Robert Conroy - Castro's bomb

"Saboteurs, my ass," bellowed Major Sam Hartford. "I knew it!"

The phone call just received from the Pentagon said be alert for a major attack. Several outposts had reported sounds of vehicles and tanks and that could mean only one thing. The commies were coming. Or were they? Nobody would know for certain until they arrived with guns blazing. They could simply be driving around for some reason or because they wished to aggravate Gitmo's garrison and keep them up and alert on Christmas. These doubts meant that the base would have to wait to be hit and could not fire preemptively, even if they did see Cuban vehicles. As long as the Cubans were behind their border they could do whatever they wanted. That irked him. Who the hell decided that war had to be played fair?

He dressed as quickly as he could and again cursed the fact that he had to wear regular shoes and not combat boots. The shoes made the pain in his feet tolerable, while the boots would have killed him.

The jeep picked him up and drove him and a couple of other Marine officers to their assigned defensive position. They aroused no interest from the literal handful of people out extremely early on a Christmas morning.

Hartford's duty station was in a bunker that would be used as a backup command center if the real one was knocked out. The site was supposed to be a secret, even from the garrison, but he doubted there were very many secrets regarding Gitmo. The bunker was built into an old maintenance building close by McCalla Field. It had been sandbagged and set up during the previous crisis just two months earlier. He wondered if the Cubans knew it existed and had it zeroed in. What a comforting thought.

A dozen men were in the bunker, a captain, two lieutenants and a bunch of enlisted men. They all looked at him with apprehension on their faces and he wondered if his reflected the same.

Hell, he was supposed to inspire confidence, not fear. They were only lightly armed and the bunker was filled with communications gear. They could talk to anyone on the base. They could talk to the Pentagon if anyone was awake in that monstrous building. Hell, they could talk to the President of the United States if they wanted to. What they couldn't do was stop a major Cuban attack if one came.

Still, no one knew exactly what was going on. Only the marine garrison had been alerted, not the Navy, and that was the right way to do it. If it came to shooting, the marines were the best qualified to defend the base. The sailors, he thought derisively, still slept snug in their bunks and clutched their teddy bears to their chests. He stopped himself. That was unfair. A lot of sailors had been willing to fight the last time Gitmo was threatened two months ago. If the threat was real, they'd show up, draw weapons, and do their best.

He looked into the Bay. The destroyer anchored a half mile off shore looked like it too was sound asleep. So what was going on? No planes were taking off from either of the two airfields. Nor were any of the few armored vehicles the Marines owned on the move out of the motor pool and on to defensive positions. This was truly a half-assed alert.

He and his small command waited, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee. After a while, the dark of night began to fade and there was the hint of dawn on the horizon. In a little while they could think about going home.

Sirens began to wail.

Shit.

Cathy Malone awoke with a foul headache and to the piercing wail of sirens. What the heck was it? Was something on fire? She checked the clock on the dresser. Four-fifteen. There was the sound of distant thunder, then thunder that wasn't so distant and caused stuff on shelves to vibrate wildly like there was an earthquake. It must be quite a storm, she thought groggily.

Alice pounded on the door and opened it. Her eyes were wide with excitement. "Something big is happening. There are explosions over at the airfields. I think something must've blown up. Let's go take a look."

Cathy put a robe over her short cotton nightgown and ran outside where many of her neighbors had already begun to congregate. Their apartment building was on a low hill overlooking the bay. Below them was one airfield and across the bay was the other. A destroyer was anchored in the middle.

A jet plane shrieked overhead, flying so low that Cathy and the others actually ducked or fell to the ground. An explosion followed quickly, rocking them with its violence. Behind them, windows shattered.

"That pilot's in a load of trouble," one woman said as she picked herself up. It was Rachel Desmond. She worked for some Marine major.

"I don't think so," her husband said softly. He was another civilian worker, but one who'd retired from the navy and had seen action in World War II. "That plane's Cuban. We're under attack. This is Pearl Harbor all over again."

Cathy was stunned. She looked skyward and made out the silhouettes of other planes circling and diving over the airfields and saw others flying over the destroyer.

She grabbed Alice's arm. "Let's get dressed and see just what the heck is going to happen. I think we may be evacuated again and we'd better be dressed for it."

They had just turned to run back to the building when a massive explosion, followed by smoke and fire, erupted from the bay behind her. "That was the destroyer," someone yelled. Cathy turned. Yes, it was the destroyer. Flames were billowing from her rear. Or stern, she thought as she recalled the correct terminology. The destroyer appeared to be under way and moving slowly towards the ocean. As she watched, more planes strafed and bombed the warship, but didn't appear to cause additional serious damage.

Finally, flashing pinpoints of light from the destroyer indicated that her anti-aircraft guns were working. Her main battery opened up, sending larger shells into the sky where they exploded like fireworks. Rachel Desmond's husband cheered. "That's telling them," he exulted.

The destroyer was fighting back and that was reassuring. But the flaming ship was clearly heading for open sea. She was leaving them.

Cathy and Alice looked at each other. Evacuation? Maybe not this time. Maybe it was too late?

"I think I see something," Lance Corporal Hollis said. The road was still dark, although rays of light had begun to appear and make confusing shadows. "You want me to go out there again, lieutenant?"

"No point," Ross said. "If they are coming we'll know it soon enough."

"I think I can hear them," Sergeant Cullen said.

Andrew swallowed nervously. Suddenly, there was the rumble of thunder coming from behind him. Before he could say something to Cullen, there was the sound of shrieks in the air followed by sharper, but more savage, explosions.

"Oh Christ," muttered Cullen. "The base is getting bombed and we're about to get hit."

Andrew started to order all men to their positions when he realized that everyone was up and ready and looking to him for leadership.

"Tank!" Hollis yelled. "Damn, there's a whole bunch of them."

How many in a bunch, Andrew almost snapped, but thought better of it. One or a hundred, it didn't matter. They couldn't stop a thing with the weapons they had. He ordered his radioman to inform on the situation. He took a deep breath. The tanks were visible. There were three of them and they were followed by armored personnel carriers and trucks, and all were moving slowly but steadily down the road towards them.

And he had twenty men and an old machine gun to stop them. Now he knew how Custer felt when he saw all those damned Indians. He could see that the oncoming tanks were Russian T34s with 85mm guns. They each had a four man crew and two 7.62 machine guns along with the main gun. They weighed in at thirty-four tons and could do more than thirty miles per hour, which was all totally irrelevant considering that he had no way of stopping them. He wondered if he could do thirty-five miles an hour if one of them was chasing him.