Nelson DeMille - The Cuban Affair

She didn’t reply.

“We could get arrested tonight and executed in the morning.”

She laughed but it was a nervous laugh. Clearly she wasn’t ready.

I was about to drop the subject but she said, “Get the check.”

“And a taxi?”

“And a room.”

“Wait right here.”

I moved quickly to the front desk and inquired about a room. The clerk sensed that I was on a pepino mission, and he said that only luxury rooms were available, and I had my choice of four — the Errol Flynn room, which sounded exciting, the Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra room, where I could also get laid, the Walt Disney room, which might be a little weird, or the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan room, which sounded like a winner, for five hundred CUCs — more than I had in my wallet. But the clerk wanted me to get laid — or he wanted to pocket some cash — so he said he’d take part of the payment in American dollars, plus ten percent. Why is free sex so expensive?

I had to show him my passport and visa, and I signed in as “Dan MacDick,” which was either a Freudian slip or good tradecraft. He handed over a big brass key whose tag said: 232, Tarzan. That’s me.

I returned to the terrace, where Sara was downing another daiquiri. I asked, “Do you need a few more to do this?”

“It relaxes me.”

I put an American fifty on the cocktail table. “Ready?”

She nodded and stood.

We walked into the lobby and got on the elevator, neither of us saying anything.

On the second floor, we followed the hall sign to 232. The brass plaque on the door read: JOHNNY WEISSMULLER, TARZAN.

Sara either didn’t notice or had no comment. I unlocked the door and we went into the room. I turned on a light, which revealed a big space whose décor was sort of eclectic, with a few tacky touches such as the leopard skin on the floor and the tiger-striped bedspread. Maybe I should have asked for the Walt Disney room.

Anyway, there was a bar, thank God, and I said, “What would you like to drink?”

Sara seemed to have zoned out and was staring out at the water.

I opened the bar fridge and found a split of Moët and popped the cork, then filled two flutes and handed one to her.

She took it and stared at the bubbles.

I’m not pushy, but Major Johnson was in command now, so I had to strike the right balance between romance and sex. I turned on the radio and found some soft Son guitar music, which was sort of romantic.

Sara seemed to come out of her zone and I raised my glass. “To us.”

We clinked and drank. I asked her to dance, and we danced to the rhythmic guitars. Her body felt good against mine.

She said softly, “I don’t just jump into bed with any man.”

“Me neither.”

Anyway, the clothes came off as we danced and drank champagne, and we wound up in the shower together. I saw that Sara had a bikini cut and she sunbathed topless. You can learn a lot about people in the shower.

She ran her finger over the scars on my chest. “This makes me sad.”

“Could have been worse.”

She explored further, one hand cupping my bolas and the other wrapped around my pepino.

“It’s all there,” I assured her.

“Put it in a safe place.”

I grasped her buttocks and slid inside her.

She put her hands on my shoulders then arched her back, and the water ran over her face and breasts as I got into the slow, rhythmic beat of “Chan Chan” coming from the radio.

Olé!

Later, in bed, Sara wrapped her arms and legs around me and whispered, “I’m happy, but now I’m also... frightened.”

“That’s okay.”

“Last week, I lived for the day I could return to Cuba and steal the money from under their ugly noses... Now, I have... maybe something else to live for.”

“I had the same thought.”

“Were you frightened when you were there?”

“Every day.”

She stayed quiet awhile, then said, “I don’t want them to capture me.”

“I understand.” Same in Afghanistan. If you fell into the hands of the Taliban, you’d wish you were dead. I also remembered what Carlos had said about Villa Marista prison, and I was sure conditions there hadn’t improved much.

She cuddled up to me. “It would be nice to be rich in Miami with you. But it would also be nice to just be in Miami with you.”

“That would be nice.”

She rolled out of bed, went to the bar, and poured two more glasses of champagne. She noticed the key on the bar and asked, “Why is this called the Tarzan room?”

“Come here and I’ll show you.”

If you fell into the hands of the Taliban, you’d wish you were dead.

They’d cut off your balls, then slice off your face with razor knives. And they’d hold your head and make you look in a mirror at your own faceless red skull. And you couldn’t close your eyes, because you’d have no eyelids. And then they’d make you watch the dogs eat your face and your balls. Then they’d give you a pat on the back and let you go.

And that was why you’d blow your brains out before you let yourself get captured by them.

It was my first tour, before I got promoted to captain, and I was leading my motorized platoon, about forty men from the 5th Stryker Brigade Combat Team in Maiwand, operating out of FOB Ramrod, into a moonscape of dust, dirt, and rocks, under a blazing sun.

The lead vehicle, a Bradley recon, got hit by an IED, then all hell broke loose and we were taking RPGs and automatic weapons fire from the piles of rock on both sides of the road. We dismounted quickly and moved away from the vehicles that were getting hit. I took a round in my body armor but kept moving, and we got flat and began returning fire.

There was very little cover or concealment, and it took me about ten seconds to realize we’d been caught in a well-planned ambush by a large enemy force, and there was the distinct possibility that we were all going to die. Kill the wounded first, then yourself.

Half our eight armored vehicles and Humvees were ablaze, and one exploded and I could feel the heat on my back.

They tell you in tactics class that the only way out of an ambush is to charge into the ambush. This is bullshit.

I got on the horn and ordered the platoon to move north along the road and begin flanking the ambush.

The Taliban are tough and sometimes fearless, but rarely smart, and never very good marksmen. They fire their AK-47s on full automatic like kids playing with toy guns. Their hits are lucky, but hits are hits, and a few of my men went down, but the medic reported light wounds.

The desert wind was from the south and we fired and maneuvered north, under the cover of black diesel smoke and smoke marker grenades until we were about a hundred meters out of the kill zone. Then we began flanking the ambush positions, moving from rock pile to rock pile, getting around them until they realized we’d turned the tables on them.

The crews of the undamaged Bradley Fighting Vehicles had remounted and were providing supporting fire with their 7.62mm machine guns and 25mm rapid-fire cannons.

The Taliban began withdrawing, dashing among the rock piles. I could see that they outnumbered us, but I ordered the platoon to pursue, though I knew that the turned-around ambush could easily turn into a secondary ambush, a.k.a. a trap. It’s a game. No rules, but lots of strategy. Offense is the best defense, so we pushed on across the desert valley into thickening piles of rock that had rolled down from the nearby mountains.

My platoon sergeant strongly suggested we break off the pursuit and wait for the helicopter gunships to even the odds. But I was full of adrenaline and all pissed off, and I’d led a charge into the rock field, totally oblivious to the horseshoe-shaped ambush that awaited us.