Cuba by Stephen Coonts Read Free Book Online Page B

MiG-29s and had precisely one operational—mis one—which Corrado kept flying by the simple expedient of cannibalizing parts from the others.
    He checked his fuel. He had enough, just enough, to get home. Sure, he had no business being out here over the ocean, but he wanted to fly today and the Cuban ground control intercept (GCI) controller said the American was here. One thing led to another and here he was.
    Now Carlos Corrado was on course to return to his base near the city of Cienfuegos, on Cuba’s southern coast. He checked the compass, the engine instruments, then turned back to studying the American plane, which hung there on the end of his wing as if it were painted on the sky.
    A minute went by, then the man in the front seat of the American plane raised his hand and waved. Carlos returned the gesture as the big American fighter turned away to the right and immediately began falling behind. Carlos twisted his body in his seat to keep the F-14 in sight for as long as possible. Big as it was, the F-14 disappeared into the eastern sky with startling rapidity.
    Carlos Corrado turned in his seat and eased the position of his butt.
    The Americans were two or three technical generations beyond the Cubans, so far ahead that most Cuban military men regarded American capabilities as almost superhuman. They had read of the Gulf War, of the satellites and computers
and smart weapons. Unlike his colleagues, Corrado was not frightened by the Americans. Impressed by their military capability, but not frightened.
    If I were smarter, he thought now, I would be frightened
    But the Americans and Cubans would never fight. They had not fought since the Bay of Pigs and doubtless never would. Castro would soon be gone and a new government would take over and Cuba would become a new American suburb, another little beach island baking in the sun south of Miami, Key Cuba. When that happy day came, Carlos Corrado told himself, he was going to America and get a decent flying job that paid real money.
     
    Doña Maria Vieuda de Sedano’s daughters arrived first, in the early afternoon, to tidy up and do the cooking for the guests. They had married local men who worked the sugarcane and saw her every day. In truth, they looked after her, helped her dress, prepared her meals, cleaned and washed the clothes.
    It was infuriating to be disabled, to be unable to do! The arthritis that crippled her hands and feet made even simple tasks difficult and complex tasks out of the question.
    Doña Maria managed to shuffle to her favorite chair on the tiny porch without help. Her small house sat on the western edge of the village. From the porch she could see several of her neighbors’ houses and a wide sweep of the road. Across the road was a huge field of cane. A cane-cooking factory stood about a half mile farther west. When the harvest began, the stacks belched smoke and the fumes of cooking sugar drifted for miles on the wind.
    Beyond all this, almost lost in the distance, was the blue of the ocean, a thin line just below the horizon, bluer than the distant sky. The wind coming in off the sea kept the temperature down and prevented insects from becoming a major nuisance.
    The porch was the only thing Dona Maria really liked about the house, though after fifty-two years in residence
God knows she had some memories. Small, just four rooms, with a palm-leaf roof, this house had been the center of her adult life. Here she moved as a young bride with her husband, bore her children, raised them, cried and laughed with them, buried two of the ten, watched the others grow up and marry and move away. And here she watched her husband die of cancer.
    He had died … sixteen years ago, sixteen years in November.
    You never think about outliving your spouse when you are young. Never think about what comes afterward, after happiness, after love. Then, too soon, the never-thought-about future arrives.
    She sat on the porch and looked at the clouds floating above