"Well, they're doing a bang-up imitation."
"This is a diversion," said Chiun.
"Maybe it's just to soften up the Cubans until the main force arrives," Remo suggested. "Remember Ultima Hora?"
"There is one way to find out. And that is to end this charade now."
With that, the Master of Sinanju porpoised into the water and swam toward the grounded barge.
Remo, ducking, followed.
Chiun floated under the barge and scored a circular hole in the flat-bottomed hull with one long fingernail. He tapped the circle with a knuckle. It popped in like a soup can lid.
The barge quickly filled, and they watched it as it sank. The pirates-and a ragtag crew they were-continued to fire as they sank. They gave off bluish-green sparks as water found their electronic components, and their guns sputtered into silence.
The last one vented a squawky "Tu Madre!" before it sank.
"Looks like a breeze," Remo said. "Let's do the job."
They swam out into the bay. The high-powered bullets were a nuisance, but they hit the water and immediately deflected at crazy shallow angles, to drop harmlessly to the ocean floor. The water was unnaturally warm.
Remo and Chiun split up and attacked the barges from below. Chiun scored holes with his nails. Remo, who had always resisted Chiun's insistence that he grow killing nails of proper length, used the blunt tip of his forefinger as a punch press instead. The stiff digit made thirsty drill-bit holes.
To the hunkered-down Cuban detachments along the beach at Playa Giron and stuck in the muck of Zapata Swamp, it looked as if their return fire was finally winning the day. One by one the barges had listed, capsized, or simply taken on water.
The order to cease firing came, and they watched in muted awe as the pirates continued to fire even as they went down with their ungainly ships. The water swallowed their muzzles and their still functioning mouths. Some of them were swearing in mechanical voices even afterward.
Silence settled over the Bay of Pigs.
And the crabs scuttled out of their places of concealment, and the long-necked buzzards floated over broken human carrion.
Remo and Chiun returned to a sheltered portion of the shore in the silence. They looked out over the bay. A huge full moon rose higher, seeming to shrink as it climbed.
"Guess there's no main task force," Remo muttered. "So where's the invasion?"
Then, from behind them, they heard excited cries in Spanish.
"What are they saying?" Remo asked Chiun. The Master of Sinanju listened with grim mien.
At length he said, "They are saying Habana does not answer their radio calls. They fear it is under attack."
Remo dug out his map and looked at it.
"I don't see any 'Habana,' " he said.
"It is called 'Havana' on the map."
"Then why doesn't it say that?" Remo demanded, ripping the map to shreds and scattering it away.
The convoys started to back up. Between the damaged vehicles and the ones that had used their yearly allotment of gas to reach the combat zone, they managed only to create a logjam that trapped the rest. Spanish curses flew. Fights broke out over ownership of bicycles.
"So much for the Cuban cavalry," Remo grunted. "I'd say Fidel has been suckered good."
"So have we. For we must reach Havana immediately."
Remo looked around. He spotted the FAR helicopter, sitting like a droopy-winged dragonfly on a low hill.
"If there's any gas left in that bird, I think we have a chance," he said.
They flitted toward the waiting bird, avoiding the Cuban bodies-which the scarlet land crabs had already begun to attack hungrily.
Chapter 28
The Maximum Leader of Cuba strode up the waiting gangplank to the gleaming white cruise ship, Beasley Adventure. It was magnificent! And so clean, it sparkled as if dusted by pixies.
Right then and there he decided not to ransom the opulent floating palace, but its crew and passengers only. He would keep it for his personal yacht. It was a prize worthy of the greatest soldier of the Americas, himself.
At the top of the gangplank two stewards in white waited for him, standing at attention. They were unarmed. In fact, they saluted crisply as he stepped onto the deck, trailed by a contingent of his loyal bodyguards.
"Why am I not met by the captain, as is fitting?" demanded the President of Cuba.
"The captain is expecting you in the main dining room, sir," one steward said politely.
El Lider blinked. He liked the treatment these men were according him. It was muy respectful.
"I will go to him!" he snapped. Motioning for his men to follow, he stormed along the deck, taking in the beauty of the prize that was now the flagship of the Cuban navy. Perhaps he would have it outfitted with surface-to-air missiles. No doubt the Beasley people would have fits, but in the historic struggle between ideologies the capitalists could expect no quarter.
They were two more stewards standing at attention in front of the main dining salon, on B Deck. They saluted with one hand, and with the other reached out to open the doors.
El Lider nodded curtly as he swaggered into the breathtaking crystalline sumptuousness of the salon.
He heard the muffled gunshots and turned, cigar dropping from his mouth.
The stewards had each put a bullet into the brains of his two closest bodyguards. They were crumpling to the floor as, from places of concealment behind gleaming white ventilators, others opened up on the remnants of his protective contingent.
"Mierda!" he raged.
And the doors were clapped shut in his bearded face.
"Welcome," a voice said.
The Cuban leader whirled, eyes stark.
Across the room, a captain in a starched white uniform sat quietly at the head table.
Making fists with his hands, El Lider stormed toward the man. If necessary, he would break this dandy's neck with his bare hands.
Out from under the tables, soldiers appeared. They wore white jumpsuits and carried AR-15 automatic rifles with ludicrously white stocks. There was an insignia on each stock. The same insignia was on patches stitched to their shoulders.
It was the world-famous silhouette of Monongahela Mouse, he saw.
The rifles were all pointing toward him. He came to a stop.
"I see, I see," he grumbled. "This is, how jou say, a 'Troyan Horse'?"
"Not exactly," came a cool voice from behind him, a voice with a kind of gravelly twinkle in it. "Although this ship is just filled with young lads just waiting for the signal to march into Havana. But you might say what we have here is more of a kangaroo court."
The Maximum Leader of Cuba turned. And beheld the last face in the world he had expected to see.
"Uncle Sam?"
The Cuban helicopter pilot was only too happy to give the Anglo and the old man from the East a ride to Habana. There was only one problem.
"There is no petrol, senores!"
"There enough to get us in the air?" asked the Anglo, holding him up as the waves of pain continued to converge on his poor heart.
"Si. But how far, no one can say!"
"Let's take this one step at a time," said the Anglo.
And then, because the Anglo had been good enough to relocate his shoulders, the Cuban pilot happily lifted the helicopter into the air.
They had to stop twice for fuel. Petrol was a precious thing in the Cuban Revolutionary Army, and hoarded zealously. The Cuban pilot had told the pair of this, but they had seemed strangely unconcerned.
The pilot at last understood why, when they settled down next to a disabled T-64 tank and the two made the stranded tank crew perform the difficult act of siphoning the gas into the helicopter.
It was amazing, the things men could do even with their shoulders dislocated.
On the last leg of the trip the Anglo turned to the old man and, over the rattly clattering of the laboring helicopter, shouted, "Teach me some Spanish, Little Father. "
"Because when I meet Castro, I want to give him a piece of my mind in his own tongue."
The President of Cuba wore the expression of a poleaxed zebu.
A figure stood up from behind a long banquet table. It was a ludicrous figure, dressed in the frock coat and top hat of the mythic symbol of American imperialism, Uncle Sam. Even his eye patch matched his costume. It was blue, and sprinkled with white stars.
But this Uncle Sam was not the graybeard of cartoons, but a cartoonist renowned throughout the world.
"But, jou . . . jou are dead, Uncle Sam Beasley!" The man smiled under his frosty brush mustache. It was a reflective smile, if chilly.
"You know," he said thoughtfully, "when I first explained my ideas for Beasley Isle, a lot of my people thought I had been in the freezer too long."
" 'Beasley Isle'?"
" 'Cuba' sounds too ethnic. People don't want ethnicity in their leisure activities. That's why I had them call my French base EuroBeasley. Sounds more palatable. Anyway, I first got the idea after they pulled me out of that damn icebox."
"Icebox?"
"Everything had changed. Including our tax base. Revenue was down. Attendance off. But taxes were through the roof. I had bases all over the world, and the host countries were sucking every operation dry of operating capital through value-added taxes and every other kind of damn tax you could think of. So I asked myself, how can I be sure that the Beasley Corporation will survive into the next century, since it looks like I'm going to?"
"I do not know," El Lider said thickly, his mind still processing the impossibility of Uncle Sam Beasley standing before him, in the flesh.
"I'll tell you what came to me," said the star-spangled apparition. "I said, Beasley's too big now to be a corporation. It should be a nation. Think of it! An entire island that is also a theme park. It'll be bigger than all the other Beasley parks combined. Folks will flock from all over the world! And when they do, I'll just shut down the other parks. No more taxes. No more minimum-wage laws. No more government regulations. And maybe down the road when the fuss is over, after we're admitted into the U.N., I'll wrangle a seat on the Security Council and do really big things."
"Jou are going to turn my Cuba into a park!" El Lider roared.
The frost-tipped brush mustache quirked over snowy teeth. "I thought you'd be impressed."
"This will never happen! Never!"
"Thanks to Leo Zorilla, it will."
El Lider narrowed his eyes.
"That name sounds familiar," he mumbled, scratching his beard.
"Deputy Commandant, Cuban Air Force. Diabetic. He was picked up by this very vessel some months back. Unfortunately, the INS got to him before I could. But we got together. I offered him a job in return for whatever military secrets he cared to divulge."
"That traitor! I will have him shot!"
"Too late. He's history. Just as you, my friend, will be."
"Jou are loco!"
A twinkle came into the man's single visible eye. "You know what Leo told me? He told me that the weakest point in the Cuban coastal-defense net was the one everybody thought would be the strongest. Any idea where that is?"
The Maximum Leader suddenly turned green.
"Playa Giron?"
"Or Red Beach, as we say north of the border. It made sense to me. No one would want a repeat of the Bay of Pigs fiasco. You thought you could leave it unguarded, relatively speaking."
"Hah! The yoke is on jou. It is no longer unguarded. I have ordered the cream of the Revolution to that historic place!"
"That's right, you did. You've got practically all your regulars out there right now, shooting at animatronic soldiers."
"Animatronic?"
"You can't kill them, but they can kill you. Gives new meaning to the word 'expendable,' doesn't it?"
El Lider gaped. "A diversion?"
"I believe you said something about 'a Trojan Horse' earlier."
"And jou said something about a kangaroo court. I suppose you think jou can try me?"
"Intend to."
"Hah!" said the President of Cuba, pounding on his massive chest. "Do your worst! I am above your laws. Above history. Jou cannot try me for war crimes. I have committed none. I am a revolutionary, a soldier of the Americas doing the work of the revolutionary. My interventions in other countries are no different than that of any great historical world power. The acts I have committed in my own country are the business of Cuba and Cuba alone. Jou cannot try me for these things. "
"I don't expect to," said Uncle Sam Beasley in his dry-ice voice.
The President of Cuba plowed on as if unhearing. He was on a roll. He began ticking off points on his thick fingers.
"Jou cannot try me for crimes against the U.S.A., jou cannot try me for crimes against my people, jou cannot try me for-"
"Try copyright violations," said Uncle Sam.
El Lider's mouth dropped open in mid-word. "Copy-"
"You've been pirating my programs. I don't like that. I put a lot of sweat into those things." And with that, Uncle Sam Beasley took up a gavel and banged it twice on the banquet table.
From behind curtains came Mongo Mouse, Dingbat Duck, Screwball Squirrel, and a host of other fictitious characters. They took seats on either side of Uncle Sam, who then sat down.
"The Beasley Tribunal is in session," he snapped.
The President of Cuba blinked furiously. He had always understood the time might come when he would fall from power and be haled before a tribunal such as this. He looked at the jury again and thought, well, not exactly like this ....
He had practiced the speech he would give on this occasion. Every act of revolution he would defend fiercely, passionately, unassailably. He had dreamed of this moment. Looked forward to it almost confident that his sharp wits and silver tongue would vindicate him before the world.
But he had certainly never taken the charge of copyright piracy into account. And here he was, forced to defend himself before the bizarre representatives of the most ferocious defenders of copyright on earth.
Feeling his bull-like shoulders sag, the Maximum Leader threw out his chest in defiance. "I insist upon being tried by my own countrymen. Only they can properly yudge me. Not these running dogs! No offense to jou, Gumpy."
Gumpy Dog cocked his floppy-eared head in an injured manner.
"Tell you what," said Beasley. "I'll throw in a Cuban." He lifted his voice. "Dr. Revuelta. Would you kindly join us?"
From behind the curtain came a Cuban the Cuban president knew only too well.
"Jou! Jou terrorista!" he raged.
"Dr. Revuelta will be installed as interim president," said Uncle Sam. "Having one of their own as head of the government will keep the population pacified."
The Cuban President shook a big fist. "Him? Never! He is a mediocrity."
"Actually, he's a gynecologist," Uncle Sam pointed out with a smile.
Dr. Revuelta took a seat beside Wacky Wolf.
"I understand you were a lawyer before you turned revolutionary," Uncle Sam said mildly. "I'll allow you to act as your own counsel."
"Challenge accepted."
Uncle Sam chuckled. "I thought you'd say that, you big blowhard. Seems I recall an old adage that goes, 'A man who acts as his own lawyer has a fool for a client.' "
"Bah!"
"So how do you plead?"
The Maximum Leader of Cuba gazed at the bizarre tribunal seated before him. His quick mind went back to his first trial, back in the old days. He had coined a phrase then. One which he still liked very much. It had resounded in the courtroom then, and he had shouted it to las maws ever since. It had gotten him through every political and strategic mistake he'd ever committed. He repeated it now.
"My guilt or innocence is not for such as jou to say!" he bellowed, shaking an agitated finger in their faces. "History will absolve me!"
And then he launched into a speech, which he intended to go down in history as the longest
of his bombastic career.
For the more he kept talking, the more likely it was that his loyal soldiers would come to succor him.
Chapter 29
The President of Cuba was appealing to Monongahela Mouse when his ears picked up the faint clattery rattle of helicopter blades. It was very near. He raised his bull voice to drown out the warning sounds. No doubt it was crack Cuban Marines of the Guevara Battalion, landing on the deck.
"Mongo, my brother," he said as he paced before the Beasley Tribunal. "I appeal to your renowned sense of fairness. Jou and I are mucho hombres. I am a man among men and jou, magnificent one, are a mouse among-how jou say?-mouses."
Mongo stared blankly, round-eared and roundeyed. It was impossible to tell if he was reaching the indefatigable rodent, so the Cuban kept talking.
"The children of Cuba love jou, as do I. How could I, their beloved Lider Maximo, deprive them of your adventures simply because our capitals do not have proper relations?"
The mouse cocked one ear to one side. The duck was nodding its orange beak imperceptibly. And best of all, Uncle Sam himself was growing sleepy of eye. It was working. They were becoming like silly putty in the grip of his oratorical might. Confident, he pressed on.
And the doors banged open.
Fidel turned, a broad grin splitting the bush that was his lower face.
"What took jou so-" He gulped, and swallowed his words.
A lone man stood framed in the salon entrance. He wore black. He was unarmed. Yet the expression on his face was one of utter confidence. "What the fuck!" snarled Uncle Sam.
"Jou again!" gasped Dr. Revuelta.
"Que?" gulped Fidel Castro.
"Que sera, sera," said Remo, showing off his newly acquired knowledge of Spanish.
The Maximum Leader of Cuba looked at the darkeyed Anglo with the high cheekbones and thick wrists, and spat out a harsh question in English.
"Who are jou, Yanqui?"
Remo smiled. "Yo soy soldado de los Americas."
And the Maximum Leader of Cuba did a slow burn that all but singed his curly beard. Who was this gringo, to claim the sacred mantle of the Latin American revolutionary?
Before he could voice the question, Uncle Sam Beasley thundered, "Somebody shoot that pain in the ass!"
It was an unfortunate order. Fully half the armed guards thought the pain in the ass was the Cuban leader. The others correctly took the command as directed toward the skinny guy in black.
Cold Warrior td-91 Page 20