder, balancing carefully, wire cutters in hand. Halfway up I was blinded. The floodlights had come back on, blasting away the darkness, leaving us totally exposed. I had never felt so naked in any sexual exercise.

“That’s just the auxiliary power cutting the lights in,” Erikson shouted. “The fence alarm is on another circuit. Get up that ladder, Drake!”

I went up it with a rush. The sharp blades of the wire cutter sliced through the strands of wire like so much wet spaghetti. The cut wire rasped against the metal of the fence as it fell away. The light was so intense at the top of the fence that I couldn’t see the ground below. I launched myself into the black pit, and my heavy haversack drove me to my knees when my boots hit sand. I scrambled desperately to one side and had barely made room when Wilson landed in my tracks. It took Slater longer.

Ten feet down the fence Erikson had reset the ladder. He went up it so fast his feet hardly seemed to touch the rungs. He snipped through the four strands of dangling wire in what seemed a single motion. Still standing on the ladder, he threw the wirecutters over our heads into the darkness beyond the immediate floodlit area.

Then he stepped up onto the tubular steel fence rail with both feet. He balanced for an instant, M-16 rifle in his left hand, before he squatted swiftly and with his right hand pulled up the ladder. He passed it across his body and dropped it on our side of the fence. It was an incredible feat of strength and balance. “Get rid of that;” he called before he jumped down to join us. Wilson grabbed the ladder and ran into the dark area with it.

“Single file now!” Erikson ordered when Wilson reappeared. He set out at a pace that none of us could match. He had to slow down almost at once. I brought up the rear. As much as I was laboring myself, I was constantly running up on Slater’s heels. Slater’s wheezing sounded as if he were close to exhaustion. My own mouth was full of cotton before Erikson stopped in a shallow depression.

“Everything’s fine,” he told us as we huddled close to him to hear his voice above the storm. “We’re in an area called the defensive zone. We won’t reach a Cuban outpost for almost a mile.”

“This is no-man’s land?” Wilson asked.

“No. It’s guarded by a regimental combat team of the second Marine Division from Lejeune, and they’re tough boys. The hubbub inside the fence should keep them tied down, though. Remember that everyone is looking the other way. No one’s supposed to be moving away from the fence. The system isn’t set up for it. If we clear this area within the next half hour, we’re in good shape.”

Slater was staring around into the blustery darkness. “I can’t see anything except the shapes of a few hills,” he complained.

“Nothing to see except troops manning static defensive positions,” Erikson said.

“Machine gun posts?”

“Yes, but the mine fields are more dangerous.”

Mine fields.

It was like a left hook to the solar plexus.

Erikson realized he had made a mistake. “They’re inert until activated during a full red alert,” he added hastily.

“Let’s hope we rate only a small pink alert,” Wilson rasped.

“We’ll keep on a track halfway between the high ground and the low,” Erikson went on. “Let’s move out.”

We pressed on for another ten minutes. Erikson set a circuitous course across the rocky hills sparsely covered with scrubby, soggy cactus and guinea grass. It was tiring walking with one foot lower on the hillside than the other all the time. I kept bumping into Slater. He not only was slowing down physically but he was trying to watch too carefully where he put his feet down.

My boots were soaked and I was just as wet under my poncho from free-flowing perspiration. “No talkin’ from this point.” The word came down the line. Slater’s relay to me consisted of breathless grunts.

Erikson led us higher up the slopes. The haversack on my back seemed twice as heavy as when I’d first slipped into its straps. We advanced steadily for what seemed twice as long as the first interval but probably wasn’t. When our snakelike progress stopped suddenly, Slater sank to his knees.

Erikson came back down the line and put his lips to my ear. “Don’t let them panic. I’m going to reconnoiter.” He looked at his watch, deposited the backpack radio at my feet, and slithered away.

I thought I’d get questions that I wouldn’t have been able to answer, but even Wilson seemed satisfied just to rest. When Erikson returned after the longest quarter-hour I ever remember, Slater was up off his knees, but his color was pasty. “We’re about a hundred yards from the Maximum Leader’s happy hunting ground,” Erikson whispered. “Right in front of us there’s a fence of
concertina
, large-looped barbed wire pulled out like an accordion across the ground. I’ve found a place where we can get underneath it. That’s our gateway to Cuba. Quietly now.”

We started off again. The ground underfoot had changed from sandy soil to sandy clay. Great gobs of it clung to my boots. Erikson proceeded more and more cautiously. The slight rest had hindered me almost as much as it had helped. My breathing had improved, but my muscles had started to tighten up.

Erikson dropped to his hands and knees. We all followed suit. Even above the whistling of the wind I could hear the sound of water rushing down a hillside. The sound grew louder as we crawled forward, and then one by one we drew up alongside Erikson and stared down a slippery-looking bank at a creek bubbling alongside a dark mass. Erikson took my right hand and extended it. I touched cold, wet, barbed wire. Beneath it the storm-swollen creek had eroded a crater.

Erikson flattened out on his stomach, slid down the slope, and wriggled under the wire. It was a tight fit with his backpack, but he made it. From the way he went at it I could see that he had done it before to try the passage. Wilson followed him, then a laboring Slater, then me. I hadn’t thought it possible to feel any wetter. I was wrong.