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Broken Jewel The Betrayal Game The Assassins Gallery Liberation Road Last Citadel Scorched
Earth The End of War War of the Rats Souls to Keep |
David L. Robbins's The Betrayal
Game CHAPTER ONE March 7, 1961 The older brother moved first. More competitive, faster, he grabbed his swim fins, mask, and spear from the back seat. He dashed down the slope. The younger one hooted after him, not caring so much to win a race to the water. He knew his luck ran better; he would catch the most fish, as always. “Rodrigo!” his brother called to him up the hill. He walked carefully, barefoot over the lime stones and scraggy shells. “Slow poke!” Manuelito made a show of putting on his mask and fins at the water’s edge. He held up the spear, then splashed ahead. Rodrigo watched his brother kick, chopping froth behind his fins, to be first into the bay. Rodrigo sat unconcerned in the sand. He wet the fins to slide them on better and spit into his mask. He stepped into the water, pleased at the flatness of the surface today. The sun shone from straight above, the visibility underwater would be ideal. Rodrigo walked until the bay rose to his knees. He kneeled forward and let his buoyancy take over, then propelled himself with a kick of the fins. He gazed down and ahead; the shelf of sand fell off quickly to deeper water, to the small coral reef only fifty meters from shore that was off-limits. Schools of yellowtail and blue creole wrasses swam to meet him with curiosity. When Rodrigo offered nothing of interest, they dispersed. He paddled along the surface watching the sand bottom slope away. When the depth reached eight meters, the outskirts of the reef began to appear, small brain coral heads and elk horn coral, sea whips and sea fans. Rodrigo and Lito did not know this reef so well as the ones of Bahia Honda fifteen kilometers west. Those were closer to their home and not the private preserve of Fidel Castro. But the boys had speared wonderful Nassau grouper in this place twice before, and had not been caught or bothered by anyone. They decided to come again today, a perfect day. Staying on the surface, Rodrigo kicked until the reef beneath him grew denser. The tops of the coral lay ten meters below him, the sand bottom three meters more. He swam a wide circle, looking for Lito. For minutes he did not see his brother; Lito was the stronger swimmer and could stay down fantastically long. But Rodrigo had eyes for movement, a knowledge for fish his brother could not match. While Lito thrashed about on the bottom, lunging into holes, chasing and stabbing, Rodrigo cruised, quiet and belonging on the reef, until his spear betrayed his intent. He saw bubbles dribble out of the coral. Lito was in a crevice, chasing something. His brother emerged empty-handed, cheeks puffed with the last of his lungs. He did not speak when he surfaced beside Rodrigo but only gulped air, then propelled himself again to the bottom. Upside down, Lito looked up to Rodrigo and held his hands apart, to imply a medium-sized grouper. Rodrigo drew a deep breath and dove. He kicked easily, wasting no motion or air. He settled on the sand beneath a jagged brow of the coral. Here in the blue depth the greens and aquas muddied to gray, orange faded towards bilious brown, and when a spear caught a fish in the heart, the brilliance of blood was never more than rust. Rodrigo waited, releasing no bubbles. He held himself on the bottom with a hand gentle on the reef, to break nothing. He listened to the grinding rustle of sand on the other side of the coral wall where his brother worked to corner his grouper. Rodrigo stayed patient, knowing Lito might spook something out of the reef his way. He exhaled a slow stream of bubbles to ease his lungs. Smaller denizens of the reef came to investigate, some grunts too little to take, then a spider crab peeked at him and retreated. Rodrigo peered into the shadows at the bottom of the coral to be certain no morays lived there. A burst of Lito’s bubbles boiled out of the coral. A metallic thud sounded. Lito had loosed his spear but the noise was metal striking rock. Lito had missed. Rodrigo caught a flutter to his left; a grouper sped into the open trailing frightened puffs of feces. He watched his brother rise out of a crack in the reef, loose spear dangling at the end of its tether. Lito reeled the lance in and kicked to the surface for a quick breath. Rodrigo loaded his spear in his own hand, pulling the long shaft back, stretching the rubber belt anchored around his wrist. That moment, a large
blackfin snapper ambled around the corner of the coral head not two
meters from Rodrigo’s fins. The fish had seen Lito, had watched
the grouper escape, and decided to follow suit while the predator was
away. Rodrigo rolled to his side, swinging the spear into play before
the snapper could react. He let go the long shaft, the sling launched
the spear forward; the tip pierced the snapper just behind the gills.
The fish went crazy. Blood inked the water in the ragged circle the
snapper danced, tugging the lanyard at Rodrigo’s wrist. He hauled
the fish in, grabbed the still shivering lance and showed it to Lito
who was nearing the surface. His brother shook a fist down at him. Rodrigo
had struck first. The snapper weighed on Rodrigo’s arm. It flicked its fins, desperate to get off the barbed tip of the spear. Rodrigo felt every spasm of the dying fish through the shaft. He lifted his head above water to take a breath and look to shore. A man stood in the sand on the edge of the water. The man saw him and waved both arms. He was big, stout in a green guayabera and khakis. He wore something around his neck, sunglasses. No, binoculars. Rodrigo lifted his mask to see better. He snorted to clear his ears, then heard what the man was yelling at him. “Get out of the water!” Rodrigo licked his lips, salty. Under the surface, the snapper struggled. “Fidel!” the man shouted, pointing at the road. Rodrigo raised a hand, to say he had heard and understood. He pulled the mask back over his eyes. The snapper wriggled, refusing to die. Rodrigo took a deep breath and dove to fetch his brother. There would be trouble if they were caught fishing in Fidel’s private cove. Of all the mala suerte. He spotted Lito on the bottom, on the trail of the grouper. Rodrigo could not catch up to his brother quickly if he dragged this snapper along. He couldn’t wait for Lito to surface; his brother could stay down minutes, too long, with Fidel on the way. Without regret, he pushed down the barb and slid the fish off the lance. The snapper fooled itself that it was free and kicked once. That exhausted it; the fish rolled over dead. Rodrigo surfaced, to move faster and put himself above his brother. Below, Lito crept hand over hand along the reef, not as sensitive as Rodrigo to the life of the coral, thinking only of the grouper. Unseen to Lito, his grouper scampered out the other side of the coral, staying low across the sand flat. Rodrigo kicked hard. If they were found here, there was no telling what Fidel would do to them. Fidel was a man of the people, a revolutionary, but he liked his sport and this was his reef, everyone knew that. The brothers might be taken out of school and put in jail, they might have to serve in the militia. They could lose their father’s car. Rodrigo had no more time to count his fears; his brother was swimming over the top of the reef, suspecting now where the grouper had fled. Rodrigo, fighting to control his breathing after the fast swim over the surface, took a breath and dove. Lito was in the sand flat now, on his knees staring after the grouper, deciding whether to give chase again. Rodrigo saw him shrug and look up. Lito had still not seen him. Rodrigo figured his brother was about to rise. Instead, Lito turned his mask downward again, at the sand. Just a few meters to his right, a perfect conch shell lay in the open, the pink of its belly so bright the water could steal little of its hue. Lito flattened on the bottom and flipped his fins to glide to the shell. Rodrigo hovered behind and ten meters above, worried. This wasn't the time, with Castro bearing down on them, for his brother to be collecting shells. Lito set his hand on the conch. Rodrigo, without a full breath in his lungs, considered surfacing to see if they were already caught. Before turning for the surface, Rodrigo admired the shell his brother had found; it was large, filling Lito’s hand lifting it. An explosion ripped out of the sand. Rodrigo erupted away in a torrent of foam and mad water. He was catapulted past the surface of the bay into the air, his mask torn away, the fins gone. He landed on his back still holding the spear, but he let that go and it trailed away on its tether. He brought his hands to his head, to quell the pounding in his ears, behind his eyes, from the pressure of the blast. He could not shake off the black dots in his vision. What had happened? What had Lito touched? Rodrigo opened his mouth wide and, with pain, drew in all the breath he could hold to dive for his brother. Without his mask, the water was a confusion. Whipped-up sand clouded what little he could discern. Rodrigo panicked. He kicked for the surface, gasping. He looked at the water he treaded in and saw the brown stain. He screamed, “Lito! Lito!” A stinking mist hovered on the surface. Rodrigo kicked to lift himself higher, to see and shout through the haze. Dead fish bobbed to the surface. He thought to yell for help, and spun around to face the shore. The man who’d called to him was gone. Rodrigo turned back to the open bay, fighting tears. The water began to settle from its terrible roiling. The fright that struck first in his chest swelled into his arms and legs with the pricks of needles. Through stuffed ears, he heard a splash. His eyes flashed across the surface. In the haze, twenty meters off, a hand rose, then dropped. Rodrigo swam in alarm and hope for his older brother. Approaching, he saw that Lito did not have his mask either. Lito was barely able to keep himself above water, probably would not have were he not such a strong swimmer. Rodrigo stroked closer, calling out how scared he was. Lito answered only by again raising the one arm again out of the water. Then Rodrigo realized how much darker was the water around them both. “Grab on, Lito! I’ll take you back to shore!” Rodrigo reached out. Lito clapped his raised arm around his brother’s neck. He waited for the slap of Lito’s left arm across his shoulders, to complete the clasp before towing him back to the beach. But the touch of his brother’s second arm did not come. Rodrigo screamed when he saw the protruding bones. Splashing water kept them white, washing off blood that pulsed out of the shredded muscles around the joint, the meat of his brother as pink as the conch shell. Rodrigo looped an arm beneath his brother’s one intact shoulder. Crying, he rolled Lito to his back and kicked for land. He could not look back, and did not know what he would do to save Lito when they reached shore. Before he could take more than a few strokes, with his brother’s moans in his ringing ears, three jeeps roared onto the beach. The vehicles stopped behind their father’s car. A dozen bearded men got out, some in swim suits. Paddling hard, fighting not to fail in his strength, Rodrigo shouted for help. One man, the tallest, heard and began without hesitation to run down the slope. Others tried to stop him, the cove stank with the smoke of the explosion. The tall one broke free and dashed, barefoot and bare-chested, over the sharp ground. Rodrigo recognized him and felt a surge of relief, also dread. Fidel dove into the bay.
March 10 Two thousand feet below, the earth lay blacker than the midnight sky. Vast swaths of tilled land and uncut forest unfurled, uncannily dark, with no homes or lit barns to strike a single sparkle. The few narrow roads were vacant at this hour. In the northern distance, Havana glistened. From this height, even the faint gleams of Matanzas a hundred kilometers to the east were visible. The pilot, an exile codenamed Pronto, circled a finger at the windshield, aiming ahead and down. Calendar looked closely where the man pointed. In the next minute, it was Pronto who saw the lights. The darkened plane banked left. Pronto cut back the rpm’s, aligning the nose of the Helio with the flashes from the ground. Three red dots appeared on the left, three green on the right. The Unidad team below marked the landing strip. The space was maybe no longer than a football field. An anxious hand touched Calendar’s shoulder. He twisted in his seat to the four men in the rear. Each wore black, head-to-toe, with greasepainted faces. All had satchels in their laps stuffed with clothes, money, false papers, and Dragunov SVD 7.62 sniper rifles. On their hips rode Heckler & Kock pistols. The four were Cubans, CIA trained assassins. The one tapping on Calendar’s shoulder made a gesture with his hands to express how small the landing zone looked. The man seemed unsure. Calendar hid his annoyance that a Cuban trained to blow off Castro’s head would be scared over a plane landing. Calendar pressed an open palm at him to assure that everything was okay. There wasn’t time to explain that the STOL in the plane’s name meant short takeoff and landing. Calendar again masked his irritation that this guy didn’t know the Helio was designed for this sort of operation: come in low, slow, and short; leave these four guys behind, then get out. The Cuban sat back, uneasy. He shouted something to one of the other shadows. All of them were lit only by the plane’s dials. Pronto lined up on the red and green flashes, the landing zone edging closer. He brought the plane in at thirty knots, quickly shedding altitude. Calendar watched the silhouettes of treetops rise against the charcoal sky. Pronto made small, almost hectic adjustments with the yoke. Calendar had not flown with this pilot before and had to rely on faith that he was good enough to set the STOL down without landing lights, in pitch black with no idea what sort of surface he was landing on. A bead of sweat dribbled under Calendar’s eye. The wings waggled as Pronto adjusted to a cross breeze. Calendar stared where the ground was supposed to be and could not tell what lay ahead. The Helio slowed, almost drifting downward, slowly, maddeningly, leaving plenty of time for Calendar to conjure trees and power lines out of the night. The red and green flashlights remained the only illumination as the plane sank, sank, then bounced hard. The hands of the assassin behind him went to both of Calendar’s shoulders, clutching in fright. Calendar swept the man’s grip away, angrily disengaging himself from the touch of fear. Get off me! he thought. Pronto straightened the taxiing Helio and depowered the prop. They’d landed on a road, a narrow asphalt stripe cut through a dense forest. Calendar wiped his lips, gazing out the windows at the walls of tree trunks on either side. “Holy shit,” he muttered, forgetting for the moment he was wearing a microphone. Ten feet left or right. Pronto laid on the brakes and used just enough prop to turn the Helio around, to face the direction from which they’d flown in. With damp hands Calendar undid his seat belt. He yanked off his headphones and pulled the door handle. Jumping out on the road, the spinning prop wash rippled his jacket. “Go, go, go!” he shouted at the darkened snipers in the backseats, pistoning his arm. He reached in to grab duffle bags and toss them on the asphalt. He did not touch the Cubans, letting them fumble out of the plane on their own. Shapes appeared out of the darkness, Unidad men. Calendar had nothing to say to them, though they were his assets. As soon as the last assassin was out, Calendar gave them all a thumbs-up, then climbed back into the plane. Animatedly he pointed up the road, for Pronto to hit the gas and get back in the air. The pilot took his
foot from the brake, goosed the throttle, and the Helio began to taxi.
Again the colored flashlights came on ahead, marking the road. Pronto
spiked the rpm’s. In seconds the Helio’s wheels came off
the road. Calendar did not buckle his seatbelt. Instead, he pivoted
to look back. The red and green lights went out. Instantly, they were
replaced by other flashes, orange ones. “Shit!” Calendar yelled into the cockpit, drowned by the prop and engine. Urgently he twirled his index finger, signaling Pronto to come around over the landing zone. Pronto circled above the scene, banking Calendar’s window to the chaos below. Calendar kept his eyes on the ground, catching pops of gold and orange flecking the dark. He followed the ambush by the flashes of gunplay. Troops had the landing zone surrounded, their guns sparked in a broad circle. From the amount of rounds fired, the ambush looked to be in squad strength, forty or fifty soldiers. The Unidad team and the assassins defended from the center, trapped on the open road, dashing to escape into the trees but running right at soldiers. The ambush was over before the Helio could make a third loop. The road and the trees lapsed back to darkness. Suddenly, Pronto yanked the plane out of its circling bank. Calendar, without his seatbelt, pitched sideways, slamming his head against the window. Before he could curse, a series of flashes blinked on the ground like firecrackers. Castro’s troops had turned their rifles to the sky, at the sound of the unseen plane. It would take a lucky potshot, but with enough of them shooting… Sparks struck on the engine cowling; a bullet had zinged off it. Pronto pulled on the yoke and worked the throttle for all the climb he could get. Calendar tugged his gaze off the ground to face into the blank sky. In his earphones, Pronto muttered in Calendar’s headphones, “Hijo de puta.” The entire operation had been rounded up. All the training, resources, plans, lives, squandered. “Goddam underground,” Calendar growled into his mike. “Riddled with informants.” Pronto nodded. “All the best people left for Miami,” the pilot answered. “There’s nothing but pendejos left in Cuba. That’s why we’re coming back.” The Helio leveled
off at six thousand feet. Calendar buckled his seatbelt. Pronto angled
west, away from distant Havana. Calendar sat back and shut his eyes.
Images of the four men he'd left dead on the road waited for him, and
visions of Fidel’s firing wall, after questioning, for those who
were captured alive. He balled a fist, slamming it into the roof of the plane, once, twice, a third time. With every punch, he shouted, “Damn it! Damn it!” “Hey!” Pronto shouted into the earphones, “Easy, man. You’re gonna dent the plane. Jesu.” Calendar lowered the fist, knuckles throbbing from the pounding. He stared at glowing Havana off to his right. “How hard can it be to kill this guy?” He rammed his fist one more time into the ceiling. |
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