About mid-morning a boat came by. It contained two fishermen, and it was headed right for our island. We had nothing against fishermen, but if they discovered up it would be disastrous. One report to the authorities would bring Cuban gunboats swarming like flies. Deadly stinging flies!
The boat stopped about 150 feet from where we were hiding and began to fish. If they came no closer, if those men did not see us, all would be well. Otherwise—
Tomas came to me in agitation. "One of the fishermen—he is my nephew!" he whispered.
"Good. He won't give us away," I said.
"Not good! He is a rabid Communist, and the chief of the fishermen's militia!"
Oh-oh. "You know what that means?" I asked him, giving him a hard stare.
He nodded grimly. "He is no relative of mine any more—not since he turned traitor to his people."
A good attitude. Still, I worried. No man likes to contemplate the death of his own blood-kin. Could we trust Tomas now? The two fishermen kept drifting closer. Apparently the fish were biting better in our direction. Were they Communist fish, trying to betray us? I stood behind a dead tree trunk, nervously fingering my silent M-3 machine gun. How close could they come, without seeing us? If only they would go some other direction! Suddenly one of the fishermen turned. He gestured urgently to his companion. He had seen something!
They started their motor and headed directly for us. There was no question now; they had spotted one of our boats and were coming to investigate.
I lifted my rifle and aimed, feeling a cold necessity. Was there any alternative? I had experienced Fidel's prisons, and I had lost friends to Paredon, the wall of death. In the hands of the militia, my life would endure only long enough for their torturers to extract the dregs of my information. After me, my friends—those friends who were now waiting in Havana to help me. Some of them were young women—oh, the G-2 would like to learn their identities! Those sadists seemed to get an extra thrill from making a pretty girl scream...
My rifle fired. The silencer worked perfectly; there was only the noise of the gun carriage going back and forth. It was as though the weapon had a mind of its own, and I was a bystander. First the Communist nephew fell, then the other. But the rifle wouldn't stop. The entire clip of twenty five bullets emptied into their jerking bodies. Blood spurted and stained the water. There were messy discharges from their bodily orifices. There is nothing pretty about violent death!
It takes a special discipline to kill a human being. I had done it before, so I was hardened somewhat—but the first time brings nightmares for months. Those who like to watch violence on TV, or read about killings in comic books, have little appreciation of the real nature of it. It is not fun to take a man's life! But when it is his life or yours, and you know that from bitter experience, it happens. That's part of what combat is all about.
The other part, for me, was this: now at last the shades of Virgilio and Antonino could rest in peace.
Virgilio: April 13, 1961, the second day of the Bay of Pigs invasion. I was having breakfast in the house of Graciela, an elderly lady who had given me shelter for the night, and I was looking at headlines in the newspaper. Twenty-five counter revolutionaries had been shot in the Cabanas prison, and among them were Virgilio Campaneria and Alberto Tapia Ruano. They were former companions of mine in the resistance movement, and very good friends. I had broken down and cried over that newspaper, and in the grief and fury of impotence I swore to avenge them. Somehow, somewhere, sometime...
Antonino: six months later, in my first retraining camp run by the DRE in Key Largo, I heard on the radio how my good friend and fellow student of law, Antonino Diaz Pou, had been shot in Matanzas prison. He had said goodbye to me a year before, leaving for the U.S.A., but had returned to Havana as a radio operator before the invasion. So we were both in Cuba again, but had not met. He had entered the Venezualan embassy for sanctuary, but left when the Movement needed him to maintain radio contact with Miami. He was waiting on a Matanzas beach to be picked up by friends—but was surprised by the enemy, wounded, captured, and given Paredon, execution.
By my logic, I had now avenged my friends.
There was no place to bury the bodies on the key, as it was mostly swamp and tree trunks. But we had to dispose of them somehow, for the corpses could give us away as surely as the living men.
Nilo had an idea: "Send the cadavers back with Mario and Oreja. They can tow the fishing boat to the yacht after we land, then have the Cuban Exile radio report that the two fishermen defected and reached Miami safely in their small boat. No one will know the difference."
Excellent notion! So we set it up that way. We were fortunate that Tomas had recognized them, so we could give their full names. That night we crossed to the mainland without event in the Boston Whaler, leaving the rubber raft cached in the key. Tomas pointed out the designated landing place: a small beach. In the dark it looked just like a mud hole—but that was why we needed a guide.
I got off the boat—and sank into the mud right up to my armpits. "What the hell kind of a beach is this?" I demanded, not in the best of humor.
I could not move. I was burdened with all my equipment, so was quite heavy—but that is one of the problems on such missions. You have to carry everything you're going to need right along with you. I bore a radio set with batteries and hand generator—and this was not a miniature transistor receiver, but a substantial mass of equipment that covered my whole back, about fifty pounds total. I also had a canteen of water, a submachine gun with silencer and spare clips of ammunition, a .45 pistol, knife, five hand grenades, $30,000 in freshly-minted Cuban 20-peso bills, gold coins (good as gold anywhere!), first aid kit, maps, code books, compass, poncho, hunting knife, food rations, vitamins and personal effects. In short, I was so loaded down I could hardly move even in the best terrain. Now that the supposedly firm beach had turned out to be mush, I was really stuck.
"Well, move," Nilo whispered in the dark. "We don't have all night."
"Cono tu madre," I snapped. No, I won't translate that; it was an expletive calculated to make the ears of even a hardened terrorist burn.
Nilo chuckled. "How lucky we are that Juan is in a good humor tonight—and so sure of foot." Juan was the name I used for this mission. We always used false names, so that we could not be identified if caught, and could not give away our companions. It also protected our families. I know this precaution saved my own skin once, for the police were combing Havana looking for "Juan"—who did not exist.
After Nilo and Tomas had finished with their unfunny humor, they hauled me out of the gunk and back into the boat. I sprawled, a muddy mess from the chest down. They might have muttered something cute about that, but this was a serious mission where any words might be overheard, so we worked mainly in silence. We were too miserable and scared to engage in much light banter anyway.
We floated further along the coast and landed again about a third of a mile beyond the scene of my accident. This time the ground was reasonably firm. The three men of our mission unloaded. Mario was terrified; he had wanted to turn back as soon as we hit the mud, but we wouldn't let him. Now he perked up; he was finally returning to the security of the yacht. There were no farewells; the boat left quickly.
We were on our own. But our problems were only beginning.
We started walking, following our guide. We tramped and tramped. How far did we have to go to make our rendezvous? We cached the radio in some forest bushes near the coast. That lightened the load somewhat, but we still had trouble. We had to cross a barbed wire fence. Nilo jumped over, then held up the bottom strand for me to squeeze through. I got hung up on a barb, wouldn't you know it, and had a hell of a time getting unstuck. We passed through a freshly plowed field; that was another mess.
Tomas's age began to tell. He had increasing trouble walking, and finally we had to take his pack and half-carry him. Some guide! Suddenly Tomas fell on his knees, sobbing. "Kill me! Kill me! I lied, I am no guide, no guerril
la—I only came to bring my own family out! We are lost, I don't know where we are! Kill me!"
No wonder we had landed in muck! Such rage boiled up in me that I grabbed for my gun. I actually put it to his forehead and took the safety off. It was my life the son of a bitch had finished. Lost in enemy terrain—how would any of us survive? But Nilo stopped me. "There will be time for that later!"
Some common sense seeped into my volatile temper. What would another killing gain us? More work to bury the body! It was understandable that a man would do anything to get his family out of Cuba, after all. Tomas was no traitor, only a desperate fool. So we let the matter drop, and we plunged ahead, more or less hopelessly.
And for once we lucked out. We stumbled on the only part of the region our fake guide was familiar with—his own farm—so that suddenly we knew where we were. In the process, as we learned later, we had skirted a group of government militiamen on patrol—and we hadn't even known they were there.
I think ninety per cent of the success of such missions as ours is just plain blind luck—and we can't always tell the good luck from the bad. Had my landing in the mud delayed us just the amount needed to make us miss the patrol?
We made our way to a thicket of thorns, a good hideout for the day. These thickets can be massive affairs, impenetrable, that nobody would fool with short of desperation; that was what made this one so good. Nilo and Tomas went to a small farm to contact the owner, who was a friend. I remained in the thicket, guarding our equipment.
I had had a hard night, what with the mud and barbed wire and the weight of the radio and helping Tomas along, and I was tired. I tried to stay alert, but it was so nice being off my feet that soon I found myself nodding. I lay down to sleep. I shouldn't have done that.
Suddenly I heard voices: Nilo and Tomas must be returning, looking for me. It was hard to tell one thorn thicket from another, which was another good thing about this hiding place. I made small clicking sounds that were our recognition code. The group approached—and I saw it was a bunch of militiamen on their rounds.
I froze in terror. Had my confusion brought the enemy down on my head? But I was in more luck than I deserved. The militiamen had heard the clicking, but they thought it was a cricket. They passed me by.
I had just about used up my quota of good luck. I did not sleep again.
Later my friends arrived, carrying some goat meat and guava paste and fresh soft white cheese and Cuban bread in a bucket. It was a slops pail, so that it looked as if someone were going to feed the hogs—a good camouflage. Everything had to look innocent and natural; our lives depended on it.
So at last we had good food to eat. Maybe guava paste from a slops pail doesn't sound like much, but I'll settle for it any day. Maybe I'm a hog at heart.
We stayed there several days, giving out money and getting information from townspeople we could trust. I recovered my transmitter and sent a message out. It wasn't a bad time, as such things go. I remember walking to the edge of the thicket at night and watching the full moon over the palm trees. By day the heavens were an incredible azure, and the sun beat down on us; by night it was just as pretty.
Of course there were some inconveniences. Natural functions were a problem. Out in the key or in the boat, the entire ocean was one big flush toilet; just poke your posterior over the edge and make your offering to nature, and no backtalk about pollution.
But here on solid land it was no picnic. In the dark, amidst the thornbush, with dried mud caking my pants, I could hardly tell what was what. Mosquitoes zeroed in on my exposed anatomy like darts on a bullseye; they knew what was what! That forced me to slap on more repellent when I could find it. I had to wipe myself with huge plantain leaves, and let me tell you, toilet paper is much better! I buried my waste the way a cat does, for it was essential that we leave no traces at all.
The routine life of a guerrilla is not exactly James Bond style adventure. In fact, there are times when it hardly seems worth it. Did you ever see James Bond using a plantain leaf?
Than we headed east at night—and stumbled on what we later learned was a Russian missile base. This was just one of those freaks of the trade; we hadn't really expected to find anything like that, despite our orders.
The woods were full of trigger-happy militia. We had blithely walked into a hornets' nest. For this was the secret of the early 1960's: the Soviet emplacement of intermediate-range nuclear-warhead missiles in Cuba. That daring ploy was intended to shift the balance of world power, and of course it was to precipitate a sudden East-West confrontation of greater significance than any other.
I was, I believe, the first American agent to send hard information confirming this fantastic threat. I understand my report was shunted straight up to President Kennedy. Maybe I was the key link in the chain of events that saved the world from nuclear holocaust in 1962.
At least, I like to think so. Call me terrorist, guerrilla or patriot: few of these can claim as much.
Chapter 2
Three Misses
My father was arrested on July 26, 1960—ironically the seventh anniversary of Fidel Castro's own abortive first uprising and arrest. So the "26th of July Movement" applied about as well to me as to Fidel, for it started us both on our careers of anti-government activism. Only my opposition was to Fidel's government, which I felt was worse than the one he had overthrown in the name of the People.
My father was no guerrilla, no terrorist. He was sixty-five years old, a retired lawyer. All he did was pass out leaflets protesting the repression of the Catholic Church in Cuba. Young Communist toughs had attacked the crowd of women and old men leaving the Jesus de Miramar church after mass.
It was not that we thought the Batista government that preceded Castro was good; it was notoriously corrupt. But Fidel made so many fine promises, and reneged on most of them as he brought Communism to Cuba. What had become of free speech, the free press? Abolition of the death penalty? Open elections? Restoration of the Constitution? Freedom of religion? My father's literature set the record straight.
But in a totalitarian state, anti-government propaganda is a serious offense, particularly if backed up by facts. Two waiters at the Spanish Club at the Havana beach had seen my father give some of the leaflets to a friend, and they called the G-2, or secret police. The G-2 searched and found some of this incriminating material at his house when they took him in.
For such a heinous offense, the indictment demanded thirty years in prison. Considering his age, this was much the same as a death sentence.
Of course the police were after me too, as I was my father's son, and active in the same movement. They assumed I would be guilty of the same offense. Guilt-by-association is one of the tenets of this type of government. They were mistaken: I was guilty of much worse.
Before they came, I got my gun, gathered all the incriminating papers I could find, and gave the bagful of literature to the mother of a friend of mine for safekeeping. "Don't look inside!" I cautioned her. But she did look—women are that way, curious as cats—and almost had a heart attack, poor thing. Worse than pornography, that addictive literature of freedom!
Of course another time I did worse than that: I left a shoe box containing live hand grenades with a girlfriend. Girls, despite appearances, are good for more than one thing. She didn't sleep a wink all night, but she kept them safe!
So now I went into hiding, but all my friends knew where I was. I stayed at another girlfriend's house, of course. Disappearing does have its little rewards.
When I learned the identity of the two informers who had gotten my father arrested, my hot Latin blood boiled up. I headed for the Spanish Club with my gun, determined to shoot those two waiters immediately. But my friends intercepted me and persuaded me to wait until my father's trial. Wise counsel; I might have made things worse for my father.
All right. I waited. But that didn't mean I was letting it rest. I went to the club several times, and such was my temper I would probably have gone after
them with my bare hands if I had seen them. I was then a nidan in the martial art of judo, a second degree black belt, champion of Cuba. It would have been a gross abuse of my skill, for judo should be used only for self defense, but I was young then, 25, and peril to a member of my family set me off. I'm older now, but I haven't changed. Fortunately the informers always hid in the kitchen when I showed up, except once when I saw one of them serving another customer. I went to him and said: "You know who my father is," and I turned away. He almost soiled his pants.
I sent them a message, gentle enough considering my sentiments. "If my father is condemned, you are dead." I am not a very subtle person. To make sure it sank in, I had a friend burn their lockers with phosphorus. Phosphorous is nasty stuff; it burns so ferociously that nothing will put it out, and it starts suddenly like a Fourth of July sparkler. Very pretty, throwing living sparks in every direction, with white glaring light tinged with green from impurities. It makes clouds of acrid gray smoke, stinking of sulfur. It didn't melt down their lockers, but it destroyed their street clothes and everything else in there.
They got the message. At the trial they recanted and testified that they had not actually seen my father do anything, and that he was a good man. Of course he was a good man—but not in quite the way they implied. So the case against him collapsed, and he went free.
Naturally the authorities soon caught on to my part in the matter. A stenographer of the court who was a friend of our family later reported to me that a prominent member of the five man court had said "Let the old man go—it is the son we want." So? I wanted him, too!
I disagree with Fidel Castro's politics, but I can say this about his ability: he organized one hell of an efficient police state. Because there were powerful opposing forces, like the Catholic Church, dissidents were not taken in as boldly as in Nazi Germany or Russia. A person would be summoned for questioning—and not return. No noise, no violence, no shooting—nothing anyone could really point to. Nothing to justify a violent protest or uprising.