Read Castro's Bomb for Free Online Page B

when the Korean War had ended a decade earlier.   The Garand had been replaced by the M14, which hadn’t made it to Guantanamo yet.   This was fine with the troops because many of those who’d tried it didn’t like it.    
    The ammo was as old as the rifles and he wondered if it would work it they ever had to fire their weapons.   Fortunately, all the experts and brass said there was only the slightest chance that they would have to shoot anything except targets on the range.
    The rutted dirt road in front of the bunker led to nowhere.   Once, before Castro took over, it had led to a small Cuban town and day laborers were allowed to come in and work on the base, returning each night to their squalid homes.   Now it was sealed off with barbed wire, and according to Andrew's map, there were minefields flanking the road.   These too had been added recently and he wondered if the Cubans knew about them.   Probably.   All the high ground was in Cuban territory.   He had the nagging feeling that many pairs of communist eyes were watching their every move.
    Behind the barbed wire towards Cuba, the ground was barren and windswept.   Those who thought of Cuba as a lush tropical paradise were sometimes shocked to see what amounted to a near desert in nearby parts of Guantanamo, particularly those windswept areas to the east, where winds from the Atlantic scoured the land.
    Behind the bunker were a couple of tents that would hold the men not on duty and keep them in absolute discomfort.   The tents would protect against any rain, but did a marvelous job of trapping the Cuban heat.   It might be winter, but they were near the Equator and the weather was hot and humid.   But at least the air outside circulated and was fresh, not like the bunker, which felt like being in a hot, moist oven.   Everyone who could spent as much time as possible outside it.
    Andrew's senior noncom was Gunnery Sergeant Joe Cullen, a tall, lanky twenty-nine year old veteran of the Korean War.   He seemed efficient, but a gunnery sergeant was expected to be good at what he did.   "Not very impressive, is it, lieutenant."
    "I've seen worse," Andrew said with a grin, "just can't quite place the memory."
    Andrew was beginning to have doubts about his decision to help out his friend Hannigan with guard duty when he could have been ensconced in the relative comforts of the Bachelor Officer's Quarters, or even wasting time at the officer’s club bar.   But what the hell, he decided, he was here and it would be over before he knew it.   He could do a couple of days commanding this troop on his head.
    "So what if it ain't a Holiday Inn or a Howard Johnson's," Ross said, "it's home sweet home for the short duration."
    Cullen spat on the ground and glared at the emptiness down the road to Cuba.   "I just hope nothing happens while we're out here.   Have you looked at how miserably small this place is?   The commies come down that road and we won't be able to do much more than wave at them.   Twenty guys with rifles and one ancient machine gun are not exactly a modern army, sir."
    Ross really didn't think the commies were coming down the road anytime soon, but he did agree that the bunker was poorly sited and the men were inadequately armed, and had doubtless lost any training edge.  
    "Just a thought, sergeant, do we have a fallback position?"
    Cullen shook his head.   "No, but it wouldn't be that much trouble to plan for one.   You want me to do it?"
    "Why not?   The men won't like it very much but it will give us all something to do.   You have any thoughts?"
    Cullen mentioned a depression in the ground about two hundred yards to their rear and even Andrew saw the advantage.   Men in the depression would be hidden from anyone coming down the road and could enfilade any traffic after it passed the bunker.   They would not stick out like a sore thumb the way the bunker did.   There was no roof on the gully, but the roof on the bunker