Hawke (21 page)

The Russian chopper plunged from the Caribbean heavens, falling, sideslipping, and twisting all at the same time. The instrument panel was a blurred nightmare of wildly spinning needles. The terrain warning alarm was howling. The screaming tail rotor blade was about to go. Without that blade, the chopper was lost.

They were moments from entering the “crescent of death,” namely, the failure of forward velocity and total loss of control of the helicopter. Lose your tail rotor and the chopper begins to rotate. Because of gyroscopic action, it begins to swing like a pendulum. Your chances of crashing vertically, coming down on your skids, are reduced dramatically. Which is bad because, as Manso well knew, you might actually survive a vertical crash. But if any part of its main rotor blade touches solid ground, the chopper would just do a flaming cartwheel into the jungle.

All these thoughts went through Manso’s head. In seconds it would be beyond man’s, or machine’s, ability to recover. They were plunging down through two thousand feet, with maybe a minute to live.

Castro’s hold on the control stick was unshakable. For an ailing man in his late seventies, his grip was iron.

Manso had no choice.

He pulled the slim stiletto from the sheath attached to his right leg. He showed the Maximum Leader the blade, giving him just enough time to register what was about to happen to him and release the control stick.

“Let it go!” Manso shouted. “Now!”

“I don’t negotiate with traitors!” Castro shouted back, thick white spittle forming at the corners of his mouth. “Fuck you!”

When Castro did not remove his hand, Manso jammed the blade down into his muscular thigh with all the force he could muster. Blood spurted from Castro’s wound, spraying the instrument cluster and the leader’s fatigues. It wasn’t mortal. Manso had deliberately avoided the femoral artery. Still, sticking a blade in a man’s leg down to the bone takes a lot of the fuck-you out of him.

Castro howled in pain, releasing his hold on the control stick. He looked down at his bloody leg in shocked disbelief. Manso yanked the knife out of the leader’s thigh and threw it clattering to the cockpit floor between his foot pedals.

He then grabbed the blood-covered control and hauled back on it, twisting hard left. The chopper kept plunging for a few desperate seconds as Manso worked the controls, cursing and praying at the same time. There was now a big green mountain in his immediate future. With seconds to live, he wrestled the beast, twisting, tugging, pumping. His only chance was to drop the helicopter as rapidly as possible. And hope to come down vertically.

Suddenly, he felt it responding and stabilizing. He had it under control. Still breathing hard, he banked and started climbing, with the mountain still looming massively before him. Too late? His skids were brushing the treetops as Manso held back on the stick, holding his breath, his heart exploding in his chest. He was waiting for the shuddering crunch of the undercarriage hitting solid wood, which would bring him crashing into the face of the mountain.

It didn’t happen.

He gained a few hundred feet of breathing room, banked hard right, and found himself in clear air. He took a peek at Castro. The man was obviously in shock. He was losing a fair amount of blood and had gone a deathly shade of gray. His eyes were cloudy, out of focus.

“Comandante,
I will radio for emergency medical to stand by for our landing. Press your finger into the wound. Hold on. We should be on the ground at
Telaraña
in ten minutes.”

He got on the radio and made the request.

“Everything okay up there, Colonel?” the tense voice in his earphones said.

“Sí! Viva Cuba!”
Manso responded.

Castro was silent and remained so for the short balance of the flight. Ever the survivor, he’d wrapped his own belt around his thigh and cinched it tight, staunching the bleeding.

The sun was dipping below the western horizon when Manso flared up and prepared to land. A large concrete structure, only recently completed, stood astride a wide river, flowing out to the sea. Now the giant structure was bathed in pure white light. Manso had not seen it since its completion and the mere sight of it gave him enormous satisfaction.

To a spy plane or satellite it could be anything. A convention hall, a movie theater. Better yet, a ballet theater. The Borzoi ballet. This huge building would house the world’s largest and deadliest submarine.

An encircled red H, newly painted on the broad, flat roof of the building marked the helicopter landing pad. As Manso hovered over it, he could see a squadron of heavily armed men forming up into a solid perimeter around the pad.

Manso turned to Castro.

“On behalf of our entire crew, let me be the first to welcome you to
Telaraña, Comandante,”
Manso said when the skids were solidly down. “You will notice a few changes since your last visit.” The Maximum Leader grunted but said nothing. Two soldiers approached the helicopter at a run from either side as Manso shut down the engines. They pulled open the doors and the pilot and his passenger stepped out onto the brilliantly illuminated pad. Castro limped some twenty yards, head held high, glaring at the soldiers who ringed the chopper. No one around the perimeter said a word.

“Lower your weapons!” a defiant Fidel Castro shrieked at the soldiers. “I said lower your fucking weapons!”

Without a word, and only out of respect, every soldier lowered his gun.

“El jefe
needs immediate medical attention,” Manso said to his brother Juanito, who had come forward to embrace him. “He has lost a lot of blood.”

“Sí, mi hermano,”
Juanito de Herreras said. “The emergency medics are on the way. Welcome and well done.”

Juanito called to Castro. “There is someone most anxious to speak to you,
Comandante,”
he said. “Here he comes now.”

The formation of soldiers parted and allowed a man onto the pad. He strode toward Manso, Juanito, and Castro, smiling. He was young and handsome, and bore a striking resemblance to someone Castro had not seen in over thirty years.

“Comandante,”
Manso said to Castro, “may I present the new
presidente
of Cuba?”

“Bienvenidos,”
Fulgencio Batista said.

It was the grandson of the man Castro had overthrown more than thirty years earlier. The new
presidente
was to be Fulgencio Batista’s
grandson
!

Fidel Castro shot Manso a look of palpable hatred.

This was simply more irony than he could stand.

Gomez ducked inside the cool gloom of St. Mary’s Cathedral. It was the Naval Air Station’s oldest and most beautiful church.

It was four o’clock in the afternoon, hot as hell out in the sun, and he was supposed to be at the pistol range. He’d slept in all morning, then had a long liquid lunch and decided to blow off target practice. Brewskis and bullets don’t mix, he knew that much. Hell, he had a couple of missing toes to prove it.

He’d been blowing off a lot of stuff lately. He’d even spent another few nights in the brig after a stupid fight he got into with a noncom who’d called him a dumb spic in the mess hall. He couldn’t remember who’d started it, but he’d finished it. Look at it this way. He went to the brig. The noncom went to the infirmary. So, you gotta ask yourself. Who won?

Gomez walked quickly up the left side of the nave and entered the confessional booth. As soon as he was seated, the small partition opened and he could see the silhouette of Father Menendez through the screen.

“Father, forgive me, for I have sinned,” Gomez said. “It has been six months since my last confession.”

Gomez took a deep breath and tried to get his act together. He realized that he was literally shaking. He shook out a few Tic Tacs and popped them into his mouth. He probably smelled like a goddamn brewery. His mouth was dry as dust, too. He’d woken up feeling like a lizard lying on a hot rock.

“Have you had sex outside of your marriage?” the priest asked.

Sex?

Sex had been one of the last things on his mind for nearly a month. But this Menendez, he always wanted to hear about sex. He steered every confession that way. He always asked if you had “spilled your seed.”

Gomer was worried about much more important things than screwing some
chiquita
and spilling any goddamn seed. Rita had sent him to church to talk about his drinking. His “violence.” What lovely Rita peter maid didn’t know was that his drinking was the result of a few
underlying problems
.

Problem, name it. Solution, beer. Secret of a happy and successful life.

The nuns at the Catholic schools he’d gone to in Miami always said you should treat your body like a temple. In the last few months, Gomez had been treating his more like an amusement park. And, lately, the combination of beer, Cuban rum, and tranks he’d been on was starting to get to him in some fairly scary ways.

He put his hands together as if in prayer and squeezed them between his knees to stop the shaking.

He began his confession.

“Father, I—” He stopped. “Father, give me a second—please. I’m praying.”

And the truth of it was that he was praying.

At six o’clock on that very morning, Gomez had been sitting in his small kitchen with a gun in his mouth. He was staring out the window at the sunrise. He’d been up all night. There was an empty rum bottle on the kitchen table. A lamp cast its yellow glow on an unfinished letter to Rita and a picture of him and his family.

The barrel of the gun in his mouth tasted like the Hoppe’s gun oil he remembered as smelling pretty good when he was a kid. Didn’t taste all that great, however. Felt like his teeth were coated with it. Pretty goddamn ironic. This was the exact same revolver his grandfather carried at the stupid Bay of Pigs. Grandpa gave the gun to Gomez upon his graduation from St. Ignatius High School. The pistol held six bullets. Gomez had loaded one bullet into the cylinder and spun it a few times.

He had already pulled the trigger four times unsuccessfully.

Click. He pulled it again.

Nada.

How lucky can one guy get? Five pulls, five misses?
Five out of five? Nada?
Come on. Nobody got that lucky. Maybe somebody up there was trying to tell him something, he told himself. The hell you going to do when you get a message like this, he’d like to know. He took the gun out of his mouth and put it down on the kitchen countertop. He reached over to the little TV and snapped off CNN, which he’d only been sort of half listening to, anyway. Something about Cuba.

The sun was up now.

Everybody in the house was still asleep. He could use a couple of winks himself, couldn’t he? Maybe feel better when he woke up. Unless he dreamed about that damned teddy bear again. The big white one standing in the corner in the little pink room with the white lace curtains.

Goddamn teddy bear was driving him crazy. Ever since the birthday party. He’d imagined it would be easy, handing the bear to the little girl. Walking away. It wasn’t like that. Oh, no. She didn’t let him just walk away.

Little Cindy had laughed when he tore the paper off and showed it to her. Her eyes were wide open, just looking at that bear like it was her favorite present of her whole life or something. She’d stood up on her tippy-toes and given Gomer a big smacker. She hugged that bear to her chest and never let go of it all afternoon. Even though it was almost as big as she was.

Then, when it was finally time to go, Ginny Nettles, who was Fightin’ Joe’s wife and the kid’s mother, had come up to him. Thanked him for his generosity. Said what a wonderful present it was, how it was just what Cindy wanted. Told him she’d like to have Amber and Tiffany spend the night at their house with little Cindy. His own daughters. Right there in the Nettles kid’s room.

Sleeping right there in the same room with the big white teddy bear.

And the
bad
thing, the
really
bad thing, was he’d said to her, “Sure, why not?”

Nothing had happened, of course. That’s not how it was going to work. That was definitely not the Big Plan. Still, he never felt right about himself after that night. He would lie there next to Rita, wide-awake, thinking about how he’d let his two kids sleep in that kid’s room with the bear. He tried to get his mind off of it. Think about his million dollars waiting for him in Switzerland. Growing like mushrooms in the dark. A dark vault. With a big white bear in the corner, its eyes glowing bright red.

Rita had finally thrown him out of the house three days prior to this little visit with the padre.

He’d come home pretty messed up that night and she’d gotten more pissed than he’d ever seen her. Gave him living hell. So he’d smacked her a couple of times to shut her up. Nothing serious. No
stitches,
for chrissakes. No broken anything. Nothing to get your panties in an uproar and kicked out of your own friggin’ house over.

She’d be sorry. Wait till she found out how rich her soon-to-be ex-husband was. That would be something. He could see himself driving up in a brand new Corvette Z06, telling her about the bank in Switzerland, the money. But, hey, just stopped by to say good-bye. See ya.

Hey, way cool plate for his new ’Vette.

SEE YA

He was now living on a pullout sofa. In the upstairs apartment of his buddy Sparky Rollins, one of the guards up on the tower. It wasn’t so bad. He could watch dirty movies on TV. Drink all the beer he wanted. Eat stuff with his hands. Burp, fart, leave the toilet seat up. Hang at the USO until closing time. Nobody ragging his ass all day and night, right? Not a bad life.

Want to hear something funny? Kind of life he was living? He woke up one morning, went into the head to pee, and noticed his pecker had turned orange. Talk about freaked out! He was dialing 911 when he remembered. He’d fallen asleep watching
Debbie Does Denver
or
Tina Does the Tri-Cities
or one of those—
and he’d been eating Chee-tos!
Yes!

Mystery of the orange pecker disease solved, Sherlock. Life was good.

So why had he snuck back inside his house last night? He’d used the key under the mat to let himself in through the kitchen door. Opened a bottle of Mount Gay and had a few. Gone and got his gun out of the garage and stuck it in his mouth. Pulled the trigger five friggin’ times. Man. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. You talk about dodging a bullet.

After he decided not to pull the trigger that one more time, he’d put the gun down and started crying. Staring at the picture of his kids. Watching the sunrise. Crying like a goddamn baby.

He’d gone upstairs to Rita. Gotten down on his knees beside the bed and begged her to take him back. Said how sorry he was and how he’d never hit her again. She said she thought he was sick. Crazy in the head. She’d made him swear to go to church and talk to Father Menendez about whatever it was that was wrong with him. He’d wanted to crawl in bed with her so bad he’d said yes.

And here he was, just like he promised.

“Father, I’m afraid I’ve done a terrible thing,” Gomez said in the confession booth. “I don’t know if treason is a mortal sin or not, but it’s a bitch all right—sorry, I didn’t mean to say that word—it’s a real bad thing, I know that.”

“Tell me your sins,” the priest said.

For about half a minute, he actually thought he was going to be doing just that. And that’s when he forgot about the bear with the bomb in his belly and thought about the million dollars again.

“Sorry, Father, I guess I’m not feeling all that great right now,” he said. “I’ll catch you later.”

He stood up and left the confessional, hurried out of the church, and got in his broiling car.

Christ, he could use a cold one, he thought, starting the Yugo. He’d seen a cool Corvette ad in one of his magazines. Showed a guy in a red ’Vette, and in big type it said, “Know that warm feeling of belonging you have owning a Yugo? We don’t either.”