Garcia saw the flare go up. His hands gripped on the binoculars as his jaw tightened.” Come on Meeho, don’t panic,” he thought to himself. If the train stopped now half of the train would lay outside the kill zone. The last thing they needed was the tail end of Charlie's to open up on the train prematurely. They didn’t. The guards riding high on the train saw nothing amiss, of course they were looking for running troublemakers. The relief Garcia felt at the train continuing onward came over him as fast as his anxiety at seeing the red flare. “Thank you Lord,” he whispered. With disaster narrowly averted Garcia’s confidence in the ambush soared.
Free Cuban Armed Forces-
North invasion force, Guantanamo Cuba October 1, 2018.
“L” Day or Liberation Day. 9:32 PM
Downtown Guantanamo City
Ozzy brought up on his display the overview of the city which had the location of all friendly units. He then focused in on his engagement area called Kansas Alpha. The city was superimposed with a map of the United States. Each area was given the name of the state that it corresponded with. The Communists had been pushed out of half of the city from the long days fighting. Javalina, haavee for short, ducked down behind the cinder block wall and slid next to Ozzy. He was so nicknamed because he was one of a two-man team in charge of the Javelinxlviii anti-armor missile he was entrusted to carry. “Several enemy troops in the corner building. 11 o’clock, two blocks over. RPG’s, machine gun emplacement, at least one guy with night vision.” Javalina said. “Do we have a tank in direct line of sight?” Segrera fingered the circular switch mounted on the side of his rifle to toggle through the menu items on his computer. “Dubya will have to redeploy.” “No,” responded Javalina, “That will scare them off. Pop up and laze the corner of the South West building at the intersection. Don’t look for them. Just mark it fast. I don’t think they know we’re here. The artillery trajectory will be too shallow. We need to lob in some mortars.” Ozzy toggled his switch again to bring up the artillery support screen. Within two seconds a mortar battery was assigned the mission and instructed to prepare for it. Ozzy lifted his laser-mounted rifle above the height of the wall and lased the target. Before he could bring it down again the coordinates had been sent to the fire direction center and on to the mortar teams. The mortars adjusted their aim and three tubes fired for effect. Ozzy and Haavee could hear the thunk, thunk, thunk of the distant mortar tubes firing in rapid succession. The slowest part of the whole exercise was the flight time. Not much could be done about that. For 20 long seconds the mortar rounds arched nearly a mile in the sky then plummeted on top of the target”. Five seconds to impact,” said Ozzy as he raised his rifle above the wall to view the target and assess the accuracy.
One third of the shells utilized a delayed fuse, plunging through the roof of the buildings before exploding inside. One third detonated upon contact and the last third exploded well above the ground to effectively disperse their deadly shrapnel over a wide area.
Seeing the first rounds land Ozzy quickly slid down the wall and hugged the ground but not fast enough. Even as the ground beneath them leapt and shocked, Ozzy could feel his finger sting. He thought he might have smashed it in his drop for cover. “Look at my finger. The left ring finger. Is it hit?” Haavee, with his standard night vision could actually see better up close than Ozzy could. “Woa, the ceramic plate is totally whacked dude … but I don’t see no blood. I don’t think it penetrated.” The most exposed area of a Team warrior was his hands and wrists. As they pointed, viewed from, and fired their guns from around cover it was found that shrapnel, flying debris from bullet riddled walls and the bullets themselves posed a vulnerability that was overcome by Special gloves, wrist and forearm protection. This protection made from a lightweight Kevlar with trauma plates imbedded in them. The plates varied in size from the form fitted ones around the forearm down to the tiny plates that covered each segment of the fingers.
“Left twenty meters, drop ten,” Ozzy yelled into his cupped hands that cradled his helmet-mounted microphone.
“On the way,” came the reply, “you better hunker down sir, its coming in danger close”.
Tell me about it thought Ozzy. “I copy”. Ozzy yelled, “Next salvo coming in twenty seconds, get down, that stuff is dangerous and get ready to go.” Ozzy could see on his helmet-mounted screen the arcs of the mortar rounds lobbing onto the target. He could see that there would be a slight lull of ten seconds between the main salvo and the last three shells. During that slight pause Ozzy quickly put his gun around the corner and viewed the flattened building. “That’s it, Boitel and Carrion, three more mortar rounds and you guys go, everyone else covers them. The second the last round exploded the team was on the move. Boitel ran across the street to find cover in a doorway. Carrion quickly followed. Boitel and Carrion leapfrogged up the street to the target. The M1- A could be plainly heard roaring up closer in support but he could not see it and Boitel could not be bothered to toggle through the screens to find its location.
“Ozzy to Boitel, don’t step into that street. I see multiple targets in that street just west of the target.” Thanks to the drone with an infrared camera flying above them in the darkness, the situation screen displayed the street peppered with ghostly green images running to and from the collapsed building. “The tank is coming up. He’s gonna hit em with machine guns. No grenades or main gun repeat no grenades or main gun. Our guy is west of you on that street.” Ozzy said for the benefit of the tank listening in. “Copy that,” replied the tank commander Segrera. Boitel sidled up to the corner of the street and pointed his gun system around the corner to take a look down the street. The gun mounted infrared sight showed numerous enemy targets running or stumbling zombie like or lying on their backs calling for help as many others were busy redeploying to new defensive positions. “Tell the tank to hold back. I’ve got these guys,” Boitel said quietly into his helmet-mounted microphone. Boitel reached down to his thigh pocket and pulled out his twelve-inch flash suppressor/silencer and quickly attached it to the end of his M16. He swung the gun around the corner and carefully viewed the situation. He looked for anyone with night vision equipment lurking in cover. He could see none. They obviously had no idea he was there. He then saw a communist soldier with night vision in the street directing other soldiers. Boitel brought him down with one shot to the head, trying to smash those goggles as well. His flash suppressor was big and awkward and cumbersome but there was absolutely no visible flash to give away his position and it had the added benefit of silencing the noise from the muzzle blast. The sonic crack of the bullet still made plenty of noise as it broke the sound barrier on its way to the target but it was all but impossible to determine which direction the bullet came from. Boitel switched to the much clearer night vision mode. Another careful scan of the area revealed a machine gun emplacement two hundred meters down the street. Someone was bobbing his head up and down like a prairie dog next to the machine gun holding a large pair of binocular type lenses to his eyes. In a flash of fear he realized that the prairie dog was looking in his direction. It instantly dawned on him that he was not exposed; only his gun and hands were being pointed around the corner. The helmet-mounted display was especially disorienting to those who felt so comfortable with it that they forgot they were looking through it. Boitel hit the range finder button on his gun with his trigger finger and 224 meters appeared on his gun sight. The center of the recticicle adjusted automatically as he rested it squarely on the prairie dogs chest. Boitel’s gun cracked and the prairie dog dropped hard flinging the glasses to his left. The gunner manning the large caliber machine gun next to the prairie dog lit up the scene with a surrealistic staccato strobe light but not in Boitel’s direction. The gunner was shooting due south and he was due east. The communists, seeing the fire from the machine gun assumed the enemy was approaching from the southwest. They had no idea the enemy was already in their midst. As they took cover many were exposed to Boitel’s deadly accurate fire. A cro
uched man running took Boitel’s bullet in the chest but kept running only to fall in mid stride twenty meters away. Boitel was joined by Carrion who had his flash suppressor in place. The shootin gallery was officially open now as eight more communists fell to their guns. “Redeploy” came the order from their squad commander. Ozzy had been seeing everything Boitel and Carrion had seen through their gun video cameras, infrared and night vision system. His job was to keep that knucklehead Boitel alive and made sure he didn’t get Carrion killed at the same time. Boitel was bound and determined to break three hundred kills in this war and have his name in every history book in Cuba for the next hundred years. Ozzy would have preferred to pull back and let arty rain down on those targets but he did not micromanage. He would let his guys in the forward position fight it as they saw fit, within reason. But he was not about to wait around worrying like a mother hen. It was time to wade in amongst the enemy and show them what they could do. “OK move forward” Ozzy told his men.
Boitel redeployed but not by very much. Within twenty seconds the two were hammering away at the communist troops again with a mechanical skill. They were dropping them with regularity that unnerved them both. Firefights were not supposed to be this way. Especially with the elite Eastern Army, The Brigade of the Border (Brigada de la Frontera). This brigade started out with volunteers and were reinforced with the most elite units on the Island. Even the Special Troops that made up Castro’s own security force were here in Guantanamo. What was also suspected of being here was a company of women that guarded the border perimeter which unnerved the young FCAF soldiers.
Boitel slammed another magazine into his M16 and said into his microphone to no one in particular and of course to everyone in particular, “That’s got to be twenty six.” Carrion was still knockin em down and did not respond. “They still don’t know where we are. We’re gonna get to the second story of this building, Boitel to Ozzy, redeploying to second story, request support.”
“Rodger that,” responded Ozzy. “We’re coming in behind you”.
Boitel and Carrion ran the twenty yards to the corner building directly across from the flattened target. Boitel knew the first story was clear because all the windows and blinds were blown out and could see the interior clearly in the darkness. The upstairs was the thing he was not too sure about. He wished that one of the Packbot teams were with him. The Packbot was a small, flattened tracked robot. It would climb these stairs and look around the second story and find any hiding enemy waiting in ambush. The tough little thing could be thrown out of a second story window and hit the ground speeding to its target or to cover. It proved itself extremely valuable in the caves of Afghanistan as well as the urban fighting in Iraq. “We’ll just have to do it the old fashioned way.” They quickly cleared the second story in the classic cover and clear procedure.
“Ozzy to Boitel, picking up a lot of movement to your North and West.” Boitel approached the blown out second story windows. “Oh blank,” he whispered. He grabbed Carrion and pushed him towards the window “shoot ‘em!” He toggled to his fire support screen and set up a fire mission. He started to laze targets. “Boitel to Ozzy, they’re on the move and headin’ our way. The whole stinkin’ line is on the move. I count hundreds,” Request you bring up the guys and take defensive positions around me. I’m calling in arty on positions west of us. Bring up that tank.”
“Rodger that.”
Boitel could now hear the friendly artillery pounding in the distance.
From the darkness of that second story the two men had all they could handle just fighting off enemy directly to their front. They could not let them cross the street and occupy the first floor of their building before their team could get there. With mechanical precision they put rounds into the enemy who were firing their weapons blindly in the darkness. One round to the torso with anything over a ninety percentile hit probability and they moved on to the next target whether they dropped or not. One thing that irked the troops no end was the low knock down power of the .223 caliber M16. It was just as deadly as any other rifle but sometimes it just did not drop the target instantly like the shock power of a .308.
The artillery fell uncomfortably close as the team took up positions in and around ‘Boitel’s building’ as it came to be known.
“Ozzy to Boitel, we’re downstairs and taking up positions.”
“K.”
The battle for ‘Boitel’s Building’ now became a ferocious firefight. The Communists now had a general idea where the unseen enemy was and some went fully automatic, spraying the building with their AK47’s. They were quickly suppressed with counter fire from the team warrior unit who could plainly see their muzzle flashes even without their night or thermal vision. Inside the building a thunderous explosion threw Ozzy to the ground. Boards, plaster and dust from the ceiling above lay on top of him. He slowly got to his knees in the choking pall. Ten feet away Boitel also struggled to get up.
“Where’d you come from?” Ozzy coughed out.
Boitel pointed to the hole in the ceiling above him. “Took the elevator.”
Carrion was still on the second story looking down through the hole at Boitel “you ok?”
“Oh I do’no, we’ll see,” he said.
Over the Com Net “RPG launch position one fifty meters northeast. Marking now.”
Ozzy jumped in, “plaster the area, we’re going to move into that direction, over.”
Ozzy turned to Boitel “Love the place you picked out for us, Boitel.”
“I remodeled it just for you Sarge.”
“Your on mike gentlemen,” crackled the fire control officer back in his command vehicle. “Cut the chatter.”
“Medic,” yelled Boitel. The call was passed down the line.
23 kilometers West of Ciego de Avila
October 2, 2018 L Day plus One
10:53 AM
One half mile in front of the train a pillar of white grayish smoke exploded skyward. Strangely it was silent for the first couple seconds. In that moment the rebels could see the shock wave speed outward to rend the humid air, trees and plants. The sound of the explosion was unbelievably loud. Corporal Lopez knew immediately that his men used about 30 times as much as was needed to do the job. ‘I just hope they didn’t hear it all the way back in Havana,’ he thought. All guns now opened up as the train started to break hard. Communists started to jump off the still swiftly moving train. They tumbled end over end or hit hard sprawling into the gravel. Some lay prone on the rising grade near the track ready to return fire at the enemy they thought was only on the other side. They were plainly visible to the rebel riflemen on their side of the tracks as they opened fire and picked them off as easily as the silhouetted targets they used for target practice. As the men started to pour out of the front and back of a train car the machine guns concentrated on those areas. Bodies piled up making it more difficult for yet more men to make it out of the car without being pushed and subsequently tripping over the bodies of their comrades. The communists who survived the jump from the train relatively uninjured and who had loaded weapons with them were few in number. Yet the prevailing doctrine to counter an ambush was to charge into it and charge into it they did. The rebels now had a strategy of their own to implement. If you want to kill as many of the enemy as you can you shoot the attacker that is farthest away from you first. Then the next furthest and so on until you kill the closest enemy last. The leader of the assault will not see all the rest of his comrades behind him fall and is less likely to take cover or retreat until it is too late. The benefit to this is that you can bag the entire assault team in one rush. This strategy apparently went out the window when the rebels, seeing the tremendous numbers of soldiers on the train and suddenly feeling very alone in their fox holes, hit the lead charging soldiers hard in an attempt to turn back the counter attack. As the communist vanguard fell to the onslaught of the still hidden rebel AK-47’S it did have the desired paralyzing effect on the remaining troops. They found it to
be a much better idea to find cover and stay low. The train was still moving at 20 mph and showed little signs of slowing despite the grinding screeing of the steel wheels on steel track.
Many of the soldiers on the train now turned their attention to a machine gun emplacement over one thousand meters away high on a ridge that was peppering the train. The only reason they could see the machine gun at all was the fact that it was using tracer ammunition. It was shooting at the train with relative impunity since it was far out of communists’ rifle range. The firing was non-stop. It was not the bursts of fire that most machine gunners use but a steady continuous stream that seemed like it would never end. The firing did stop however when the barrel grew a dull red hot. The machine gunner unlatched the feed tray on top of the gun, flipped it forward and exposed the upper receiver. He grabbed the barrel handle. With a quick twist he wrenched out the hot and smoking barrel and threw it onto the ground. It made a sizzling sound as it lay on the grass making it steam. “Son of a blank,” muttered the gunner’s mate, speaking of the hot barrel. “Put it on the tray.” Both knowing the difficulties they were going to have cleaning the outside of the barrel with debris burned onto it. His suggestion went ignored. The gunner’s mate, who happened to be the gunner’s childhood friend and distant relative had the next ammo belt already in the gun as soon as the new barrel was slammed into place. The whole procedure took just under ten seconds. They worked fast and efficiently as a team. They were ‘dialed in.’ The firing resumed with the familiar bursts of fire now directed at the juicy and irresistible targets that the train cars packed with the communist soldiers made. When the bullets hit, it found nearly all onboard either firing out the window or trying to get to the crowded windows to fire or reloading their magazines by putting one cartridge at time in their thirty round clips. The car was so full that if a bullet flew through the car it could not miss hitting somebody. The first machine gun round went cleanly through the window and hit the upper right arm of a soldier firing out the window. His arm went limp falling to his side. It felt like it was about to fall off when the man dropped his rifle and instinctively grabbed the stricken arm by the elbow and held it tight to his body. The round continued on its destructive path traveling through the right side of another man standing directly behind the first blowing a hole through his abdomen, exited through his back and finally lodged in the wood shelf under the window in the far side of the car. At six hundred and fifty rounds per minute this tale of horror repeated ten times per second. The next two bullets double tapped a man standing next to the first, dropping him like a sack of sugar. For the first couple seconds the soldiers continued to fire but crouching down as the fire swept through them like a scythe. It happened so fast no yelling or grunts of hit men were heard, just the sound of the bullets and their impacts. After four seconds most of the men now lay prone on the floor of the car but the carnage continued.
The Cuban Liberation Handbook Page 9