CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

FROM THE AIR, THE forty-five square miles of land and water that made up the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay seemed to sparkle back the sunlight. Arranged like a thumb and forefinger around the bay, it was America’s oldest overseas base, having been acquired in the Cuban-American treaty of 1903. It was also the only American base inside a communist country—and a sharp stick poked in Castro’s eye.

Aboard the C-54 military transport as it turned upwind on final were, in addition to Boehm and me and Frog-turned-spook Smarty Marty Martinez, fourteen Cuban patriots trained in demolitions, communications, escape-and-evasion, and survival. Our Cubans, along with other teams of saboteurs and spies, had been inserting onto the island for the past several weeks to prepare the way for a landing, their mission to blow up roads, bridges, and railroads when the invasion began.

“Listen to your radios,” spooks instructed during a team briefing held at Naval Station Little Creek the night before. “You will hear the codes that tell you where and when to go into action.”

Boehm, Marty, and I had strict orders not to accompany the Cuban teams when they infiltrated. Roy was pissed off about the prohibition, grousing his usual “fucks” and “cocksuckers,” but there was little we could do about it. There’d be hell to pay internationally if Castro captured an American inside the country blowing up something.

The C-54 rolled off the runway and immediately into a hangar. The door closed against possible spies. The base commander met us to ensure everything went smoothly. Boehm and I hootched up at the BOQ with Smarty Marty and other CIA operatives while a covered deuce-and-a-half truck transported our Cubans to a barracks isolated on a corner of the base. Boehm and I weren’t essential to the mission, but we had insisted on going along to Guantanamo in moral support of “our” Cubans.

There was little to do for the next couple of days except cool our pipes and stay out of sight. Finally, we got a go for that night. A Jeep drove Boehm and me to the Cuban barracks as soon as the sun went down. Smarty Marty and another agent had arrived for last-minute briefings. The Cubans seemed in high spirits as they made final preparations, having been issued C-rations, weapons, radios, maps, and other gear. The plan called for them to split into two seven-man teams for insertion at two separate locations.

Teams assembled dockside where a Navy landing craft and an eighty-five-foot open-sea rescue “crash boat,” an AVR, waited. The crash boat bristled with twin 50-caliber machine guns and a 20mm anti-aircraft gun. Nothing said we couldn’t fight back if attacked while in international waters.

It was a moonless night so far. Dark settled around the two boats as though all light in the world was shut off. We had to feel our way up the gangplank and onto the landing craft; not a single light penetrated the darkness, not even the pinprick glow of a cigarette. No one spoke.

The boat low-throttled to sea followed by the crash boat running overwatch. I rode the bow with the salt air in my nostrils and the warm breeze off the tropic island brushing across my cheeks. Boehm and I spoke in low tones. Smarty Marty took the bridge with the captain. The Cubans waited silently on deck gripping M-14 rifles and huddled around backpacks full of dynamite and C-4 plastic explosives, radios, ammo, rations, and survival gear. Once deposited, they must hide out in swamps and in the mountains until they received word to sweep into action.

I wondered if they felt as nervous as I had the night I ran my first mission with UDT-5 in Korea.

The Sierra Maestra Mountains, Fidel Castro’s old refuge in Oriente Province, rose dark and irregular off to starboard. So far so good. Even fishermen avoided these seas after dark in fear of being fired upon by Soviet patrol boats.

Our boats pulled alongside each other and pulled throttle. Infiltrators along with Marty and Boehm silently transferred to the crash boat with its shallower draft in order to pull nearer the shoreline. Rubber rafts, ready to go on the crash boat, provided the last leg into wooded coves and hidden swamps. My duty was to remain aboard the first craft and use it as a command ship until Boehm and the spook returned. I solemnly shook hands with my Cubans as they departed the ship.

“When we meet again, Commander Bone,” Eduardo said, “it will be in a free Cuba.”

“Ojalá que es verdad,” I replied.

I gripped Boehm’s arm as he prepared to drop over the side of the landing craft into the crash boat. I felt it necessary to issue a final warning.

“Roy, stay on the boat and keep your sorry ass off Cuban soil. All Khrushchev needs to start an international incident and fuck up the landing is capture a U.S. personnel.”

We dropped the first team of seven near the mountains about forty miles east of Gitmo. The other seven infiltrators went into an inlet called the Bay of Pigs.

“Remember the story I told about killing the shark?” Boehm reminded his guerrillas before they vanished into the darkness. “Don’t give yourself away until you have the element of surprise. Then—”

A soft Spanish chuckle. “And then—fuck them over. Right, jefe?”

“Fuck ’em good. Fierce and deadly.”

Aboard the command boat we waited out a time interval listening for gunfire or some other indication the infiltrators may have been compromised. Smarty Marty finally sighed with relief. Nothing out there but waves washing against shoreline and the occasional night bird.

“They’re in,” he said. “Let’s get out of here before daylight and we’re spotted.”

The next day Boehm and I hopped the C-54 back to UDT-21 at Little Creek. I couldn’t help feeling that we had deserted our guerrillas in not accompanying them ashore. I knew Roy felt the same way.

“I wonder if we’ll ever see those poor bastards again,” he said.