Chuck cut his flaps and eased down. Pete puked out his window just shy of the runway.
They taxied in. Pete gargled tequila for a breath rinse. Cuban trainees hit the hold and off-loaded the rifles.
A case officer trotted up with supply forms. Pete got out and itemized them: guns, R&R booze, Hush-Hush anti-Beard propaganda.
The guy said, “You can eat now, or wait for Mr. Boyd and Mr. Stanton.”
“Let me walk around a little. I’ve never seen the place.”
Chuck pissed on the runway. Pete said, “Any word on a go date?”
The guy shook his head. “Kennedy’s waffling. Mr. Bissell’s starting to think we’ll be lucky to go before summer.”
“Jack will come through. He’ll see that it’s too sweet a deal to pass up.”
o o o
Pete meandered. The camp was Disneyland for killers.
Six hundred Cubans. Fifty white men running herd. Twelve barracks, a drill field, a rifle range, a pistol range, a landing strip, a mess hall, an infiltration course and a chemical-warfare simulation tunnel.
Three launch inlets gouged out of the Gulf a mile south. Four dozen amphibious crawlers rigged with .50-caliber machine guns.
An ammo dump. A field hospital. A Catholic chapel with a bilingual chaplain.
Pete meandered. Old Blessington grads waved hello. Case officers showed him some good shit.
Dig Néstor Chasco–staging mock-assassination maneuvers.
Dig that anti-Red indoctrination workshop.
Dig the verbal abuse drills–calculated to increase troop subservience.
Dig the corpsman’s amphetamine stash–pre-packaged preinvasion courage.
Dig the action in that barbed-wire enclosure–peons flying on a drug called LSD.
Some of them screamed. Some wept. Some grinned like LSD was a blast. A case officer said John Stanton hatched the idea– let’s flood Cuba with this shit before we invade.
Langley co-signed the brainstorm. Langley embellished it: Let’s induce mass hallucinations and stage the Second Coming of Christ!!!!!
Langley found some suicidal actors. Langley dolled them up to look like J.C. Langley had them set to pre-invade Cuba, concurrent with the dope saturation.
Pete howled. The case officer said, “It’s not funny.” A drugzorched peon whipped out his wang and jacked off.
Pete meandered. Everything sparkled and gleamed.
Dig the bayonet drills. Dig the spit-shined jeeps. Dig that rummy-looking priest dispensing outdoor Holy Communion.
Loudspeakers announced chow call. It was 5:00 and nowhere near dark–military types dined early.
Pete walked over to the lounge hut A pool table and wet bar ate up two-thirds of the floor space.
Boyd and Stanton walked in. A large fucker blocked the doorway–resplendent in French paratrooper khakis.
Kemper said, “Entrez, Laurent.”
He was jug-eared and plain huge. He had that frog imperialist swagger down pat.
Pete bowed. “Salut, capitaine.”
Boyd smiled. “Laurent Guéry, Pete Bondurant.”
Froggy clicked his heels. “Monsieur Bondurant. C’est un grand plaisir de faire votre connaissance. On dit que vous êtes un grand patriote.”
Pete tossed out some Québecois. “Tout le plaisir est a moi, capitaine. Mais je suis beaucoup plus profiteur que patriote.”
Froggy laughed. Stanton said, “Translate for me, Kemper. I’m starting to feel like a rube.”
“You’re not missing much.”
“You mean it’s just Pete trying to be civilized with the only other six-foot-six Frenchman on earth?”
Froggy shrugged–Quoi? Quoi? Quoi?
Pete winked. “Vous êtes quoi donc, capitaine? Etes-vous un ‘right-wing crackpot’? Etes-vous un ‘mercenary on the Cuban gravy train’ ?”
Froggy shrugged–Quoi? Quoi? Quoi?
Boyd steered Pete out to the porch. Spics double-timed through a chow line across from the drill field.
“Be nice, Pete. He’s Agency.”
“In what fucking capacity?”
“He shoots people.”
“Then tell him to clip Fidel and learn English. Tell him to do something impressive, or he’s just another frog geek to me.”
Boyd laughed. “He killed a man named Lumumba in the Congo last month.”
“So what?”
“He’s killed quite a few uppity Algerians.”
Pete lit a cigarette. “So tell Jack to send him down to Havana. And send Néstor down with him. And tell Jack that he owes me one for the Nixon-Hughes thing, and as far as I’m concerned, history’s not moving fast enough. Tell him to give us a go date, or I’ll boat on down to Cuba and whack Fidel myself.”
Boyd said, “Be patient. Jack’s still getting his sea legs, and invading a Communist-held country is a big commitment Dulles and Bissell are keeping after him, and I’m convinced he’ll say yes before too long.”