The Cuban Liberation Handbook

by Joshua Hatuey Marti

  “Our job is to fortify the Palace of the Revolution but there is a problem. We have had no communication from the Palace since last night. There is nothing going in or out. We have reason to believe at least some special troops around the Palace may be disloyal. Our job is to go in and establish communications with Castro himself and make sure he is well.” He looked around and found a few eyes squinting with suspicion.

  “It may be a false alarm. If it isn’t I want you men to be prepared to take the Palace and protect the lives of the Comandante en Jefe and the party leadership.

  They have eight tanks and twice that in BMP’s. There are a limited number of troops there. Probably two hundred at the most. Only twenty or thirty are special troops.”

  Usually Havana was crawling with two battalions made up of these rigorously trained and politically reliable personnel. They were a highly trained shock force that mainly provided protection for high-ranking officials. Most were siphoned off to serve in the disastrous battle for Guantanamo. Not a single one had returned. Instead of filling their ranks with experienced soldiers they opted to bring up fanatically devoted young men who had showed exceptional promise in one of the youth organizations like the Jose Marti Pioneers or the Union of Young Communists. Many of them were prerecruits sixteen or seventeen years old. They were waiting to be inducted into the regular armed forces when the country underwent mobilization. They were snatched up to fill in the ranks of the Special Troops the moment they left basic training. The Communists placed loyalty over any other virtue.

  The General gave instructions, encouragement and steel in their backbone. When he concluded he asked, “Any questions?”

  Major Jimenez raised his hand and spoke “Did you want some units to come in from Independence Ave. Sir?”

  “Who do we have here? Battalion 2721? Yes. You will reinforce the palace from the south under Lieutenant Conejo, where are you…” The General looked around. “There, there he is. You will obey his orders without hesitation. Is that clear?” he added in a stern tone.

  The General got in his car and sped the three kilometers to the Palace of the Revolution. A green army truck followed closely behind.

  End of chapter 4

  Cuba Chapter 5

  Havana, Cuba

  October 5, 2018 “L” Day plus Four

  The General’s car, not a limo by any stretch of the imagination, rolled down the dirty cramped streets of east Havana. The dilapidated crumbling buildings loomed above him like the slot canyons he had seen in a magazine. He knew very well some of these people could afford to paint or fix up these exteriors but were afraid to do so. Afraid of calling attention to themselves. Afraid of appearing better off than their neighbors.

  The smoky little Lada labored up Factoria Street weighed down by four two hundred pound men. The abandoned industrial buildings and warehouses looked like they were ruins -- vintage WWII, destroyed by neglect and scavengers instead of bombs. Their internal structures had sprouted flimsy hovels constructed with scraps of wood and rusting steel. The roofs and walls were dirty sheets of plastic sagging in despair. ‘Like malignancies growing inside a corpse’ thought the general as he peered out the passenger window ‘poor wretches’. The car splashed through large puddles of sewage which was common this close to the rail yard. The broken sewer pipes were a low priority even before the national mobilization. The car turned left onto Maximo Gomez. It was a larger boulevard but just as depressing. In less than a kilometer they turned onto Arroyo. Straight down the street stood the Palace of the Revolution. There was space and breathing room on this street. The General took a deep breath. In three minutes he would be battling for his life. The morning was still new and fresh. The few trees looked greener today than he had ever seen them. The air was sweeter and fresher than the fetid and oppressive odors of the inner city. The blue sky looked incredibly beautiful, as though he were seeing it for the first time. “Like a new world,” he mumbled unintelligibly.

  The calmness he felt disappeared as the little eastern European car came to the first roadblock.

  “General Hernandez to see the Commandante,” said the driver as he handed a fist full of papers and identifications to the sentry. There was only one Commandante around here and it was Castro himself.

  “Yes sir, just a minute sir,” said the sentry handing back the paperwork. He signaled the heavily laden truck blocking the road. It roared to life and lurched out of the way.

  The General opened his car door and rested his arm on the roof of the car.

  “I have reinforcements coming through here in a few minutes. Keep that thing out of the way.”

  “But, uhh, the…” responded the sentry.

  “But what!” The General said with rising temper. “Did you read those orders we just gave you? Just what do you do with the documents people give you soldier? I said, do you read them?” The General was very good at being scary and now he was playing it like he was going for an Oscar.

  “Yes sir.” The sentry quickly found out he was not going to impress the General by following his strict orders to take direction only from the Palace itself. Just a few minutes ago he overheard chatter on his walkie-talkie that the Quartermaster had been executed. A shock of fear bolted through the sentry’s body as he realized it was this General who ordered it and might be contemplating his own execution at this very moment. If he wanted to keep his life another minute he would have to recover fast.

  “Uhh, uhh the heavies go through the eastbound lanes, here Sir,” he pointed to his right. I will have them cleared immediately Sir.” He turned and screamed at the men working in and around the trucks now blocking the lanes. The veins in his neck distended and his face morphed into ferocity. “Move those trucks now! Clear those lanes! Move it. Move it!”

  The General waited patiently till the soldier was finished screaming and the trucks were moving. The Lada moved forward sounding more like a boat with an outboard motor than a car.

  Three hundred meters to the Palace. The square in front of the Palace had sand bagged gun emplacements, armored personnel carriers and tanks. Across the square situated near the Jose Marti monument were more. The General knew the thick trees on the other side of the palace looking south would be teeming with the same. The General’s car came to a stop in front of a T-62 tank straddling the semi-circular driveway.

  The General and three of his men lightened the car considerably when they got out with briefcases in hand and slammed the doors. A young officer approached them, walking a considerable distance from the portico of the palace. He saluted smartly “General Camejo, how can I help you Sir?”

  “I need a meeting with the Commandante.”

  “Yes Sir, if you could follow me.”

  When the other two men followed behind, the officer looked askance at them.

  “They are part of my briefing,” the General said.

  They walked through the ornate front doors held by saluting soldiers, past the great mural of heroes on horseback. They passed through a metal detector and their briefcases were thoroughly searched. The General’s two companions were vigorously patted down. Even the general was given a quick body search by a sheepish and apologetic Sergeant. It was not the same humiliating groin and butt search that his companions had endured, but it was sufficient to ensure he had no gun on him. The three men collected their briefcases and were escorted to the elevator. They descended fifteen meters below the lobby. When the elevator opened the cool smells of deep earth enveloped them. They walked down long, cramped hallways of stark concrete. Heavy steel blast doors broke up the monotonous passages. They reminded the General of large bulkhead hatchways on a ship. It was just plain stupid to have the leader of the country in this shelter the General thought. Being in a secret location was the only protection against the modern bunker buster bombs that were surely available to the Free Cubans. The General had seen internet videoxciii of the Imperialist bomb in action. It dug a crater so large and so deep it was hard to determine the scale of it in t
he video. The crater was at least ten meters deep. The bombs had the necessary accuracy to pound the exact same spot over and over and dig out any underground bunker in the world, in theory at least. In the past conflicts it had never been necessary to attack the same target twice. Even if the deepest bunkers did not collapse, everyone inside was killed or badly injured and the structure was rendered unusable.

  Apparently someone else had the same thoughts as the General. Castro’s war room was in the process of packing up and moving to the divisional HQ in the center of Havana. The new headquarters just happened to be located in the Hospital Pediatrico Docente Cerro, Havana’s premier hospital (such as it was) for children.

  The General and his staff of two walked single file down the corridor. They were passed by several uniformed men carrying heavy boxes of documents, maps, printers, computers and the like from the bunker complex. The corridor was so cramped that the General had to sidle past the burdened soldiers. Up ahead the General saw the familiar face of Castro walking toward him in the cramped hall. The Comandante’s head was bobbing up and down in his unmistakable gait, sandwiched between his bodyguards.

  The General let his pants slip down a few inches. The lowered pants were barely noticeable under his long uniform jacket. For good measure he reached behind his back and put his finger down the crack of his butt. He grabbed the hilt of a hardened nylon spikexciv hidden there and eased it up till it was a few inches above his lowered pants.

  The General’s companion walking directly behind him clearly understood the meaning of the action. He put his left hand on the General’s shoulder and leaned forward and with a smile he whispered something in the older man’s ear. His right hand, now obscured, reached under the General’s jacket, grabbed the spike and pulled it the rest of the way out of his butt crack. With the deft motion worthy of a magician he transferred it to his notebook binder, pushing it up between the covers. As long as he kept pressure on the book the spike would remain inside the binder. As soon as he relieved his grip the spike would drop into his open palm.

  Castro looked up at the General. Puzzlement pinched his face as he said, “General Camejo, what is happening?” He waited for an answer.

  The General responded, “I have some information regarding disloyal personnel.”

  Castro nodded his head knowingly. “Yes, yes but you must see me at the new HQ. I can’t talk to you now. We are in the process of moving as you see.”

  At that moment an aide that the General recognized bounded down the hall gripping a sheet of paper. “Commandante, Commandante…”

  Castro let out a sigh of exasperation at the call.

  “Sir, you have an urgent message from the…”

  The aide stopped mid-sentence. His eyes widened with horror as he now recognized General Camejo. In that moment the General knew the game was up. Word had come from somewhere reporting the unauthorized troop movements at General Camejo’s hand. Castro, in his tired state, was a bit slower to turn to look at the aide. When he did, the old fox knew in an instant what that look meant. It was the last coherent thought that he would ever have on this earth. Before he could even turn his head to see the look on the face of the General that betrayed him a blinding white flash took away his vision. He had a sensation of falling followed quickly by enveloping darkness and hell.

  He seemed to be sliding down a crumbling precipice with the gaping jaws of a horrifying darkness below him. His body obeyed one last command from his spirit as his arm shot out in a desperate attempt to grab and hold on to this world. A world that his Creator had lovingly made for him, in a body that had been painstakingly crafted over eons. A world in which Castro had raged and oppressed and tortured and murdered countless numbers of his brothers and sisters for decades.

  His spirit was flushed out of his body as quickly as waste going down a toilet to an eternity of torment and anguish that had awaited him for far too long. A billion-trillion years would go by before his time in hell would even have begun.

  The General’s companion and assassin was Alexis Maestre. Alex for short. He was an average looking fellow. Average height, weight, build and intelligence. His health had been slightly better than average but unfortunately the health of his family had not been. He had five children, now grown or dead. Only someone who has had children in the oppressive poverty of a Communist country could begin to know the hardships that entailed. Now he had grandchildren. They had been such beautiful lithe little creatures. One had just died of dengue fever. One had daily epileptic seizures brought on by a case of malaria she had survived when she was two years old. Dengue fever and malaria in the 21st century. Shameful. Of course you couldn’t call it Dengue fever. You had to say it was a fever syndrome since Dengue was officially eradicated in the eighties. The third one, little Alicia, had a chronic dysentery of unknown origins and her survival was in doubt. He had seen his own children grow and forced into jobs that were literally meaningless for starvation pay. Whatever the Party ordered you to do, that’s what you did. Whatever the Party thought you should think that’s what you tried to think.

  He was a career soldier never achieving a higher rank than Sergeant. He had no high connections and no favors to call in. He was one of the average millions just trying to survive. Now survival was not even possible for his grandchildren. He berated himself daily for being such a coward. He simply should have picked up a rifle and started shooting every Communist he saw. But that would only bring more hardship and death to his family.

  When the General called him personally and told him to come to his house/headquarters a few hours ago he thought he was done for. He had known for months that the Party had finally concluded that he had lost his faith in Socialism.

  The all knowing party somehow knew his thoughts. It started when the political officer assigned to his Company observed his lack of enthusiasm when shouting “Socialism or Death” or the other vapid Party slogans. But more than half the men lacked the requisite fervor. He was no more dissenting than them.

  He was still wary after the General told him the plan that would culminate in Alex’s death. Usually a plan whose incentive is your execution is not considered attractive by the average person. But the General knew men. He appealed to Alex’ sense of duty, to his family and to all the Cuban families in the same circumstances as his. In trade for his life the General promised that millions would live. His future grandchildren would grow up healthy and happy.

  That cinched the deal for Alex. The mere thought of his grandchildren’s condition motivated him to sacrifice anything for their welfare.

  The moment Alex heard the aide coming down the hall urgently calling after Castro he released his grip on the notebook binder and the nylon spike dropped into his hand. It was nine inches long and several times thicker than a ballpoint pen. Indentations formed a solid grip for the fingers. The hilt terminated in the lower palm of the hand giving it tremendous thrusting power as an extension of the forearm.

  The point was as sharp as a hypodermic needle. The Teflon no-stick surface on the business end of the spike provided a smooth entry into the body. The General had acquired it and many others like it searching the homes of suspected dissidents. Ingenious concealable knives sent from America.

  Alex had just a few minutes of practice with the weapon to become familiar with it. Fortunately he had four years experience in the amateur boxing ring when he was a teenager. The thrust of the dagger to the head of the victim was very much like a right cross. He felt as though he had lost very little in the intervening years, indeed he was much stronger now than he had been at eighteen. Being a sergeant, he was mandated to stay in shape. The power was there, he knew, but he did not have the quickness and accuracy of his younger years. He determined that he would just have to make up for it by not hesitating for a millisecond. In that final moment he vowed that he would have no thought of dying or escape or pleading for his life. He would only think of the strike.

  When Alex saw Castro walking toward them he decided to driv
e the dagger home as el Presidente passed him in the hallway.

  Castro and his entourage had stopped in the underground corridor to talk with the General. The two men were no more than centimeters apart in the cramped quarters. Alex was less than a meter away. A bodyguard placed his body between Castro and Alex as the two Cuban leaders came to a halt.

  This was certainly not as Alex or even the General had envisioned it. The General was to meet with Castro and bring Alex into the briefing for his special knowledge regarding the subject at hand. Perhaps over a spread out map Alex would sidle up closer to the Comandante. It was certainly not the optimum moment to strike while he was surrounded by bodyguards. On the other hand, all he needed was an unguarded second to succeed where a number of attempts had failed.

  When the aide had rushed down the hall calling for the President everyone, except Alex, turned to look at him. When the bodyguard turned he left a gap between himself and the General and a clear shot at Castro. True to his vow Alex launched himself at his target without hesitation simultaneously releasing his briefcase and notebook binder.

  His left foot stepped forward propelled by a powerful right leg conditioned by years of thirty kilometer marches in full gear. He wound up his right arm for a straight right cross punch bringing the dagger up, pointing at the target. Then he threw his entire weight and momentum into the strike. Castro’s head did not move at all in the split second it took for Alex to cross the half meter and drive the spike deep into the man’s temple. It was accomplished before Alex’ briefcase hit the ground.

  The plan was that Alex would keep hold of the weapon levering it back and forth while the point was buried deep in Castro’s brain to do as much damage as he could until he was killed. But the force of Alex’ blow buried the spike so far into the skull that only a centimeter or two of the handle remained exposed. Alex knew his work was over and Castro would die.