Chapter 31: Catching Up

“Are you going to sleep all day?” The speaker wore a neoprene wet suit. The name--Gem or Jim. I didn’t recognize him but his name popped up. “Get your shit on, Jackie. They’re dropping us off in a minute.”

I also was wearing a wet suit. It was more than a moment as we waddled topside and Major Blake gave us a final pep talk.

“Leave nobody alive.”

Then Jim/Gem and I went over the side and began swimming, towing bags. I was disoriented. I knew which direction to swim, I roughly knew my target location--and their faces. I knew the installation we were raiding down to the rooms in the compound. There were supposed to be four men on our target list--plus any support personnel. I was so disconnected that swimming in the warm, dark ocean didn’t seem strange--swimming was just something that I did. When I asked myself the date, I was surprised to learn that it was Wednesday, April 10, 1963 at 1:37 AM Eastern Standard Time. My partner and I had been swimming for 42 minutes. Estimated time of arrival was 3:30 AM--and we would have fifteen minutes to assemble our gear and begin killing.

What was I doing in the water south of the Straits of Florida?? The last thing I remembered prior to being woken was making wild monkey sex with Billie and Mae. Or was she Bobbie?

“Patrol boat,” Jim/Gem warned. We had been swimming for two hours when a Cuban naval patrol vessel motored past us. Perspective: that boat was perhaps half the size of a World War Two torpedo boat, but from my position in the water, rising and falling with ocean swells, that patrol boat was the size of a battleship. The engine’s noise transmitted through water clearly and the wake pushed me into my partner. After it passed, we resumed our swim.

Infiltration operations are like that--boring, physically demanding--and there are exciting moments. We made it to a salt marsh and slowly crawled ashore a few minutes late, at 3:41 AM. Somebody neglected to post adequate sentries! More good news--fewer people to kill. Orders were, “leave nobody alive.” Nobody. A cluster of cottages, a twin-engined airplane, a boat docked in a small harbor--our first victim was a pair of guards playing cards and drinking beer in a small shack beside the pier. The expected guard on the plane was asleep inside--I heard him breathing.

Our equipment was a pair of high-end STEN guns with silencers--and two Welrod pistols. There were also a pair of Browning Hi Power pistols and those infamous commando daggers. We had hand grenades--Mills bombs. And a few demolition charges with detonators and time pencils. If you are paying attention, all of our equipment was British--right down to the cartridge headstamps. No wonder the swim was difficult! Seven magazines per STEN. Set the selectors to single shot--full auto tend to burst the baffles, not good! All British gear--why? Not my lane--just obey.