Boots.
His spine sizzled. He muttered, “Soldiers.” A spike of dread surged into his legs, demanding he get out of there.
He looked back at the yellow house. He remembered his promise to Rina, and he played out in his head what would happen if Alek were arrested and interrogated.
The first soldier came from between the houses, submachine gun carried at his chest. Five more soldiers followed. Lammeck turned, forcing himself not to break into a run. At a brisk pace, he walked the hundred yards to Heitor’s house.
Lammeck didn’t knock but pushed open the front door. In the foyer, he shouted, “Heitor!” He kept calling, moving cautiously down the hall. He assumed that somewhere in the house the men he’d come to warn carried weapons, so he advanced with care.
Through a swinging door, Susanna rushed into the hall. She held up both hands to intercept Lammeck, to quiet him.
Susanna came at him. “Señor, señor, please ...”
“There’s no time.” Lammeck waved her away. The troops outside were closing in and he had seconds to alert the conspirators, then get Alek and himself out. “Where’s Heitor? Right now! Where is he?”
At the far end of the hall, a door flung open. Heitor stormed out.
“What is it, Professor?”
“A patrol. They might be on their way here.”
Heitor snapped his eyes off Lammeck, to his wife.
She told him, “It could be just a routine patrol.”
Heitor shook his head. “And it might not.” He touched her wrist. “Go.”
“No.”
Heitor sighed. To Lammeck, he said, “I’ll get the boy. Take your time. Do not run from this house.”
He spun on his heels to disappear through the door. Lammeck looked at Susanna. With a sad smile, she said again, “Perhaps it’s only a routine patrol.” He watched her go out the front door, to take her station on the patio.
At the far end of the hall, the door opened. Alek emerged, looking unsure. Immediately, Lammeck measured their chances. They could go out the front door, as Heitor instructed. The soldiers would see them leave. If the patrol was simply cruising the neighborhood as Susanna hoped, there might be no problem. But what if the soldiers were coming here? What if Alek and Lammeck were stopped and questioned? Two Americans in Cuba on the eve of an invasion which everyone on the island seemed to know was coming? There was no time for Lammeck to coordinate a story with Alek and Susanna for why they’d been in this house.
And what of the running woman and child? She knew or suspected something; what was her transgression that made her dart and hide?
If the soldiers were in fact headed for this house, then leaving it seconds before they arrived would be no protection. If this was just a normal neighborhood patrol, the best thing to do was stay out of sight, and trust Susanna to turn the armed men away.
Uncertain, but aware he needed to act immediately, Lammeck pivoted in the hall. Wordless, Alek followed.
Lammeck tapped on the door. Heitor opened it.
“We can’t leave. It’s safer to stay here.”
Heitor nodded.
Inside, eight other men boiled in mounting alarm. Heitor shushed them. As Lammeck expected, each of the conspirators, Heitor, too, had reached for pistols.
The room was bare of furniture and decoration save for a long refectory table and a single chair. On the table a large map of central Havana was spread. Red and blue circles and arrows had been drawn across the sheet. Cigarette smoke purled in slow eddies lit by a single small window. All the cigarettes had been snuffed in an ashtray.
One of the unnamed Cubans pressed a revolver into Alek’s hand. Lammeck wanted to insist the boy put it down, but kept his silence; Alek was a Marine, and if a fight was indeed coming, they’d be better off with Alek armed than empty-handed. Lammeck considered the knife in his waistband; it was nearly useless in this tight spot. He moved as far from the door as he could get, to stand beside Heitor behind the table.
Heitor said, “Todo será bien.” It’ll be alright. “My wife will persuade them that everything is normal. She is remarkably convincing. She is a teacher, you know.”
“I’m a teacher. And I’m about to shit my pants.”
“You are an historian, as well, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Well, now you must ask how much of history has been made by men and women exactly in your condition, eh?”
Heitor put a hand in the middle of Lammeck’s back to comfort him. He felt the sheathed knife tucked under Lammeck’s guayabera.
“Professor,” Heitor murmured, “we are not so different, I think.”
Lammeck had no time to consider this or to reply. On the opposite side of the door, boots tromped over the tile floor. Susanna’s voice approached in the hall, trying to redirect someone. Lammeck heard the word sargento.
The men in the room, Alek, too, tightened the grips on their pistols.
One of the men whispered, “La ventana.” The window.
Heitor nixed this idea with a harsh shake of his finger. He pointed at his ear, then toward the door. It’s too late, he gestured. The soldiers would hear.
A voice beyond the door said, “Abre esta.” Open this.
Susanna answered, “Es sólo almacenamiento.” It’s only storage.
One conspirator, who seemed to be the youngest, defied Heitor’s order. He slipped behind Lammeck to the window. Quickly, he unlocked the frame and slid it partly open. The rising panes let out a hushed squeal.
The young man pointed at Heitor, then the window. He whispered, “Jefe, vete.”
Lammeck scanned the room. To a man—even Alek—they curtly nodded. Each jutted his pistol at the door, to buy Heitor and their cause whatever seconds they could.
Heitor cast an emotional smile at his comrades. Then he turned to Lammeck.
In quiet words, not a whisper, he said, “Professor, please tell America to free our country.”
With that, Heitor raised the window, careless of the noise. He stabbed a finger at Alek.
“You first. Go.”
Alek tucked the pistol in his belt. He stepped quickly for the window, not conflicted about leaving. He lifted a leg over the sill, then slipped through to the ground outside.
Heitor rolled the map on the table into a scroll and shoved it into Lammeck’s hands. “Go.”
Heart pounding, Lammeck took the map and moved to the window. He shoved one leg outside. Twisting to squeeze his shoulder under the top panes, he saw Heitor overturn the heavy refectory table. Several men joined him in a skirmish line behind the table, pistols facing the door.
The door busted open. The heel of a boot flew into the room with splinters of wood.
Heitor Ferrer pulled his trigger. The bullet spooked the first soldier who jumped against the hallway wall. In awe, Lammeck hesitated on the sill, frozen until he caught sight of a second soldier in the hall behind Susanna drop to a knee and level his Czech submachine gun.
Lammeck tumbled out of the window. Landing awkwardly, he rolled to his back. Behind him, the panes shattered, showering him with glass and bits of mullion. He let go the map, shielding his face with his arms. Out of the opening came the pows of pistols and the vicious unmuffled ripping of automatic fire. Lammeck lay covered in sharp littered slivers, beneath the horrible clamor of screaming men and blasting guns. Then came the shouts, “¡Me entrego! ¡No fire!” The firing ceased.
Alek squatted against the wall below the window, glaring at Lammeck.
He hissed, “Get up, get up!”
Lammeck grabbed the dropped map and scrabbled off the ground. A shard in the grass sliced into his palm.
Together they ran through the backyard. The cut on Lammeck’s hand had gone deep, his pumping arms spattered blood onto his pants and the pockets of his white guayabera. No perimeter had been set up in the backyard before the soldiers went into the house. Where were they? Lammeck wondered. He reached the tall bordering hedge. Tucking his head behind his arms, Lammeck bu
lled through the shrubs. Alek dove in right behind him.
They emerged into an alley, Lammeck wheezing and dripping blood. The boy was in much better shape. Lammeck’s guayabera was torn, pants grass-stained, both blood-spattered.
“Holy cow,” the boy panted. “Okay, okay. What do we do now?”
Lammeck didn’t know. He was disoriented, badly frightened. He sucked air to slow his breathing. He needed to concentrate but the pinging pulse in his temples, the bellows in his chest, the throb in his right hand, all fought off his senses from returning. Behind him, beyond the hedge, the silence from the yellow house was ominous. What had happened to Heitor, Susanna, the conspirators? Lammeck could do nothing for them except survive and get Alek away.
North. They should go north, toward the ocean. They’d catch separate taxis at Avenida 5. If asked, he’d claim that he’d been assaulted, cut by a thief’s knife. He was lucky to be alive and scared—true enough.
Which way was north? The wind.
He lifted his cheeks to feel the breeze, smell the salt. The direction revealed itself in the palms and oaks arching above the alley. Lammeck took a step, and saw the soldier.
The man was at the end of the alley, a block away but walking straight toward Lammeck and Alek. He carried his submachine gun at the ready, though there was no urgency in his stride. He raised his hand to hail them, to signal for them to stop where they were.
Instantly, Lammeck discarded his plan. He knew he and Alek could not wait for the soldier to approach, not with Lammeck disheveled, bleeding, and clutching a map displaying the details of Fidel’s upcoming assassination.
But they’d all seen each other. To turn and go the other direction would appear evasive, because it was.
Lammeck did the only thing he could do.
He said to Alek, “Run.”
The boy held his ground, a resolute glint in his eyes. He tugged the pistol out of his belt. Lammeck foresaw a disaster if Alek chose to shoot it out.
“Put that away,” he commanded.
The boy did as he was told. Lammeck tore off down the alley away from the soldier, Alek behind him. He sprinted with every bit of his speed, which he knew was not much at his age and girth. The gash in his right palm continued to seep, blood trailed off his elbow. He glanced over his shoulder; the soldier was gaining ground. Lammeck could hear the rattle of his submachine gun bouncing on his chest.
Alek looked back, too, at their pursuer. He shouted at Lammeck: “Split up!”
The boy lowered his narrow shoulders and crashed full bore through the hedge running along the alley, into some backyard to lose himself among the houses. Lammeck, with the soldier still hot on his trail, felt abandoned. Twenty yards ahead the alley dead-ended into an intersection. Lammeck was not going to outrun the dogged soldier. His only hope was to shake him somehow. He decided to hit the intersection, turn left, and seek an opportunity in that direction. Both he and Alek were on their own now.
Rounding the hedge, Lammeck’s sandals skidded in the gravel. Entering the turn, he almost smashed headlong into the bumper of a fat, green, fin-tailed Cadillac idling in the narrow way. To stop himself, Lammeck propped his hands on the Caddy’s wide hood, impressing a bloody palm print.
He had no time, the soldier was closing fast, Lammeck glanced through the windshield; a man in the front seat glared back at him. Lammeck scuttled down the length of the driver’s side, to keep running.
The driver’s door opened, blocking his path.
Felix got out.
Lammeck jerked in surprise. Thank God, he thought. Felix can get me the hell out of here!
On the other side of the Cadillac door, Felix asked, “What are you doing here, old man?” Under his left eye, Felix had the purple ghost of the bruise Lammeck had put there.
Lammeck blurted, ”I’ll explain later! Get in the car!”
The tall man reached across the door to grab Lammeck’s torn guayabera.
Lammeck looked at the big hand clenching his sleeve. Felix yelled, “¡Aqui!”
The footfalls of the soldier sounded around the corner.
Felix took his eyes off Lammeck, to shout again to the soldier: “iAq-”
Lammeck drove the joined fingertips of his bloody right hand into Felix’s Adam’s apple, crunching the voice box. Felix finished his shout with only a quick, bug-eyed croak. With his left elbow Lammeck jammed inside Felix’s grip on the guayabera, circling the arm with a swift release maneuver; in an instant he had Felix grappled and turned away. In the same moment, Lammeck swept the ancient four-inch blade out of its sheath at his lower back. He raised and lowered the dagger in an expert act of butchery, slashing hard across the top of Felix’s right shoulder from the collar bone to the biceps to immobilize that arm. Felix crumpled in sudden pain; Lammeck held him up long enough to hack deep into the left shoulder, slicing the deltoids there to shut down that arm, too.
Felix sank to his knees. Lammeck scrambled around the car door, sheathing the knife. Blood had splattered on the Cadillac’s green roof from Lammeck’s bleeding hand. Felix’s blue guayabera sprouted the buds of dark wings below both gashed shoulders.
Furious, Lammeck grabbed Felix under the armpits. He hoisted the man off the ground; both Felix’s arms hung limp. He threw Felix onto the front seat, strong enough in his rage to heave him into a crumple on the passenger side of the bench. Lammeck flung himself behind the wheel, shifted into first gear, and popped the Caddy’s clutch.
The big car hurtled forward, slamming shut the door. Lammeck hunched behind the steering wheel, barely seeing over the dash in case the soldier came out of the alley behind him with his machine gun lit up. He shoved into second gear, mashing the accelerator. Passing the intersection with the main alley, he ventured to sit up enough to look in the rearview mirror. The soldier stood behind the speeding car but had not brought up his gun in time to loose a burst. The boy had done the right thing, letting the car go without firing in a residential area. Lammeck spun the wheel to turn into the street.
Slowing to avoid attention, he took stock. Blood was smeared everywhere in the car, across the front backrest from Felix’s torn shoulders, over the steering column from Lammeck’s bleeding hand. The crisp tang of copper made Lammeck curl his nose. He fought the urge to retch. Turning to the window, he took a gulp of fresh air.
He laid his right hand in his lap, pressing the wound into his shirt to stanch it. He noticed Felix, eyeing him. Felix tried to speak, but only coughed out of his bashed throat. The man tried to raise his hands but neither hobbled arm would lift out of his lap.
Lammeck drew the black-handled knife again from its sheath. He reached across the seat to press the tip into the flesh beneath Felix’s chin.
Lammeck didn’t know the address of Calendar’s safe house, the one Felix had kidnapped him to a few weeks ago. Right now he drove in Miramar. Calendar had said the house was in Luyano, south of the centro, near Havana Bay. He guessed that by now the soldier he’d eluded was describing to someone the Cadillac that had escaped him with the running viejo. There wasn’t time for Lammeck to get lost in Havana’s streets. A police hunt for this big green Cadillac with blood splashed all over it would begin very soon.
Lammeck shoved the edge of the knife higher under Felix’s chin. He felt the scrape of the man’s beard along the blade. Felix stretched his neck as if in a noose.
“I’ll slit your throat. I’ll dump your body in the street. ¿Comprende?”
Felix, afraid to nod with the steel at his skin, choked out, “Yes.”
“Good.” Lammeck heard his own tough talk. He watched a red pearl drip from his hand onto Felix’s shirttail. He gave the knife a nudge.
“Take me to Calendar.”
Felix, who could not raise his arms and would not move his head, rasped, “Left... at the corner.”
* * * *
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Compromiso Street
Luyano
Havana
CALENDAR HAD NO UMBRELLA and he w
ore no slicker. Drenched, he stood in the backyard of the safe house, puzzled.
Under a tarp drizzling rainwater was Felix’s Cadillac. Calendar recognized the car’s big outline, the distinctive fins. What was it doing back here? Why was it covered?
He approached, keeping an eye on the windows of the stucco house to see if anyone noticed his arrival. Something was out of whack; he kept himself ready to bolt in the opposite direction at the first sign of trouble.
He reached the car and took one long, careful glance in every direction. Lifting the tarp beside the driver’s window, he muffled a curse.
Streaks of rusty blood were smeared across the seat back, finishing at twin dribbles and dark patches on the passenger side. More blood had dried on the steering wheel and shifter. Calendar tugged the tarp back to check the rear seat. It was clean. Only the driver and passenger had bled. His gut tightened.
The Betrayal Game - [Mikhal Lammeck 02] Page 19