Storm Clouds Over Havana by Mike Marino (novel24 .txt) 📕

The Taino know the mountain trails and are excellent scouts and observers watching for any out of place movements in their domain, such as a Cuban Army column advancing towards the rebel camps. They had been persecuted by the government economically and shared a kinship with the island peasantry and Castro’s camp. They cared not for wealth, nor politics, nor technological progress, but mainly, they care not for El Presidente. This is the bond that make them the unsung heroes in this unfolding military melodrama that is changing with a fury on a daily basis. I am a betting man, but I bet even Studs Terkel wouldn’t know who to put his money on in this contested contest.

Pilar noticed the change in me first. I was taking sides. My objectivity had been compromised because I was too close to the nucleus of Castro. Something, Sean Donovan and the other CIA brainiacs hadn’t forseen either. I was not a cold, hard as steel trained 007 agent ready to kill on command as my training would have taught me. I was a writer, out for a story, an assignment for a newspaper syndicate that was seeing both sides and to me one side had a shine to it, a humanity to it, oh hell, call it what you will … “a cause” while the other side lacked humanity and oppressed the people for the profiteering of the government fat cats with the rich support of the American Mafia and the intelligence apparatus of the CIA. A triumvirate of fear, intimidation, and arrests that created the present pressure cooker of revolution that only had two options …. That was to fight and win...or fight and die...for the sake of my beautiful Pilar and myself, I placed my money on the roulette wheel’s red squares to fight and win….I wanted to grow old with her in Cuba. I know what Hemingway felt now. Cuba was in my blood....Pilar filled my heart....

Dateline: Cuba July 11, 1958 6:34 PM Filed by Mickey Russo, Special Correspondent

The rebel held area  of the Sierra Maestra region came under attack early this morning as the Batista government’s summer offensive “Operation  Verano” was launched by the nation’s military forces under the command of General Cantillo, a former college classmate of Rebel leader Fidel Castro

Gen. Cantillo’s main battalion led an amphibious assault at the tiny village of La Plata near the river of the same name on the Oriente coast, while a simultaneous attack from 300  land based troops was launched from a region north of the rebel camp in the mountains in an effort to cut any escape route for the rebel  forces.

The amphibious forces landed without incident and proceeded  inland to meet the advancing troops  from the north to capture the vastly outnumbered rebel fighters.

Information regarding the surprise assault was obtained a week ago by informants in Havana who passed the information along to one of Castro’s intelligence agents, known only as “Victoria”.

As the Cuban army began the advance into the mountains, rebel forces under the command of Castro and one of his generals, a Che Guevara managed to delay the advance through a series of areas filled with landmines that took a heavy toll on government troops.

Once clear of the minefields, rebel forces including the newly trained Female Battalion ambushed the surprised Cuban soldiers who began a fast retreat back through the minefields  under a rain of constant deadly machine gun fire, grenade attacks and small arms fire. Added to deadly mixture, the retreating Cuban army  was under the rifle sights of  rebel snipers attacking them along the way with pinpoint accuracy.

The soldiers who were able to run the gauntlet found that they were now in the false calm of the eye of hurricane of combat, and as a result  are now surrounded. In a desperate attempt for survival they are digging trenches awaiting  help  from reinforcements as their supply of ammunition must be almost depleted.  

….End of Transmission …

Memo To: Sean Donovan, CIA, Langley; Buster Scalisa, CIA, Havana; Blake O’Hara, NYC

During the evening of July 9, there was an assassination attempt on the life of General Castro. The plot was uncovered by “Victoria”, the same fighter who also gathered the intel on the Batista summer offensive attack that has suffered a disastrous setback on day one from an inferior number of rebel troops. Inferior in number only, but superior in tactics and marksmanship.

The assassination attempt was unsuccessfully attempted by  a young Cuban from Havana, a former waiter working for Meyer Lansky who had joined the rebel camp two weeks ago. As he was attempting to get close to Castro’s hut to carry out his mission, Victoria and Pilar were waiting in the dark to catch him in the act. At one point he pulled out his pistol and was mere feet from Castro’s hut when Victoria yelled out to him. He was startled and as he turned to face her, gun in hand, she did what I would have done...she shot him.

Castro, Che, Raul and others ran outside of their tents to find him lying bleeding on the ground. Victoria can’t spell “wound” very well, but as a marksman what can you expect.

Castro called for medical help as he wanted to question the young man as to who sent him, but on the way to the medical tent he passed out and passed away, but not before his dying breath expelled the name “Lansky”

Find out if you can what Lansky has do with this. I can’t believe he would get involved on this level.   As you can see...things are heating up in the old camp. Assassination attempt, now we’re under attack by government troops. Blake you owe me big time if I ever get back to New York.

PS: Do me a favor. Get money from the bottom of Sean’s Cracker Jack CIA Box and pay off my tab at Toots Shorr’s and buy a round for the boys on me...and tell Mailer….now I know what ‘fug’ means and I didn’t get it from his book, and my book will have more ‘fugs’ than his, or at least if I survive this assignment….my fug is bigger than his fug!

Personal Diary Entry July, 12, 1958 Early Morning Sunrise in the Camp.

It’s been quite a few days. I need a cold beer badly. Beer is OK here, but no refrigeration so room temperature, which here means a beer with a head and a heat index reading is the best we can do. I never saw a man shot and killed before. Pretty incredible, but after a day of combat carnage yesterday death takes on a mystique all its own.  A certain unreality. I feel numb to it..as if it is happening in a dream, my dream and I observe and don’t view with anymore qualms than I do when attending the fights at Madison Square Gardens, except, when you’re down for the count in a revolution, you’re down for the count...forever. That is the reality of my unreality.

Pilar is on overdrive. Helping to derail an assassination attempt is heady business for a young college girl who has traded in her pen and hand calculator for a semi automatic rifle and can lob a grenade with such accurately she could be a Karl Marxman Valedictorian at the University of Dissent during this season of discontent.

She and Victoria are closer now than they ever were in college as students, but am worried now. Pilar’s politics now involve bullets and guns, whereas before it was pamphlets and protest. I’m afraid Victoria has convinced her that dying for a cause makes you a martyr. I’m in love with her and want her to be the mother of our children, not the martyr of a cause.    

The one good thing that is coming from the past two days is that she has primed her sexual pump on all this combat action. Her vagina seems to respond to victory in a big way. In bed last night I was with a Cuban panther, dark, sleek, and sexy. She was no longer a wild eyed college idealist….Pilar was now exerting  the  power in bed. Determined, demanding, focused, sweaty and sexual.  She was the revolution...I was the conquered. To the victor go the spoils….she was the victor...I was happy to be the spoils. I told her, “Revolution seems to suit you, yes?” She smiled while sitting astride me as I lay prone, happy, “Fuck you Mickey. Surrender, now!” and laughed. I had to laugh too.  “I’m yours, take me to your leader!” I cried. She looked at me slyly put her fingers to my lips leaning over and said in that raspy voice of hers that drives me wild…”I am the leader!”

Dateline: July 22, 2958 Sierra Maestra, Cuba 10:30 AM by Special Correspondent Mickey Russo

Cuban military forces sent to La Plata to quell the insurrection of the rebels led by Fidel Castro surrendered unconditionally yesterday afternoon. Major Jose Fernando Quevedo, commander of Battalion 18 that led the amphibious attack against Castro’s army 11 days ago from the beachhead at La Plata, a small fishing village on the coast, was subject to days of shelling and small arms and rifle fire when the battalion became completely surrounded and trapped by rebel forces.

Che Guevara, one of the rebel commanders used loudspeakers to urge the major to surrender. The major finally agreed after receiving a personal letter from Fidel Castro that his men would not be harmed in anyway and would be turned over to Red Cross representatives in Santiago de Cuba. The major then agreed and surrendered himself and his troops quietly yesterday afternoon.

In the final tally, Battalion 18 lost 71 men dead and  wounded, while 400 surrendered to the rebels along a cache of weapons and ammunition. While many of the Cubans were released to Red Cross officials, others, including Major Quevedo switched sides and  joined forces with the rebel army to help bring down the Batista regime. This could be the turning point as rebel victories are mounting and government forces are losing on many battlefronts not to mention in prestige in the international press.

Revolution does make for strange bedfellows.

There is still the matter of Battalion 17 who attacked from the north while the amphibious assault was