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they both started to laugh.
Chapter 38
Rourke opened the hatch on the DC-7 and looked out across the airfield. He
could tell General Santiago by the ensignia on the collars of his G.I.-style
fatigues; but the only face Rourke recognized was that of Natalia. He looked
at her eyes, saw the recognition there and then threw down the ladder.
"Come on, Sissy," he said to the girl standing a little behind him.
Rourke started down the ladder to the runway, helping the girl. As Rourke
turned to start across the field toward Santiago and Natalia, he stopped, his
hands frozen away from his body, frozen in the movement of sweeping up toward
the twin Detonics pistols under his coat. There was a semicircle of men, Cuban
soldiers, with AK-47s in their hands, their muzzles pointed at him.
Rourke looked beyond the emotionless faces of the soldiers and across the
airfield. Santiago seemed to be poorly disguising a smile but Rourke couldn't
read Natalia's eyes. There was a command shouted by Santiago, the words
something Rourke recognized. "Arrest that man. Seize that woman and the
airplane and its pilot immediately!"
Rourke cocked his head slightly toward Natalia as she took Santiago's arm,
hugging it to her it seemed. Her eyes just stared ahead. Coldly, Rourke
thought.
"What's happening?" Sissy Wiznewski asked, her voice low, trembling.
Rourke reached out watching the soldiers watching him and took her hand,
saying to her, "I'll let you know as soon as I find out myself. It wasn't
Natalia's way, Rourke thought not to go against her uncle's wishes, not to
use the Communist Cubans as an instrument for her own revenge.
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He tried to read the woman's face from the distance separating them. He'd
been told there was a Colonel Miklov there with Natalia. But he saw no Russian
officer, not even someone in civilian clothes.
A man Rourke judged as a squad leader stepped toward him, saying in bad
English, "I will take your guns."
Rourke again glanced toward Natalia nothing. He decided to gamble, reaching
slowly under his coat with first his left, then his right hand, taking the
Detonics pistols and handing them butt first to the squad leader. Since the
man hadn't asked for his knife, Rourke didn't volunteer it.
"You will come with me," the man said. Rourke started to walk ahead, still
holding Sissy's hand. "The woman she will see the general."
Rourke eyed the soldier, then looked over the man's shoulder toward Natalia.
He thought he caught an almost imperceptible nod. But it could have been his
imagination, or wishful thinking he thought. He gambled again. "Sissy, it'll
be all right, I think. Just do a good job convincing the general that the
quakes are real. Don't worry," he added. Then Rourke let go of her hand and
started ahead, the soldiers falling in ranks around him. He saw the squad
leader from the corner of his eye, handing the twin Detonics pistols to
Santiago. Rourke saw Natalia looking down at the guns in Santiago's hands, saw
her lips move, saying something. Then Santiago with almost ridiculous
formality, Rourke thought bowed and offered the pistols to Natalia. She took
them, smiling, and for the first time he could hear her.
Natalia was laughing.
Chapter 39
Paul Rubenstein looked across the hood of the jeep, then at the florid-faced
Tolliver beside him behind the wheel. "That's a death camp," Rubenstein said
slowly, staring now past the hood of the jeep and to the lower ground and the
road and the camp beyond it.
"The commandant has a reputation for being anti-Jewish."
"They put an anti-Semite in charge of a detention camp in an area with a
large Jewish population," Rubenstein interrupted. "Then they know what's going
on, the Communist Cuban government."
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"Some say the commandant down there, Captain Guttierez, dislikes the Jews
almost as much as the anti-Castro Cubans. He's been exterminating every one of
them he can find."
"Why have you waited to do something?" Rubenstein asked him.
"Simple you'll see in a minute look." And Tolliver pointed over his
shoulder.
Rubenstein, his palms sweating, turned around and looked behind the
jeep. Tolliver's number-one man, Peddro Garcia, a free Cuban, had gone to get
the rest of the Resistance force. Rubenstein's heart sank. Two men
approximately his own age, a woman of about twenty and a boy of maybe sixteen.
Tolliver, his voice lower than Rubenstein had heard it before, sighed
hard. "That's why, Rubenstein. Two men, a woman, a boy, me, and Pedro that's
it. Now you. You still want to do this thing?"
Rubenstein turned around in the jeep's front passenger seat, started down
over the hood toward the camp. "Hell yes," he rasped, the steadiness of his
own voice surprising him. "Yes I do."
Rubenstein felt the ground shaking, then looked at Tolliver. The man said,
"Some little quakes like that have been coming the last week or so. Don't know
why. This ain't earthquake country."
The trembling in the ground stopped and Rubenstein simply said, "Let's work
out the details, then get started."
"We're gonna wait until dark, right?" Tolliver queried.
Rubenstein thought a moment. He'd learned from Rourke to trust your vibes,
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