“Vector me to the Fulcrum (MiG-29).” Cuco ordered. He knew Izzy was not going to like the order.
“You got him on your screen right… now, eleven o’clock, fifty klicks, clear as day, go get him man.” Izzy tried to sound enthusiastic and supportive. He still felt bad about his criticism of the last dog fight. There was no way to change Cuco’s mind, so might as well go with it. Now that they were behind the searching line of MiGs it wasn’t completely crazy to sneak up on the MiG-29 from behind and hit it. In fact the opportunity was almost too good to pass up. Of course the entire Cuban armada of fighters would swarm them as soon as they were detected but they would manage it somehow. The coming fight would be one for the history books one way or another. The first F-15 to be shot down in an air-to-air battle or the first one to escape from the middle of a furball, out numbered twenty-to-one.
“You wanna jettison the bombs?” Izzy said as he prepared to release the dead weight.
“No,” came Cuco’s response. Oh, thought Izzy, Kook was indeed crazy. How was he planning on breaking off with the pursuing MiG’s long enough to bomb the runways of Santa Clara then break off again to head for the barn? He was going to leave his wing man with no missiles on his racks? What were Pepe and Roman going to do? ‘Well, whatever,’ Izzy thought. He made a conscious decision on how he was going to behave on a mission and to second guess his pilot while trying to fight was something he was not going to do.
“Pepe is eight minutes to bingo fuel. I’m telling him to make a hole for us and bug out,” said Izzy.
“Copy,” responded Cuco.
The F-15 was fifty kilometers behind the MiG when it finally dropped in directly behind it and matched its speed. Now the Eagle was completely invisible to the look down, shoot down Doppler radar carried by the MiG-29. The Fulcrum could not detect a target with a closure rate equal to the aircraft speed. Cuco then pushed his plane past one-thousand miles per hour to get within sure kill shot range.
“Light her up and let her rip,” Cuco said sternly as he pulled up hard to avoid some power lines.
The missile flew low to the ground to avoid being detected by the MiG for as long as possible. It flew to within five kilometers of the MiG before streaking skyward at over Mach four.
“I don’t know what that commie’s doin but he’s not seeing it,” said Izzy. Cuco was busy making a hard turn for Santa Clara and did not even hear his WSO talking. Before Izzy finished his sentence however, the MiG went to full afterburner and headed for the stars. Beads of white hot decoy flares trailed the MiG as its dispenser popped chaff clouds at regular intervals. The burning magnesium spheres could be seen for a hundred kilometers. The LADAR updated the missile as it reached out to the speeding aircraft and blew its tail off. Flames poured out of what was left of the engine exhaust ports and the underside of the plane. The tip of the starboard wing folded under as the port wing seemed to crumple in a blur of smoke and avgas. Izzy could plainly see the MiG pilot’s inexperience. To not see the missile until it was in its pop-up phase then to counter it so poorly. What was the guy doing driving a plane like that? They’ve got to have more MiG-29’s than pilots to fly them, he mentally noted.
23 kilometers West of Ciego de Avila
October 2, 2018 L Day plus One
“Put the heavy machine guns back about 1200 meters from the target as high as you can along this ridge and the ridge on the other side of the railroad tracks. On the other side of that hill we will put the mortar team. Their spotters can choose their own place. The two light machine guns 800 meters, again one on each side. Make sure you change out those barrels before they get too hot and warp. I have an idea we will be using them a lot over the next few weeks and you’ve got to keep them in good shape. One sniper team on this side of the tracks near the South end of the kill zone where the train engine should come to a stop and the other one on the opposite side of the tracks. Then the other two sniper teams in the same positions near the north end of the target area.” He paused. “Strike that…you have the basic idea just have the four sniper teams set up where they will, just make sure they tell me where. Infantry, all thirteen of them 300 meters. Five on this side two on that side. I want everyone elevated at least 20 meters from target level.” Automatic weapons tended to kick upward as they were fired. The first round of a burst would be on target but the other rounds might end up anywhere. Usually high. “Grenade launchers in close at 300 meters. Our friend Peter will blow the track by that clump of brush there,” pointing with a stick to the Rail Road track, “when he blows it that’s the signal to initiate the ambush. Once the last car passes the rear charge, that one may be blown to block their retreat. I hear Havana is loading heavy stuff. I don’t know when the train is due. Even they probably won’t know till it’s full. You can bet some of everything will be on it, including lots of troops. When we hit them, hit ‘em hard. They will only surrender if our barrage is fierce enough. We have more ammo than you can use so don’t be lazy about stockpiling it. I can guarantee that when the shooting starts you will wish you had more, no matter how much you have. Everybody in place and ready by first light, that’s zero five hundred hours, you have about 4 hours. Any questions?” The men who gathered shuffled their feet and glanced at each other, saying nothing. Finally one asked “ What’s next?” Corporal Garcia Lopez spoke without hesitation. “We’ll see what we have on the train, then we will decide. At all costs no communist supplies are going to make it East. The general plan is to go 45 kilometers north to seize the bridges across the Zaza river. Who knows, by the time we get there we might have enough support and reinforcements to just keep going north till we hit serious resistance.”
For years Garcia thought of this spot. The long narrow valley through which lay the main railroad heading east. He often thought that if he had the chance to pay back Cuba’s glorious leader this would be a fine spot to do it. With a small force he could choke off the Communist’s supply line to their forces in the East. After he heard about the flier he came to this area to reconnoiter and prepare. This was “Dark Territory.“ Radio communications to and from the train would be impossible with anything less than satellite communications. That was not an option to a third rate, third world government. Havana couldn’t even stock its free clinics with aspirin, much less supply its army with up-to-date anything. This area of radio blackness began about five kilometers north of their position and extended about fifteen kilometers east. Once out of dark territory radio communications were to be immediately re-established with Havana. Any delay reporting in would signal trouble. If all went well they would have about a half an hour before the alarm would spread.
Six years earlier Garcia was told his daughter would need a tracheotomy to live. The local nurse told him she couldn’t do it. The center literally had nothing. Not even the one bar of soap doctors were supposed to receive monthly. She told him the nearest doctor that might be able to help was forty kilometers away. So much for Castro’s boast of the “40,000 doctors” he was fond of counting as an accomplishment of the Revolution. Garcia held his “angel” in his arms like a rag doll on that sweltering cattle truck. It was a nightmarish and desperate journey. They made it to the barren medical center only to find the doctor was out trying to make a living waiting tables at a restaurant across town. No one could or would help. He laid her in the waiting room and went on a futile search for the doctor. He still could hear her pleading with him not to leave her. See the panic in her eyesxlvi. Now, the thought of his daughter dying, scared and alone, filled him with a cold determined hatred. There were other resentments against the Communists, of course, like torture, using your own children as spies against you, the continuous indoctrination, the constant fear of arrest and a general ugly, stinking, filthy type of oppression that permeated everyday life in Cuba. These were nothing compared to the pain he felt as this memory stabbed through him. Even now, six years later, every time he thought of it his hand came up to cover his grief stricken eyes. To the casual observer it looked lik
e he was rubbing his eyebrows, as though he was tired. To those who knew him well thought it to be a nervous tick. However, there was not a soul in the world who knew what passed through his mind while doing it. No sense in trying to break the habit now. He knew he would repeat the ritual till the day he died, which might well be today.
The soldiers looked hypnotically at the outspread map as Garcia nervously rubbed his forehead. “Today they will pay for forcing us to live in this hell hole only to see our children die,” said Garcia. His chin quivered slightly as he hid is eyes behind his hand and rubbed his eyebrows. The young officers around the table looked askance at each other as their commander continued rubbing in silence. Now, they knew.
Free Cuban Armed Forces -
North invasion force, Guantanamo Cuba October 1, 2008.
“L” Day or Liberation Day.
Guantanamo Province
The night sky flashed with the occasional explosion and the staccato sound of machine gun fire.
Two Stryker Armored Personnel carriers stopped one hundred meters behind the forward elements of 1st armored. In the darkness the elite members of Team Warriorxlvii exited the carriers and approached the rear of Segrera’s Tank. Segrera whistled at the menacing group that approached him. “Gunner, here they is,” said Segrera. Man I’m glad there not coming after me, he thought, a friggin nightmare. “You boys do look purdy all duded up,” Segrera chided. Sergeant Oswaldo Paya, Ozzy to his friends grinned up at Segrera. “We heard you need some birds flushed.” He was a young Cuban American fresh from the proving grounds of Ft. Lewis, Washington. He was outfitted like all the other men of his unit. A walking weapons system. It was actually a system of systems. His Kevlar helmet was a sophisticated weapon system in itself. His lighter, stronger Kevlar helmet held a wireless LAN antenna that communicated to the other men in his unit, the Stryker command center and in turn the fire support officer, the artillery fire direction center, the M-1 Abrams tank as well as other units. The helmet-mounted display could be pulled down in front of his right eye. Being so close to the eye, it could display the equivalent of two 17-inch computer monitors. Through this display the soldier could receive computer generated information, digital maps, intelligence information, troop locations and imagery from his gun mounted thermal weapons sight, laser range finder and video camera. It integrated with the Night Sensor Display. He could operate in all types of weather, smoke and at night. The gun-mounted video camera fed the image directly into the helmet mounted display enabled him to view and shoot around a corner without exposing himself to the enemy, beyond his arms and hands. He could communicate easily and clearly with others in the squad by voice, visual and text data. He always knew his precise location, where his buddies were, the mission plans and known enemy positions.
Sergeant Ozzy Paya raised his M-16 based weapon subsystem over his head and scanned the darkness as it fed the image into his helmet-mounted display as Segrera filled him in. His weapon was a M-16 with all the fancy stuff attached to it. Some of the team warrior units had the newer Objective Individual Combat Weapon, the OICW. It was basically the same except it had the capability to fire the computer controlled 20mm air burst rounds. To his way of thinking not having that capability was a minor inconvenience. He could easily mark the target with his laser rangefinder for the mortar, tank or artillery units that supported his team. They could have rounds on their way within fifteen seconds of his marking them. You just had to make sure you were out of the way. That friendly artillery was a heck of a lot bigger than a small 20mm high tech grenade.
Segrera, still standing in his hatch called down to Ozzy. “Enemy positions start just a few hundred meters in front of that M-60 tank there.” As he said it the tank in question boomed to punctuate his sentence “Maybe less.” Ozzy continued to scan with his gun mounted night vision sensor and said, “Our guys aren’t going to shoot us when we walk up on them there are they?” “Naw”, said Segrera with a slight southern drawl. “They’ve been briefed that you’re coming. Heck, I’m more concerned that you’ll scare them to death looking like that. You almost did me.” “The only thing dropping dead tonight are Communists,” Ozzy replied light heartedly. The troops fanned out like lions who owned the night. With the M1A in support, they hiked to the sound of the guns.
23 kilometers West of Ciego de Avila
October 2, 2018 L Day plus One
The train slowly lumbered into the long valley. It was an ancient U.S. steam locomotive. While extinct almost everywhere else in the world Cuba still had 258 U.S. and British steam engines, most of them used in the winter to transport cut cane to sugar mills for processing. It was anyone’s guess why they were using them to transport men and equipment. It was followed closely and perhaps being pushed by two diesel engines with a long train behind it. Garcia looked at it a good long time through his binoculars. At least two spotters were on the front of the first engine probably with their own binoculars. The train was cautious for good reason. Before the train left the outskirts of Havana people had stacked junk on the tracks. A crew of soldiers cleared the tracks of debris no less than forty times. Obviously the people of Cuba had their own idea of how to send the Communist troops off with their well wishes. The Soldiers on the train knew it would only get worse as the war wore on. The political officers fumed about it. It did not take much imagination what they would do to those “traitors” who sabotaged the tracks, if they could only get their hands on them.
Time seemed to slow down at the first signal that the train was approaching. Finally the sounds of the train could be heard. The low hum first then the screeing grinding sound of a sick engine. Then the familiar clack clacking sound of the wheels hitting fresh track segments. Garcia felt anxious. His limbs started to feel weak as an overly excited adrenal gland pumped more adrenaline into his system than he needed. He felt as if he were in his dreams in which he lacked the strength to fight the adversaries that his nightmares created. If he could be anywhere he would be in one of those foxholes down the hill from him with his AK 47. Just one of the guys under somebody else’s leadership. That fleeting thought lifted the burden from his shoulders for a moment only to have it envelope him once more like a dark mist. It served only to make him realize how heavy his burden was.
He had the nagging suspicion that he forgot something or something was missing. Of course he could have easily used twice the number of men that he had but it was not that. It was the feeling of impending doom for his men. He knew as soon as he led men into battle, and some ultimately to their deaths, his life would be forfeit. Somewhere in his gut he knew he would not escape the slowly grinding mills of the Gods. As for his men, he hoped better for them.
The foxholes were spread about one hundred meters apart with one man in each. Then there were the two tail end Charlie’s who dug their foxholes 200 meters from the last one. Their job was to cut off any retreating enemy that tried to bug out of the ambush. It would have been much better to have two in each foxhole but this would have to do. They just did not have the men to cover a train that might be a kilometer long. Each man dug his foxhole to accommodate two soldiers so if his position got too busy another soldier whose position was relatively quiet could come to his assistance and help out. Each one had a convenient dirt “shelf “ to hold all the soldier’s rifle magazines. He could change magazines without taking his eyes off his field of fire. As the train engine approached the tail end of Charlie’s position Garcia’s breathing stopped as he inhaled. A few more seconds and the train would be at the point of no return. They could not stop the train in time even if they did spot the foxholes. The end of the train was nowhere in sight as the body of the train rounded a tree covered bend two clicks from his position. The spotters on the engine were plainly visible now. The binoculars were to the sentinels’ eyes looking up to the surrounding mountains. They were not the unsuspecting target. They were wary and alert. Garcia could see more now. Now it seemed that the train was literally crawling with soldiers. Many were on top, some c
limbing up or down the ladders mounted on the outside of the rail cars. Also visible were the objects that he had both hoped and dreaded were on the train. Tanks. T62’s. Over ten for sure. Now there was only one thing on his mind. Were they manned? The hatches were closed. There were no tank commanders with their torsos sticking up through the hatch. Garcia’s mind was numb at the full implications of this bit of good luck but not too numb to mumble “good.”
The tanks would not be able to fire their main guns, that much was obvious. The recoil would flip them right off the railroad car or if chained down the whole car might tip or derail. The machine gun on each tank could make for a hardened nest, which would have proven costly to silence. The tank crews, of course, were onboard the train but they were crammed in with the rest of the units. The thought of making special accommodations to have them readily at hand to the tanks was considered but it was so far down the priority list that it was quickly lost in all the chaos. Just the act of throwing on the train any and all available units was a Herculean effort for a bureaucracy as top heavy and convoluted as the Cuban one was. The train seemed to pick up speed slowly as it straightened itself out on the long valley floor. Then from the front of the train a flare streaked skyward trailing white smoke, slowing and beginning its descent forming an angry red arch. The train was twenty meters from crossing the outer perimeter of the ambush zone. A sentry riding on the engine spotted fresh dirt from the first foxhole but nothing else. He himself was not too concerned but it would please his sergeant to know he was on the ball. He shouted up to the engineer “Go, Go!!” The engineer popped his head out of the window of the engine to assess the situation. His only concern was to make sure there was clear track ahead. He would pour it on, as best he could with this old lumbering behemoth. The lack of panic or even real concern in the voice of the sentry was infectious. The flare was not followed up with warning shots from his AK 47 so was treated by the other guards throughout the train with interested curiosity. They were anxious to get a shot at the troublesome track vandals and this was clearly all the trouble they expected.
The Cuban Liberation Handbook Page 8