Choke Point, page 13
“What do you think my friend? A little excitement?”
Panama City
Bernie Ryng’s day began well before dawn with pounding fists on the door and Kitty shaking him awake. He rose onto his elbows. The dream had faded, the knocking now a steady rap ping on the apartment door, followed by a voice.
“Senor Ryng, SenorRyng, please … it is General Huertas’s aide.”
He climbed from the bed, slipping into his pants and picking up his pistol in the same motion as he moved to the door. “Who is it?” he shouted back, easing to the side of the door.
“Colonel Cassis, General Huertas’s aide. I have been asked by the general to pick you up, sir. It is very important.”
Ryng had met Cassis once and the voice seemed vaguely familiar. When he let the door fall open against the chain, he recognized that it was the colonel and he was alone. It took only a matter of moments for Cassis to explain that some Cuban soldiers had been captured in a firefight near Colón. General Huertas very much would like Señor Ryng to be part of the interrogation.
Soon after arriving at the Guardia jail, Ryng realized that Huertas had no comprehension of the term interrogation. It was torture, pure and simple, and the inquisitors seemed to be quite experienced and comfortable at their tasks.
“We had three of them, Senor Ryng,” Huertas reported. “But that one there,” he indicated a corpse with a gesture of his head, “was too weak. Maybe these Cubans aren’t producing such great soldiers today,” he added with a grin.
From what Ryng could determine, there had never been any time that this particular corpse might have spoken, torture or not. From the looks of the head wound the man had incurred, he felt it likely the man had been dead before he was brought in, perhaps instantly. The second one looked no better. A bullet wound in his chest was still oozing. The man was obviously unconscious, and there seemed no way he was ever going to be brought around so that he could then be tortured. But Huertas’s men were preparing him anyway. Ryng sensed that all was not right with General Huertas.
It seemed to Ryng that this was a phony setup. One dead prisoner, one beyond caring. “Where’s the last one? Head shot off?” he inquired sarcastically.
Huertas shook his head. “On the contrary. This last one’s wounded, but he’s coherent.” The general guided the group into the next room.
There, propped in a chair and held in place by leather thongs around his ankles, thighs, chest, and wrists, was a skinny youth in a torn, bloody uniform. A gash across his forehead ended by an ear that was mostly ripped way. His face and neck were badly bruised. Ryng looked into the most frightened eyes he had ever seen. Tears coursed down muddy cheeks. The boy couldn’t have been more than fifteen.
Huertas leaned down in front of the youth. “Now, we begin in earnest.” He touched a button on the table beside them. The boy jumped as a shock raced through his body. The general tapped the button lightly a couple of times as the eyes grew bigger. “You see how it works?” There was an urgent nod. “All right, we know you are Cuban—”
“No … no …” the words were wrenched from his mouth as Huertas held his finger tightly on the button.
“We will start with your name and your unit.” He waited for a moment as the boy’s breath came in long pain-wracked sobs. Then, “Again, your name and your unit.”
“I am not Cuban,” he hissed through clenched teeth. “I am—” The button was held down firmly until the body ceased to respond, the head slumped on his chest.
“Water,” snarled Huertas. He turned to one of the waiting aides. “Bring him around quickly.” To Ryng he added out of the corner of his mouth, “These Cubans are not so tough, are they? We will find out soon enough.”
“Have you ever considered, General, that perhaps he is not a Cuban?”
“Ridiculous. Look at the uniform—Cuban. He was captured in a firefight.” The general shrugged. “That’s enough for me. Soon we will find out.” Cold water had been poured over the boy’s head. Now they were slapping him with wet towels.
“It doesn’t strike me that he’s a Cuban at all. Look at the uniform. It’s much too big for him. A grown man would wear that. He’s just a kid. The troops in the Cuban army are older, well-fed, well trained, disciplined. Look for yourself. He’s all skin and bones, more like a peasant than a soldier—”
“Señor Ryng, I have been asked by President Ramos to cooperate with you. I do not like the idea of working with Americans, but I follow my orders. I was told that you want to talk to Cubans, so I have a Cuban for you.” There was a groan from the chair. “There, he’s coming around. You will see.”
The head slowly came up from the chest. Spittle ran from the corners of his mouth. The tongue lolled drunkenly as he tried to talk, his eyes staring at a spot on the general’s chest. There was no reaction as Huertas’s hand moved toward the button on the table. “We know you are Cuban,” the general shouted. “Your unit… tell me your unit first.”
The face looked up at Huertas. “Ama … Amador … Ama …” His head lolled backward.
Huertas looked at the boy. His eyes were slits. “I don’t want code names. I want the identification of your battalion … the names of your officers….” His hand came down on the button.
There was a gagging sound as the boy’s body jerked convulsively and he choked on his tongue. The men watched as the prisoner strained for air, strange sounds emanating from his throat. Instinctively, Ryng grabbed a pencil from the table. Yanking the boy’s head back by the hair, he jammed the pencil in his mouth, digging for the tongue. As the eyes bulged out unseeing, Ryng succeeded in halting the choking, but the head fell forward and the body went limp.
“You are wasting your time, Senor Ryng. You are better off to let enemies die.”
“He is dead, General.” Ryng lifted the chin then let it fall back. “He’s very dead. How do you expect to gain any information that way?” He was facing Huertas, his face only inches from the general. “He was probably half dead when he was brought in here. I suspect that someone put that uniform on him, either before he arrived here or”—Ryng’s eyebrows rose—”after you already had him in the room. He’s no more a Cuban than I am. Probably some poor peasant that figured there’d be something to eat if he joined the rebel forces. I don’t know why you brought me here, General Huertas. But I suggest that the next time you do so, you be damn sure you’ve got someone who is really Cuban. Then I’ll talk to him, in my own fashion, and I’ll make sure President Ramos understands that’s the way I want the job done.” Ryng turned on his heel and walked to the door. “I assume there will be a car and driver outside.”
The sun was coming up as he returned to his building. Why the hell would they drag me out in the middle of the night, he wondered, for a sham like that? Then he began to feel a gnawing fear in the pit of his stomach. The time it took the elevator to arrive at his floor was as interminable as the wait for it had been in the lobby. He dashed down the corridor, fumbling for his key. But there was no need for one. The lock was gone, a twisted mess of metal where it had once been part of the door.
There was no need to call for Kitty or even to search for her. She was the reason, their main objective. Reducing the apartment to a shambles had been secondary, more likely done by others while Kitty was spirited away.
There had been no need for secrecy or deception. The call by General Huertas was intended to get him out of there. The display of a couple of bodies—it didn’t matter where they’d died—and the torture of the young boy were merely a ruse to occupy his time in case Kitty’s kidnappers had been delayed. To Ryng it was right out of a grade B movie, and he was the foil, the dummy who had taken the bait!
Once again he wished Henry Cobb were here. Cobb, who was more experienced in this kind of operation, would never have fallen for it. Instead, Ryng thought, he had been drawn into this web—by Tomas Cornejo, by President Ramos, by Huertas … even by Kitty, who had convinced him that he should accept Ramos’s offer.
Then a startling thought occurred to Ryng: If he followed Kitty’s trail backward, would it end up in Dave Pratt’s office? It seemed improbable that anything could fit together so well, impossible that she would be allowed to take part in such a dangerous game. There was no doubt in his mind that she really was Katarina Alvarez, that she was a Panamanian who had done much for her country, that her father was on a first-name basis with Castro, but could Dave Pratt have planned something like this… even plan that Bernie Ryng would turn against his own best judgment and fall in love with her?
Where the hell was Cobb, then? Henry would have some ideas about this. Or did Henry also have all the answers? No. That was impossible. The one man Bernie Ryng trusted implicitly—even more than himself—was Henry Cobb, and Cobb would never let either of them be drawn in like this.
Unconsciously Ryng pushed the sofa against the useless apartment door. If anyone planned to get through here, he would be ready. He stretched out in an easy chair backed against the wall, facing the door, his legs out in front of him.
Then he closed his eyes and relaxed, letting his mind drift, clenching and unclenching his fists.
As his head cleared and his thoughts became ordered, one improbable item occurred to him that he had never considered. Kitty Alvarez flashed back and forth across his mind, and he realized that he had really fallen in love with her. Because she had insinuated herself so deeply into his consciousness, bypassing the weekend-long stand or the vacation infatuation that he was familiar with, he had wholly overlooked the emotional attachment. If it had ever become apparent, before it became a dependence, it was more likely he would have packed his bags and moved on. It was neither his desire nor his nature to fall into a relationship of this kind. Nor did he think he was the type that any woman could easily establish an emotional attachment with. Was it that Kitty Alvarez had seen something he was unaware of in his own makeup? If she did, maybe it was time to get out of this business—before he ended up dead.
That was it, then; his mind was made up—but no sooner did he rise from the chair and go to the window, than two planes, old-fashioned prop types, military but without markings, swooped over the city, their machine guns firing at nothing in particular. Finally he could see exactly what they had in mind—the firing was only to draw attention to their target. As they closed toward the Presidential Palace, they climbed slightly.
Ryng watched as bombs tumbled into the grounds of the Palace. He could see the puffs of smoke and dust before the muffled explosions came to him. There had been little effort to even aim at the Palace itself. If they had really wanted to, they would more likely have been armed with rockets or missiles. It was simply a show of force, a display of power to the man in the street as he went to work at that early hour. The rebel forces were busy establishing the fact that they could come and go as they pleased, and drop a couple of bombs on the seat of power if they liked, without facing any retaliation. There was no clearer way to eradicate the peoples’ wavering confidence in their government.
Such arrogance on their part confirmed for Ryng the idea he had been working on himself. Arrogance was the answer. Why not go to the father of the girl he had been sleeping with? Why not tell Esteban Alvarez the juicy details, followed by the fact that his own people had grabbed his daughter. Ryng knew Alvarez would never order that, never take the chance that she might be hurt. Why not stir up the waters in the rebel camp—use one of their leaders to muddy the waters? Perhaps that was the way to break it all open. Would Alvarez be the man who knew the real plans, knew what the Cubans and Russians really had as their main target? Creating hatred and mistrust within the enemy camp was always a prime tactic.
Off the Northeast Coast of Cuba
Without fanfare the American destroyer Stump went quietly to general quarters at first light. It was part drill, but more anticipation that the Soviet submarine would be under way that morning. Reports of Soviet submarine activity had been increasing in the daily messages. For three days Stump had been steaming Blue/Gold watches off Punta Munda on Cuba’s northeast coast, half the crew at anti-submarine stations while the other half stood easy. She was as ready as a ship could be. Her captain was not the type to take the chance of his crew growing stale through the monotony of anti-submarine warfare (ASW) steaming without a target.
The Soviets cooperated by sending not one, but two submarines out of the Cuban harbor. One turned northwest and submerged as soon as the coastal shelf fell off into deep water. The second cruised about three miles offshore and commenced a series of drills, submerging to periscope depth, surfacing to put crews over the side in rubber rafts, even darting off in a variety of directions at high speed before reversing course. With only one destroyer standing offshore, this seemed the normal way of confusing the Americans.
Stump’s captain, Lou Eberhardt, had been trained to expect exactly what the Soviets were attempting. There was no doubt in his mind which submarine he intended to trail. Before either sub ever reached open water his target had been identified. She had emitted signals with radar carried only by the boat headed for the Windward Passage between Cuba and Haiti. The one moving off northwest in a determined fashion was a decoy, an older submarine given to the Cubans years before. Stump’s helicopter tracked that one until a frigate fifty miles away arrived to assume contact.
Dave Pratt’s initial plan was to place each submarine he knew was destined for passage blockade under surveillance. His orders authorized holding them down, if possible, to teach them some lessons about anti-submarine warfare even before they arrived on station. The data forwarded by Henry Cobb was vital to Pratt’s strategy, for he knew that once the Soviet submarines reached station, they would go silent until ordered to interdict their assigned area. Some of the submarines had come to Cuba for replenishment, and they would be easy to track. Others would resupply from tenders at sea. Those would cause more trouble because they could go deep to evade detection. But he intended to make it as difficult as possible. Each Soviet submarine-resupply ship was under constant surveillance by aircraft and frigates. The one advantage he could give his destroyers was the opportunity to watch their target surface for fuel and supplies, then attempt to maintain contact afterward. If only it could be that easy with the nuclear submarines that would stay well away from the many passages into the Caribbean—they were independent, required no resupply, and could stay down until they were damn well ready to show themselves.
Stump remained at general quarters during the submarine’s antics. Now that there was a firm target, the one they were responsible for, it was valuable for morale to involve the entire crew. Stump’s mission was anti-submarine warfare and she was designed and her men trained for exactly that purpose. From this point until the Soviets gave the signal to blockade each of the Caribbean passages, the submarine would make every effort to evade, and Stump would attempt to track her quarry. Once submerged, the game would be to hold the submarine down, making any effort to surface for air or snorkel an unpleasant experience. The objective was not only to know where that submarine was at every minute, but to wear down her crew to the point of ineffectiveness. Short of attack, this was the cold war method of achieving their goal.
The Soviet submarine casually worked its way into deeper water. She was a new Tango class, designed for long-range operations, fast on the surface or submerged, and much quieter than her predecessors. There was no great expanse of deep water for a submarine to maneuver in between Cuba and the Great Bahama Bank. The submarine commander, Captain Third Rank G.A. Fitin, expected a tail would be more than likely and was ready to play the game. There was no doubt in his mind that he could not take his men into action exhausted by a hold down. Yet his orders were to use any American destroyers as training aids for his crew, up to a certain point. A signal would be issued by the Soviet Caribbean commander when it was time to dispose of any tails his submarines could not shake.
The submarine dove while on a northwesterly course. Temperature readings of the water remained constant at all levels. There were no sharp temperature gradients that would deflect the powerful U.S. sonar. Within an hour the submarine reversed course, heading southeast toward deeper water and additional maneuvering space.
On the surface, Stump remained at general quarters until the submarine steadied on her course toward the Windward Passage. There was an advantage to knowing her quarry’s eventual station. Captain Eberhardt was able to switch his watch to Blue/Gold by mid-morning. He intended to exercise both his ASW teams as independent units. This was the perfect time. His ship was fast and efficient at the game she was designed for, and the weather and the water conditions were on his side. It was important to maintain a positive attitude with his crew. He had told no one about the top secret message Admiral Pratt had issued to commanding officers the day before—that intelligence had intercepted Soviet orders indicating their submarines could use lethal means to reach their stations on schedule. Eberhardt would simply have to become so familiar with the sub captain’s tactics that he would be able to sense when the other eventually altered his tactics to fire torpedoes.
Stump’s captain noted that it was time to prepare the next of the many situation reports he and each commanding officer with a submarine contact would send to Pratt every two hours.
The Pentagon
Admiral Pratt leafed through the sheaf of situation reports. Stump had made first contact, but it was not long after that the others began to roll in—then it was a fresh report every two hours. A disturbing element, one that would concern him even more later on, was the ease with which the Russians seemed to accept a shadow as they moved toward their blockade area. Originally Pratt had considered the Soviet message—that a signal would be sent when they were to dispose of the U.S. ships—as a bold lie. Now he was not so sure of that. The possibilities this concept opened up were staggering. No commander looked forward to a shoot-first strategy.
