The Cuban Liberation Handbook

by Joshua Hatuey Marti

  These were better equipped soldiers. Most had night vision and moved with the confidence of an elite unit. Behind the troops, through the smoky darkness loomed a BMP with its infrared spotlight, searching, then another behind and to the right switched on its spotlight. A dull stab of fear struck through Elvis. A response his ancestors would have been very familiar with. The same terror of looking through the mist and seeing two hunting lions looking for you with more of the pride behind them. Elvis had the added bonus of a pack of wolves at his heel as well.

  “BMP, eleven o’clock, ‘bout eighty meters,” said Elvis.

  “You’re up, shoot it!” yelled the gunner as he scrambled to retrieve another shell from the magazine.

  “What’s the elevation?” said Elvis in a tone that was as calm as he could manage.

  “Uh, depress one meter.”

  Elvis fired the gun. The tank recoiled. The Personnel Carrier exploded. The gunner was barely back in his seat when he started to reload the gun. Elvis saw the men to the front leap from the earth and rush the tank. Then the tank rocked with another explosion. This one was different from the first hit. A duller, less violent one. An RPG.

  “Hurry up they’re rushing,” Elvis yelled, not so calmly now.

  The gunner slammed in another shell and yelled, “You’re up. They hit the track. I don’t think we can move.”

  Elvis swung the turret toward the infantry and unleashed a torrent of bullets, knocking down the brave men and driving the rest to ground. Wham! Another explosion shocked through the tank. This one felt like it broke Elvis’ ankles even though they were cushioned by the dead tank driver’s body. He looked for the next Personnel Carrier only to find the vision blocks were smashed. He looked through gun sight and finally acquired it. He saw the BMP’s gun light up and before he could utter a word of warning his ears were ringing with another explosion, his eye was bruised from the eyepiece and his poor ankles felt like someone had driven spikes through them. The gun sight was still operable and had the BMP still in its sights. Elvis fired the main gun and another Personnel carrier exploded sending flames high into the night sky.

  Elvis grabbed the coaxial machine gun and started firing again.

  The gunner screamed, “Let me reload.”

  Elvis did not respond. He kept firing away. He could not believe this battle. It looked like one of those stupid Soviet propaganda films where the Nazis were falling like harvested wheat. Of course that was only in the mind of the propagandists. This was real. He was mowing down men from inside this steel tank like the movies. He swung the turret from side to side killing with a scythe of destruction. Men were retreating and heading down hill. It looked like he had beaten off this attack but he knew these men would reform within a few minutes and charge back at him.

  Elvis saw no targets left to shoot through his obscured night sight even though he knew dozens or hundreds were out there hugging the ground. “Reload.”

  The gunner struggled to retrieve another round from the ammunition stowage next to the driver.

  “Make it a high explosive, anti personnel type,” Elvis said.

  “Oh, would you like a Mojito with that too sir?” the gunner said venomously “You blanking idiot, I know how to load the gun. So did Eli before you …” his sentence was tearfully choked off. “Now I’m using him as a rug,” he mumbled bitterly.

  Elvis sat silently as the gunner struggled back into his seat and reloaded. “Your mak’in me nervous boy, don’t make me pull the pin on this grenade.” A grenade he didn’t have.

  There was a momentary silence then the gunner said, “You’re up.”

  Elvis traversed the turret three-hundred-sixty degrees firing the machine gun at his slightest suspicion. He heard a smaller explosion and turned the turret to find it. It sounded like a mortar. Were they trying to hit the tank with a mortar? In quick succession three more impacted but they were not moving toward the tank. The explosions were coming from the area he had assumed the Communists were assembling to form up another attack. “I think that’s ours,” he said. Elvis reached up and cracked open the hatch. He heard the distinctive sound of distant .308 caliber sniper rifles and the sonic crack of the bullets flying past. It was friendly fire coming from the hilltop. He concluded that the Free Cubans had regained the top of the hill and were pouring fire down upon the Communist troops. The sound was soon lost as the AK47’s barked back in reply.

  The tank continued to spit death into the night until the gunner flipped the light switch on and informed Elvis that the ammo was low. The tank had burned through nearly twenty-five-hundred machine gun rounds. From the frustratingly fleeting images Elvis had concluded that the Communists were withdrawing from the hill. He thought he could sense the Free Cuban forces were gathering strength. Then he glimpsed the blazing trail of a Javelin missile through the air. It traveled from the hilltop down to a gully located three hundred meters below him. A fire violently sputtered into life announcing the missile had found another BMP (Armored Personnel Carrier). Both flames and its black oily plume seemed to fight for the same space during their brief existence. Blackness cloaking the flames only to be fought off and pushed away time and again

  Elvis instantly said, “That’s it… let’s get out of this thing.”

  He swiveled the commander’s periscope to take one last look around them. He pushed open the heavy hatch and shimmied out. Bullets hammered the open hatchlxxiv making loud, dull bell ringing sounds. Bullet fragments peppered his left forearm. He rolled off the tank onto the ground and hugged it. Intense pain shot through his arm. A second later the gunner scrambled off the tank, landed on Elvis and promptly crawled off a short distance into the night. He was breathing heavily with a groaning cry in every breath.

  The gunner called out “I… I think...” then came a groan of pain.

  Elvis suddenly felt as naked as a turtle without his shell. He crawled around the tank peering into the darkness searching. And there it was, his pile of stuff no more than 15 meters away. His armored vest, gun and ammo. Elvis heard the gunner cry out again but it was now background noise which meant nothing to him. He slithered on his belly the entire distance and right into his vest. His forearm now felt like he had some hornets inside stinging him. The pain was growing more intense but there was almost no blood. Bullets were cracking overhead and still whacking the tank with regularity. Elvis grabbed the rifle and started to crawl back to the tank when it was hit again by a Seventy-three millimeter. The explosion blew out what was left of his eardrums and raised dust for twenty meters around the tank. Just when he could not believe he wasn’t hit by the shrapnel, his left arm stopped working altogether. The pain in his arm had stopped like someone had flipped an off switch. There was no pain at all but his entire arm had become inoperable. Inspecting the arm he found the reason. He was bleeding profusely from his upper arm near his shoulder. He ripped open a Velcro pocket of his armored vest, pulled out his first aid bag, got out the piece of surgical tubing and wrapped it around his arm. Holding one end in his teeth and pulling the other as hard as he could the tube constricted the arm and shut off the supply of blood to the arm. That done, he looked around. The tank did not brew up so he swung the rifle across his back, got on his knees and continued to crawl toward the tank like a three legged dog he once saw. His left arm hung lifelessly dragging his knuckles over the ground.

  “Geeyall,” he laughed morbidly as he imagined what he must look like to his buddies looking down on him from above. The thought of friendly troops observing him gave him surge of hope. Maybe he could make it after all. He was sure the gunner was dead but made it over to him anyways. Elvis grabbed the gunner by the shoulder and rolled him over. The gunner’s eyes opened. “Hey,” the gunner said plaintively. “Don’t, I’m bleeding.” He rolled back over in the fetal position holding his leg with a bloody hand.

  The gunner had been on the other side of the tank when the seventy-three millimeter hit it, thus saving him from the worst of it.

  Elvis mov
ed the gunner’s leg to find the other leg at the thigh drenched in blood.

  “Great,” muttered Elvis. “Keep pressure on it.”

  He got out his first aid kit again and got a surgical dressing. With the gunner’s help he tied a tourniquet just above the bloody part of the pant leg. He found a stick on the ground, tied it to the knot on the tourniquet and twisted it round and round, cinching the bandage tighter and tighter until the blood flow stopped.

  “We’ve got to find a hole,” Elvis said as he looked around. He stood for a second next to the tank looking around then laid next to the gunner.

  “Come on, follow me, I see a crater,” said Elvis.

  Both men slithered toward the crater on a blackened moonscape. Sticks that were once bushes were the only thing left standing on the hillside. A bullet smashed into the ground raising a small plume of dirt and dust near Elvis’ foot. Elvis clumsily rolled over on his back, fumbled with the AK47 rifle with his one good arm and tried to get a bead on the next round fired at him. But he could see nothing. The Free Cuban snipers were continuing to pour fire down on the Communists, maybe they hit the guy who shot at him. They continued to crawl until the men finally reached the crater and wallowed into it as gracefully as an elephant seal on the beach. Elvis propped the rifle on the rim of the crater and looked around. He noticed some movement on the tank as a Communist soldier tossed a grenade down the open hatch. Elvis fired at the shape but could not tell if he hit anything. The grenade went off with a dull metallic "thunk" sound and the tank caught fire as only tanks could. It illuminated the burned earth in eerie dancing shadows, the strobing sparks looked like flash bulbs taking pictures of a dark and alien world. Elvis thought now was a good time to hunker deep into the shadow of the crater and treat their wounds and did so.

  Elvis treated his and the gunner’s wounds expecting any minute to be overrun by the Communists or a grenade to drop in on him. The fear returned. If he could hold on a little longer FCAF units would take back the hill and him with it.

  For fifteen long minutes Elvis and the gunner laid there nursing their wounds. Elvis belly crawled to the top of the crater when he saw it coming. A SWORDSlxxv robot clumsily driving itself down from the crest of the hill. Even at a hundred meters the little monster held his undivided attention. It seemed to be coming right toward him. The robot stopped momentarily then tracers streaked from the tracked midget and reached straight out for Elvis. The first short burst snapped inches over his head before he could duck back into the safety of the darkend crater. Elvis suddenly had a sick feeling as he remembered his battered helmet. With his good arm he pulled off the helmet and saw that his IFF (Interrogator Friend or Foe) transmitter was missing. In the dark FCAF soldiers and the SWORDS would not be able to tell him from foe without it. They wouldn’t know where he was. Elvis began to shake uncontrollably.

  SWORDS ROBOT:

  Guantanamo Free Cuban Sector, firing range.

  June 5th 2018. Three months before L day.

  The Sergeant stood before Elvis and a hundred others. He was a little nervous and kept referring to his notes as he began his presentation.

  “Imagine a soldierlxxvi who never sleeps or eats, never experiences fear, who never complains. Who’s three feet tall, has four eyes and can see in the dark. Who’s so attached to his weapon that it takes a screwdriver and a pair of pliers to take it from him. The SWORDS adds a new dimension to urban conflict. It’s the first weaponized robot and can be armed with everything from a machine gun to a rocket launcher.”

  The Sergeant looked up from the scrap of paper and spoke more conversationally. “We shot rockets off this system before we shot forty mm grenades off this system before, anything that can be shot by a human can be shot by this platform.”

  He looked down at his notes again and continued in a halting southern accent. “It’s no wonder that Time magazine voted this little robot one of the greatest inventions of the 21st century.”

  “This smart robot assassin is controlled by a soldier calling the shots from a safe distance from the enemy. A soldier can drive his weapon remotely 800 – 1000 meters away and be able to fire his weapon from the safe distance of obscurity.

  There is bank of surveillance cameras to give the soldier a unique view of the battlefield.” The Sergeant walked over to the squat little unit, crouched down and began to pointing out its various features.

  “Right now we have five cameras on board. We have one behind the scope so it is your target acquisition sight, we have one that’s a Pan/Tilt. That gives you a 360 degree view. Out front we have a camera that is a wide angle that zooms down in front we have a front drive camera in the rear we have one that’s the same but it’s a rear drive camera.”

  The Sergeant stood up and continued. “The optics on board the Sword, you can actually read people’s name tags at 3-400 meters. Whereas the human eye can’t pick that up even with your best binoculars. You can see the expression on his face, what weapon he is carrying, even see if his selector lever is on fire or safe.

  The swords is operated from a portable consol using radio frequencies the soldier steers the unit with two joysticks with live video feeds relaying the pictures back to the unit.

  At the present time we have a M49 machine gun. But we can put an M240 machine gun which is a larger machine gun we can put an M16 we can put a 50 caliber sniper rifle on it. It’s also been armed with a six barrel 40mm grenade launcher, an anti tank rocket launcher…” He was interrupted by three soldiers who came forward and sat at a long portable table that had three fat looking briefcases on it. They opened up the cases to reveal a bank of very military looking controls. Two joy sticks, bright red covered weapons controls, camera selectors and many more that Elvis could not see clearly. As in a laptop the lid held the screen. It was divided into four sections, each one showing the view from a different camera.

  The Sergeant continued. “The robots are virtually silent and can travel at the pace of a running soldier. They run on batteries an can be put in sleep mode for up to seven days before being switched back on. A lethal sniper just waiting for its prey.

  Out in the open it’s easy to see the robot coming but its real power lies in urban combat where you won’t see it coming around the corner.

  Imagine the fear of seeing a swarm a deadly robots heading straight for you with nobody to shoot back at.

  M240 machine gun can fire 700 rounds before it needs to be reloaded. It can select single or auto fire. With such a stable platform the weapon can shoot its weapon with extreme accuracy.”

  Elvis instinctively knew this would be an exceptionally dangerous weapon to use around friendly units. It was hard enough to be a TRAP gunner in a single position keeping track of friendlies. It would be quite another thing to have the trap gun running around shooting everything in sight. Nevertheless, he had hoped for a position as one of the SWORDS operators but the competition was fierce and in the end those spots went to U.S. Cuban-American soldiers who were extensively trained at the Picatinny arsenal in New Jersey.

  Free Cuban Armed Forces -

  North invasion force, 23 km west of Guantanamo City, Cuba October 2, 2018.

  “L” Day or Liberation Day plus one. 2:32 AM

  Even with his ears ringing incessantly Elvis could hear the electric tracks of the robot now. It must be very close. He decided that he would not let the ugly beast roll up to the rim of his crater and blast them away rabbits shivering in a hole. He decided to shoot it out with the thing.

  Just when he rolled over on his stomach in an attempt to get into firing position he heard someone in a loud muffled whisper say “Salt!”

  Elvis stopped and listened. “Salt!” came the voice again more urgently in a loud bellow.

  It was the identification code word for this operation. Elvis temporized with “Uhh” as he searched his brain for the correct response. No sooner was it out of his mouth when he knew that was the exact wrong thing to say.

  “Uhh, Lake City” responded Elvis. They
were here. He was safe…well, safer anyway.

  The voice said, “Hold your fire.”

  Free Cubans, no more than two dozen, reoccupied positions on the hill while a few more waded out into the black night in pursuit of the withdrawing Communist forces led by two of the SWORDS units. The sound of single rifle shots that spoke the language of precision punctuated the night. A Free Cuban mortar round would fall now and then which bespoke of a scarcity of ammunition. Elvis fearfully anticipated a return of the Communist artillery but it did not come. A medic now treating him and his newfound prisoner/comrade bitterly said that the ‘Brethren’ had cut loose a few of their precious TACMlxxvii missiles and may have neutralized the Communist guns. Elvis just wanted to get off this hill. As soon as the medic was done with him he got up to leave.

  The gunner said “Hey, wait for me, take me with you. You gotta take me with you!”

  Elvis sighed and sank back to hug the edge of the crater. He started mumbling curses as his head hung heavily on his shoulders.

  The gunner added, “You gave me your word.”

  Elvis turned to the Medic who seemed to be a disagreeable stocky little fellow and said, “I need two guys to carry this guy back to the aid station.”

  That request was all the excuse the cantankerous little medic needed to lay into someone.

  “You need! You need!” the medic yelled. “No one is going to cart this POW around. In case you haven’t noticed we’re in the middle of a battle here. We’ll probably be thrown back off this hill again any minute now. We’ll leave him here, let the Commies have him back. I don’t want him.”

  It was a good thing Elvis was nearly two hundred pounds of muscle and spent months regularly hauling around over one hundred pounds of equipment. He threw the gunner over his shoulder and, cursing all the while, headed for the crest of the hill and the aid station just beyond. His body armor had shifted to the side exposing his lower back but he just didn’t have the energy to put the gunner down arrange it properly and pick him up again. He tried to stay in as much cover as he could which was nearly gone but as he approached the crest of the hill the barren area held no cover at all. He trundled up the slope to reach the crest passing the body of the Communist Officer he had silenced mid-sentence. He knew it was the worst possible place to be, silhouetted on the crest of a hill. Elvis began to mutter curses with every breath as his pace quickened. The crack of a bullet sounded in his ear. By the sound of it Elvis knew it came within inches of his shoulder. Then he felt his belly literally explode in a blinding pain. He continued trudging along another twenty meters, vomiting and groaning. Three or four more bullets cracked in the night around him but the overwhelming pain and instant sickness he felt drove the outside world into a fuzzy and hazy other place, beyond his caring. The moment he reached the cover of the back side of the hill he slid the gunner off his shoulder and dropped to the ground.