Cuco checked to make sure his MASTER ARM SWITCH was OFF then radioed,
“Freedom Three, maintain visual spacing and take the lead. Check nose is cold.” That was a command to check that his weapons were safed as well.
“Acknowledged, Freedom One, I have you in sight, at your four o’clock, high. My nose is cold. Leaving high patrol.”lxxxi
“Rodger.” Cuco looked up and to the right and saw his wingman, right where he said he’d be. “I have you in sight, Freedom Three. I’ve got two more bandits, one at two o’clock, thirty klicks, low and fast. Do you have him on your radar?”
“Affirmative, One,” said the wingman.
“Designate as bandit One. You are clear to engage bandit One. I will take high patrol and keep an eye on bandit Two now at eighty klicks.”
Bandit Two was too far away to be in effective cover position for Bandit One but he looked like he could be a player in this one. The Mig patrolled the outskirts of the fight ring menacingly. He may have been planning to fire missiles at extreme range as Freedom Three closed the distance on Bandit One or join some friends and make a high speed dash into fray.
Freedom Three tried to induce the Mig into a high speed stern chase and a possible gun kill but ended up using a precious AMRAAM missile on it. A quick, clean kill.
Freedom Three then went supersonic after Bandit Two but the Bandit kept his distance and retreated back under the protective umbrella of Communist SAMs (Surface-to-Air Missiles) positioned in and around Santa Clara. The last remaining Communist airbase was growing into a veritable fortress. A hundred or more SAM sites were in operation there and the number was growing as the anti-aircraft units trickled in from all over the island.
Freedom Three was sent to return to Gitmo to rearm and reload while a nervous Cuco and Izzy patrolled the airspace between the bad guys and forward elements of the FCAF units.
Half way home Freedom Three was redirected to intercept a flight of three Mi-24 Hind Helicopterslxxxii flying out of Holguin. Apparently they were to be supported by the air armada the F-15’s had just broken up and driven off. Stupid move, to fly a helicopter without air cover. Gitmo could only guess what its objective was. The American E-8 Joint STARSlxxxiii (surveillance and Targeting Radar System) ground-reconnaissance aircraft picked up the helicopters before they got fifty feet off the ground and passed on the info to Gitmo. Freedom Three rolled in to gun the helicopters. They scattered. They were very heavily armed helicopters but not with weapons that would help them very much in a dogfight with a fighter aircraft. The F-15 hit the first helicopter at a distance of a mile. The Eagle killed it dead, blowing apart the pilot, gunner and the eight troops it carried. The helicopter was fully ablaze while its rotors kept it aloft. It slowly cantered to its left then crashed and tumbled onto the flat and barren landscape below. The F-15 used over half of its nine-hundred-and-forty rounds to do it. In two more passes it killed another as it was attempting to land and sent the third home trailing smoke.
North invasion force, Guantanamo City, Cuba October 2, 2018.
“L” Day or Liberation Day plus One 5:00 AM
The Captain had nearly chewed Ozzy’s ear off. It was a good sign though. If he meant to bust Ozzy down and replace him he would have done it already and spared himself all the yelling. He was told that his unit would not ‘wade out’ into the middle of the enemy when artillery could do the job with no casualties. He had better exercise more control over his men or the Captain would find someone who would control them. Gitmo would not squander their most valuable asset because some hotshots wanted to win the war all by themselves.
Ozzy in turn chewed out his own team and threatened to take Boitel off the line.
Boitel was nearly in tears. “I’m sorry Sarge, I’ll do whatever you say. I’m gonna be very careful from now on. No more hot doggin, I promise. Only don’t send me back. I can’t go back. I belong here with the guys.”
Ozzy was completely defused with Boitel’s repentance. He wanted to put his arm around him and tell him it was ok. He had spearheaded a great victory. They had blown through the defenses that took Castro’s Eastern Army months to prepare. They were moving so fast the Communists could not retreat in an orderly fashion and they were taking prisoners faster than they could handle them.
Ozzy jutted his jaw and simply said in his gruffest of voices, “Just don’t do it again.”
Dawn broke over a smoking city well under the control of the Free Cubans. Soviet era tanks and BMP’s littered the rubble-strewn streets. This is the place Castro had planned to stop the Free Cubans. This was the city into which he poured every asset he could. It was to be his launching point for the invasion to finally rid himself of this “cancer” that had sprung up in the feted Guantanamo swamp.
It may have seemed like a cancer to Castro but it was the burning fire of freedom that was now spreading throughout the island nation.
FCAF vehicles charged up the main highway to Santiago de Cuba, eighty-six kilometers to the west, where only sporadic fighting took place. By noon they made one-hundred and seventy-seven kilometers to Bayamo. Nothing but joyous crouds greeted them there. The troops welcomed the display but it slowed them down as much as the fighting did in Santiago de Cuba.
General Zip Petra decided to bypass the next major city of Holguin. The trip was uneventful except for an attempted enemy air attack that never arrived. The Communists took an inordinate amount of time forming up near their Santa Clara base. How they got up any planes at all was a mystery since all their runways were cratered. Maybe they had used an adjacent highway to take off from. Taking off from a highway was one thing. Landing a heavy aircraft on an unreinforced roadway was another. In any event the FCAF F-15’s had given them a good shellacking so they probably did not have to worry about landing too many Communist planes, Zip thought.
By nightfall the Free Cuban armored units rolled into Las Tunas for a total gain of two-hundred and fifty-three kilometers in a twelve hour period. The troops rested and refueled for four hours when they were off again. The road was clear all the way to Camaguey. Rebel forces had control of Marti and the surrounding areas. Those very same Rebel forces, a ragged band of Freedom Fighters, happily joined the powerful convoy. The Free Cubans made another one-hundred-twenty-five kilometers that night to the outskirts of Camaguey.
44 Km West of Ciego de Avila. Majagua, Cuba
October 2, 2018 L Day plus One
The Communist convoy had gotten hopelessly jammed as the divided highway abruptly stopped and funneled down to a poorly maintained two lane road. The dark ribbon of road slashed through a high sea of sugar cane. From the road the fields appeared as a jungled mass of vegetation, no more thoughtfully spaced than a field of grass. But upon closer inspection the plants were indeed carefully spaced, offset from each other but not in rows. A man could hide successfully just three or four plants away from the road.
This stretch of road had been a busy hive of activity just one hour ago. Dozens of cars and trucks carrying the rebels from Ciego de Avila disgorged their comrades and their weapons into the cane fields, then drove back to a safe hiding spot nearly a kilometer away. The footprints were carefully smoothed and the cane field now looked deserted and lonely.
Jesús Zamora was twenty-six years old. He worked as a repairman on radios, antennas, telephones and telephone lines. He was also a veteran as were most of the Rebel participants in this ambush. When word was passed around for volunteers for this mission Jesús had commandeered and loaded a truck with all the mines he could find. If they wanted the mines they would need someone who knew how to skillfully place them, and he was the guy.
Jesús placed over fifty MON-50lxxxiv antipersonnel mines along a stretch of road about a kilometer long. Further down the road he dropped off another dozen or so and kept a few in reserve in his foxhole. Hopefully the rebels would have enough know how to set them up properly, or if they did not, enough sense to leave them alone. These mines were at least thirty years old. The electrical firi
ng device was notoriously unsafe. They were known to prematurely detonate. Jesús would never connect the wires to the remote terminal more than one second before the moment he wanted to detonate the mine.
Communist trucks, armored personnel carriers and tanks still on their semi-truck transports moved slowly along the black asphalt road. Irregular transports like converted cattle trucks filled with wary soldiers were interspersed amongst the slower moving BMP’s.
The long line of mines were spaced about twenty meters apart standing upright on their four extended legs or attached to the stalks of the sugar cane. The deadly rounded faces pointed toward the road. Inside each mine were seven-hundred steel balls and C-4 explosive. Each mine had a electrical wire running back and tapped into a main wire which in turn ran back to Jesús inside his hole forty meters behind the line of mines. Inside the fox hole Jesús had a car battery that would provide the power necessary to detonate the long array of mines. He did not have the time to conduct the usual circuit test but this array, although not this long, had been well tested in the past. It would have been better to have each mine independently operated by a soldier who knew how to do it. But to hand all these deadly mines over to men who did not know what they were doing had disaster written all over it. He now regretted just dropping off the dozen or so mines to men who may have had no idea how to use them.
Jesús heard but could not see the heavy vehicles on the road. The loud, deep growling of the large engines made his heart beat wildly, like it would jump right out of his chest. He was to be the initiator of the ambush and he had to do it by sound alone. Long before the column reached the pressure mines that had been buried to block the road he heard an explosion about half a kilometer away. His guess was one of the anti-personnel mines were prematurely detonated before the convoy was fully inside the kill zone. He had no choice now but to detonate the mines before the enemy had time to take defensive positions. He connected the black wire then touched the red wire to the terminal. Before his mind could register that he had indeed completed the circuit the world exploded in dust, debris and fire.
His Rebel comrades, most he did not know, raced past him running headlong toward the road carrying a rifle and an RPG (Rocket Propelled Grenade) before he got out of his hole he heard the familiar “ThuuKuuu” sound of the RPG’s being fired, the impacts against the armored vehicles, and the ensuing conflagrations. By the time he had grabbed his rifle and joined the men at the road it looked like it was nearly over. Every vehicle was ablaze and wounded men were limping, crawling or being dragged away from them.
Jesús estimated about thirty-two vehicles were burning. Most of the column trailed far behind the stricken and burning jumble and Jesús could hear the Communists putting out a barrage of fire at his poor comrades at the very end of the ambush line.
Far down the road he could see a tank coming off its transport and start roaring down the side of the road at them. Then a group of large armored vehicles seemed to mass and move forward down the road toward him. Jesús looked into the smoldering sugar cane and noticed spots where the mines did not explode. He ran over to where his mine should be and with a little difficulty found an unexploded mine. He carefully switched off the arming switch and disconnected the wire. He ran back to the road and started to order his comrades about. They gathered up three more unexploded mines. Jesús told the men to form a line perpendicular to the advancing Communists and dig in.
Rebel mortar fire rained down upon the advancing Communists but it had no effect on the tanks and BMP’s. To add to their mounting problems there was almost nothing of use to the Rebels on the burning vehicles except for some ammunition. The Rebels fell back from the advancing Communists and were quickly assembled into Jesús’ line of defense. The rebels were still lining up in their positions when the first tank approached along side the road. Jesús went along the line kicking men and ordering them to come along. He quickly repeated the plan of attack over and over as more men accumulated.
Communist soldiers cautiously walked along the sides of the advancing tank hoping the Rebels had fled. One of them froze in terror as he looked at a stalk of sugarcane that had a mine on it about eye level. He cried out a warning. Two seconds later the mine exploded sweeping the soldiers off of their feet and setting the T-55’s external fuel tanks afire. Rebels raced out of the sugar cane in pairs. The first man firing his AK-47 wildly and his buddy shouldering and firing an RPG into the tank. The first three teams were cut down by the tank but not before they fired two rockets into the tank with the only discernable effect being a blown off track. More RPG’s streaked from the cane field and into the tank. One hit the thinly armored side between the road wheels and into its internal fuel tank. In less than a second the tank was sitting in a pool of its own burning fuel unable to move. Fifty meters behind the burning tank a BMP armored personnel carrier fired into the cane field cutting down more rebels. Some took cover amongst the wrecked vehicles and some dove into the nearest foxhole. Jesús dove for cover and landed on top of a guy in a long but very shallow hole. It looked like a poorly dug grave. The guy was inert and it took Jesús less than a second to roll the corpse on its side and take its place close to the dirt. He was literally face to face with the dead man as large millimeter rounds cracked overhead. The man looked familiar. He lived on the other side of town or maybe outside of town. Jesús rarely saw him. Jesús would see him from time to time riding his bike. The guy looked like he was asleep. Jesús expected him to wake up any second and would have to apologize for taking over the hole. But the guy never woke up. Nearby the body lay an RPG ready to go. Jesús threw the rocket over his shoulder and headed out to his original hole which lay thirty or so meters in front of the ragged rebel line. It was odd that Jesús knew exactly where he was in the endless dense cane field. His brain was so clear, his memory so sharp and time so slow in battle that it was an entirely new experience. To his surprise four men followed him and were puzzled when Jesús jumped in his hole. They hit the ground, mumbled something to each other and turned on their bellies to head back to their holes.
“No, wait. Do any of you know how to use one of these mines?” Jesús held up an anti-personnel mine. They all quietly shook their heads no. “You there,” Jesús said, “stop hitting that cane stalk. It’s moving the top leaves. They can see that.”
Only one of the men had an RPG. “Listen up! Any of you guys know how to use the RPG?” a couple nodded their heads affirmatively. Jesús wrestled the rocket off of his back and handed it over to the group. He was happy to transfer the responsibility of it to someone else. It was not because he didn’t know how to use it. He was familiar with its operation. But the life expectancy of someone using one today would be short and Jesús wanted to live. That was the drive that made mines so appealing to him, survival. He secretly considered himself a coward. His father told him that many times. “Worthless cowering dog,” his drunken father would endlessly growl. Jesús accepted the label and internalized it as only a child raised with the notion could. He may be a coward he thought but he was responsible for destroying more enemy vehicles, equipment and killing and wounding more enemy soldiers today than an entire regiment could have.
The BMP (Communist Armored Personnel Carrier) was slowly rumbling through the sugar cane behind a screen of Communist soldiers walking ahead of it. Other armored vehicles were moving toward the front of the burning column.
Jesús and his team moved swiftly and silently through the cane toward the sound of the BMP. Jesús stopped, placed a mine and started unraveling the forty meters of line he would need to detonate it remotely. He hooked up the mine and placed it about waist high on a cane stalk. Jesús ran back to the others hurriedly digging a hole in the soft earth to protect them from the coming blast.
“You know what to do,” Jesús said to the others. The sound of the BMP shifted toward the road. It was no longer coming directly at them. “Ahh!” he said in exasperation. “I’ve got to move the mine. Everyone stay here. We’re still going to
detonate it. We’re just going to run a little farther to hit the BMP that’s all. Stay here!” With that Jesús ran to the mine. He pointed the mine toward the roaring sound and turned to run back to the others. Out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw movement which made him run all the faster. Bullets started to cut down leaves and stalks around him. He hit the dirt and crawled the rest of the way. He dove into the hole, grabbed the detonator, attached the wires and hit the plunger. Nothing happened. He hit the switch over and over, still nothing. He threw off his pack and dug out a bag containing another mine. He grabbed the new firing system out of it and started to hook it up. He imagined that the Communist foot soldiers were past the mine now and would soon see the wire leading to it. The other men were urgently complaining about the mishap but Jesús didn’t pay attention to them. He was too busy. He hit the new plunger and was surprised, as he always was, when the mine went off.
North invasion force, Guantanamo City, Cuba October 3, 2018.
“L” Day or Liberation Day plus Two. 5:30 AM
The FCAF units blew through opposition almost as fast as it could drive. It was obvious that they were not interested in occupying a town or city in the usual sense. They would break the backbone of the Government forces and let the Cubans themselves hold their own towns and cities. The sun would rise in less than two hours. Most of the exhausted FCAF troops lay in hurriedly dug scrapes in the ground. The armored vehicles formed walls of sorts around the sleeping men. On the vehicles wary gunners kept their binoculars on the distant horizon alert for trouble.
The Cuban Liberation Handbook Page 19