at the Gitmo brig.
Erikson kept looking at his watch and then down the road. Suddenly he raised his hand in caution. The headlights of the truck patrolling the perimeter, diffused and yellow-glaring in the rain, passed our position in its swing around the fence. “Three minutes now,” Erikson said calmly. He gathered together his equipment.
I expected to hear the mine go off despite the distance. When the floodlights illuminating the fence went off suddenly, I was caught flatfooted. The contrasting darkness seemed overwhelming. “Run to the fence!” Erikson ordered. There was a ring in his voice. He took off like a sprinter.
I couldn’t run while juggling the load on my back and the equipment in my hands, but I kept up with Slater and Wilson, who had the same problem. Erikson was waiting for us at the foot of the fence. My eyes were beginning to adjust to the blackness. Wilson and Slater slapped the two sections of the aluminum ladder together and jammed it against the fence as though in some previous incarnation they had been foot soldiers scaling the walls of Constantinople.
“You first, Drake,” Erikson said. “Cut the barbed wire right next to an anchor point, then drop down to the other side. The other two will be right behind you. I’ll move the ladder to the other end of this fence section and cut the barbed wire again at that point as I go over so it will fall on the Cuban side of the fence. In this weather it might be a while before the missing section is noticed. Over you go!”
The top rung of the ladder reached to the lowest of the four ugly-looking barbed wire strands. I started up the ladder, balancing carefully, wire cutters in hand. Halfway up I was blinded. The floodlights had come back on, blasting away the darkness, leaving us totally exposed. I had never felt so naked in any sexual exercise.
“That’s just the auxiliary power cutting the lights in,” Erikson shouted. “The fence alarm is on another circuit. Get up that ladder, Drake!”
I went up it with a rush. The sharp blades of the wire cutter sliced through the strands of wire like so much wet spaghetti. The cut wire rasped against the metal of the fence as it fell away. The light was so intense at the top of the fence that I couldn’t see the ground below. I launched myself into the black pit, and my heavy haversack drove me to my knees when my boots hit sand. I scrambled desperately to one side and had barely made room when Wilson landed in my tracks. It took Slater longer.
Ten feet down the fence Erikson had reset the ladder. He went up it so fast his feet hardly seemed to touch the rungs. He snipped through the four strands of dangling wire in what seemed a single motion. Still standing on the ladder, he threw the wirecutters over our heads into the darkness beyond the immediate floodlit area.
Then he stepped up onto the tubular steel fence rail with both feet. He balanced for an instant, M-16 rifle in his left hand, before he squatted swiftly and with his right hand pulled up the ladder. He passed it across his body and dropped it on our side of the fence. It was an incredible feat of strength and balance. “Get rid of that;” he called before he jumped down to join us. Wilson grabbed the ladder and ran into the dark area with it.
“Single file now!” Erikson ordered when Wilson reappeared. He set out at a pace that none of us could match. He had to slow down almost at once. I brought up the rear. As much as I was laboring myself, I was constantly running up on Slater’s heels. Slater’s wheezing sounded as if he were close to exhaustion. My own mouth was full of cotton before Erikson stopped in a shallow depression.
“Everything’s fine,” he told us as we huddled close to him to hear his voice above the storm. “We’re in an area called the defensive zone. We won’t reach a Cuban outpost for almost a mile.”
“This is no-man’s land?” Wilson asked.
“No. It’s guarded by a regimental combat team of the second Marine Division from Lejeune, and they’re tough boys. The hubbub inside the fence should keep them tied down, though. Remember that everyone is looking the other way. No one’s supposed to be moving away from the fence. The system isn’t set up for it. If we clear this area within the next half hour, we’re in good shape.”
Slater was staring around into the blustery darkness. “I can’t see anything except the shapes of a few hills,” he complained.
“Nothing to see except troops manning static defensive positions,” Erikson said.
“Machine gun posts?”
“Yes, but the mine fields are more dangerous.”
Mine fields.
It was like a left hook to the solar plexus.
Erikson realized he had made a mistake. “They’re inert until activated during a full red alert,” he added hastily.
“Let’s hope we rate only a small pink alert,” Wilson rasped.
“We’ll keep on a track halfway between the high ground and the low,” Erikson went on. “Let’s move out.”
We pressed on for another ten minutes. Erikson set a circuitous course across the rocky hills sparsely covered with scrubby, soggy cactus and guinea grass. It was tiring walking with one foot lower on the hillside than the other all the time. I kept bumping into Slater. He not only was slowing down physically but he was trying to watch too carefully where he put his feet down.
My boots were soaked and I was just as wet under my poncho from free-flowing perspiration. “No talkin’ from this point.” The word came down the line. Slater’s relay to me consisted of breathless grunts.
Erikson led us higher up the slopes. The haversack on my back seemed twice as heavy as when I’d first slipped into its straps. We advanced steadily for what seemed twice as long as the first interval but probably wasn’t. When our snakelike progress stopped suddenly, Slater sank to his knees.
Erikson came back down the line and put his lips to my ear. “Don’t let them panic. I’m going to reconnoiter.” He looked at his watch, deposited the backpack radio at my feet, and slithered away.
I thought I’d get questions that I wouldn’t have been able to answer, but even Wilson seemed satisfied just to rest. When Erikson returned after the longest quarter-hour I ever remember, Slater was up off his knees, but his color was pasty. “We’re about a hundred yards from the Maximum Leader’s happy hunting ground,” Erikson whispered. “Right in front of us there’s a fence of
We started off again. The ground underfoot had changed from sandy soil to sandy clay. Great gobs of it clung to my boots. Erikson proceeded more and more cautiously. The slight rest had hindered me almost as much as it had helped. My breathing had improved, but my muscles had started to tighten up.
Erikson dropped to his hands and knees. We all followed suit. Even above the whistling of the wind I could hear the sound of water rushing down a hillside. The sound grew louder as we crawled forward, and then one by one we drew up alongside Erikson and stared down a slippery-looking bank at a creek bubbling alongside a dark mass. Erikson took my right hand and extended it. I touched cold, wet, barbed wire. Beneath it the storm-swollen creek had eroded a crater.
Erikson flattened out on his stomach, slid down the slope, and wriggled under the wire. It was a tight fit with his backpack, but he made it. From the way he went at it I could see that he had done it before to try the passage. Wilson followed him, then a laboring Slater, then me. I hadn’t thought it possible to feel any wetter. I was wrong.
When I regained my feet after scraping my belly button on the muddy creek bottom slithering under the wire, Chico Wilson was staring at the ground. Two figures were prostrate in the mud. Wilson turned one over with his foot. Even in the semiblackness it was possible to make out the dark-skinned, bearded face and wide, glassy eyes. The movement of the body showed that it had a broken neck.
“They stumbled onto me in the dark,” Erikson said. “It might be a break for us. If we’re challenged, Chico, sound off in Spanish and we might pass for this patrol.”
“Wouldn’t there be a password?” Slater asked. He was still staring down at the bodies.
“Fake it,” Erikson said crisply. “All we’ll need is a few seconds to get the jump on them. Weapons at the ready from here on. Safeties on, though. An accidental shot after a slip in this gumbo could unshoe the mare.”
Once more he started off into the windy rain, again angling toward higher ground.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
