Read Killing Castro for Free Online Page B

and the pilot warmed up the engines, taxied down a very small runway and took off.
    “You like flying?” he asked Fenton.
    “I don’t mind it.”
    “I can take it or not,” Garth said. “He said something about supplies. Let’s have a look, huh?”
    The supplies were guns, ammunition, some minor explosives. Garth looked them over and whistled. “We better not hit anything coming down,” he said. “Gunpowder and dynamite. We’d go up like a bomb.”
    “I wouldn’t worry,” Fenton told him. “The pilot seems to know what he’s doing.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Yes.”
    The pilot knew what he was doing. He flew north of Cuba, skirting the big island and coming in over the Bahamas, then cutting south to fly over Acklins Island and move in on Oriente Province, the easternmost section of Cuba. It was hill country there, rough jungle land with dense vegetation and jagged terrain. Guerrilla fighters could disappear in that sort of country. Castro, with a force of only twelve men, had started in the Oriente hills. His twelve men had lasted, had been reinforced, until they had pushed Batista off the island and had sent him running for his life.
    But now time had played tricks. Now Castro was in Havana, growing sleek with power, and other rebel bands roamed the hills of Oriente. Small bands, hiding, fighting in desperate skirmishes.
    The plane flew over Cuba. Garth didn’t even see the landing strip until they were almost on the ground. He couldn’t understand how the pilot had managed to find it. They landed in a cleared portion of a farmer’s tiny field. The pilot had killed the engine long ago. The air was still, warm.
    Three men and a woman rushed to meet the plane as Garth and Fenton climbed down from it. The men carried drawn revolvers; the woman had a rifle across one shoulder. Two of the men went to unload the Cessna. The other, with the woman, came to Fenton and Garth.
    “You are the Americans from Señor Hiraldo?” the man asked.
    “That is correct,” Fenton said. Garth remained silent, his eyes looking at the woman. She was maybe twenty-five, maybe younger. Her hair was long and uncombed, her eyes dark brown. She wore a pair of khaki pants and a torn army field jacket. The clothing couldn’t hide the shape of her body. Her breasts were large and firm, her hips ideal for bearing children or making love. Garth stared at her and wanted her.
    “I am called Manuel,” the man said. “The others, my comrades, have no English. I have some English. I speak not well, I fear.”
    “You speak very well,” Fenton said.
    “You have much kindness. But we must hurry. There is little time for pleasantness in the hills. Soldiers are everywhere.”
    The other two men ran off, their arms filled with guns, ammunition and explosives. Manuel and the woman were behind them, Garth and Fenton close on their heels. Already the pilot was warming up the plane, anxious to get out of Cuba in a hurry.
    Garth watched the girl. He lumbered through the brush with thorns snatching at his clothing but all he could think of was the girl, the way she walked. He saw her buttocks moving within the khaki pants. He wondered if she wore underwear.
    He was going to have her.
    He knew this, knew it for a fact. The broad was hotter than hell, he thought, and he was going to get her on her back if it was the last thing he did. If she was sold on the idea, fine and dandy. If she wanted to put out, swell. That made it easier, and why take the tough way?
    But it was all up to her. Because one way or the other he was going to get in her pants, whether she liked it or not, whether she was somebody’s wife or somebody’s sister or somebody’s mother, it didn’t make a damned bit of difference. If it had to be rape that’s what it was going to be. It was up to her.
    The underbrush got progressively thicker and Garth waded through it like a rhinoceros charging through savannah grasses. The guy called Manuel was keeping up a running stream of chatter but