Olga and her escort needed to reach a farmhouse to get help. Most of the guajiros in the area sympathized with the revolution even if they didn’t take an active role in it. Their stories were all the same. They had supported, even gushed over, Batista during his early years. But the longer he stayed in power, the more resentful they became.
When Olga and her escort reached the first farmhouse, the owner didn’t hesitate to let them come inside. He told them what they already knew: They weren’t safe. The secret police were all over the area, on horses and in trucks.
The farmer agreed to let Olga stay while her escort sent for help. She had no idea how long he would be gone, but at least she was safe for now.
For the rest of the day, she stayed, even taking time to play on the floor with the little girls who lived there. At ten o’clock that evening came a knock on the door. A messenger indicated that Olga needed to leave. Soldiers were drawing closer, searching all the farmhouses. She was in imminent danger.
A short while later, she heard noises outside. Just as the farmer was taking her out of the house, she spotted two men with long, stringy beards, clad in olive fatigues, on horses coming toward the farmhouse.
The farmer walked out to his stable—a rudimentary wood-frame structure with a roof—and led one of his own horses to Olga.
“I had never ridden on a horseback,” she recalled. “But I didn’t say anything.”
With one of the men riding in front of Olga and the other in the rear, they took off in the darkness. The area, known as Callejón del Coco, was crawling with soldiers. The barbudos knew the area well, but it was a long ride to Guanayara.
As they moved along the trail, Olga began shivering. The higher in the mountains they went, the colder the air. Olga was entering another world. Other than short trips to the farms outside Santa Clara, she had never been this far from home. Huge trees seemed to grow out of the rocks, so tall in some places that you couldn’t see anything else. The path they were riding on was so deep in the woods that the trees formed a canopy over the trail.
As they rounded a bend, Olga noticed a faint light in the distance. At first, the men thought it belonged to some peasants, but they quickly realized it was two army patrol cars set up for an ambush.
“We threw ourselves on the ground,” recalled Olga.
Suddenly their trip had taken a wrong turn. It was time to get off the horses and send them off in another direction. Now they had to walk on foot on a new path, one far longer and more treacherous. It started to drizzle. Olga was freezing. Her body ached, and her shoes had torn. Her feet bled on the rocky terrain.
“¿Estás cansada? ” one of them asked. Are you tired? Olga said no. She wanted to keep going. She didn’t know how much longer she could go, but if she could make it to morning, they stood a chance.
She began to count the trees she passed just to keep her mind from drifting off. With each one, she pretended to be that much closer to her destination. Don’t stop, she would tell herself. If she did, she might not get back up.
As the sun broke through the trees, Olga was lagging, but at least she could see better in the morning light. Just a few more hours, and they could make it to the rebels.
As they reached an area known as Escandel, Olga heard a strange noise. The men stopped. Olga watched as one of her escorts repeated the noise, cooing like a bird. Seconds later, several bearded men in olive fatigues broke from the brush.
She had arrived. This was the first camp, an outpost, the men told Olga and her escorts. The main camp lay several kilometers away.
“Venid,” one of them said—come—motioning for Olga and her handlers to follow them to an open area with a fire. The fresh aroma of thick, dark coffee hung in the air as the men gathered. Her escorts described the close call with the enemy. It appeared the soldiers were moving in Jeeps along the main roads.
Olga recalled having a strange feeling come over her. She was now with the rebels, the men fighting the war. Other than being with her family, she had never felt more at home, as if she had been gravitating toward this moment her entire life.
One of the men noticed that Olga’s feet were cracked and bleeding. “Why is this lady not wearing any shoes?” he asked. Another handed her a pair of worn leather boots. “They are not new, but I hope they will fit you,” he said.
Olga smiled. A day earlier, secret police and soldiers were hunting her, and at least now, she had survived to see another day.
But she had only a few hours to rest. Her handlers needed to get her to the main camp, Veguitas. There she would meet Menoyo and the others preparing for their first major offensive.
10
Menoyo split the men into smaller units—roughly ten to a team—and ordered them to set up satellite camps, each a couple of miles away. The largest lay in the center under Menoyo’s command, and an intricate network of peasant runners linked the units.
The rebels were putting their stamp on the mountains, creating their own revolutionary village. It was the best way to take on Batista’s larger, well-armed units. Menoyo was creating strike teams, fast and able to move through the mountains more quickly than the soldiers.
Olga had run into one of the satellite camps with her escorts and was coming close to the main camp. Menoyo had gotten word from the runners that Olga was coming, and he had agreed: She could stay, but she had to bunk in a nearby farmhouse.
The sun was setting over Veguitas as the men gathered, some breaking down their rifles to clean, others stringing up their hammocks. The sentries made for their posts on the outskirts of camp.
Olga had never seen so many men with guns. Most were young and dark-eyed, dressed in olive fatigues.
Menoyo was standing in a circle with several others when he spotted the visitor. He already knew about Olga’s brush with the secret police and her escape from the soldiers. As he walked over to her, he could sense she was nervous. But he assured her: She was among friends. This would be her home.
“You’re with us now,” he said in a calm, reassuring voice.
One by one, the men approached her and extended a hand. Some, like Armando Fleites, had come from Santa Clara, and others had been in the student directorio network. At least she didn’t feel like a total stranger.
Roger Redondo was unlike many of the others. Though he came from a hotbed of rebellion, Sancti Spiritus, his parents didn’t approve of him joining the cause. The movement was breaking up families. They wanted him home. But he couldn’t just watch as his friends fled to the mountains to fight, knowing they could die. “I had to go, too,” he said.
Roger Redondo, lead intelligence officer with the Second Front Courtesy of Ramiro Lorenzo
Across the camp, a tall figure in a group of men had his back to her. The group broke out in laughter, and one of the rebels motioned to the central figure and said, “Be careful, we have a lady among us now.”
The man with wide shoulders and thick arms turned around to face her. He had blond hair and rugged features, and when she looked into his eyes, all she could see was blue.
Morgan extended his hand to her and said something in broken Spanish, but she could barely understand him. She felt her head go light as she stood and stared into the stranger’s eyes. She had never seen anyone like him.
Morgan smiled. “I am very pleased to meet you.” He let go of her hand and stepped back.
Olga tried to act as though nothing had happened. She nodded and walked across the camp with her escorts, but after several minutes, she found herself looking over her shoulder and searching for the stranger.
Near the Veguitas camp, a young couple with children agreed to give Olga a cot in their home. It was a simple farmhouse with a wood-burning stove, small windows, and a wood floor.
As she lay down to sleep, Olga kept thinking about her own family. Whatever problems they expe
rienced, they could always depend on one another.
The next morning, the young mother saw her guest’s sadness. “¿Qué pasa? ” she asked. What’s wrong?
Olga looked around the farmhouse and could see that the woman was like her own mother. The clothes for the children hung on a line strung in the corner. The pot on the stove was brewing coffee. Flowers stood in a simple vase.
Olga told her about her life in Santa Clara, the police hunting her down, the other students arrested and tortured. But as they talked, Olga realized that the people in the mountains were even more vulnerable.
Her own problems paled in comparison to what the campesinos in the Escambray had been enduring. City life offered some protections. In Havana, revolutionaries could seek shelter in foreign embassies, and the more sophisticated among them could turn to the press corps. Here in the mountains, there were no safe havens. The Rural Guard could get away with anything. Some of them pulled locals from their homes and beat them senseless in the middle of the night. Until Menoyo and the other rebels showed up, the peasants had no advocates.
“Thank God they are here,” the young mother said.
Olga watched the children playing with dominoes, the tiny wood pieces crashing to the floor and then the shrieks of laughter. No one could guarantee this family that it would survive.
As the sun began to crawl down over the mountains, Olga walked outside. The peaks of the Escambray rose above the trees, creating a cavern of raw nature and elegance that made time stand still. She had never realized how beautiful her country was until now. It made no sense to her that so many bad things were going on in Cuba when places like this, the Sierra del Escambray, were so divine.
As she peered across the open field, she could see someone on a large white horse riding in the distance. As he came closer, she recognized the rider as the stranger she met at the camp, the man she later learned was an Americano. He was the last person she expected to see.
As he dismounted, he was whistling the “Colonel Bogey March,” better known as the tune whistled in the movie The Bridge on the River Kwai.
“Hola,” he said. “How are you doing, Olgo?”
Olga held her tongue for a moment. “I am fine, Commander, but my name is not Olgo. It’s Olga—feminine.”
Morgan smiled and stepped back for a moment. “Forgive me, I am still trying to learn Spanish.”
Morgan had finished training the young recruits for the day in target practice and had been thinking about the woman he had met the night before. He didn’t know how to break it to Menoyo, but he asked for permission to go out riding. Several of the farmers had made their horses available to the rebels, so when Morgan showed up at the makeshift stable, he picked the only white mare.
As Morgan and Olga stood outside, the woman came out of the farmhouse. She had recognized the Americano, his presence already known in the close-knit villages around the camp.
The woman had been cooking a meal of roast pork with beans and rice. “Tienes hambre? ” she asked.
Morgan looked puzzlingly at Olga, making it clear that he didn’t understand.
Olga motioned to him as if eating.
Morgan smiled. “Si,” he said.
Some of the peasants feared the rebels coming too close because of the Rural Guard, but the family hosting Olga had long believed in the revolution. They knew Morgan as one of the leaders. They talked about the fighting and the hardships coming to the mountains. Olga stopped to explain to Morgan in what English she knew what they were saying. The greater the rebel forces grew, the stronger Batista’s retaliations against the peasants. The wrath of his soldiers was growing.
Between bites of food, Olga and Morgan kept staring across the table at each other, shifting uneasily in their chairs. Olga had never seen an Americano other than in photographs. The men were usually cowboys with guns, the women decked out in fashionable dresses on the covers of magazines. She was intrigued with Morgan but knew very little about him.
After dinner, over a cup of café con leche, Morgan leaned against the wall in a taburete—a small armless chair used by Cuban farmers—and pulled out a cigarette. Every few minutes, he stopped talking and looked at Olga.
Olga had wanted to see him again, but now she didn’t know what to say. They were in the midst of a revolution, and no one knew where they would be a month from now, or even a week. She followed him outside into the cool night air, the stars looming large and bright.
The rebels were heading out on a mission the next morning, and it could be a while before he returned. The revolution was taking on a new course. What had started as a cat-and-mouse conflict had now become a war.
Morgan lifted his hat, then turned around and faced her. “It’s yours,” he said, surprising her as he placed it on her head. “I’m giving it to you.”
Again, she didn’t know what to say.
Morgan leaned in—as though to kiss her—and smiled. “I will see you. Take care of yourself.”
He mounted his horse and waved good-bye. Olga watched him ride over a steep hill and wondered whether she would see him again.
11
Menoyo crept to the edge of the trees and peered at the ground below. “Mira,” he said, pointing to the rows of coffee plants and the sprawling farmhouse just beyond the brush. Government forces had taken over La Mata de Café, a large plantation owned by the Lora brothers, members of one of the wealthiest families in the Escambray.
Morgan and the others stared down the same ledge. In an open area dotted with farmhouses and wooden structures, they saw soldiers—everywhere. Menoyo and his men knew that when they set out they might run into Batista’s men; they just didn’t know how many. Of all the places in the vast Escambray—two hundred thousand haunted acres—this is where the army had chosen to camp. Either the officers knew the rebels’ location, or they had a remarkable sense of intuition. It had to be more than just a coincidence.
Menoyo lifted his binoculars and scoped the trouble below. In the center of the plantation stood a large stone and wood chalet, through which officers were moving. To the sides, outbuildings served as temporary barracks for the soldiers. He wasn’t sure, but there was a good chance the unit was hauling mortars and other heavy artillery.
“Esperamos,” he said. We wait.
The rebels needed time to strategize. Menoyo, Morgan, and the others formed a circle. They had only thirty-five men with them, and it was too late to gather any more. At this point, the other camps were far away on their own patrols. The main rebel unit could wait and regroup with the others days later, but no one knew how long the army would stay put.
Menoyo recognized that this might be their only chance to hit the two hundred or so soldiers, unaware and unprepared, and inflict serious casualties. If the soldiers were plotting to attack Menoyo’s central position, the rebel unit needed to ambush them now. The other option was to wait until the cover of night and surround them from every corner.
“See that?” Menoyo pointed to the chalet serving as commanders’ quarters. That was their first target. If a few rebels could get close, they could lob grenades inside. If they landed the explosives properly, they could wipe out most of the leadership right away. That could force the rest to retreat and scatter, as had happened days earlier.
The rebels formulated their plan. They would split into several smaller groups, and each would take up position around the four-acre spread. Menoyo and Morgan would approach the front and rear of the chalet and, on the commander’s signal, would toss explosives into the command house, thereby signaling the beginning of the assault. In the darkness, the soldiers would have no idea how many rebels surrounded the farm.
“Terrorize them in their sleep,” Menoyo said.
The rebels could see that he and Morgan were growing closer, spending hours together every day talking strategy and other business. Morgan was speaking more Spanish, and Menoyo w
as picking up some English as well.
More and more, Menoyo was depending on Morgan to take the young men under his wing and teach them the rudiments of fighting. When they were scared, he needed Morgan to buck them up and shake out their heebie-jeebies.
Darkness edged in as the men huddled in the brush. This was no hit-and-run field exercise. This was a direct attack on an army camp. They had to hit the soldiers quickly.
It was time.
Menoyo motioned for the others to take their positions. “Let’s go,” he said.
He and Morgan darted toward the camp. The last thing they wanted was to run into a sentry. If shots were fired, the ambush would fail. Both men peered through the darkness but didn’t see anything between them and the chalet.
They bolted toward the main building, Menoyo clutching his M3 submachine gun and Morgan his Sten. By sheer chance, they passed unnoticed through the sentries, halting in the dark, hearts pounding, as they reached the side of the chalet. Next they had to get inside. Quietly, both men inched up to the entrance. They swung open the door, hurled their explosives inside, wheeled around, and ran to the perimeter before they could become targets themselves.
Within seconds, the grenades exploded, sending shards of glass and wood flying into the air. The rebels surrounding the camp opened fire.
Soldiers ran screaming from their makeshift barracks. Others remained inside, reaching for their weapons to return fire. All they could do was hunker down and try to withstand the assault. They had mortars but no idea where to fire them. In the darkness, they couldn’t gauge the position or even the size of the rebel forces.
Back and forth, the two sides exchanged shots. Just when the soldiers thought the attack was over, the rebels launched another barrage. Had the army known how few men were attacking, they might have stood their ground. But in the chaos, they wanted only to escape while they still could. Some of the soldiers fell back and found an opening between the rebel positions. One by one, they ran.
The Yankee Comandante Page 7