When the last had failed even to strike a target, they stood about like castrated bulls, droopy of shoulder and morose of eye. Men. But not warriors. Some furtively brushed tears of shame from their eyes.
"What will we do?" asked one.
Zorilla had to clear his throat twice before he could answer. "I must contact Uncle Sam."
They all agreed this was for the best. Comandante Zorilla left them to deal, hot-eyed, with the pain in their Cuban hearts while he made the telephone call.
In the privacy of the tobacco shack he dialed the number that existed, unextractable, in his trained memory and no place else.
"Zorilla reporting," he said stiffly.
"Go ahead," a gringo voice said. There were orange blossoms in that voice. It was mellow, and laced with the mild southern accents of Florida.
"Ultima Hora must stand down."
"Repeat report."
"Ultima Hora has been rendered ineffective by two agents."
"Agents of whom?"
"They say Uncle Sam send them."
"Describe these agents."
Zorilla rattled off the descriptions with spare clarity.
"One moment," said the mellow phone voice.
The line hummed. Bullfrogs croaked in the swamp, and the tireless katydids made reedy music.
The clicking signaled the return of his immediate contact.
"Uncle Sam sent no agents. Repeat, the two you describe are unknown unfriendlies."
"The timetable must be abandoned until my men can heal."
"Negative. Timetable cannot be shelved. The MIG incident is driving events now."
"But what do I do?"
"Ultima Hora was first wave."
"I know. I am heartsick."
"Redundancy has been built into the plan. A new first wave must be set in place, and trained by you."
"But what will I tell my men? They live for this."
"We have to assume training camp compromised irrevocably. Return to headquarters for debriefing and new orders."
"But my men . . ."
"Must be decruited."
Comandante Leopoldo Zorilla's eyes went stark.
The code word had been agreed upon. Zorilla had agreed to the "decruitment" option. But never had he believed he would be forced to implement it.
"But-"
"You are a soldier. Execute instructions and report for further duty. Word comes directly from Uncle Sam."
"Si, si," muttered Comandante Zorilla into the suddenly dead telephone. Through the rush of blood to his ringing ears he never heard the receiver click.
Woodenly, he hung up, adjusted his insignia-less uniform, and picked up the sole working rifle within the sentry perimeter.
He called in his men, stood them at attention, and with the suddenly too-heavy rifle held loose in the crook of his arm like a duck hunter's, began a speech.
It was a long speech. About duty, about honor, about Zorilla's deep feelings for his men. There was sadness in his voice as he spoke, sadness in the faces of his soldiers. They knew they were to be taken off active duty. A few flinched. They steeled themselves for the actual words when their comandante, circling them on dull feet, lifted his rifle and let the shameful bullets erupt one at a time.
They fell in the time it took for a string of firecrackers to become torn red paper.
It was necessary. It was also shameful. Because he could not bear to see the looks in their wounded eyes, Comandante Leopoldo Zorilla had shot them all in the back.
Then he had gone out into the night to silence the sentries. Finding them already dead, he had fled.
And now he drove through the frosty Florida night, the firefly-like love bugs bouncing off his windshield, making noises like castoff peanut shells caught in a windstorm.
The sound reminded him of the sand against the windows of his comandancia office back in Santiago de Cuba.
There, Comandante Zorilla had been Deputy Comandante Zorilla of the Cuban Air Force. He had been a boy the day Fidel had taken the capital.
It had been a jubilant day, and when Fidel had put the nation under arms, Zorilla, a teenager, had been glad to shoulder them. On each May Day he had taken up an actual rifle and shot at rocks along Jibacoa Beach, pretending they were the helmets of crawling Yanqui Marines.
It was an exciting time to be Cuban.
He enlisted in the Air Force when he came of age. Flew patrols and escorts for Soviet ships. Then-Capitain Zorilla had been so valuable a pilot that they would not send him to Angola to support Socialism there.
It had been the bitterest of disappointments. Until his comrades began to filter back, telling tales of African ingratitude and the wasted lives spent defending a nation that did not care about itself, never mind Cuban sacrifice.
Capitain Zorilla had dismissed these grumblings, for he believed.
He believed even as Cuba peaked in the mid-1970s, all the while suffering horrendous losses in its fight for ungrateful peoples all over Africa.
He believed through the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, because Fidel had told him this was no superpower adventure, but a necessary defense of Socialism. Even as the Hind gunships massacred simple goatherds, Fidel had vowed this.