On-GO: six hundred Benzedrine-blasted Cuban rebels.
On-GO at the air strip: sixteen B-26 bombers, set to hammer Castro’s standing air force. Dig their blacked-out U.S. insignia– this gig was non-imperialisto.
PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS–
The abbreviation fit the destination. John Stanton got the chant going at reveille–that shrink said repetition built up courage.
Pete chased high-octane bennies with coffee. He coubd see it and feel it and smell it–
The planes neutralize Castro air power. The ships go out– staggered departures from a half-dozen launch sites. A second air strike kills militiamen en masse. Chaos spawns mass desertion.
Freedom fighters hit the beach.
They march. They kill. They defoliate. They link up with on-island dissidents and reclaim Cuba–weakened by dope and propaganda foreplay.
They were waiting for Bad-Back Jack to okay the first air strike. All the orders had to emanate from the Haircut.
PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS–
Pete and Stanton jeep-patrolled the site. They had a short-wave set rigged to the dashboard–site-to-site communication made easy.
They had direct feeds to Guatemala, Tiger Kab and Blessington. They were radio contained at that level–only Langley direct-channeled to the White House.
The order came down: Jack says to send six planes out.
Pete felt his dick go limp. The radio man said Jack wants to move real cautiously.
Six from sixteen was a big fucking reduction.
They kept circuiting the site. Pete chain-smoked. Stanton fretted a Saint Christopher medal.
Boyd pouched a message three days ago–some cryptic Hush-Hush orders for Lenny Sands. He forwarded the information. Lenny said he’d write the stuff up quick.
Lenny always delivered. Ward Littell always surprised.
That Teamster book hand-off was superb. Littell’s brown-nose job on Carlos was better.
Boyd had them lodged at the Guatemalan campsite. Marcello glommed a private phone line and ran his rackets biz longdistance.
Carlos liked fresh seafood. Carlos liked to throw big dinner parties. Littell had 500 Maine lobsters air-shipped to Guatemala daily.
Carlos turned crack troopers into salivating gluttons. Carlos turned said troopers into coolies–trained exile guerrillas shined his shoes and ran his errands.
Boyd was running the Marcello operation. Boyd gave Pete one direct order: LEAVE LITTELL ALONE.
The Bondurant-Littell truce was Boyd-enforced and temporary.
Pete chain-smoked. Cigarettes and bennies had him parched. His hands kept doing things he didn’t tell them to.
They kept circuiting. Stanton sweated his clothes wringing wet.
PIGS! PIGS! PIGS! PIGS! PIGS!
They parked by the dock and watched troops climb the boarding plank. Six hundred men hopped on in just under two minutes.
Their short-wave set sputtered. The needle bounced to the Blessington frequency.
Stanton plugged in his headset. Pete bit his zillionth cigarette of the day.
The troop ship creaked and waddled. A fat Cubano puked over the stern.
Stanton said, “Our government-in-exile’s in place, and Bissell ended up approving those far-right boys I recommended. That’s good, but that fake-defector charade we cooked up backfired. Gutiérrez landed the plane at Blessington, but the reporters that Dougie Lockhart called in recognized Ramón and started booing. It’s not a big thing, but a fuck-up’s still a fuck-up.”
Pete nodded. He smelled vomit and bilge water and oil off six hundred rifles.
Stanton unhooked his headset. His Saint Christopher was fretted shiny to dull.
They kept circuiting. It was gas-guzzling Benzedrine bullshit.
Please, Jack:
Send some more planes in. Give the orders to send the boats out.
Pete got wild-ass itchy. Stanton blathered on and on about his kids.
Hours took decades. Pete ran lists in his head to shut Stanton out.
The men he killed. The women he fucked. The best hamburgers in L.A. and Miami. What he’d be doing if he never left Quebec. What he’d be doing if he never met Kemper Boyd.
Stanton worked the radio. Reports crackled in.
They heard that the air strike fizzled. The bombers nailed less than 10% of Fidel Castro’s air force.
Bad-Back Jack took the news hard. He responded in cuntish fashion: no second air strike just yet.
Chuck Rogers squeaked a call in. He said Marcello and Littell were still in Guatemala. He dropped some late-breaking stateside info: the FBI invaded New Orleans in response to fake Carlos sightings!
It was Boyd’s doing. He figured erroneous phone tips would keep Bobby diverted and help cover Marcello’s tracks.